Andrew Kimbrell, a Catholic convert who unapologetically lists "faithfulness to family and society" as his greatest source of hope for the future, nonetheless relishes his role as a heretic.
In our time, there’s no greater heresy than challenging the modern ideal of always pushing the limits. To question the value of breaking new ground, even in controversial fields like genetic engineering or biological weapons, is to find yourself called a crank, and far worse. Yet Kimbrell — a lawyer, writer, and former concert pianist — has made a career of doing just that, blasting away at twentieth-century orthodoxy in books and articles, in courtrooms and public addresses, in lobbying efforts and public education campaigns.
"This is the century of the technological imagination," he says. "We think we can do anything with enough research and development — even find the genes that control aging so that we can achieve immortality. But most spiritual traditions say that limits are important, limits bring transcendence. When we are playing music, holding a baby, making love, pitching a great fastball — those moments are meaningful and beautiful in and of themselves.
"The idea of limits becomes for me the central vision of the twenty-first century. Sure, we want to keep pursuing cures for diseases, but not destroy all limits. Technology cannot replace transcendence."
That’s what drives Kimbrell — the belief that, although technology is a useful tool, we cannot allow it to replace our ethical philosophies, moral judgments, and spiritual teachings. "The religion that really controls our time is modernity," he explains, diagramming the new Holy Trinity that rules the world with a firmer and more far-reaching hand than any pope in history: science (the "all-knowing" Father), technology (the "all-doing" Son), and market economics (the "all-consuming" Holy Ghost). "These are the new deities," reverentially worshipped by modern-day priests in the cathedrals of government, universities, the media, and corporations around the world, says Kimbrell.
A wide smile, an infectious laugh, and a keen curiosity about almost everything under the sun help make Kimbrell a truly effective heretic; no one can dismiss him as a negative, sour-on-life personality. Indeed, he credits love — his love for the Beaverkill River in the Catskill Mountains of New York — as the reason he embarked on a career as an activist. He and his brother started visiting the river as young men, hurrying there after work on Fridays to squeeze in some fly-fishing before dusk. When they learned of plans for a huge condo development, which not only would ruin the scenery but also flush sewage into the river, they helped organize an opposition movement that successfully blocked the project. That campaign, which involved legal action, influenced him to go to law school.
"I reversed my hobby and my profession," he says, noting that until that time he made a living as concert pianist and music teacher in New York City. He still plays for fun, and is now writing music for five of Shakespeare’s sonnets—an idea that struck him while he was watching the movie Shakespeare in Love.
Politics had always been a big part of his life. Kimbrell grew up attending civil rights and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in New York City. In high school and at New York University, he helped run the organization Art and Music Students Against the War.
"It’s amazing that a generation got together and helped stop a war as an act of conscience," he says. "The anti-war movement gave me a real sense of pride to be part of something that changed the world."
As founder and president of International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA; on the Web at icta.org), which operates out of a brick rowhouse just blocks from the U.S. Capitol, Kimbrell taps that rebel spirit to question the consequences of new technologies. He’s not bent on ousting all new contraptions; the office buzzes with clicking computer keyboards and whirring fax machines. ICTA research, political organizing, and lawsuits target genetic engineering, the internal-combustion engine, cloning, animal patenting, food irradiation, and industrialized agriculture and forestry.
In many years of work — first with Jeremy Rifkin’s Foundation on Economic Trends and later with ICTA — Kimbrell filed successful legal briefs against forcing a surrogate mother to give up her baby in the famous Baby M case, against the Pentagon’s biological warfare programs, and in favor of stronger health labeling on meat and poultry. On Capitol Hill, he’s written legislation with members of Congress all over the political spectrum, from archconservative Illinois congressman Henry Hyde (outlawing the commercialization of surrogate motherhood) to liberals like Barbara Boxer (on animal patenting and genetic privacy).
His book The Human Body Shop marshals powerful moral, medical, and spiritual evidence against the emerging commercialization of the body. In addition to exposing the chilling details of a new global marketplace trading in human organs, genetic material, and reproductive capacity, he calls for a "body revolution" that would tie traditional beliefs about the body’s sacredness with new insights drawn from holistic views of wellness and alternative medicine.
His next book, The Masculine Mystique, is a manifesto urging the men’s movement to expand out from inner mythopoetic work to embrace a broad political program that could bring a new perspective to issues like militarism, economic inequality, family breakdown, environmental degradation, and social alienation. Praised by both men’s movement founder Robert Bly and feminists, the book brings fresh ideas to the raging debate about gender issues. It sold well more than fifteen thousand copies in hardback and earned Kimbrell a warm welcome at many men’s meetings across the country.
Kimbrell’s wide-ranging focus takes in everything from wilderness preservation to workplace stress to the empty values we bestow on teenage boys — a constellation of concerns. "When I talk about technological society, I mean systems, not just machines," he says. "A corporation’s structure is a technology, and so is an assembly line. They were created the same way machines are created: to perform a particular function without much thought to other consequences of their existence."
He attributes this view to his training as a classical pianist. "My teacher, Kurt Appelbaum, taught that the technique of playing actually creates the emotion of a piece of music — in contrast to many teachers who say that you adopt a technique and add the emotion later. Years later it struck me that it’s the same with technology. We create it to perform a function and then try to add our values — and that doesn’t work. Technology creates its own values. We need to be aware of that any time we implement a new technology."
Adapted from the book, Visionaries: People and Ideas to Change Your Life (New Society Publishers) available at your local bookstore or 800-880-UTNE.