I like the assignment from last week, so it will be the assignment for this week as well. It really isn't the same, though, because you are expected to make use of all of Jimmy Corrigan instead of the first half. To put it another way: the text of the assignment is the same; expectations, though, will be a little different/higher.
In other news, I'm likely to fall behind on grading this week. Fear not, though - I'll get caught up over break. Remember to email me with any questions or difficulties...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Life's Meaning
Alisha Nesbitt
Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200
Essay #3
Life’s Meaning
Have we as a people lost the meaning of life? Some would say yes we have and others would say we haven’t. It is just all about what the meaning of life means to you. Some have very different opinions on what they want out of life. They might want to enhance it or they just might want to keep it the same. But as author Bill McKibben, of the novel Enough, he gets you to seriously think about this question. He takes you on this journey, about how people are trying to change human life. He explains what we could do to make life better, but at the same time he is asking you if this is really what we want out of life. For me I am all for enhancing life, but genetic engineering is taking it too far.
Genetic engineering what scientists have come up with, so you can plan your future ‘s life out. Instead of your child being born with the genes of you and your partner’s, you can get different types of genes injected into your embryo. They can be born very smart, a good athlete, nice personality, etc. Now I would say that this is taking life way too far. Why would you want to do this to your child? Some would think that this would make life happier but it isn’t. When your child goes out and wins a big track meet, he’s/she’s not going to be thinking “yes I did this all on my own” but “this is what my parents want” (McKibben 53). It’s like you have turned you child into some type of machine, of what you wanted your child to be and that’s not fair. Just like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says about joy, that with genetic engineering there isn’t any opportunity for joy, and without that we will settle for less such as watching television or drinking (McKibben 54).
If we as a people invite this genetic engineering into our world, then yes, we have lost the meaning of life. Life is not about not about trying to make our children into what we are or what we wanted to be in life. We should be happy with whatever they come out to be and whatever they choose to do with their lives. Yes, when they are young we should teach them about the fundamentals of life, but once they are older we have to let them go and be themselves. That is what this world is all about individualism, everyone as their own person. Having genetic engineering in this world is just going to have everyone the same. People are going to be good at everything, but that is not what life is about we need to have differences in this world.
In conclusion I don’t believe we have lost the meaning of life, but I do believe that if we accept genetic engineering in than we will. We don’t need anything like that. I think we are just fine the way we are. This will just make our world so much more confusing. People are stable with what is going on with our world now. So why should be bring this in? If people would stop thinking of themselves then we wouldn’t even have to think about this problem, and we would be fine. We don’t want to be seen as a world that doesn’t have any meaning for life.
Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200
Essay #3
Life’s Meaning
Have we as a people lost the meaning of life? Some would say yes we have and others would say we haven’t. It is just all about what the meaning of life means to you. Some have very different opinions on what they want out of life. They might want to enhance it or they just might want to keep it the same. But as author Bill McKibben, of the novel Enough, he gets you to seriously think about this question. He takes you on this journey, about how people are trying to change human life. He explains what we could do to make life better, but at the same time he is asking you if this is really what we want out of life. For me I am all for enhancing life, but genetic engineering is taking it too far.
Genetic engineering what scientists have come up with, so you can plan your future ‘s life out. Instead of your child being born with the genes of you and your partner’s, you can get different types of genes injected into your embryo. They can be born very smart, a good athlete, nice personality, etc. Now I would say that this is taking life way too far. Why would you want to do this to your child? Some would think that this would make life happier but it isn’t. When your child goes out and wins a big track meet, he’s/she’s not going to be thinking “yes I did this all on my own” but “this is what my parents want” (McKibben 53). It’s like you have turned you child into some type of machine, of what you wanted your child to be and that’s not fair. Just like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says about joy, that with genetic engineering there isn’t any opportunity for joy, and without that we will settle for less such as watching television or drinking (McKibben 54).
If we as a people invite this genetic engineering into our world, then yes, we have lost the meaning of life. Life is not about not about trying to make our children into what we are or what we wanted to be in life. We should be happy with whatever they come out to be and whatever they choose to do with their lives. Yes, when they are young we should teach them about the fundamentals of life, but once they are older we have to let them go and be themselves. That is what this world is all about individualism, everyone as their own person. Having genetic engineering in this world is just going to have everyone the same. People are going to be good at everything, but that is not what life is about we need to have differences in this world.
In conclusion I don’t believe we have lost the meaning of life, but I do believe that if we accept genetic engineering in than we will. We don’t need anything like that. I think we are just fine the way we are. This will just make our world so much more confusing. People are stable with what is going on with our world now. So why should be bring this in? If people would stop thinking of themselves then we wouldn’t even have to think about this problem, and we would be fine. We don’t want to be seen as a world that doesn’t have any meaning for life.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Meaning of Life
Julie Vandervort
Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200
Everyone has their own idea of why they are here and what the meaning of life is. Many people devote their lives to a sport or some sort of activity; others look to religion to find a purpose. However, if we continue on the current track we are on now we will soon lose all meaning that life could possibly hold. Technology has made our lives much easier and has even contributed to saving lives but, it also has the potential to ruin our lives.
McKibben believes that “the great danger of the world that we have built is that it leaves us vulnerable to meaninglessness – to a world where consumption is all that happens, because there’s nothing else left that means anything” (McKibben 46). The majority of us are too obsessed with TV, movies, and video games. These things keep many of us from realizing our full potential. This is especially obvious in the current generation because they have grown up with all of this technology and don’t know anything else. For example, my cousins bring their video games everywhere they go. They refuse to interact and socialize with everyone else and if they get distracted for one second from their game they become extremely irritable. This could be attributed to the way their parents have raised them or to the culture they have grown up in.
If we begin to genetically engineer our children this could possibly eliminate their laziness or it could encourage it. McKibbin explains a study done by Csikszentmihalyi that researched why people found a deep joy in some particular activity. He found that for a person to enjoy an activity it must “provide a clear set of challenges,” “a going beyond the known, a stretching of one’s self toward new dimensions of skill and competence” (McKibben 51). If an activity is too easy it will lead to boredom and if it is too challenging it will lead to anxiety. Therefore, if someone is programmed to be an amazing runner they will most likely quit running because it will become boring for them to do. According to McKibben, “the joy comes not from excelling against some arbitrary standard, but from excelling against whatever your limits happen to be” (McKibben 52). Even though people will be programmed to be great, they will probably never reach their potential because they will become bored since there is no challenge.
A life without meaning and purpose is exactly what Jimmy Corrigan lives. He is the prime example of what our lives will become if we let ourselves become completely consumed by technology. If we refuse to do anything with our lives and entertain ourselves solely with technology or if we decide to genetically engineer our children it will only lead to one outcome; we will all become boring and meaningless. Life will become torturous to live and there will be no point to our existence. In order to prevent this from happening we need to start making changes in our lives now. We need to stop relying so much on technology and stop taking life for granted. We only live one life, so why not make the most of it?
Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200
Everyone has their own idea of why they are here and what the meaning of life is. Many people devote their lives to a sport or some sort of activity; others look to religion to find a purpose. However, if we continue on the current track we are on now we will soon lose all meaning that life could possibly hold. Technology has made our lives much easier and has even contributed to saving lives but, it also has the potential to ruin our lives.
McKibben believes that “the great danger of the world that we have built is that it leaves us vulnerable to meaninglessness – to a world where consumption is all that happens, because there’s nothing else left that means anything” (McKibben 46). The majority of us are too obsessed with TV, movies, and video games. These things keep many of us from realizing our full potential. This is especially obvious in the current generation because they have grown up with all of this technology and don’t know anything else. For example, my cousins bring their video games everywhere they go. They refuse to interact and socialize with everyone else and if they get distracted for one second from their game they become extremely irritable. This could be attributed to the way their parents have raised them or to the culture they have grown up in.
If we begin to genetically engineer our children this could possibly eliminate their laziness or it could encourage it. McKibbin explains a study done by Csikszentmihalyi that researched why people found a deep joy in some particular activity. He found that for a person to enjoy an activity it must “provide a clear set of challenges,” “a going beyond the known, a stretching of one’s self toward new dimensions of skill and competence” (McKibben 51). If an activity is too easy it will lead to boredom and if it is too challenging it will lead to anxiety. Therefore, if someone is programmed to be an amazing runner they will most likely quit running because it will become boring for them to do. According to McKibben, “the joy comes not from excelling against some arbitrary standard, but from excelling against whatever your limits happen to be” (McKibben 52). Even though people will be programmed to be great, they will probably never reach their potential because they will become bored since there is no challenge.
A life without meaning and purpose is exactly what Jimmy Corrigan lives. He is the prime example of what our lives will become if we let ourselves become completely consumed by technology. If we refuse to do anything with our lives and entertain ourselves solely with technology or if we decide to genetically engineer our children it will only lead to one outcome; we will all become boring and meaningless. Life will become torturous to live and there will be no point to our existence. In order to prevent this from happening we need to start making changes in our lives now. We need to stop relying so much on technology and stop taking life for granted. We only live one life, so why not make the most of it?
Nature vs. Nurture
Why, exactly, does a genetic predisposition force a loss of meaning? I feel that Bill McKibben fails completely to explain, in basic, explicit fashion, why losing the randomization of our genetic makeup will also force the loss of our identities and our basic meaning in life. How do genes that have been preselected by one’s parents, rather than chosen at random by an invisible molecular force, strip humanity of their identity and purpose, if one exists? I feel that germ-line engineering will do little to change the basics of human nature or the concept of the meaning of life.
Our “engineered” progeny will still face the same existence that we do today and that mankind generally has for hundreds of thousands of years. They may do so with an extra genetic advantage or two, but the lives they lead will remain largely the same as ours. They will seek improvement, happiness, and knowledge. They will laugh, cry, and live. They will, however, do so without facing the possibilities of cystic fibrosis, Huntingdon’s disease, sickle cell anemia, or any of the countless genetic diseases that currently plague humanity. They will be able to run faster, jump higher, and think more deeply. Yet, they will still run, jump, and think for themselves.
Germ-line engineering is not a “magic bullet.” McKibben often overlooks this and, throughout his book, exaggerates the abilities of the technology, distorting the effect it may have on humanity. It will never be able to produce a child who is completely predictable or robotic. It may produce offspring who has an especially efficient blood-oxygen exchange system, or one with long, nimble fingers and proficient hearing. Yet, it will be unable to compel these offspring to embrace their athletic ability or to embrace their musical tendencies any more than our current, “natural” genes can.
Genes are not the only determinants and predictors of humanity. As we stand now, we are already predisposed to enjoying particular things based on culture, genetics, and human nature. Directing this somewhat through germ-line engineering does not alter this. The “nurture” side of our development will remain unchanged. The world tends towards chaos. Thousands of unpredictable forces act on our development and genotypes now—how do engineered genes differ? Environment wields enormous power over the people we become.
So how, in consideration of the shortcomings of germ-line engineering and the force of the environment upon our genes, does a future of genetic germ-line engineering devoid humanity of its basic meaning? Purpose and meaning take a variety of forms for each individual. Some such as McKibben find meaning in pushing their physical or mental limits. While McKibben argues that meaning would be lost in this sense if germ-line engineering were to take effect, I disagree with this opinion. As stated before, germ-line engineering will not produce robotoic offspring. It may produce a child who can run at previously impossible speeds, but it will not make said child enjoying running or motivate him or her to develop their skill. Even today, the best of runners are not necessarily those who were born with the best ability to run. The best runners are those who train day in and day out, who dedicate themselves to the sport they love, and who push themselves beyond what nature has given them. Nearly all Olympic runners most likely have very little difference in ability. It is not the runner who is naturally fastest that wins the race; it is the runner who is most dedicated.
McKibben also feels that the search for self is a large portion of the purpose of human life. He claims that if we were to pre-select our children’s tendencies, they would have no opportunity for this self-searching experience, as their identities would be laid out before them. Yet, our genetic makeup is not the only place from which our identities emerge. For quite some time, scholars, psychologists, and philosophers have debated the question of “nature vs. nurture.” Which has greater effect over our eventual development and identities? While I will not attempt to answer this question in this essay, I believe I can safely state that, no matter which one believes to have a greater effect, it cannot be denied that both contribute. So, regardless of if the “nature” half of our development is predetermined, the “nurture” portion cannot be predicted. Humans will continue to have the opportunity to search for their identities even after the implementation of germ-line engineering and may, perhaps, even find new meaning in exploring how their environment has impacted their preselected genes to produce unique and unpredictable human beings.
The meaning of human life originates in many ways and is different for every individual. Yes, some find meaning in testing themselves, others in discovering themselves, and countless others find meaning in countless other ways. Germ-line engineering will not destroy these purposes, but alter them, ever so slightly. It will not force the loss of meaning that Bill McKibben envisions, but enhance it, streamline it. Mankind is not dependent on genes alone.
Our “engineered” progeny will still face the same existence that we do today and that mankind generally has for hundreds of thousands of years. They may do so with an extra genetic advantage or two, but the lives they lead will remain largely the same as ours. They will seek improvement, happiness, and knowledge. They will laugh, cry, and live. They will, however, do so without facing the possibilities of cystic fibrosis, Huntingdon’s disease, sickle cell anemia, or any of the countless genetic diseases that currently plague humanity. They will be able to run faster, jump higher, and think more deeply. Yet, they will still run, jump, and think for themselves.
Germ-line engineering is not a “magic bullet.” McKibben often overlooks this and, throughout his book, exaggerates the abilities of the technology, distorting the effect it may have on humanity. It will never be able to produce a child who is completely predictable or robotic. It may produce offspring who has an especially efficient blood-oxygen exchange system, or one with long, nimble fingers and proficient hearing. Yet, it will be unable to compel these offspring to embrace their athletic ability or to embrace their musical tendencies any more than our current, “natural” genes can.
Genes are not the only determinants and predictors of humanity. As we stand now, we are already predisposed to enjoying particular things based on culture, genetics, and human nature. Directing this somewhat through germ-line engineering does not alter this. The “nurture” side of our development will remain unchanged. The world tends towards chaos. Thousands of unpredictable forces act on our development and genotypes now—how do engineered genes differ? Environment wields enormous power over the people we become.
So how, in consideration of the shortcomings of germ-line engineering and the force of the environment upon our genes, does a future of genetic germ-line engineering devoid humanity of its basic meaning? Purpose and meaning take a variety of forms for each individual. Some such as McKibben find meaning in pushing their physical or mental limits. While McKibben argues that meaning would be lost in this sense if germ-line engineering were to take effect, I disagree with this opinion. As stated before, germ-line engineering will not produce robotoic offspring. It may produce a child who can run at previously impossible speeds, but it will not make said child enjoying running or motivate him or her to develop their skill. Even today, the best of runners are not necessarily those who were born with the best ability to run. The best runners are those who train day in and day out, who dedicate themselves to the sport they love, and who push themselves beyond what nature has given them. Nearly all Olympic runners most likely have very little difference in ability. It is not the runner who is naturally fastest that wins the race; it is the runner who is most dedicated.
McKibben also feels that the search for self is a large portion of the purpose of human life. He claims that if we were to pre-select our children’s tendencies, they would have no opportunity for this self-searching experience, as their identities would be laid out before them. Yet, our genetic makeup is not the only place from which our identities emerge. For quite some time, scholars, psychologists, and philosophers have debated the question of “nature vs. nurture.” Which has greater effect over our eventual development and identities? While I will not attempt to answer this question in this essay, I believe I can safely state that, no matter which one believes to have a greater effect, it cannot be denied that both contribute. So, regardless of if the “nature” half of our development is predetermined, the “nurture” portion cannot be predicted. Humans will continue to have the opportunity to search for their identities even after the implementation of germ-line engineering and may, perhaps, even find new meaning in exploring how their environment has impacted their preselected genes to produce unique and unpredictable human beings.
The meaning of human life originates in many ways and is different for every individual. Yes, some find meaning in testing themselves, others in discovering themselves, and countless others find meaning in countless other ways. Germ-line engineering will not destroy these purposes, but alter them, ever so slightly. It will not force the loss of meaning that Bill McKibben envisions, but enhance it, streamline it. Mankind is not dependent on genes alone.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Overkill
Evan Kelly
Dr. Johns
Essay #3
Overkill
The world as we know it is changing. Fantasies that were only dreamt of in the 19th and early 20th century have become realities. We can now talk to and see in real time, a friend that is half way across the world. We can now stop the once horrifying word, cancer. Now, humanity is on the brink of a new frontier called genetic engineering. Many dread this new technology, but others claim that it is our brightest future. Think of a world without incurable disease. The fatal viruses in Africa and the rest of the world could finally become extinct, but what other outcomes will come of this technology. Bill McKibben writes in his book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, that the world is loosing it’s meaning and genetic engineering will destroy our sense of community. I disagree. I believe that there are many flaws that are not addressed in McKibben’s argument.
Bill McKibben believes that we have already begun to loose our sense of community, but with technology constantly being improved, it is now easier than ever to stay in touch with those close to you. It is my first year away from my home family, and friends, but I can call, e-mail, and now even video chat with anybody, even my dog. While I hear my parents say “wow, I wonder what ever happened to him. After high school we just lost contact.” If I want to I will be able to continue talking to my old friends any time. It is much easier leaving home, when I can see it in real time with the touch of a button. Imagine if we were still constantly writing letters like we did a century ago. I would only hear from my parents once a month and I’d only hear their voices when I went home. It took a century to go from pencil and paper to digital video chatting. Who knows what will happen in the next century. I wouldn’t be surprised if teleportation became our new means of communication and transportation in the next century. Soon the next generation and even our generation will look back and be astonished at the poor picture quality in a video chat. Instead we may simply teleport to our destination and have a conversation face to face. Staying close with friends and loved ones is becoming increasingly easy and will ensure that we maintain a sense of community.
McKibben also argues that we have lost our collective meaning and that genetic engineering will only further destroy us. It is natural for man to be curious and to have an insatiable thirst for more. When I say natural I define it as a state of mind that the majority of humans are born with. Competition, love, attraction, and curiosity are all what I believe to be natural instincts. These are the some basic parts of life that humans are “meant” to do. Genetic engineering cannot and will not change this. While McKibben does admit that some genetic engineering is beneficial, such as the creation of genes that will combat disease and virus, he says that once we cross the line, there is no going back. He is frightened that IQ manipulation and designer babies will be inevitable outcomes. While this may be true, who decides that this is a terrible thing? I would like to be 6’2 with natural athleticism. I would also like to have been born smarter so that maybe calculus wouldn’t be so damn hard for me. McKibben debates that genetic engineering will steal our individuality and turn us into machines, with pre-programmed thoughts, feelings, and ideals, but this argument is not valid. Even if we do start to genetically alter our children before birth, there is no possible way that they will all be the same. Say a group of children receive a gene that increases intelligence, based on the rest of their genes this could enhance their writing skills, speaking skills, arithmetic skills or any other in a long list of skills. These children will not write exactly the same papers in school. They may all argue a thesis in an equally intelligent, but completely different way. Genetic engineering is not programming. It is enhancement. Remember that these children will learn different values through their upbringing. Sure, all parents may want their kid to be smarter, but some will want him to be a rocket scientist, others a doctor, and others a business owner. Furthermore, an increase of inherited intelligence does not mean that a child will be a bilingual nuclear physicist at birth. He may have traits like an increased capacity for knowledge and a yearning to learn. One must still obtain this knowledge from somewhere and there are thousands of teachers across the world, each with his or her, own style and beliefs. Each child will at least partially embrace the beliefs of his or her professor. This is more evidence that we will not become machine-like. Even identical twins, with the same DNA structure often take completely different courses in life. With genetic engineering we will not only continue to survive, but we will thrive. Does this sound like a loss of meaning?
What McKibben fails to consider are the many areas of our being that can potentially be altered. If our natural athletic ability can be enhanced then so can our personality. We can receive a gene that will make us less lazy or less of a procrastinator. I know that I would sign myself up for that one. We could become more loyal, dedicated, caring, ethical; the list goes on and on. Industry and the economy would boom if everybody had an undying will to succeed at the workplace. Poverty could potentially be wiped out and the financial scam artists that seem to be multiplying everyday could become non-existent. Life has become monotonous just as I believe F.C. Ware has demonstrated in his graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan. My days are more or less spent sleeping, going to day class, working, going to night class, doing homework, and then sleeping once again. Of course that is not every detail of my life, but my point is that I know where I will be and what I will probably be doing for 90% of the day next Tuesday. Genetic engineering could be our key to a new world. In reality, Jimmy Corrigan is not the typical person in today’s society. But I would describe him as an exaggerated normal individual, and his boring life is the life that deep down, many people feel that they are living. Though physically most people can communicate and interact much more thoroughly than Jimmy, they are mentally exhausted just as he is. Where would Jimmy be if he were to have had his genes altered before birth though? He could have increased intelligence, perseverance, and social skills. Maybe then, his father would not belittle him, and if he did continue to then Jimmy would have the will to continue on and rebel against his abusive father. There may be some consequences of genetic engineering, but the rewards heavily outweigh them.
Bill McKibben is wrong in saying that humanity is loosing it’s meaning. He is also wrong in believing that genetic engineering will steal our individuality. If anything it will increase it. Instead of being born solely with the genes of our parents, a child could be born with these genes as well as other enhanced genes that will increase various areas of the mind and body. Genetic engineering is the beginning of a revolution. The possibilities are endless and sooner or later man’s natural curiosity will enable us to cross the barrier and begin to engineer our genes to become a stronger human race. F.C. Ware is correct. Human life is monotonous and our lives are becoming more boring by the day. This world needs a breakthrough to excite us once again. Guns revolutionized warfare, electricity revolutionized the world that we live in, and genetic engineering will revolutionize the people living in this world. We are on the brink of a new age and to say that we have lost ourselves and robbed our lives of meaning is just overkill.
Dr. Johns
Essay #3
Overkill
The world as we know it is changing. Fantasies that were only dreamt of in the 19th and early 20th century have become realities. We can now talk to and see in real time, a friend that is half way across the world. We can now stop the once horrifying word, cancer. Now, humanity is on the brink of a new frontier called genetic engineering. Many dread this new technology, but others claim that it is our brightest future. Think of a world without incurable disease. The fatal viruses in Africa and the rest of the world could finally become extinct, but what other outcomes will come of this technology. Bill McKibben writes in his book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, that the world is loosing it’s meaning and genetic engineering will destroy our sense of community. I disagree. I believe that there are many flaws that are not addressed in McKibben’s argument.
Bill McKibben believes that we have already begun to loose our sense of community, but with technology constantly being improved, it is now easier than ever to stay in touch with those close to you. It is my first year away from my home family, and friends, but I can call, e-mail, and now even video chat with anybody, even my dog. While I hear my parents say “wow, I wonder what ever happened to him. After high school we just lost contact.” If I want to I will be able to continue talking to my old friends any time. It is much easier leaving home, when I can see it in real time with the touch of a button. Imagine if we were still constantly writing letters like we did a century ago. I would only hear from my parents once a month and I’d only hear their voices when I went home. It took a century to go from pencil and paper to digital video chatting. Who knows what will happen in the next century. I wouldn’t be surprised if teleportation became our new means of communication and transportation in the next century. Soon the next generation and even our generation will look back and be astonished at the poor picture quality in a video chat. Instead we may simply teleport to our destination and have a conversation face to face. Staying close with friends and loved ones is becoming increasingly easy and will ensure that we maintain a sense of community.
McKibben also argues that we have lost our collective meaning and that genetic engineering will only further destroy us. It is natural for man to be curious and to have an insatiable thirst for more. When I say natural I define it as a state of mind that the majority of humans are born with. Competition, love, attraction, and curiosity are all what I believe to be natural instincts. These are the some basic parts of life that humans are “meant” to do. Genetic engineering cannot and will not change this. While McKibben does admit that some genetic engineering is beneficial, such as the creation of genes that will combat disease and virus, he says that once we cross the line, there is no going back. He is frightened that IQ manipulation and designer babies will be inevitable outcomes. While this may be true, who decides that this is a terrible thing? I would like to be 6’2 with natural athleticism. I would also like to have been born smarter so that maybe calculus wouldn’t be so damn hard for me. McKibben debates that genetic engineering will steal our individuality and turn us into machines, with pre-programmed thoughts, feelings, and ideals, but this argument is not valid. Even if we do start to genetically alter our children before birth, there is no possible way that they will all be the same. Say a group of children receive a gene that increases intelligence, based on the rest of their genes this could enhance their writing skills, speaking skills, arithmetic skills or any other in a long list of skills. These children will not write exactly the same papers in school. They may all argue a thesis in an equally intelligent, but completely different way. Genetic engineering is not programming. It is enhancement. Remember that these children will learn different values through their upbringing. Sure, all parents may want their kid to be smarter, but some will want him to be a rocket scientist, others a doctor, and others a business owner. Furthermore, an increase of inherited intelligence does not mean that a child will be a bilingual nuclear physicist at birth. He may have traits like an increased capacity for knowledge and a yearning to learn. One must still obtain this knowledge from somewhere and there are thousands of teachers across the world, each with his or her, own style and beliefs. Each child will at least partially embrace the beliefs of his or her professor. This is more evidence that we will not become machine-like. Even identical twins, with the same DNA structure often take completely different courses in life. With genetic engineering we will not only continue to survive, but we will thrive. Does this sound like a loss of meaning?
What McKibben fails to consider are the many areas of our being that can potentially be altered. If our natural athletic ability can be enhanced then so can our personality. We can receive a gene that will make us less lazy or less of a procrastinator. I know that I would sign myself up for that one. We could become more loyal, dedicated, caring, ethical; the list goes on and on. Industry and the economy would boom if everybody had an undying will to succeed at the workplace. Poverty could potentially be wiped out and the financial scam artists that seem to be multiplying everyday could become non-existent. Life has become monotonous just as I believe F.C. Ware has demonstrated in his graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan. My days are more or less spent sleeping, going to day class, working, going to night class, doing homework, and then sleeping once again. Of course that is not every detail of my life, but my point is that I know where I will be and what I will probably be doing for 90% of the day next Tuesday. Genetic engineering could be our key to a new world. In reality, Jimmy Corrigan is not the typical person in today’s society. But I would describe him as an exaggerated normal individual, and his boring life is the life that deep down, many people feel that they are living. Though physically most people can communicate and interact much more thoroughly than Jimmy, they are mentally exhausted just as he is. Where would Jimmy be if he were to have had his genes altered before birth though? He could have increased intelligence, perseverance, and social skills. Maybe then, his father would not belittle him, and if he did continue to then Jimmy would have the will to continue on and rebel against his abusive father. There may be some consequences of genetic engineering, but the rewards heavily outweigh them.
Bill McKibben is wrong in saying that humanity is loosing it’s meaning. He is also wrong in believing that genetic engineering will steal our individuality. If anything it will increase it. Instead of being born solely with the genes of our parents, a child could be born with these genes as well as other enhanced genes that will increase various areas of the mind and body. Genetic engineering is the beginning of a revolution. The possibilities are endless and sooner or later man’s natural curiosity will enable us to cross the barrier and begin to engineer our genes to become a stronger human race. F.C. Ware is correct. Human life is monotonous and our lives are becoming more boring by the day. This world needs a breakthrough to excite us once again. Guns revolutionized warfare, electricity revolutionized the world that we live in, and genetic engineering will revolutionize the people living in this world. We are on the brink of a new age and to say that we have lost ourselves and robbed our lives of meaning is just overkill.
When the Motivation No Longer Exists
Melanie Siokalo Eng. Comp. Tues 6- 8:30
When the Motivation No Longer Exists
Imagine the pattering of feet on the gravel road, heart and pulse rates sky rocketing out into the heavens, and the words “I think I can” being spoken all around you. You are so deep into the flow that none of these things concern you. But, what happens when, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can”, turns into “I know I can, I know I can, I know I can?” The drive and motivation that the athlete once had, now turns into pride and self-centeredness. If “you know you can” let’s say win this marathon, then what is the point of running it in the first place? The accomplishment turns into more of a chore. The enjoyment and the flow are lost and instead dread has been gained. So is there a limit? Yes,there is a max to what the human race can achieve in the terms of making things “better.” Better becomes the best and that is all it really can be. And once this max has been reached, all individuality is lost. What makes the human race, the human race, is gone.
In Bill McKibben’s book, Enough, an example of a rock climber is used to explain the “flow” an athlete enters when they are concentrated on one particular thing. He states “If he were genetically altered to have stronger fingers and forearms, he would be able to climb harder routes- but he wouldn’t go ‘deeper’ into the flow state” (McKibben 52). The piece of mind that a rock climber is in disappears. The rock- climber no longer feels a challenge, just something to keep his body moving. The flow and self discovery are no longer things the rock-climber looks forward to at the start of the task. The rock-climber reaches for the next groove in the rock without hesitation, no sense of a challenge. McKibben also states, “So an upgrade won’t multiply your joy. Instead, it might as well sap joy, because forgetting the self seems to be a key part of falling into the flow” (McKibben 52-53). The "knowing" of what you are capable of (which in the future, if this continues, will be everything) throws away the flow. The process of the "flow" is almost like an out of body experience. But it’s not so out of body, when the task is no longer a challenge but an ego boost. "I think I can" turns into " Ha, yes so, I knew I could climb that rock without even flinching." The human race will have nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for.There will no longer be a separation between world-class athlete and honor roll student. Actually, everyone in the race will be that combination and more.
But there is a time when an end has to be met. If everyone is the best then what happens? The answer- the sense of individuality is lost. We no longer have an identity but a mere number to distinguish one from the other. The human race blends into one, identical species. Once the human race becomes all it can be, there will be nothing left to achieve. In the comic book, Jimmy Corrigan, a young boy is portrayed with a dream to be like Superman. Now let’s look ahead in the next hundred years when every human being is just as strong, just as smart, and just as handsome as superman. Who is the superhero then? Do we have one? The answer is no. The human race will have no one to look up to as their savior or their hero. The strive to become just like Superman does not exist if you already are just like him, or even better than him.
Sometime in the future, a line has to be drawn. Some vote needs to be cast on the reality of the situation. Someone needs to stand up and say " Is this really what we all want? Let's look at the consequences if we keep preceding the way we are." Well if that never happens, I say climb all the rocks you can now. Enjoy the very last of the challenge that is put forth. Enjoy the flow of "not knowing" and self discovery. And enjoy all the superhero's you can now. Because soon, they will all be gone.
When the Motivation No Longer Exists
Imagine the pattering of feet on the gravel road, heart and pulse rates sky rocketing out into the heavens, and the words “I think I can” being spoken all around you. You are so deep into the flow that none of these things concern you. But, what happens when, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can”, turns into “I know I can, I know I can, I know I can?” The drive and motivation that the athlete once had, now turns into pride and self-centeredness. If “you know you can” let’s say win this marathon, then what is the point of running it in the first place? The accomplishment turns into more of a chore. The enjoyment and the flow are lost and instead dread has been gained. So is there a limit? Yes,there is a max to what the human race can achieve in the terms of making things “better.” Better becomes the best and that is all it really can be. And once this max has been reached, all individuality is lost. What makes the human race, the human race, is gone.
In Bill McKibben’s book, Enough, an example of a rock climber is used to explain the “flow” an athlete enters when they are concentrated on one particular thing. He states “If he were genetically altered to have stronger fingers and forearms, he would be able to climb harder routes- but he wouldn’t go ‘deeper’ into the flow state” (McKibben 52). The piece of mind that a rock climber is in disappears. The rock- climber no longer feels a challenge, just something to keep his body moving. The flow and self discovery are no longer things the rock-climber looks forward to at the start of the task. The rock-climber reaches for the next groove in the rock without hesitation, no sense of a challenge. McKibben also states, “So an upgrade won’t multiply your joy. Instead, it might as well sap joy, because forgetting the self seems to be a key part of falling into the flow” (McKibben 52-53). The "knowing" of what you are capable of (which in the future, if this continues, will be everything) throws away the flow. The process of the "flow" is almost like an out of body experience. But it’s not so out of body, when the task is no longer a challenge but an ego boost. "I think I can" turns into " Ha, yes so, I knew I could climb that rock without even flinching." The human race will have nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for.There will no longer be a separation between world-class athlete and honor roll student. Actually, everyone in the race will be that combination and more.
But there is a time when an end has to be met. If everyone is the best then what happens? The answer- the sense of individuality is lost. We no longer have an identity but a mere number to distinguish one from the other. The human race blends into one, identical species. Once the human race becomes all it can be, there will be nothing left to achieve. In the comic book, Jimmy Corrigan, a young boy is portrayed with a dream to be like Superman. Now let’s look ahead in the next hundred years when every human being is just as strong, just as smart, and just as handsome as superman. Who is the superhero then? Do we have one? The answer is no. The human race will have no one to look up to as their savior or their hero. The strive to become just like Superman does not exist if you already are just like him, or even better than him.
Sometime in the future, a line has to be drawn. Some vote needs to be cast on the reality of the situation. Someone needs to stand up and say " Is this really what we all want? Let's look at the consequences if we keep preceding the way we are." Well if that never happens, I say climb all the rocks you can now. Enjoy the very last of the challenge that is put forth. Enjoy the flow of "not knowing" and self discovery. And enjoy all the superhero's you can now. Because soon, they will all be gone.
Jimmy Corrigan: The Saddest Kid on Earth
Julia Sandoval
Dr. Adam Johns
February 23, 2009
Dr. Adam Johns
February 23, 2009
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth… Whose Life is Devoid of any
Significant Meaning and who lives a Sad and Pointless Existence
Everyone has a fear that the thing they love will one day become meaningless to them. Have you ever had a favorite song that, as you play it over and over again, you begin to drown it out and utter the words only out of habit? Or that special person who you fear might ultimately annoy you to the point of separation with his constant questions or loud chewing? Momentarily, all these things are completely tolerable. It is a completely human tendency to get accustomed to things to the point that they lose meaning. But isn’t it better that you knew them even once? Just the fact that something did give you joy is reason enough to cherish it. The exceptions are when it is something that really, truly gives a person extreme joy and satisfaction. That sport you just cannot stop playing and that book you can never put down. It is the “flow” that keeps us motivated (McKibben 51). This drives us out of ambition and comfort alike and is totally unique to human nature. Do you think a robot would climb a mountain more than once just because? Probably not, once they have the pride of the job well done, what else would be the point? If humans lose collective meaning in the things they love, there is little ability left to love at all.
The risk we take in reconstructing the DNA of future generations is greater than we even know. With our culture growing and expanding, we cannot risk dehumanization, which is what genetic engineering is at its core. For instance, think of the most boring person you know. Now, imagine that he or she genetically engineered his or her daughter. How creative do you think that person would turn out to be? What improvements in society could they make? The loss of individuality is so imminent that it is frightening. If parents aren’t creative enough to engineer their children in a way that the children can grow and expand their thoughts and contribute creatively to the culture of the future, the children won’t. And this will go on for generations and generations until everyone is smart, attractive, athletic, and the same .
Another aspect that this loss of meaning could influence is loss of meaning in regards to religion and politics. If every person is the same cognitively and socially, there is no doubt that power shifts will be challenged. If everyone had the capacity to run a government, there is no need for a true leader. War is inevitable and the stakes will be even higher. Religion also will be greatly affected, for people will find the flaws in them and it is easy to think that they will change radically, if not be eliminated completely from human existence. What I’m talking about is that in this aspect, people will have no direction, it will be him for himself and that is it. For every person. One of the things that McKibben talks about is that the meaning of human existence is that basically, humans exist to take care of each other and live happily (McKibben 94).
In the case of Jimmy Corrigan, he is an example as to what our existence could become. He basically lives for no one. He takes care of no one and definitely does not live happily. He is what we could become if we decide to proceed with genetic engineering. He lives for himself by himself. But of course, this sounds like a strong willed, personal choice, doesn’t it? He sounds by this statement to be a hardened man who needs no one to fulfill his life. But in fact, this does not happen by choice for Jimmy; as it would not also for future genetically engineered people. They would not have decided to live on their own with no companionship, it would’ve happened because of our influence, out of their control. We can only imagine that we, free willed, free-thinking humans of today, would become the icons that future humans would lament and admire. Like Superman, WE are free, WE help each other, WE are happy. Jimmy would have a high regard for us, as would the future dehumanized generations.
The robots, more physically like supermen, would have nothing to drive them. Yes, they can help people, but it would mean nothing to them. Loss of meaning is in every sense of the word the worst thing we can do to anyone. Just think, if one day you discovered a new sport that just thrilled you to your very core, and someone came up and magically made that thrill disappear, would you continue to play it? Probably not, and you would probably miss it. That is what we would be doing to our future generations. “It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all,” is a true statement, at least to me. But how terrible to think that that statement in itself would lose its meaning and that the people of the future wouldn’t even be able to comprehend it.
McKibben, B. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books, 2004.
Ware, F.C. Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth. Pantheon Books, 2000.
The Irony of Darwinism
Chris Owens
Adam Johns CMP 0200
24 February 2008
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age is a book more concerned with the future of the “human spirit” than the future of the human species, focusing on the endangerment of human life’s meaning more intently than physical differences in the future. With the purpose of the book being the preservation of human meaning, it is then obviously important to address the question “What is the meaning of human life or the purpose of our existence?” Rationally, there is no positive consequence of attaching any special meaning to human existence beyond an evolutionary perspective, and perhaps none for life in general. Nonetheless, author Bill McKibben argues that meaning is determined by experiences, a sense of one’s self and the “power and the frailty” of the human body (3). In fact, McKibben goes to the extent of indirectly (and possibly unintentionally) linking a person’s life’s meaning to their genetic lineage, and it is here where his logic is flawed.
He first gives an example of parents wishing to manipulate a child’s life course first with behavioral modifications, then again with genetic ones. He then argues that a child with genetic modifications would have lower meaning in his or her life because they will have been subjected to their parents predispositions, and that any specific activity enjoyed or skill possessed would have lower meaning because these would arise from genes preferred by their parents rather than personal choice (59). However, this is where his argument becomes muddled. Of “normal” or non-genetically engineered children and genetically engineered children, neither group has the ability to decide which genes they receive, thus there is no significant difference between the lives of the groups. Only that the aptitudes of the latter group would match the preference of the parents rather than the aptitudes (or lack thereof) being quasi-randomly given to them by traditional means. Hence the quality of life and the meaning McKibben attaches to it are not changed by germline engineering in the sense he conveys.
From a scientific perspective, questions on the meaning of life or the purpose of human existence, good or bad, are of a trivial nature. The only completely objective answer to give is based on observable facts: humanity is driven by the desires to procreate, to exert an increasing control on the surrounding environment, etc. Fundamental concepts such as love, joy, fear and sorrow can all be logically linked to a more basic will to survive and spread an individual genetic lineage, and biologist Lee Silver would likely agree. In Silver’s Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality, he comments on Francis Fukuyama’s struggle to define the notion of “human nature,” eventually saying that his attempt to ascribe human nature to a “factor X” belongs with the many other essentially secularized religious ideas that, in his opinion, are irrational (121). Thus, the only meaning that can be attached to human existence by a positivist or scientific mind is evolutionary and concrete.
Of course there are also other fronts in Enough in which McKibben attempts to confront human meaning. Most notably he mentions a future that is to him meaningless because of germline genetic engineering and robotics creating consciousness that is more than human, and that this creation will endanger humanity as a species and all the meaning he attributes to specifically “human” life. McKibben’s sentiment is apparently that there is no connection between current humanity its probable future robotic or genetically-enhanced offspring, saying, “they look into your faces […] they will, in fact, be staring into a mirror […] but 2050 may be very different indeed. Perhaps so different that […] a book from our time will be of historical interest only, the record of a different creature” (64). McKibben is more interested in the continuity of the species as it is now rather than embracing the possibility that humanity, in the near future, may be able to actually control and accelerate its own evolution.
Against the intuition of McKibben and most others, there would be continuity between the species as now known and whatever it may be in several hundred years, regardless of the physical differences, would still be the direct descendants of current humanity by a minimum of consciousness. An evolutionary leap forward can and will happen in this manner not because human life isn’t presently comfortable or exciting enough, but because the species as a whole is unconsciously drawn to ensure its survival. It is the ultimate irony that the future of humanity is not to be humanity as now known, but to ensure the survival of beneficial genes, of the collective consciousness, by destroying its current face. Darwin’s evolutionary theory actually implies this. Thus once again the only meaning that can be obtained is that humanity’s only purpose, only true meaning, is to maximize its chance to survive, to exist.
Silver, Lee. Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality.
New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books.
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Meaning of Life not fundamentally Lost
Albert Wu
EngCmp 0200
Essay for 2/24
I believe that the meanings and purposes we attribute to our lives are products of a combination of nature and nurture. However, nature and nurture are not mutually exclusive categories. For example, a couple has a child that has a genetic predisposition to intelligence and an athletic build. Depending on the environment the parents provide for the child, that child can grow up to be an Olympic athlete and a Nobel Prize winner, or the most insignificant person to ever exist. If the child is given books and is encouraged to be active and ambitious, he/she will assume the former role. If the child is encouraged to watch hours of television and only exercise during the walk between the television and the refrigerator, the child will assume the latter. Because nature and nurture are so closely related and interactive, I believe that the “meaning of life” is threatened, but it hasn’t been lost because both nature and nurture have to be conceded to truly lose meaning.
In his book, Too Much, McKibbon uses Seinfeld as an example for a life without context or meaning. He says, “the great danger… of the world that we have built is that it leaves us vulnerable to meaninglessness – to a world where consumption is all that happens, because there’s nothing left that means anything.” His argument is poignant, but it is flawed. In the Art of Happiness, by his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama describes the purpose of life, from his perspective, as being happy. Pure and simple, no complications or arbitrary meaning: happiness. Contrary to McKibbon’s argument, I believe that even if society becomes the product of corporate mass marketing and people reach a point where life is completely sedentary, apathetic, and superficial, we still won’t have meaninglessness. If we ask ourselves, “is my life amounting to something?” We won’t answer “no,” we’ll say, “Yes, I’m happy.” Those who are clinically depressed, of course, will have a similar purpose: to achieve happiness, which is still a purpose. In order for us to have completely lost meaning, for society to completely lose “weight and substance,” we will not be able to answer whether our life is amounting to something because for that to happen, we’ll have to have lost everything, even our most basic emotion: happiness.
McKibbon continues to describe individualism as the only resource for meaning, and that the “heart of [his] argument [is] we stand on the edge of disappearing even as individuals.” Individualism, as described before, is the juncture between nature and nurture. Even if genetic engineering renders nature’s role as obsolete because our intrinsic factors are no longer a product of a random selection of genes but rather a product of a Petri dish, extrinsic factors will still play a dominant role in our development that will still make us individuals. McKibbon reasons that if a person is engineered, they will no longer be able to distinguish between what is authentically “human” and what is fabricated, thus taking away their individuality and thus their purpose and meaning. However, I don’t agree with his reasoning. You cannot engineer someone to have higher reasoning abilities than another. What you can alter are genes to give someone more white matter, or a thicker sheet of myelin around their nerve fibers resulting in faster, more efficient synaptic transmission; you can superficially increase the volume of neurotransmitters present at synaptic terminals giving a person “better” cognitive function, but you cannot fundamentally alter a persons ability to reason and think independently. In order to develop your engineered child, you still need to present, and nurture them with the appropriate stimuli that will promote their ability to reason during their stages of development. For example, genetically engineered child A is engineered to have more white matter, etc… but isn’t nourished with language, education, affection, etc… That child, who was genetically engineered to have better reasoning abilities will look at a puzzle, scratch their head, and have no idea what to do because our ability to reason using language, math, algorithms, etc… are products of our environment. Individuality cannot be taken away because individuality is a product of the experiences and influences we’re exposed to while growing and maturing. If McKibbon attributes our grasp on meaning to individuality, then I argue that individuality, and thus meaning, can’t be lost.
Another example of how purpose and meaning of life won’t be lost is found in Chris Ware’s, Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth. Jimmy Corrigan is a hapless, melancholy protagonist. Abandoned by his father at a tender age, and having grown up with an overbearing mother and an alienated social life, he never had the type of warming environment one needs to be conditioned to feel happy and really content in society. Going back to my original argument, however, both nature and nurture have to be conceded before purpose and meaning are lost. The role nature played was obviously conceded to a point with Jimmy, a below average, average Joe; but McKibbon proposes, “We have to, somehow, produce all the context for ourselves,” that we need to be able to attribute some meaning to our lives in order to be considered an individual and have purpose. Jimmy used his overactive imagination as an escape. Because of his absent father, etc… his environment conditioned him to live through his own world, his own reality within reality that gave him context, meaning, and purpose. Albeit not independent himself, he was assertive with his independence and individuality by living vicariously through his imagination. For example, he often dreamt of being a robot. The robot he assumes, in my opinion, is a metaphor for indestructibility and independence. Albeit walking around in a tin can also represents Jimmy’s isolation from the rest of society, it represents his resistance to that alienation. Jimmy’s situation did not reflect a loss of meaning; his situation represented an alternative resource for us to create a context for our lives, to create independence, and to sustain meaning and purpose.
EngCmp 0200
Essay for 2/24
Insert Clever Title Here
I believe that the meanings and purposes we attribute to our lives are products of a combination of nature and nurture. However, nature and nurture are not mutually exclusive categories. For example, a couple has a child that has a genetic predisposition to intelligence and an athletic build. Depending on the environment the parents provide for the child, that child can grow up to be an Olympic athlete and a Nobel Prize winner, or the most insignificant person to ever exist. If the child is given books and is encouraged to be active and ambitious, he/she will assume the former role. If the child is encouraged to watch hours of television and only exercise during the walk between the television and the refrigerator, the child will assume the latter. Because nature and nurture are so closely related and interactive, I believe that the “meaning of life” is threatened, but it hasn’t been lost because both nature and nurture have to be conceded to truly lose meaning.
In his book, Too Much, McKibbon uses Seinfeld as an example for a life without context or meaning. He says, “the great danger… of the world that we have built is that it leaves us vulnerable to meaninglessness – to a world where consumption is all that happens, because there’s nothing left that means anything.” His argument is poignant, but it is flawed. In the Art of Happiness, by his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama describes the purpose of life, from his perspective, as being happy. Pure and simple, no complications or arbitrary meaning: happiness. Contrary to McKibbon’s argument, I believe that even if society becomes the product of corporate mass marketing and people reach a point where life is completely sedentary, apathetic, and superficial, we still won’t have meaninglessness. If we ask ourselves, “is my life amounting to something?” We won’t answer “no,” we’ll say, “Yes, I’m happy.” Those who are clinically depressed, of course, will have a similar purpose: to achieve happiness, which is still a purpose. In order for us to have completely lost meaning, for society to completely lose “weight and substance,” we will not be able to answer whether our life is amounting to something because for that to happen, we’ll have to have lost everything, even our most basic emotion: happiness.
McKibbon continues to describe individualism as the only resource for meaning, and that the “heart of [his] argument [is] we stand on the edge of disappearing even as individuals.” Individualism, as described before, is the juncture between nature and nurture. Even if genetic engineering renders nature’s role as obsolete because our intrinsic factors are no longer a product of a random selection of genes but rather a product of a Petri dish, extrinsic factors will still play a dominant role in our development that will still make us individuals. McKibbon reasons that if a person is engineered, they will no longer be able to distinguish between what is authentically “human” and what is fabricated, thus taking away their individuality and thus their purpose and meaning. However, I don’t agree with his reasoning. You cannot engineer someone to have higher reasoning abilities than another. What you can alter are genes to give someone more white matter, or a thicker sheet of myelin around their nerve fibers resulting in faster, more efficient synaptic transmission; you can superficially increase the volume of neurotransmitters present at synaptic terminals giving a person “better” cognitive function, but you cannot fundamentally alter a persons ability to reason and think independently. In order to develop your engineered child, you still need to present, and nurture them with the appropriate stimuli that will promote their ability to reason during their stages of development. For example, genetically engineered child A is engineered to have more white matter, etc… but isn’t nourished with language, education, affection, etc… That child, who was genetically engineered to have better reasoning abilities will look at a puzzle, scratch their head, and have no idea what to do because our ability to reason using language, math, algorithms, etc… are products of our environment. Individuality cannot be taken away because individuality is a product of the experiences and influences we’re exposed to while growing and maturing. If McKibbon attributes our grasp on meaning to individuality, then I argue that individuality, and thus meaning, can’t be lost.
Another example of how purpose and meaning of life won’t be lost is found in Chris Ware’s, Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth. Jimmy Corrigan is a hapless, melancholy protagonist. Abandoned by his father at a tender age, and having grown up with an overbearing mother and an alienated social life, he never had the type of warming environment one needs to be conditioned to feel happy and really content in society. Going back to my original argument, however, both nature and nurture have to be conceded before purpose and meaning are lost. The role nature played was obviously conceded to a point with Jimmy, a below average, average Joe; but McKibbon proposes, “We have to, somehow, produce all the context for ourselves,” that we need to be able to attribute some meaning to our lives in order to be considered an individual and have purpose. Jimmy used his overactive imagination as an escape. Because of his absent father, etc… his environment conditioned him to live through his own world, his own reality within reality that gave him context, meaning, and purpose. Albeit not independent himself, he was assertive with his independence and individuality by living vicariously through his imagination. For example, he often dreamt of being a robot. The robot he assumes, in my opinion, is a metaphor for indestructibility and independence. Albeit walking around in a tin can also represents Jimmy’s isolation from the rest of society, it represents his resistance to that alienation. Jimmy’s situation did not reflect a loss of meaning; his situation represented an alternative resource for us to create a context for our lives, to create independence, and to sustain meaning and purpose.
The Meaning of Life is Leaving Us
Glenn Goss
Dr. Johns
COMP.
Our collective meaning of life as a whole has not fully left us; however, it is beginning to. The meaning of life itself is different for everybody depending on religious views and such. Whether we as people feel we are on this earth for ourselves, for others, or to fulfill the path bestowed upon us from a higher being, we still have a sense of what we are here for as of the current time. Without the regulation of genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology as discussed by both Bill Joy in his essay and Bill McKibben in his book Enough, we will eventually lose our collective meaning. We will all be able to download all the many characteristics we have long desired for with a click of a mouse. Imagine, having the ability to download happiness and intelligence. We would all have programmable minds. In my mind, this is the same as parents genetically altering their prospective children with certain traits prior to birth. Who's to say that there will not be flaws in programming minds? Even if they are successfully done will the person be human? In McKibben's book, he quoted Richard Hayes as saying, "Suppose you've been genetically engineered by your parents to have what they consider enhanced reasoning ability and other cognitive skills. How could you evaluate whether or not what was done to you was a good thing? How could you think about what it would be like not to have genetically engineered thoughts?" (McKibben 50) This statement validates and implies the fact that genetically engineered human beings do not actually think for themselves, they are programmed to think and act certain ways. In my mind, this is not right. Agreeing with McKibben, I believe that the rapidly advancing genetic engineering technologies are quickly approaching the line that cannot and should not be crossed. This line signifies humanity with a collective meaning (preceding the line), versus humanity that has completely lost it's meaning (past the line). (McKibben) This statement, similar to the one made by Michael Pollan on the back cover of McKibben's book, reminds me of a song entitled "Toeing the Line" by a southern style rock band called Pride and Glory. Humanity, at this time is "toeing the line", in the sense that we are still progressing with all of these potentially dangerous technologies with nothing slowing us down. Will we stop, or will this continue until we are all mindless beings, programmed to live a certain way?
There really is no reason for parents to choose traits for their children or for us to be able to program our minds. When parents are against the way their children turn out to be after raising them, it is generally the parents' fault. Not monitoring who the children are hanging out with and/or not coercing them to do well in school are just a couple examples. The bottom line is, the nurture of the children through childhood has the greatest influence on what type of person the child will become. Is it necessarily right for parents to be allowed to choose what type of child they want before birth when they have the ability to control everything themselves? Parents can raise their child to be an intelligent, happy being without the use of genetic technology. This scenario parallels the attributes of the disease phenylketonuria, which results in mental retardation due to a build up of phenylalanine (an artificial sweetener). There is no cure for this disease, however parents have the ability to provide their child with the brain of a normal human being, simply by monitoring their child's diet, and limiting the intake of phenylalanine. This is much the same way that parents have the opportunity to shape the personality and characteristics of their children throughout their childhood by setting good examples and practicing good parenting skills. Choosing desired traits and characteristics and programming minds is not needed.
Chris Ware's character Jimmy Corrigan is the epitome of what modern life will become when and if humanity loses it's collective meaning. He can be described as a lonely, emotionally impaired human castaway. His abandonment and disappointment throughout his life resulted in his feeling of isolation. The words that describe Jimmy Corrigan could be used to describe humanity if we enter into the world of genetic engineering and programmable characteristics. We would be mindless human beings, not knowing who we are or how we came to be the way that we are. Our entire meaning of life would be but a blur in our so called minds. Inevitably, we would no longer be living beings. Our engineered intellect would leave us feeling the same as Jimmy Corrigan did, a human castaway in complete isolation. Allowing this to happen to humanity would be preposterous. Enough is enough.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Purpose of Humanity
Ryan Lynn
Dr. Adam Johns
The Purpose of Humanity
For thousands of years, ancient philosophers, priests, and ordinary people have all pondered the question “What is the meaning of life?” or similarly “What are people for?”. Personally, I interpret the question “What are people for?” the same as asking “Why are we, as humans, on this planet or what is our purpose in life?”. There is no one answer to this question, and is based solely on that person’s beliefs and life experiences, which would shape how they view the world, the human race, and what they conceive to be the sole purpose of mankind. People drift in and out of time, trying to leave their mark so people in the future will remember them. Otherwise, they will be forgotten, and what was the purpose to their life? Our lives are just a small ripple in an ocean of infinite time, where we are easily forgotten. Maybe people were put on Earth to preserve its life, maybe they are here to continually advance technology to a point where it reaches its potential and replaces mankind as the dominant race on the planet, or maybe there is no purpose to mankind’s existence.
At the beginning of McKibben’s Enough, he starts off by describing a personal experience of running a marathon and training to beat a goal he set for himself (1). Even though this goal is not with the likes of those of experienced athletes, the satisfaction of pushing yourself to the limit and seeing what you are truly made of is something that McKibben was striving for. Pushing and pushing your body to its absolute limit and accomplishing a feat you thought impossible is one of the greatest feelings you can experience. During the feat, the pain, the determination, the dedication, all of this makes you feel human. As an athlete for the University Of Pittsburgh, I know this feeling. I know how it feels to put in the time and effort and achieve the impossible. You can really find out who you are and what you are willing to do to achieve something. As McKibben comments “ [r]unning is an outlet for the spirit, for finding out who you are…[i]ts a volutantary beauty, a grace” (1). McKibben believes that running is a way to find oneself and perhaps purpose in life. So, maybe people are here to find the limits to what they can accomplish. However, if this is true, genetic engineering stands to threaten this mentality. McKibben states that genetic improvements to the body would take the “personal” out of the “personal challenge” of sport (1). He wonders what the point of competing would be “…if it was a test of the alterations some embryologist had made in you…”(1). Therefore, genetic technologies could be threatening the one of the many purposes of people.
On the contrary, Christians believe that it is not a coincidence that God created humans and that our planet can sustain life. They believe that “…God created us to have a relationship with him”(2). This means that God “…wants to know us, to love us, and to rejoice with us”(2). This interpretation of what people are for shows that Christians believe that people are here to worship God and to live life the way he wants us to live. Perhaps spreading the word of God and converting more people to Christianity can also be considered what people are for in the eyes of Christians. Either way, God wants people to live a spiritually fulfilling life and praise his word. Therefore, people are here on Earth to prove themselves worthy of living with God in heaven.
In Bill Joy’s essay Why the future doesn’t need us, he expresses his concern about how technology is evolving at an incredible rate. He believes it must be regulated, or it could otherwise lead to the extinction of the human race (3). But what if that is the purpose of mankind, to create a new dominant race or species that would be better fit to take care of the planet, as we have already shown irresponsibility to Mother Nature by polluting her skies, her oceans, and destroying her earth. This is quite an extreme thought, that people are here to create a new species that can take care of Earth better than we can and thus destroying ourselves in the process, but we are heading in a direction where technology can overrun us in the future. If that is what humans are for, than we should embrace this and go head on to create more technological advances.
These purposes may not be entirely correct, for I think that there is no real answer to the question “what are people for?”. I do not think that there is a purpose for why humans are here. For many of us, the things we accomplish in our life do not make in impact in the world and prove the lives we lived to be insignificant. Different religions have different answers to these questions as well as those who are highly educated in science. But to me, I think it is coincidence that Earth is life-sustaining. People are here to live their lives and maybe find some shred of purpose in their short time in this world that allows them to believe that they made a difference. But as a whole, there is no real purpose for human life, and even though we can’t yet explain how or why we are here, I say we enjoy our lives while they last.
Works Cited
1. McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York:
Times Books.
2. http://www.existence-of-god.com/meaning-of-life.html. 2004. 21 Feb. 2009
3. Joy, Bill. “Why the future doesn’t need us”. 21 Feb. 2009
http://www.wired .com/wired/archive/8.04/joy pr.html.
Dr. Adam Johns
The Purpose of Humanity
For thousands of years, ancient philosophers, priests, and ordinary people have all pondered the question “What is the meaning of life?” or similarly “What are people for?”. Personally, I interpret the question “What are people for?” the same as asking “Why are we, as humans, on this planet or what is our purpose in life?”. There is no one answer to this question, and is based solely on that person’s beliefs and life experiences, which would shape how they view the world, the human race, and what they conceive to be the sole purpose of mankind. People drift in and out of time, trying to leave their mark so people in the future will remember them. Otherwise, they will be forgotten, and what was the purpose to their life? Our lives are just a small ripple in an ocean of infinite time, where we are easily forgotten. Maybe people were put on Earth to preserve its life, maybe they are here to continually advance technology to a point where it reaches its potential and replaces mankind as the dominant race on the planet, or maybe there is no purpose to mankind’s existence.
At the beginning of McKibben’s Enough, he starts off by describing a personal experience of running a marathon and training to beat a goal he set for himself (1). Even though this goal is not with the likes of those of experienced athletes, the satisfaction of pushing yourself to the limit and seeing what you are truly made of is something that McKibben was striving for. Pushing and pushing your body to its absolute limit and accomplishing a feat you thought impossible is one of the greatest feelings you can experience. During the feat, the pain, the determination, the dedication, all of this makes you feel human. As an athlete for the University Of Pittsburgh, I know this feeling. I know how it feels to put in the time and effort and achieve the impossible. You can really find out who you are and what you are willing to do to achieve something. As McKibben comments “ [r]unning is an outlet for the spirit, for finding out who you are…[i]ts a volutantary beauty, a grace” (1). McKibben believes that running is a way to find oneself and perhaps purpose in life. So, maybe people are here to find the limits to what they can accomplish. However, if this is true, genetic engineering stands to threaten this mentality. McKibben states that genetic improvements to the body would take the “personal” out of the “personal challenge” of sport (1). He wonders what the point of competing would be “…if it was a test of the alterations some embryologist had made in you…”(1). Therefore, genetic technologies could be threatening the one of the many purposes of people.
On the contrary, Christians believe that it is not a coincidence that God created humans and that our planet can sustain life. They believe that “…God created us to have a relationship with him”(2). This means that God “…wants to know us, to love us, and to rejoice with us”(2). This interpretation of what people are for shows that Christians believe that people are here to worship God and to live life the way he wants us to live. Perhaps spreading the word of God and converting more people to Christianity can also be considered what people are for in the eyes of Christians. Either way, God wants people to live a spiritually fulfilling life and praise his word. Therefore, people are here on Earth to prove themselves worthy of living with God in heaven.
In Bill Joy’s essay Why the future doesn’t need us, he expresses his concern about how technology is evolving at an incredible rate. He believes it must be regulated, or it could otherwise lead to the extinction of the human race (3). But what if that is the purpose of mankind, to create a new dominant race or species that would be better fit to take care of the planet, as we have already shown irresponsibility to Mother Nature by polluting her skies, her oceans, and destroying her earth. This is quite an extreme thought, that people are here to create a new species that can take care of Earth better than we can and thus destroying ourselves in the process, but we are heading in a direction where technology can overrun us in the future. If that is what humans are for, than we should embrace this and go head on to create more technological advances.
These purposes may not be entirely correct, for I think that there is no real answer to the question “what are people for?”. I do not think that there is a purpose for why humans are here. For many of us, the things we accomplish in our life do not make in impact in the world and prove the lives we lived to be insignificant. Different religions have different answers to these questions as well as those who are highly educated in science. But to me, I think it is coincidence that Earth is life-sustaining. People are here to live their lives and maybe find some shred of purpose in their short time in this world that allows them to believe that they made a difference. But as a whole, there is no real purpose for human life, and even though we can’t yet explain how or why we are here, I say we enjoy our lives while they last.
Works Cited
1. McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York:
Times Books.
2. http://www.existence-of-god.com/meaning-of-life.html. 2004. 21 Feb. 2009
3. Joy, Bill. “Why the future doesn’t need us”. 21 Feb. 2009
http://www.wired .com/wired/archive/8.04/joy pr.html.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Human Purpose
Andy Vogel
ENGCMP 0200
Dr. Adam Johns
2/21/09
The purpose of humans is an important philosophical question with different possible answers coming from religion and ordinary people. While billions of people believe in these explanations, I think they share a common flaw. Thus, a scientific explanation seems to provide the best answer—that there is no real purpose. While I believe the human species has no purpose, individual humans can invent purposes as a way of achieving satisfaction with their lives.
Some possible purposes to human life include passing on DNA through reproduction and spreading Christianity throughout the world. The long-term result of reproduction, evolution, is an improvement of the human species. Also, an urge to reproduce was created in humans through natural selection. The humans who wanted offspring were obviously more likely to pass on their DNA than those who didn’t want children. This combination of a benefit to humans and the genetic desire to reproduce makes it a tempting answer to the purpose of humans. Spreading Christianity is another possible purpose to human life. Since the start of Christianity, missionaries and conquering Europeans have been attempting to spread the religion. In their eyes, this work will benefit other humans who haven’t realized their mistake in not being Christian.
Both of these purposes have the common theme that they improve our species. However, it is clear that humans did not evolve, or were not created, so that they could improve themselves. A true human purpose has to involve interaction with something besides humans.
Lee Silver provides a better possible purpose to humans in his book Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality. He writes that eventually, “human nature will remake all of Mother Nature in the image of the idealized world that exists within our own minds (Silver xvi). This idealized world will have eliminated suffering from humans as well as animals. While this purpose is not entirely for humans, it is conceived mainly for human benefit. The better quality of life that animals receive from this genetic engineering will make people feel good, which is the motivation for doing it. So while this purpose is at least plausible since it helps things besides humans, it does not seem strong enough to be humans’ true purpose.
Religious doctrine provides a variety of other explanations. The bible says that humans exist to serve and glorify God. Similarly, Muslims consider earning benevolence from Allah to be the goal in life. Other religions, such as Hinduism, believe that humans are a final stepping stone in the cycle of reincarnation towards heaven. Each of these explanations contradict each other, however. Allah and God are not the same. God is peaceful, while Allah advocates killing nonbelievers. God said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” while Allah said, “Allah is only one God; far be It from His glory that He should have a son.” The idea of reincarnation is also incompatible with Christianity and Islam. Hebrews 9:27 says “it is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment” ("Reincarnation: Is it compatible with Christianity?"). Similarly, Muslims believe that after people die they go either to heaven or to hell.
If one of these religious explanations really is the true purpose of life, the other religions would be wrong because of the incompatibility between the views. Because of this, at least two of these three explanations are wrong. Also, I already established that the true purpose to humans cannot be a benefit to humans themselves. Thus, the Hindu belief can’t be the right answer to this question. Breaking out of the cycle of reincarnation and getting to heaven is solely a human benefit. The Islamic goal of not making Allah angry to get into heaven is also a human benefit. For the Christian purpose of humans to be plausible, a literal God is necessary. With an actual God, then humans could have the purpose of serving and glorifying Him. I don’t believe there is an actual God out there, however. And with a metaphorical God, human purpose reduces to the human benefit of getting into heaven, which isn’t a purpose at all.
While these possibilities for human purpose do not seem very likely, the possibility that humans have no purpose can be supported with science. Animals, including apes, do not have a purpose besides providing food and materials to other animals. Since humans gradually evolved from apes, there is no distinct point where a purpose would be given to humans. Humans and other animals are therefore similar in that none of them might have a purpose. The only difference is that humans have sufficient mental capacity to wonder about their purpose. While this is not great evidence for humans’ lack of a purpose, it at least provides a reason for why this might be true.
Even if humans do not have a purpose as a species, people try to have a purpose to make their lives worth living. As Bill McKibben says in his book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, we invent challenges like running marathons to give our lives meaning (McKibben 65). I think this shows that the “purposes” in human lives are really just illusions that people fabricate to make themselves happy. McKibben’s argument that genetic engineering will take away the meaning, or the purpose, in these challenges boils down to the fact that the engineering will take away that illusion. This shows that even the challenges humans create for themselves are not really true purposes.
Works Cited
McKibben, Bill. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. 1. New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 2003.
"Reincarnation: Is it compatible with Christianity?" 01 May 2003. Personal Freedom
Outreach. 21 Feb 2009.
Silver, Lee. Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality. 1.
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
ENGCMP 0200
Dr. Adam Johns
2/21/09
The purpose of humans is an important philosophical question with different possible answers coming from religion and ordinary people. While billions of people believe in these explanations, I think they share a common flaw. Thus, a scientific explanation seems to provide the best answer—that there is no real purpose. While I believe the human species has no purpose, individual humans can invent purposes as a way of achieving satisfaction with their lives.
Some possible purposes to human life include passing on DNA through reproduction and spreading Christianity throughout the world. The long-term result of reproduction, evolution, is an improvement of the human species. Also, an urge to reproduce was created in humans through natural selection. The humans who wanted offspring were obviously more likely to pass on their DNA than those who didn’t want children. This combination of a benefit to humans and the genetic desire to reproduce makes it a tempting answer to the purpose of humans. Spreading Christianity is another possible purpose to human life. Since the start of Christianity, missionaries and conquering Europeans have been attempting to spread the religion. In their eyes, this work will benefit other humans who haven’t realized their mistake in not being Christian.
Both of these purposes have the common theme that they improve our species. However, it is clear that humans did not evolve, or were not created, so that they could improve themselves. A true human purpose has to involve interaction with something besides humans.
Lee Silver provides a better possible purpose to humans in his book Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality. He writes that eventually, “human nature will remake all of Mother Nature in the image of the idealized world that exists within our own minds (Silver xvi). This idealized world will have eliminated suffering from humans as well as animals. While this purpose is not entirely for humans, it is conceived mainly for human benefit. The better quality of life that animals receive from this genetic engineering will make people feel good, which is the motivation for doing it. So while this purpose is at least plausible since it helps things besides humans, it does not seem strong enough to be humans’ true purpose.
Religious doctrine provides a variety of other explanations. The bible says that humans exist to serve and glorify God. Similarly, Muslims consider earning benevolence from Allah to be the goal in life. Other religions, such as Hinduism, believe that humans are a final stepping stone in the cycle of reincarnation towards heaven. Each of these explanations contradict each other, however. Allah and God are not the same. God is peaceful, while Allah advocates killing nonbelievers. God said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” while Allah said, “Allah is only one God; far be It from His glory that He should have a son.” The idea of reincarnation is also incompatible with Christianity and Islam. Hebrews 9:27 says “it is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment” ("Reincarnation: Is it compatible with Christianity?"). Similarly, Muslims believe that after people die they go either to heaven or to hell.
If one of these religious explanations really is the true purpose of life, the other religions would be wrong because of the incompatibility between the views. Because of this, at least two of these three explanations are wrong. Also, I already established that the true purpose to humans cannot be a benefit to humans themselves. Thus, the Hindu belief can’t be the right answer to this question. Breaking out of the cycle of reincarnation and getting to heaven is solely a human benefit. The Islamic goal of not making Allah angry to get into heaven is also a human benefit. For the Christian purpose of humans to be plausible, a literal God is necessary. With an actual God, then humans could have the purpose of serving and glorifying Him. I don’t believe there is an actual God out there, however. And with a metaphorical God, human purpose reduces to the human benefit of getting into heaven, which isn’t a purpose at all.
While these possibilities for human purpose do not seem very likely, the possibility that humans have no purpose can be supported with science. Animals, including apes, do not have a purpose besides providing food and materials to other animals. Since humans gradually evolved from apes, there is no distinct point where a purpose would be given to humans. Humans and other animals are therefore similar in that none of them might have a purpose. The only difference is that humans have sufficient mental capacity to wonder about their purpose. While this is not great evidence for humans’ lack of a purpose, it at least provides a reason for why this might be true.
Even if humans do not have a purpose as a species, people try to have a purpose to make their lives worth living. As Bill McKibben says in his book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, we invent challenges like running marathons to give our lives meaning (McKibben 65). I think this shows that the “purposes” in human lives are really just illusions that people fabricate to make themselves happy. McKibben’s argument that genetic engineering will take away the meaning, or the purpose, in these challenges boils down to the fact that the engineering will take away that illusion. This shows that even the challenges humans create for themselves are not really true purposes.
Works Cited
McKibben, Bill. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. 1. New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 2003.
"Reincarnation: Is it compatible with Christianity?" 01 May 2003. Personal Freedom
Outreach. 21 Feb 2009
Silver, Lee. Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality. 1.
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
Potatoes
Bailey Moorhead
ENGCMP 0200
February 20, 2009
Dr. Adam Johns
"Potatoes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew." This was the ludicrous answer my friend Neal gave me when I asked him what his thoughts on the meaning of life. The answer was via text message, so it was impossible to sense any sarcasm he may have been trying to convey, but knowing Neal the answer was meant to be ridiculous. The phrase, however, embodied what I thought was the perfect answer to the question. No matter which way you cook them, potatoes are potatoes. They are planted, grow, and are eaten. I think the case is similar for humans. Every individual human lives as they choose, but the amount of time spent on Earth is miniscule. I believe every human has a meaning to their family, friends, and society, but humanity as a whole, whether it develops into a utopian society or destroys itself, simply exists to exist. Humans are as meaningful to the universe as a sack of potatoes.
Don't get me wrong. I really like potatoes. I eat them bashed, baked, fried, and even raw with salt. I like humanity, too. I just don't think we have a purpose. Some of the best things are purposeless: rolling down hills, Jello jigglers, everything Billy Mays tries to sell me late at night, etc. Humanity is pretty amazing. We've explored the depths of the sea and the surface of Mars and it doesn't look like we will stop anytime soon. Put in perspective, though, our existence on Earth is comparable to the blink of an eye. It is generally accepted that humans have roamed the Earth for 2.5 million years, and anatomically modern humans did not originate until about 200,000 years ago (Kreger). The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. This means that modern humans have only inhabited the Earth for 0.0044% of its existence and the percent is much smaller in relation to the history of the Universe, which is 15 billion years long. I find it hard to believe that any organism that has existed for this tiny period of time will have any great significance to the Earth or the Universe. Even dinosaurs, which existed for 160 million years, have had no lasting impact.
Though humans have created civilizations, we are no different from any other organism roaming the Earth. Creating and innovating are human attributes, but they are no more significant than a bird's singing or a bee's hive-building. We simply do it because our genes have instilled the behavior in us. The way we are raised may dictate how and why we do such things, but our DNA dictates what we do as human beings. Bill McKibben argues in his book Enough that our individualism is our purpose. I do believe individual humans have individual purposes. We set goals and make decisions based on our personalities. This does not make me believe, however, that we, as a species, have a purpose. Our species has most likely come to exist through chance mutations causing our evolution from a unicellular organism. The exact same process created other animals, plants, and bacteria. Basically, a random series of events has caused our existence. How, then, could we be designed to have a higher purpose? Though we may be more intelligent than other species, we live and die just as they do. Though the life of a fly may seem unbelievably short to us, the length of our lives is hardly longer than theirs from the perspective of the Universe.
Nihilism is a rather depressing philosophy at times. Personally, I like to think my life has meaning. Why else do we go to school, work, and abstain from unhealthy behavior? Silver argues that the need for religion is ingrained in human beings. It is human to want to feel that there will be rewards for leading a productive and moral life. I don't believe that religion is the only reason to make the most out of life, though. Just because humanity has no higher meaning, does not mean that we can't make the most of our own individual lives. Humans can have a happy existence even without a purpose.
ENGCMP 0200
February 20, 2009
Dr. Adam Johns
"Potatoes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew." This was the ludicrous answer my friend Neal gave me when I asked him what his thoughts on the meaning of life. The answer was via text message, so it was impossible to sense any sarcasm he may have been trying to convey, but knowing Neal the answer was meant to be ridiculous. The phrase, however, embodied what I thought was the perfect answer to the question. No matter which way you cook them, potatoes are potatoes. They are planted, grow, and are eaten. I think the case is similar for humans. Every individual human lives as they choose, but the amount of time spent on Earth is miniscule. I believe every human has a meaning to their family, friends, and society, but humanity as a whole, whether it develops into a utopian society or destroys itself, simply exists to exist. Humans are as meaningful to the universe as a sack of potatoes.
Don't get me wrong. I really like potatoes. I eat them bashed, baked, fried, and even raw with salt. I like humanity, too. I just don't think we have a purpose. Some of the best things are purposeless: rolling down hills, Jello jigglers, everything Billy Mays tries to sell me late at night, etc. Humanity is pretty amazing. We've explored the depths of the sea and the surface of Mars and it doesn't look like we will stop anytime soon. Put in perspective, though, our existence on Earth is comparable to the blink of an eye. It is generally accepted that humans have roamed the Earth for 2.5 million years, and anatomically modern humans did not originate until about 200,000 years ago (Kreger). The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. This means that modern humans have only inhabited the Earth for 0.0044% of its existence and the percent is much smaller in relation to the history of the Universe, which is 15 billion years long. I find it hard to believe that any organism that has existed for this tiny period of time will have any great significance to the Earth or the Universe. Even dinosaurs, which existed for 160 million years, have had no lasting impact.
Though humans have created civilizations, we are no different from any other organism roaming the Earth. Creating and innovating are human attributes, but they are no more significant than a bird's singing or a bee's hive-building. We simply do it because our genes have instilled the behavior in us. The way we are raised may dictate how and why we do such things, but our DNA dictates what we do as human beings. Bill McKibben argues in his book Enough that our individualism is our purpose. I do believe individual humans have individual purposes. We set goals and make decisions based on our personalities. This does not make me believe, however, that we, as a species, have a purpose. Our species has most likely come to exist through chance mutations causing our evolution from a unicellular organism. The exact same process created other animals, plants, and bacteria. Basically, a random series of events has caused our existence. How, then, could we be designed to have a higher purpose? Though we may be more intelligent than other species, we live and die just as they do. Though the life of a fly may seem unbelievably short to us, the length of our lives is hardly longer than theirs from the perspective of the Universe.
Nihilism is a rather depressing philosophy at times. Personally, I like to think my life has meaning. Why else do we go to school, work, and abstain from unhealthy behavior? Silver argues that the need for religion is ingrained in human beings. It is human to want to feel that there will be rewards for leading a productive and moral life. I don't believe that religion is the only reason to make the most out of life, though. Just because humanity has no higher meaning, does not mean that we can't make the most of our own individual lives. Humans can have a happy existence even without a purpose.
Purpose
Hamid A. Campbell
Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200
02.17.2009
Purpose
The luckiest people in the world are those who are aware of their respective individual purposes and possess the knowledge and resources to fulfill these purposes. Purpose is one of the strongest sources of motivation, and its fulfillment is the ultimate source of satisfaction. When one understands their life’s purpose and actively pursues it, each day is more than “just any other day.” Each day holds new experiences, new knowledge to attain, and new reasons to be alive. I would imagine that the hardest thing in the world would be to look back on one’s life at an old age and not have an answer to the question “what purpose did I serve?” Does this concept of “purpose,” then, apply to everyone? And if not every person serves a purpose, then exactly what collective purpose do we all serve?
The most successful sitcom in television history, and one of my favorite programs of all time, is famously a self-proclaimed show about “nothing.” Seinfeld follows a group of four friends who live in New York City, a city full of power and purpose. However, Jerry Seinfeld and his friends lead meaningless, powerless, and even purposeless lives. While the show is one of the funniest I have ever seen, the ease with which I (and apparently hundreds of millions of other Seinfeld fans) can relate to the characters and their context-deficient existences is quite scary. Other television shows, movies, and even books contain characters who consistently achieve absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, the average person can watch and read about these characters and quickly identify with them, seeing themselves impersonated in the purposeless characters. The danger lies in the fact that the world that we live in has “[left] us vulnerable to meaninglessness,” as Bill McKibben states in Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (McKibben, 2003). Again, while there are those who have found purpose in life, I would be interested in knowing the percentage of people who wake up every day and go to work only to return home feeling that they had not accomplished a thing, as if they had served no purpose. How many people truly lead meaningless lives? Because life can have no meaning if it has no purpose, can it?
Maybe human life has no purpose, and thus no meaning. It seems so straightforward, yet the theories that have been provided to explain the reason for human existence are countless. I, however, am inclined to answer the question with even more questions. Maybe there is more than one answer, more than one purpose that humans are to fulfill. I am quite certain that there exists an ultimate truth out there somewhere, and I am also certain that we, as humans, simply just cannot have it in its entirety, nor would we be capable of handling it in its entirety. The truth, as we all know, can sometimes be quite hurtful and unpleasant. Imagine that some mad scientist in a laboratory in Germany discovers the answer and finds that the purpose of human life is one that we are presently incapable of fulfilling, such as to permanently stop all of the planets in the solar system from rotating around the sun. Or maybe he discovers that our purpose is one that we are simply not willing to fulfill, such as to peacefully coexist and crossbreed with extraterrestrial life. What will we then do? If we had the absolute truth and found it to be disagreeable, how would we spend our time? Would life go on as usual (purposelessly), or would we just suck it up and all get on a shuttle to another galaxy to begin our half-human/half-alien families? Although these examples are quite farfetched and extremely improbable, it seems that answers to such questions as “what is the purpose of human life” would lead only to further problems, not solutions.
As an aspiring medical scientist, my views on the role of human life in the universe are biased in favor of the explanation that science provides. To most scientists, including myself, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory is the most reasonable explanation for the existence of humans. We simply evolved from other hominids and are a result of genetic mutations and “natural selection.” Homo sapiens will cease to exist, just as nearly every other species that has ever existed on earth has. In fact, Lee Silver, a professor of microbiology at Princeton University, reveals in Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality that Homo sapiens will be extinguished at some point “in the next 200,000 to 8 million years (Silver, 2006).” Therefore, humans have no higher purpose than to reproduce and evolve into further, more stable, stronger, better species. This purpose requires no extraordinary action on our part (since individuals do not self-evolve, but rather entire species), and everyone who reproduces participates in the evolutionary process.
Unlike other scientists, however, I do believe that individuals have unique purposes. For example, I have wanted to be a doctor for as long as my memory serves me. I vividly recall being seven years old at family gatherings ambitiously telling my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins how I was going to cure cancer and make everyone live until they were a hundred years old. Over a decade of life and education later, this desire to cure disease and alleviate human suffering still exists. Even if I never cure cancer (or ensure that every human will celebrate their centennial), I realize and understand that I am lucky enough to know what my purpose is early enough to do something about it and to know the work that I will spend my life performing. Hopefully I will never look back and have to wonder whether I had made a difference.
Works Cited
McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books.
Silver, L. M. (2006). Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality. New York: HarperCollins Publishing.
Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200
02.17.2009
Purpose
The luckiest people in the world are those who are aware of their respective individual purposes and possess the knowledge and resources to fulfill these purposes. Purpose is one of the strongest sources of motivation, and its fulfillment is the ultimate source of satisfaction. When one understands their life’s purpose and actively pursues it, each day is more than “just any other day.” Each day holds new experiences, new knowledge to attain, and new reasons to be alive. I would imagine that the hardest thing in the world would be to look back on one’s life at an old age and not have an answer to the question “what purpose did I serve?” Does this concept of “purpose,” then, apply to everyone? And if not every person serves a purpose, then exactly what collective purpose do we all serve?
The most successful sitcom in television history, and one of my favorite programs of all time, is famously a self-proclaimed show about “nothing.” Seinfeld follows a group of four friends who live in New York City, a city full of power and purpose. However, Jerry Seinfeld and his friends lead meaningless, powerless, and even purposeless lives. While the show is one of the funniest I have ever seen, the ease with which I (and apparently hundreds of millions of other Seinfeld fans) can relate to the characters and their context-deficient existences is quite scary. Other television shows, movies, and even books contain characters who consistently achieve absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, the average person can watch and read about these characters and quickly identify with them, seeing themselves impersonated in the purposeless characters. The danger lies in the fact that the world that we live in has “[left] us vulnerable to meaninglessness,” as Bill McKibben states in Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (McKibben, 2003). Again, while there are those who have found purpose in life, I would be interested in knowing the percentage of people who wake up every day and go to work only to return home feeling that they had not accomplished a thing, as if they had served no purpose. How many people truly lead meaningless lives? Because life can have no meaning if it has no purpose, can it?
Maybe human life has no purpose, and thus no meaning. It seems so straightforward, yet the theories that have been provided to explain the reason for human existence are countless. I, however, am inclined to answer the question with even more questions. Maybe there is more than one answer, more than one purpose that humans are to fulfill. I am quite certain that there exists an ultimate truth out there somewhere, and I am also certain that we, as humans, simply just cannot have it in its entirety, nor would we be capable of handling it in its entirety. The truth, as we all know, can sometimes be quite hurtful and unpleasant. Imagine that some mad scientist in a laboratory in Germany discovers the answer and finds that the purpose of human life is one that we are presently incapable of fulfilling, such as to permanently stop all of the planets in the solar system from rotating around the sun. Or maybe he discovers that our purpose is one that we are simply not willing to fulfill, such as to peacefully coexist and crossbreed with extraterrestrial life. What will we then do? If we had the absolute truth and found it to be disagreeable, how would we spend our time? Would life go on as usual (purposelessly), or would we just suck it up and all get on a shuttle to another galaxy to begin our half-human/half-alien families? Although these examples are quite farfetched and extremely improbable, it seems that answers to such questions as “what is the purpose of human life” would lead only to further problems, not solutions.
As an aspiring medical scientist, my views on the role of human life in the universe are biased in favor of the explanation that science provides. To most scientists, including myself, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory is the most reasonable explanation for the existence of humans. We simply evolved from other hominids and are a result of genetic mutations and “natural selection.” Homo sapiens will cease to exist, just as nearly every other species that has ever existed on earth has. In fact, Lee Silver, a professor of microbiology at Princeton University, reveals in Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality that Homo sapiens will be extinguished at some point “in the next 200,000 to 8 million years (Silver, 2006).” Therefore, humans have no higher purpose than to reproduce and evolve into further, more stable, stronger, better species. This purpose requires no extraordinary action on our part (since individuals do not self-evolve, but rather entire species), and everyone who reproduces participates in the evolutionary process.
Unlike other scientists, however, I do believe that individuals have unique purposes. For example, I have wanted to be a doctor for as long as my memory serves me. I vividly recall being seven years old at family gatherings ambitiously telling my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins how I was going to cure cancer and make everyone live until they were a hundred years old. Over a decade of life and education later, this desire to cure disease and alleviate human suffering still exists. Even if I never cure cancer (or ensure that every human will celebrate their centennial), I realize and understand that I am lucky enough to know what my purpose is early enough to do something about it and to know the work that I will spend my life performing. Hopefully I will never look back and have to wonder whether I had made a difference.
Works Cited
McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books.
Silver, L. M. (2006). Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality. New York: HarperCollins Publishing.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Assignment for Tuesday the 24th
Refresh yourself on McKibben's concerns about the loss of community and/or collective meaning in our culture. Look, for instance, between page 50 and page 60, although not only there. Make your own argument about the "loss of meaning" (or the non-loss of meaning), using both McKibben and Ware as sources (Jimmy's complete absence of community, and near-absence of human contact, are obvious starting points here). Asking yourself some of these questions might help you to generate an argument.
1) Is McKibben right or wrong that we have lost (collective) meaning?
2) Is this change (if you accept it) worthwhile, given the other things we have lost, or not?
3) How does Jimmy's life and situation reflect on the collective loss of meaning? Take, for instance, his lifelong obsession with Superman, his strange fantasy life, his relationship with his mother, etc. as starting points. Is Ware trying to depict modern life in general, or just one sad loser?
You can certainly use any of the material you worked on during our last class for this assignment.
1) Is McKibben right or wrong that we have lost (collective) meaning?
2) Is this change (if you accept it) worthwhile, given the other things we have lost, or not?
3) How does Jimmy's life and situation reflect on the collective loss of meaning? Take, for instance, his lifelong obsession with Superman, his strange fantasy life, his relationship with his mother, etc. as starting points. Is Ware trying to depict modern life in general, or just one sad loser?
You can certainly use any of the material you worked on during our last class for this assignment.
Choices
Phill Oostdyk
Dr. Adam Johns
Essay #3
What people are for has always been open for subjectivity depending on your beliefs, desires, or creeds. What are people for could have completely different meanings. Scientifically, it could mean to only reproduce and make your DNA survive. Religiously it could mean, at least in Christianity, to spread the word of God. Preaching, evangelizing, and living your life by the Bible are the most important things.
What people are for is just to be themselves. To make choices, enrich their lives, to make themselves and the world around them better. This may sound like a copout answer or even not an answer at all; but I have a reason for believing this. People live their lives and make choices. These choices may not always be the best for themselves or others around them, but they are choices. If the ultimate reason for what people are for is to, say, preach the word of god, then people wouldn’t have a choice not to.
Everyone in this world is different. Different cultures, different ethnicities, different everything. Even identical twins have different personalities. Having a belief that there is one ultimate reason, or even a few reasons, for what people are for is a farce. To have an opinion that there is a reason for people being here or that there is a meaning of life is based on one’s beliefs. There can never be one eureka moment of discovery that shows that there is a definite reason. Even this essay is based on my opinion and not solid fact. ‘What are people for’ is, and always will be, a question based on a person’s views.
Choice is matter of who you are, not what you are made up of. DNA may influence your decision, but it does not completely control it. A team of researches conducted a test in 2007 in Sweden to try and prove that genes influence people’s choices. These researchers used both fraternal and identical twins for this controlled experiment. What they found was that the identical twins were more likely to make the same choices than the fraternal twins. This does suggest that DNA does play part in the human decision process, but does not eliminate it. The experiment does not mention if the any of the sets of twins have the same experiences. The researchers went through the Swedish Twin Registry to find their subjects. But what if some of the identical twins were separated at birth and lived completely different lives? Would this change the results than if they were raised the same? Did the fraternal twins who grew up together fair better in the experiment than any identical twins separated at birth? My point is that people’s experiences and surroundings also have an effect on people’s choices, not just their DNA.
Bill McKibben, in his book Enough suggests that with genetic engineering, people will lose their ability to make choices. He says that in the future, without choice, democracy will fall. “Democracy depends on the idea that we’re free actors” (199). On this point, I do agree with McKibben that with the loss of choice will lead to the fall of democracy, but we will never lose our ability to choose. McKibben seems to claim that with the future of germline genetic engineering that eventually, humans will lose the ability to choose. Our choices will be made by the DNA built into us without us as humans realizing that we are not making them ourselves. But there are points to where he seems to contradict this. He says that parents will have to choose to let there their kid fall behind by not engineering them, or manipulate their genes. McKibben uses an example of adding IQ to a child. He quotes economist Lester Thurow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saying “Wouldn’t you want to do it? And if you don’t, your child will be the stupidest in the neighborhood” (33). McKibben then adds, “That’s precisely what if might feel like to be the parent facing the choice” (33) But how are parents suppose to make, or even realize, these choices if people lose the ability to choose with germline engineering? They might decide to give their child the higher IQ without it even seeming like a choice, but it will still be a choice to be made.
People being themselves, as individuals, goes hand in hand with making choices. According to McKibben, the world is on the verge of losing ourselves as individuals. I think that this could never happen. Our individualism comes from who we are, not what we are. A person is still a person, no matter what. McKibben argues that the advancement of genetics will change how people are; what they feel, how they think, etc. Even if we get to a point where human are altered before birth to what they are going to be or what they are good at, that person is still going to have to live their life. A genetically altered person will still have opinions, confront tragedy, and make choices.
Whether a person close to you dies, you lose a limb in an accident, or even just fail a class, the result would affect the person, engineered or not. If a person was modified to always feel happy, some sort of change has to occur. I believe that it just in not in a person’s soul to always feel happy.
Another point that individualism will not fade is the fact that no one could be altered precisely the same way. Geneticists could create two babies genetically the same, but their experiences will be different. For example, two embryos are both modified to run faster. Their genes alter to the same specifications. The babies grow up to be the same heights, weight, build, everything. One, Child A, has parents that push him to run. They cheer him on and support him, show up to everything he does. The other, Child B, has parents that do not really care either way. These parents show up to the occasional activity and do not pay him as much attention. These children both have nurturing factors that the other does not have. So, in a foot race, theoretically (and by design), both of these children should run at the same speed and tie, but only one wins. Who won is the irrelevant question, but the real one would be, why wouldn’t they tie? Maybe Child A won because he was pushed to be the better runner. Maybe Child B won because he wanted to prove something. The point of this story is that the argument that genetic engineering is the downfall of individualism is nothing but fear mongering. Individualism has lasted millennia.
McKibben, Bill. Enough. Owl Books 2003
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/ultimatum-1001.html
Dr. Adam Johns
Essay #3
What people are for has always been open for subjectivity depending on your beliefs, desires, or creeds. What are people for could have completely different meanings. Scientifically, it could mean to only reproduce and make your DNA survive. Religiously it could mean, at least in Christianity, to spread the word of God. Preaching, evangelizing, and living your life by the Bible are the most important things.
What people are for is just to be themselves. To make choices, enrich their lives, to make themselves and the world around them better. This may sound like a copout answer or even not an answer at all; but I have a reason for believing this. People live their lives and make choices. These choices may not always be the best for themselves or others around them, but they are choices. If the ultimate reason for what people are for is to, say, preach the word of god, then people wouldn’t have a choice not to.
Everyone in this world is different. Different cultures, different ethnicities, different everything. Even identical twins have different personalities. Having a belief that there is one ultimate reason, or even a few reasons, for what people are for is a farce. To have an opinion that there is a reason for people being here or that there is a meaning of life is based on one’s beliefs. There can never be one eureka moment of discovery that shows that there is a definite reason. Even this essay is based on my opinion and not solid fact. ‘What are people for’ is, and always will be, a question based on a person’s views.
Choice is matter of who you are, not what you are made up of. DNA may influence your decision, but it does not completely control it. A team of researches conducted a test in 2007 in Sweden to try and prove that genes influence people’s choices. These researchers used both fraternal and identical twins for this controlled experiment. What they found was that the identical twins were more likely to make the same choices than the fraternal twins. This does suggest that DNA does play part in the human decision process, but does not eliminate it. The experiment does not mention if the any of the sets of twins have the same experiences. The researchers went through the Swedish Twin Registry to find their subjects. But what if some of the identical twins were separated at birth and lived completely different lives? Would this change the results than if they were raised the same? Did the fraternal twins who grew up together fair better in the experiment than any identical twins separated at birth? My point is that people’s experiences and surroundings also have an effect on people’s choices, not just their DNA.
Bill McKibben, in his book Enough suggests that with genetic engineering, people will lose their ability to make choices. He says that in the future, without choice, democracy will fall. “Democracy depends on the idea that we’re free actors” (199). On this point, I do agree with McKibben that with the loss of choice will lead to the fall of democracy, but we will never lose our ability to choose. McKibben seems to claim that with the future of germline genetic engineering that eventually, humans will lose the ability to choose. Our choices will be made by the DNA built into us without us as humans realizing that we are not making them ourselves. But there are points to where he seems to contradict this. He says that parents will have to choose to let there their kid fall behind by not engineering them, or manipulate their genes. McKibben uses an example of adding IQ to a child. He quotes economist Lester Thurow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saying “Wouldn’t you want to do it? And if you don’t, your child will be the stupidest in the neighborhood” (33). McKibben then adds, “That’s precisely what if might feel like to be the parent facing the choice” (33) But how are parents suppose to make, or even realize, these choices if people lose the ability to choose with germline engineering? They might decide to give their child the higher IQ without it even seeming like a choice, but it will still be a choice to be made.
People being themselves, as individuals, goes hand in hand with making choices. According to McKibben, the world is on the verge of losing ourselves as individuals. I think that this could never happen. Our individualism comes from who we are, not what we are. A person is still a person, no matter what. McKibben argues that the advancement of genetics will change how people are; what they feel, how they think, etc. Even if we get to a point where human are altered before birth to what they are going to be or what they are good at, that person is still going to have to live their life. A genetically altered person will still have opinions, confront tragedy, and make choices.
Whether a person close to you dies, you lose a limb in an accident, or even just fail a class, the result would affect the person, engineered or not. If a person was modified to always feel happy, some sort of change has to occur. I believe that it just in not in a person’s soul to always feel happy.
Another point that individualism will not fade is the fact that no one could be altered precisely the same way. Geneticists could create two babies genetically the same, but their experiences will be different. For example, two embryos are both modified to run faster. Their genes alter to the same specifications. The babies grow up to be the same heights, weight, build, everything. One, Child A, has parents that push him to run. They cheer him on and support him, show up to everything he does. The other, Child B, has parents that do not really care either way. These parents show up to the occasional activity and do not pay him as much attention. These children both have nurturing factors that the other does not have. So, in a foot race, theoretically (and by design), both of these children should run at the same speed and tie, but only one wins. Who won is the irrelevant question, but the real one would be, why wouldn’t they tie? Maybe Child A won because he was pushed to be the better runner. Maybe Child B won because he wanted to prove something. The point of this story is that the argument that genetic engineering is the downfall of individualism is nothing but fear mongering. Individualism has lasted millennia.
McKibben, Bill. Enough. Owl Books 2003
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/ultimatum-1001.html
Forty-Two
James Toye
2/24/09
ENGCMP 0200
Dr. Johns
What is the purpose of human life? It is a question nearly everyone asks of themselves and those around them at some point during their existence. Many people arrive at this question not through direct contemplation but through association with another question, be it asking what their individual purpose is, or asking what the purpose of any life is. In the process of determining the function of people, many questions are asked, and through answering them, an answer to the original question can be determined, giving someone the idea that they have figured out humanity. But when many different people’s answers to the question are compared, one realizes that there are as many answers to the question as there are askers. Even though this is true, many of those answers strike around the same general idea.
In his book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, Bill McKibben shares a story from another book, which I believe echoes his thoughts on human life and purpose. The story is about an old man who lives with his wife and son, to whom he has given his farm. Even though he does not have to, the man continues to work and bring home food for his wife because “he still needed to be bringing something to her (McKibben 95).” The old man, once a farmer, no longer has to work, yet he continues to. Why? As McKibben says in his book, life is about investing yourself into your work in order to have purpose and function (McKibben 94).
Some people, like Princeton professor Lee M. Silver, have differing opinions. From reading his book Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality, one may get the impression that he thinks that life lacks purpose, that we are all but machines, existing simply because we do, driven by probability, just as his child had a forty-nine percent chance of being a girl (Silver 24). I disagree with this analysis of his persona, if Silver was convinced that we have no purpose, why would he be spending his time working to do what he believes is the right thing, and through doing so, trying to improve the quality of life for him and those around him? I believe his book is an extension of this, of him trying to get people to see his view of human purpose and join him on his mission to achieve it.
As Silver believes that human purpose is the improvement of human life, and McKibben believes it is the investment of energy, there are still more related, yet different ideas about human function. The science fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, tells of a giant computer, made to determine the answer to the “Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” which turns out to be “Forty-two (Adams 120).” This causes its creators to ask what the question is, which the computer cannot answer. From there on, the novel focuses on the antagonist as he is hunted down by the creators of yet another computer (Earth) who believe he has the question inside the structure of his brain. Through his book, Adams offers another perspective to the question of human purpose – human purpose is to search for purpose while surviving.
My personal answer to the question is a combination of these three other answers. I believe that the function of human life is to explore and understand the universe while working to help humanity thrive as a whole. The feeling of satisfaction that anyone gets when they help someone in need out helps me believe that it is something that we were meant to do, not just something we can do, but there still is an empty space inside of me and some other people that I have spoken to, that makes me feel like I need to go find something new and figure out how it exists with us, and how it influences what we do. The question “what is human purpose” is timeless, but so will be the pursuit of an accurate, all-encompassing answer to it, that people all around the world will constantly yearn for.
Works Cited
McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books.
Silver, L. M. (2006). Challenging Nature: The Clash Between Biotechnology and Spirituality. New York: HarperCollins Publishing.
Adams, D. (2002). The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. New York: Random House
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
What We Believe Spritually Has Great Effects
Stephanie Errigo
Dr. Adam Johns
Essay #3
When you type in the phrase, “What is the meaning of life?” in a Google search, you come up with over 34,700,000 results. This makes me think that many people may think that they know what the meaning of life is and that they understand why people are put on this earth. Some people may believe that a great philosopher holds the answer to what we are here for, but I don’t think that is the case at all. I believe that we are put on this earth for many reasons and it depends on your religious beliefs for the most part. I also think that bringing designer babies into the mix would make us lose our sense of individuality. Individualism as we know it today would disappear and I also think that once people found out that everyone was engineered to have their special “niche” that people would want to escape the path they are told they have to follow.
The meaning of life can be a hard thing for people to comprehend or even want to think about. Even thinking about this question made me question why I think that people are on this earth. Obviously we can’t just be here for nothing. I feel like a lot of people look toward their religion for the answer to this question. In the case of my religion, Catholic, I look at this question in a spiritual way. I think that Pope Benedict XVI puts it best when he said, “Life is not just a succession of events or experiences; it is the search for the true, the good and the beautiful.” (Catholic.com) If we feel we aren’t here for a real reason, then we believe that life is just a succession of events and experiences. I think the things that make this world beautiful is helping each other which makes things good and true. Don’t we always seem to search for the true, good and beautiful? Aren’t we always thinking looking for the good in the world today? I feel like McKibben would agree with me in the sense that people do have a purpose even if we can’t put our finger on the reason completely.
Silver would not agree with my preceding paragraph in the least. He would say that we are here for no reason, just to better the earth and make a Utopia for us to live in. I feel like he shows the selfish side of human nature. As he says in his book, “Slowly, inevitably, human nature will remake all of Mother Nature in the image of the idealized world that exists within our minds—which is what most people really want subconsciously.”(Silver, xvi)
What if people are like Silver and belief that we aren’t here for a reason, that we’re here to make a Utopia, and what if people don’t look to their spiritual or religious background? What do they believe? I think that many people would say that they have never even thought of the answer to such a question. I know that before this was brought up in prompt, I never had thought about it before. These people may say that we are here to live for ourselves, maybe thinking that it is the “Every Man for Himself” type of society, which could be true.
Whether we think we know the meaning of life or not means that we can form opinions on designer babies. Some people like Silver may think that we are here to make a Utopian world, so of course we would make designer babies. But I feel that making designer babies would cause our meaning of life to disappear along with our sense of individuality. If we make designer babies that are specialized in the areas that the parents believe are the greatest aspects, what happens to all the other great talents that someone may have that people may forget? I’m a licensed auctioneer and have been since the age of 17. I wouldn’t trade anything for that. I don’t care that I’m not an outstanding runner or the next Mozart. People like me would be gone, and other jobs that people enjoy but may not be perceived as prestigious would disappear.
What if these designer babies found out they were designer and wanted to switch the way they were? They couldn’t because they were programmed to be that way. McKibben states in Enough that, “If you’ve been designed and programmed to run, what meaning can running hold? It becomes an endless round on a treadmill, except that the treadmill is inside you—you take it out into the woods when you go for a trail run, and onto the beach when you run beside the breakers.” (McKibben, 55) I feel like McKibben is forming a metaphor for the treadmill such that the “treadmill” is the engineered genes. You can’t escape them, you take them everywhere, and if you want to be an individual, that choice is gone.
Designer babies also mean the end of very talented people. Everyone would be the same, and how much competition could really exist if everyone is really good at so many things? There would be no more Micheal Phelps, there would be 1,000,000 and there would no longer be Ludacris dropping beats, there would be 500,000 of them. Babies would no longer be a surprise either, no more “It’s a boy!” It would turn into, “Cool, we knew this was going to be a boy who excels at sports.”
The meaning of life is not found through designer babies, neither is it found anywhere for many people. I think many people turn to their spiritual beliefs for what to think about the meaning of life, but if you don’t have a faith, you may think that we have no purpose. Designer babies take away from our meaning of life I think, and they cause the whole population to lose their sense of individuality. If we allow designer babies we might as well say goodbye to life as we know it.
Silver, Lee Challenging Nature. Harper Collins Publishers, 2006
McKibben, Bill Enough. Owl Books, 2003
www.forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=4820894 (Feb 18, 2009)
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