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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