VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN, THE MONSTER AND THE SHADOWS OF TECHNOLOGY – THE FRANKENSTEIN PROPHECIES

As Jeremy Naydler also argues in the book reviewed in the philosophy section below, there is a sense in which the mechanistic outlook and its implications have colonised our minds, reaching even into the unconscious as it has unfolded historically into its present form. These two books were written 30 years apart and are studies of technological perception and indeed identity. They enable readers to become much more aware of how our mentalities and even imaginations have been shaped and literalised, especially in relation to the hegemony of the eye and the visible, and hence of a linear vision 'as a cultural habit of mind.' Robert shows how this originated in 1425 when Brunelleschi invented the technique of linear perspective and its associated vanishing point to create a sense of distance where 'the self becomes a spectator installed behind his or her window on the world… the body, now divorced from this self, becomes a specimen…and the world, as a matter for this detached and observing eye, becomes a spectacle.' (p. 31) It is easy to see how this comes to be associated with objectivity, impersonality, quantification and measurement, separation from the body and nature, the focused anatomical gaze and mechanistic thinking in general. The window and the camera are continuous, and are represented in 'maps and charts, blueprints and diagrams.' The related notions of spectator, spectacle and specimen are associated with a loss of connection and eventually with technological disembodiment.

Descartes takes this one stage further with his separation of mind and body, also corresponding to the crucial distinction between primary and secondary qualities not in fact mentioned here but leading to what Blake called single vision (see chart on p. 55) as well as separation of humanity from nature. This dualism between culture and nature, intellect and emotion, spirit and matter characterised by Susan Griffin makes women the carriers of the negative side – 'symbols of feeling, carnality, nature, all that is in civilisation is "unconscious" and that it would deny' (p. 173) – hence the witch hunt and devaluation of the feminine. There is an interesting section on cubism and the photographs of Hockney as a means of eliminating the sense of distance inherent in the camera, although it does reflect a fragmentation of perspective. Instrumental values of speed and efficiency are embodied in the standardised computer, where 'efficiency wedded to indifference is a cold abstraction of a human being.' (p. 93) The story now moves on to the body as specimen with the development of anatomy by Vesalius in terms of technical functioning – this anatomical gaze is later associated with the objectification of pornography. One comes to understand the connection between the corpse reanimated by Frankenstein, the body of the industrial worker after the division of labour, the body as machine, and the robot (p. 134). Frankenstein's vision is one of mastery and re-creation of nature, while at the same time denying responsibility for his actions and their monstrous consequences – this is all taken up in considerable detail in the second book. Psychological distance is correlated with emotional retreat and the impersonal detachment of the spectator at a spectacle.

The more recent volume is structured as a series of questions, and both books conclude with the possibility of reconnection and a new beginning. Frankenstein, also called the modern Prometheus, has become a metaphor for the drive towards mastery and control as well as wealth through patenting nature. It elicits feelings of disgust and horror from the lunar shadows undetected by the masculine solar mind intent on growth and progress and unchecked by 'the sense of the sacred that is a limit to the hubris of the Promethean mind' (p. 81). We think that we can assume these Godlike powers without the corresponding responsibility for the fallout from our exploitative policies and actions. If we do not awaken from the self-destructive tendencies in this cultural dream, then the patterns of the past will be extended into the future with no pause for reflection, healing, forgiveness, reconnection, renewal, regeneration – in short, metanoia. We are dangerously out of touch with nature and natural rhythms represented by the feminine so graphically depicted in the original Frankenstein narrative where the monster is conceived apart from woman. Paradoxically, though, he still has sensitive feelings that bely his hideous appearance – he murders Frankenstein's fiancée on their wedding day and Frankenstein himself refuses to provide him with a companion. By contrast, the alchemical union of sun and moon involves intimate sexual contact.

As Jung so poignantly develops in his psychology, we all need to become aware of the shadow and the tendency to project onto others what we deny in ourselves, and use this as a justification for violence. Understanding this should, in my view, be a core element of education, also with respect to relationships. The fifth chapter addresses the work of Ray Kurzweil and the emergence of a disembodied homo digitalis adrift in a wired world. He believes that natural evolution is much too to slow to keep pace with our computer and genetic technology and that by the end of the century, humans will no longer be identified with bodies, and our essential quality will be intelligence in a rather narrow technical sense. Robert warns that 'biological, instinctual, embodied intelligence, which evolved in relation to nature will be replaced by digital intelligence apart from nature.' (p. 58) Here there is no feeling, no intuition, no love, no feminine, no soul – just the disembodied cleverness of the left hemisphere, as explained in the work of Iain McGilchrist, a bleak engineered prospect. For Kurzweil, this represents the technological triumph over the natural processes of evolution based on the instrumental values of efficiency, speed, perfection and data processing where there is no longer any distinction between human and machine or physical and virtual reality – if this is not a dystopic technocracy, then what is? Those who refuse will be left behind as marginalised 'unenhanced humans', who will at least have the marginal option of a real human future.

The 2020 lockdowns will have put many local restaurants and cafes out of business – these are places of community, meeting, relaxation and recharge where we can hang out for conversation rather than e-commerce and digital connection – it is now weeks since I was allowed to walk up the street for a beer on Saturday evening. Our self-destructive hubris in permitting so-called gain of function research to render viruses more lethal is just one example of irresponsible and unethical behaviour rebounding on us. Where is the compassion and wisdom in such developments? Who is the monster? We are, in terms of destroying life-support systems (so-called ecosystem services) not only for ourselves but for the whole of life in pursuit of profit – as if we can avoid the adverse health effects ourselves.

Will we be able to heed the prophetic warning and awaken from our Promethean dream? The oneness and interconnectedness implied by quantum physics, mystical experience and ecology represent a potential path of return with a relational, multi-perspectival and plural structure. More immediately, in his recent book Robert emphasises love as a seed of hope, asking if it was because Frankenstein's creation was forced to live without love that he became monstrous. Today's economic and political systems have been corrupted by money and power, as is only too apparent in the manipulation of the corona narrative in suppressing the experience of clinicians in the interests of profit and social control, manifestations of a raw will to power: health cannot be mandated by the point of a needle or a gun. Out of fear and in the name of safety and security, we seem ready to sacrifice our freedoms when we should be reimagining a New World working in harmony with nature and each other. This also entails recovering our aesthetic sensibility for beauty and contact with nature instead of anaesthetising and distracting ourselves on our multiple screens. The brilliant and evocative analysis in these books serves as an essential cultural wake-up call that we ignore at our peril and that urges us to renew, reconnect and regenerate, expanding and deepening our consciousness and empathy in this creative process of emergence and renaissance.