Synthetic Biology - Brutes or Angels: Human Possibility in the Age of Biotechnology - page 274

ample of commodiication-based thinking by one synthetic biologist who
suggests redesigning tree seeds so that they grow into houses rather than
trees. 24 synbio literature is replete with examples of life viewed as a com-
modity to be constructed for human purposes. With proper controls, con-
structing new life forms for human benefit is not necessarily a bad thing.
But in combination with the additional three factors discussed next, the
commodification of nature becomes an especially dangerous threat to life
on earth.
Human exemptionalism. human exemptionalism refers to the philosophy
that supposes humans can thrive outside the laws of nature. The concept
was formalized into a Western philosophical/sociological paradigm soon
after the eighteenth-century enlightenment. exemptionalist thinking held
sway through the industrial revolution and well into the mid-twentieth
century. human exemptionalism is now severely critiqued by environ-
mental sociologists and ecologists. nevertheless, much of the general pub-
lic and governance structure in the United states and other industrialized
nations still live, vote, and behave as though humankind can live indepen-
dently from the natural world. Characteristics of exemptionalist thinking
include lack of interest in and denial of the role human activity plays in the
current wave of extinctions and climate change. The attitude that mass
extinction and loss of forests and other natural habitats do not affect hu-
man welfare and the view that preserving biodiversity is less urgent than
economic growth, democratic expansion, military defense, or developing
cures for cancers epitomize human exemptionalism.
Trained incapacities in evolution and ecology. The concept of trained incapacity
is credited to norwegian American economist and sociologist Thorstein
veblen (1857-1929), who wrote of business transactions being carried out
with thoughts only of monetary gain and with little regard for their effect
on the welfare of the community, thereby putting workers, the commu-
nity, and the business people at cross purposes (1914). The implication is
that business persons are trained to act with one goal in mind, corporate
profit, and that this training produces the incapacity to see more broadly
the implications of their activities. The concept has also been applied in