The Dawn of the Synthetic Age
Reading Time: 4 minutesExtinction, de-extinction, and the dawn of the synthetic age.
An expert in environmental philosophy and wildlife recovery responds to Margrét Helgadóttir’s ‘A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen.’
Margrét Helgadóttir’s vision of a northern city turned into a bloated climate refuge has already left the category of fiction. True, an escaped lion prowling the city streets is rare. But we already live in a world haunted by the ghosts of species extinguished by rising temperatures, the prospect of meat grown in a factory, and the burdens created by tens of thousands of climate migrants. Much else rings true, including the social disapproval for people who over-consume and the contested dramas between those who idolize a mammal and those who want him dead. The most memorable aspect of Helgadóttir’s short story, however, is not the prescience of the vision. It’s the emotional reaction she elicits for Levi.
Why Levi is special is both intuitively obvious and vastly underappreciated by those caught up in the biotechnology revolution. His fan club is based entirely on rumors that Levi is ‘the real thing’—a natural animal, not one genetically revived. Their fascination with him is relatable—many of us lust to maintain something authentic. Wild animals ripple with authenticity. Levi is one of the last of them.
Environmental philosophers coined the term ‘biotic artifact’ four decades ago. At the time, it referred to the sheep and cattle whose carefully manufactured temperaments, plump haunches, and passivity in the company of humans made them suitable objects for commodification. Upon earning the label ‘domestic,’ they simultaneously became subjects of greater care and objects of diminished dignity compared with their wild counterparts.
Biotic artifacts were popular from the start. Wild animals suffered in the face of a hundred centuries of growth in domestic livestock. Today, 96 percent of mammalian biomass is humans and domesticated animals. This means 24 times the weight of all the lions, whales, and musk-ox combined are creatures who spend their lives in pens, fields, factories, and other manufactured spaces. The remaining 4 percent of wild, mammalian life accrues rarity value by default.
The techniques that permitted the transformation of aurochs and wild sheep into beef and lamb have a hint of wholesomeness about them. Take animals with the traits you admire and put them in close proximity to others of the opposite sex during breeding season. After hormones have run their course, you get something even more marketable than what you had before.
The technologies Helgadóttir’s world employs are far less wholesome. Zoo animals are ‘lab’ or ‘factory’ built. Their genomes are synthesized from sugars and nitrogenous bases and edited with CRISPR-Cas enzymes. The stitching together of nucleic acid sequences is done in vitro and checked by technicians pouring over computer screens. Ova are fertilized with DNA that has never felt the pulse of life. Pluripotent stem cells multiply in cultures kept isolated from breathing, bleeding animals. Embryos are gestated in artificial wombs. The few young that survive are coached in the art of living by surrogate parents, their immediate ancestors now gone. The resulting organisms may count as ‘living,’ but their creation is thoroughly artificial. This new generation of biotic artifacts are all that remains in what is increasingly a synthetic age.
There are no lab-created mammals with entirely synthetic DNA yet, but scientists are inching toward a manufactured version of the living world. Custom-built bacteria whose genomes are designed on computers are successfully breeding in petri dishes. Black-footed ferrets cloned with 35-year-old frozen DNA live comfortable lives in captive-breeding facilities. And mice containing gene drives nibble food in California research labs.
Helgadóttir points out that such a diminished world is not a world entirely without joy. ‘The zoo animals,’ she writes, ‘despite all being created in laboratories … were a great entertainment. The zoo itself was an important social meeting place on weekends.’ But for those not entirely distracted by entertainments, the joy is tinged with a fatal regret. The remaining zoo animals are simulacra. As good as they are as engineering achievements, they also ‘tugged at the humans’ souls, reminding them about the lost world.’ Levi, with his rumored connection to real wildlife, crystalizes this ache more than any.
Trym, Levi’s caretaker, certainly gets this. He wants Levi to die a natural death, free from attempts to extract his sperm for de-extinction efforts. Trym knows too well how the human touch squanders a wild animal’s dignity. The hunter also senses ‘something old and majestic’ in the cat that stands before him. The self-promoting Kaya gets the point too, eventually, when she sees how Levi rests his magnificent head on Trym after they thwart the hunter’s plan.
‘A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen‘ reminds us of what will be missed in a synthetic age, however inevitable it may seem. Levi is literally lionized. His admirers will him to be a real lion in a warmed and degraded world. His authenticity provides reassurance in a world that has otherwise become a hall of human mirrors; his death crushes this soothing thought.
One hint of hope is that Levi remains a tenacious beast, surviving in the suburbs of Longyearbyen far longer than anyone expected. He proves wilier than the hunter and retains fearsome strength and speed, despite his age. He is a survivor, first in the zoo and then on paved streets, even when a whole city searches for him.
If the prospect of a synthetic age fills you despair, it’s good to recall that tenacity of wildlife. When people withdrew to their homes during the early days of the COVID pandemic, wild animals poured into quieted spaces in startling numbers. Such acts of biological endurance are not rare. As the planet warms, species of shrew have developed longer tails to dissipate more heat. Flowers are blooming earlier to synchronize with shifted insect hatches. Swallows have developed shorter wings to be more agile in city traffic. Humpback whales, freed from the harpoon, are rapidly repopulating oceans around the world without our help.
Getting excited about the survival of a lion in Svalbard tells us something important about what’s left of the living world. We want the living world to be authentic. A world of synthetic wildlife would be a Hallmark world. The good news is that wild animals are tenacious. Biology remains resilient, exploratory, and creative even when the chips are down.
If you give nature a chance, it will snatch it, quick as the swipe of a big cat’s paw.
Ref: slate