As (bad) luck would have it, I sat in a
North American airport on my birthday, trying unsuccessfully to get to South
America, and reading a copy of USA Today.
Perusing its pages from back to front, I encountered an editorial on page 11A
calling for greater reliance on instant replay technology in baseball and then found
a story on page 2A about cloud whitening. Cloud whitening is a species of what
folks today are calling geoengineering—attempts to deliberately alter the global
climate system and its human-scale effects. Bill Gates, who funds such
research, views it as “an insurance policy” in case climate change gets really
bad. The newspaper story, contrasting “pro” and “con” views, includes the
following statement warning of the dangers of messing with the Earth’s climate
system: “the assumption” says the president of a prominent NGO, “is that we can
play God with the Earth’s ecosystem.”
I want to unpack three different
meanings out of this now commonplace phrase, using the stories I found on
baseball and geoengineering. Teasing out different implied meanings of “playing
God” might help remind us of some of the complexities that we need to think
about when we publicly debate science and technology policy, and that go beyond
simplistic “pro” and “con” views.
“Playing God” usually refers to a lack
of human capacity to predict and control the emerging effects of our actions.
One could say that some of the conditions that dynamically produce physical-socio-technical
outcomes are embedded in pre-existing systems that we did not create, even
though we may be trying to alter them. To stick to the metaphor, since we did
not construct them, we lack sufficient knowledge of the “rules” and adequate
power to influence the how the “game” is “played.”
Given the mind-boggling complexity of Earth’s
climate, not to mention the high stakes that it holds for human well-being and survival,
it is easy to see why this first meaning of “playing God” may be a mainstay in geoengineering
discourses to come. But a second meaning
implied in the phrase is worth teasing out, and can be seen by drawing an
analogy to the sport of baseball.
A couple of weeks ago, an umpire
admitted that he blew a call that robbed a young Detroit Tigers pitcher from
throwing a perfect game. Perfect games are a rare and celebrated event in
baseball, but the ump’s simple mistake now means that, officially, it didn’t
happen. The founder of USA Today
would like to correct such “human errors” by using “modern technologies to make
the game fair for players and fans.” What’s holding him up? Some guy called the
Commissioner of Major League Baseball, who is “stubbornly” refusing to alter
the rules of the game. Whether one thinks that the Commissioner “obviously
can’t adjust to using modern technologies” or believes that baseball should
remain “painfully, wonderfully human” (as an LA Times respondent states), is not the issue here. In this case
there is someone who can actually institute how things take place on the
baseball diamond. Thus, “playing God” can also suggest the role of determining
and governing the activities that play out on a given field of action, a role
that can be seen from the standpoint of establishing the rules of play.
This second meaning of “playing God”
would translate awkwardly into something like “doing what God does,” but the
point would be that humans do sometimes appear to have considerable ability to
make and oversee the conditions under which actions and events unfold.
Moreover, while humans probably are not responsible for placing the Earth into
orbit with the Sun, we are arguably responsible for our own
activities—activities that seem to include partially turning our little green
planet into a political and technological artifact. This is the mindset Gates
appears to be operating under with his “insurance policy” idea.
The third meaning of “playing God” is
something that can be found in the pages of religious texts from the Book of
Job and the writings of Rumi and Kabir to, I am told, the Vedas. It’s what ancient
mythological characters like Prometheus and Tantalus did. Take the story of the
Tower of Babel. Here, “playing” connotes the verb “to game,” as in “gaming the
system” to achieve certain kinds of goals. But it’s different from meaning #1
because in this case one attempts to go to the governing source itself—straight
to the top, as the case may be. According to some interpretations of the text,
those building the Babel tower were actually going after the system’s hierarchy
itself—and they were enough of a threat that the divine force residing in the
sky was forced to scramble their speech to stop them. These builders are in a
sense similar to the editorialist who, while saying he wants mechanized
enforcement of baseball, really seems
to want to see the present Commissioner of baseball replaced, as evident when
he mentions that this guy has “had the Commissioner’s job too long.” This is also
what he appears to be gunning for in his ambiguous title, Why Baseball’s Boss Should be Called Out.
What does this third meaning of
“playing God” have to do with geoengineering? Well, while some would-be geo-engineers
seem genuinely gung ho about embarking on a heroic effort to optimize the
planet for modern societies, others may be more accurately described as
manipulating symbols in an effort to play the system. There is a hint of this
in the article’s statement, “Proponents say the [cloud whitening] research is
needed because of society’s failure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” In
other words, maybe this crazy scheme will wake some people up and get them to
stop using energy, or at least fossil fuels. That would be trying to game the
political system.
My point is that any talk of “playing God” with the Earth should acknowledge all three meanings: that #1 we lack omniscience and omnipotence over the climate system, but also that #2 we are doing a serious dance of agency with it at the same time, and we need to live with that uncomfortable knowledge. Meanwhile, statements endorsing #1 and #2 are inevitably going to be used as means to advance other ends (#3).
So, the next time you read or use the
phrase “playing God,” keep in mind that it’s not always as simple as
recognizing and respecting known limits. We do need to recognize and respect
limits; we also need to take responsibility for ourselves. Taking out untried
insurance policies should not be the basis for peace of mind, and playing a
political game of chicken only unproductively shifts blame onto others.
After seeing a replay of his missed
call, the baseball umpire felt compelled to say, “I cost that kid a perfect
game.” But, really, there are no perfect
games.
