Meaningless Future

Andrew Vogel
ENGCMP 0200
Dr. Adam Johns
3/3/09

Bill McKibbin argues in his book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age that genetic engineering will take the meaning out of life. While his argument made some sense to me, Jimmy Corrigan’s life exemplifies the consequences of a meaningless life. I believe that future advances in technology will cause people to have a short “meaningful life” followed by decades or longer of useless fantasy-driven lives. Also, I think life will lose further meaning through weakened social interaction.

Genetic engineering has the ability to gradually make each generation of humans smarter. McKibben conjectures that in 2005 babies will be able to get a boost of 10 IQ points, and by 2010, babies will being receiving boosts of 20 IQ points (McKibbin 34). Even a supporter of genetic engineering Ray Kurzweil uses Moore’s law to predict that the human brain will double in power about every 3 years ("Ray Kurzweil: Life in the Future”). While this is great for the youngest generation that has the best genes, people even 5 to 10 years older will be significantly less smart and become obsolete. Since older people won’t be able to contribute anything of use to society, they will have no purpose. This will make them similar to Jimmy Corrigan, who doesn’t have a job or any responsibilities. Because of this, Jimmy lives his life through fantasy, imagining himself as a more popular and successful man or dreaming about superman. This will be the fate of people once they go past their 5 to 10 year span of usefulness. While a responsibility-free life seems great, Jimmy’s depressing life shows that it isn’t. He confirms Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s study, which showed that enjoyment comes from challenges, not from leisure (McKibben 51).

Genetic engineering will also create a future where family ties are damaged or completely lost. Parents and children won’t be genetically linked anymore. Instead, children’s genes will come from “any other person, or any other plant or animal, or out of the thin blue sky” (McKibben 10). But at the same time, parents will be forcing their kids to conform to their wishes. Parents can “gain complete control over their destiny, with the ability to guide and enhance the characteristics of their children, and their children’s children as well” (McKibben 58). Also, the kids will be genetically superior to their parents and soon surpass their parents intellectually. This inequality will occur among siblings as well. These social problems resulting from technology are reflected throughout Jimmy Corrigan. Jimmy’s grandfather’s horrible relationship with his father occurs during a time of huge technological progress shown by the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The contrast between the wonders of new technology and the harsh consequences of it on society is seen when Jimmy’s grandfather Jimmy is abandoned by his father on top of the magnificent new buildings constructed for the fair. In fact, Jimmy’s father worked on the zoopraxographical hall, which was used to show new forms of movie-making. Thus, his father’s meanness is associated with the enormously influential piece of technology that movies became. On the other hand, Jimmy had probably the happiest moments of his life in his Italian friend’s house making little horses using primitive technology. Even though the technology presented at the fair probably could little horses instantly, the important part for Jimmy was the process of making them.

The modern Jimmy, growing up in another era of technological progress, also has problems with his family. His dad is completely absent for much of his life, and there isn’t any good reason for his absence. It seems that this lack of a relationship between father and son is a common situation in the new era. He has a strange relationship with his mother as well, and its oddness is accentuated by their complete lack of face-to-face communication; instead, they talk only on the phone. This associates the technological progress of the telephone with a weakening of relationships.

Jimmy Corrigan shows some of the ways in which technology can take meaning away from life and parallels McKibben’s arguments. Just as we are living in an era where genetic engineering has huge potential benefits, Jimmy and his grandfather lived during times when other technology had the ability to change the world. However, the Corrigan family’s dismal existence shows that the costs of the new technology may outweigh the benefits.

Works Cited
McKibben, Bill. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. 1. New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 2003.
"Ray Kurzweil: Life in the Future." 23 Dec 2005. 2 Mar 2009
.