Stephanie Errigo
3/29/09
Final Project
The future of society may look rather grim if we continue in all of our technological advances. Genetic engineering poses the threat of a lazy, mundane society as well as leaving a society wanting more and more. What about when the birth rate turns out to be two times what the death rate is? Why would we ever want our children born to cater our specific wants instead of needs? Some people like Lee Silver may say that we are going into the right direction, but many people like myself would disagree. Silver may also say that we need this Utopian world and hat the disease elimination aspect outweighs the bad, but we also have to think about morality. It’s not like we go around shooting people with terminal illnesses or euthanizing people left and right because they have a defect. We embrace these people and work through their difficulties; we accept what happens in life, why should we change that? We live our lives knowing that nothing should be taken for granted and that we aren’t invincible. If nothing is left to harm us we will become lazy and daring when it comes to everyday tasks knowing that no disease could kill us. Religion and faiths such as the Catholic Church provide much argument in the support of my side, and they use no only faith but also much reasoning as a backing instead of just using all faith like some people may think. Why the Catholic Church you may ask? It is one of the most widely practiced religions in the US and it is known for using many contradictions against many issues in the modern world.
Bill McKibben and Bill Joy are two people that would see it my way, but some things that they missing are the Catholic aspect and backing of things. McKibben has written on religious topics, not directly relating to designer babies, but they do apply to what I’m talking about. Joy is one of the last people that you would link with talking about the danger of the future. He is an innovator of many software programs such as Java, so what would make him afraid of technology? I feel as though Joy is starting to see the light by writing his article, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” By writing this article he is showing us that we aren’t as invincible as many people may think.
(I think the second paragraph needs a little work still)
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1 comment:
My primary response to the first paragraph is that it's very cluttered. The writing is choppy and often technically incorrect, and your rapid series of ideas and claims are never defended or fleshed out. Why, for instance, do you believe that genetic engineering "poses the threat of a lazy, mundane society as well as a society wanting more and more"? This is a very complicated claim; it's also a claim about the future which oddly mirrors the way that many people feel about our own culture *already*. You need something more streamlined - work on a *thesis*. What, in one sentence, are you trying to prove to the reader? The fact that you can only articulate your claims in a very complicated way, yet without citing any facts or research, makes it seem like you're setting yourself up for a series of messily interconnected and incomplete arguments, not a single coherent one.
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