The idea is to create food that feeds more people and grows in more places and lives longer. I don't have a problem with that. Sure, people are planning to get rich from it, but people are getting rich selling me peaches and yogurt, too, and I can't bring myself to get irritated at them.
It's not as though we just started messing with nature; we've been doing it almost as long as we've been human."Jon Carroll at SFGate
email letter in response:
I know this makes me a bad person
Kinda went in the ditch right there didn't it? Right off the top.
You were the Paul Simon of three-dot for quite a while.
What happened?
What is that fecal upchuck?
What is this nonsense?
It's not evil because it benefits someone?
Is that the point? Is that all that's necessary to redeem anything someone does, that it benefit someone?
Mayan grain-selection is the moral equivalent of gene-tinkering by sociopaths?
Yeah sure it is, and you know why?
Because there's no morality involved. At all. Just insectile pragmatism. And the mentality that's running the labs is not itself capable of non-artificial existence.
Wouldn't you think in at least some versions of hell the demons and devils could be said to benefit from their brimstone production and whip deployment?
Ever wonder how come human alteration of the gene pool by overt eugenic selection is anathema, but slowly altering the social filter and actually altering the genes themselves is okay?
The answer is clear but taboo.
It depends on who's doing the alteration, not how.
When are we going to start asking, and answering, "Who doesn't benefit?"
Who's getting left behind by this Promethean alchemy?
Daniel Boone's an anachronism. We don't need rough tough hombres. In fact they get in the way, except as sports/entertainment dolls.
In the future it's going to be Rupert Murdoch inside a retrofit carcass.
A Porsche Brad Pitt '98.
And that's not hell.
Because we're not on fire.
________
P.S.
Jon-
It's not wrong because they're getting rich. It's that their hunger for material reward is the primary motive. It's that the greed is clouding their, possibly non-existant, moral compass.
You know that and I know that and they know that. The only member of the discussion who doesn't know that is the viewing audience.
What makes it even more disgusting is the constant simpering mantra of "feeding the hungry" and "healing the sick". This from people who wouldn't cross the street to feed the hungry if there wasn't something in it for them. Trying to make it sound like the motive is altruistic makes it sound like the motive is inhuman. It is the noise the inhuman makes when it wants something.
The logic behind "It's not as though we just started messing with nature" can be applied to many other activities. For instance murder. It's not as though people just started dying. They've been dying for millenia.
The main thrust is honor, as a verb not as a noun. What do these men and women honor?
I think a little research would show they don't honor much of anything. Their loyalties are to themselves and nothing else. The Xenic half-stepping with which they refute moral logic is impossible to rebut without faith, and faith is not admissible evidence. This is a charade of cunning and deceit masquerading as benevolence. It's time to stop arguing about it. Resist or surrender.
I'm not calling for a return to "old ways". I'm calling for a continuation of the only human ways there are. These are inhuman practices, they aren't "modern" except that they've never been done before. In that sense probably the most modern event we can look forward to is the nuclear destruction of the human race. The same hands hold both tools, the same minds wield them, the same small hearts direct their use.
The fundamental premise is that there are no taboos when it comes to "progress" and undertakings can only be judged by their immediate benefits. But most of us scorn people that live their lives that way. Why should we live our collective lives that way?
