Bailey Moorhead
ENGCMP 0200
Dr. Adam Johns
March 3, 2009

If Bill McKibben is right, I am going to stop trying right now. I will become a lawyer or a secretary. I’ll live in the same neighborhood of Pittsburgh for the rest of my life. There’s a good chance I’ll get cancer and die at the age of forty-one. What is the use of trying to make my own decisions when my life is predetermined by my genes I’ve inherited from my parents? Perhaps my example is a little extreme, but McKibben’s argument that we will lose our individuality if we genetically modify our children is also extreme. He argues that once we start choosing genes for our children, they will have no meaning because their lives will be predetermined. If this is the case, our lives are predetermined now even without genetic engineering. We are only able to receive alleles from our mothers or our fathers, with the slight chance of mutation causing a new allele. If our genes determine what we can do with our lives, we will become just like our parents. This is obviously not the case. We are able to make decisions about our lives which separate us from the lives our parents have chosen, although we have inherited their DNA. Similarly, if humans become genetically modified, individualism can still thrive. McKibben’s argument that we will lose meaning as a species cannot hold up, because it relies on the fact that humans’ lives are entirely determined by genes inherited and this is not true.
99.9% of human DNA is shared among individuals. This means we only differ with each other by .1%, technically. Despite this, we still show an enormous amount of individuality. Even identical twins can show a great difference in personality traits. If we continue our path of genetic engineering, Bill McKibben believes we will lose a sense of meaning. He believes our individuality is what makes humans human. I don’t necessarily condone designer babies, or engineering humans to have superior genetics, but I do believe that genetic engineering can do a lot in the way of preventing heritable genetic diseases. Even if the technology does become available and people do decide to choose the genes of their children, it will not completely wipe out all individuality. Competition has always been an evident in human societies. If all humans are given a certain gene for optimal performance, running for example, certain humans will still have a harder work ethic and will be able to out-compete their peers. Although certain tasks will be made easier for us, we will still strive to achieve more.
Jimmy Corrigan seems as though he has lost all sense of meaning in his life. He has an overbearing mother, an extremely awkward situation with his father, and the most contact he has with women is with the mailwoman, Peggy. He never seems happy with his life and often escapes into daydreams of Superman, women, or murder. Despite the fact he lives in a modern world, however, it does not mean that he has lost his sense of meaning because of increases in technology. In fact, Ware seems to argue that his lack of meaning stems from a bad childhood and poor relationships with his family by comparing Jimmy’s life to that of his grandfather, also James. Jimmy doesn’t meet his father until he is 36. By this time, he is living a very mundane life with few close relationships. Jimmy often displays a sense of bitterness regarding his lack of a father figure. He sees Superman, a sort of father figure to him, fall to his death and shows little emotion. He dreams of murdering his father. He obviously doesn’t regard father figures very well. This is not a modern development, however. Ware also narrates the story of Jimmy’s grandfather, James. He has an abusive father and his mother died in childbirth. Because of this, he is terrified of his father and is very reluctant to form relationships with others. He disdains his classmates and is shocked when he meets a man, his Italian friend’s father, who is caring. He is extremely inept socially. His grandfather’s story took place before the turn of the 20th century, in a time when genetic engineering did not occur beyond breeding the best crops and livestock together. The grandfather’s sense of meaninglessness is similar to Jimmy’s although they live in very different societies. Their lack of meaning stems from family relationships, rather than diminishing individuality resulting from genetic engineering. The lives of Jimmy and James are extensively affected by their upbringing. James lost his mother as an infant and Jimmy had no relationship with his father until his 30s. By choosing these situations for the characters, Ware is showing that regardless of the traits passed on to Jimmy and James by their parents, they show a sense of meaninglessness because of their childhoods.
McKibben argues that we are losing a sense of meaning as a species as we enter a modern age of GNR technology recklessly. A sense of meaninglessness can be seen, however, in any society at any period of time, as shown in Chris Ware’s graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth. Both Jimmy and his grandfather show a similar lack of meaning despite the fact that Jimmy lives in a far more technologically advanced world. Our genes do not determine who we are and what we will choose to do with our lives. It is our upbringing, environment, and individual choices that can create a sense of meaning, whether or not we are genetically modified.