Its a new argument that just as begun. Today there is a new battleground in science, whether to only repair and heal, or to improve and create. Right now we ( geneticists ) are racing forward, building new foundations for what will become the present, personalized medicine! But should we go further than just building one story buildings, should we reach for the skys and build skyscrapers of unbelivable heights? This is the question that has been debated since genetics began.
Should we not only use our knowledge to heal and repair, but also to improve and perfect? Critics say that excellence would lead to a loss of value in human nature, a loss of virtue, of the appreciation of life. Would that really occur? Would a strive for perfection lead to a loss of the appreciation of talent, of life itself and nature?
I think not. Humans, as a society, specifically teenagers, are always outside the norm, because society has tried to make a perfect person that we must all try to strive for, yet teenagers go against this perfection, this ideal, because of the restriction placed own their own freedom to choose, (whether for good or for bad). [the merchants of cool] One geneticist or parent will have a different value of what perfection is than another. Because perfection would lead to what one beholds as perfection, (which is different from everyone else), I do not believe that the appreciation of specificity, or individuality, and therefore, talent, would be necessarily lost. However it could be degraded do a dangerously low level. I believe that society first needs to change, to accept and care greatly for life, to uphold it as its highest virtue, not talent or genes (which is what most of talent is made up of), or hard work, but life itself. Once life is held up first, before work, before family, before anything, then we can make the decision to change ourselves. Yet changing ourselves for excellence or for our own purposes will happen, whether we want it to or not, and we must change and educate society, so that these changes do not mar our humanity, our appreciation, and our love of life.
July 8, 2008 at 8:44 pm |
[...] You may know that he is a conservative, and I a libertarian. What is only now apparent is that he prefers the genetics approach to transhumanism, where I prefer the nanotechnology approach to transhumanism. This might lead to [...]
July 17, 2008 at 9:43 pm |
Improve. Please, improve. I salivate at the prospect of positive transhumanism.
I hope genetics and nanotechnology meet in the middle, since I’d like to be able to reap the rewards of transhuman evolution myself, rather than simply watching some future generation get what I can never have.