<<The Chinese ideogram for "crisis" is "danger&opportunity".>> How can we tell the difference? Where do we apply leverage? ...
I speak misgivings less as an analogy to the Bomb, than the analogies to come of Stromium 90, 3 miles island, nuclear waste, or irradiated thyroids.
It is the unforeseen, hidden, lurking side effects that lay waste to the 'innocent', to the society who do not benefit directly.
<<you wondered about our inability to deprogram war and other distasteful traits. We will have sovereign control over such things when we become proficient genetic engineers.>>
Upon what gene lies the soul, the reason, the love? Where the greed, the power lust, the sociopathic?
The question of control is foremost. Do we accept business control of the applications? Their 1st motivation is profit for the few owners, so the motivations that spawned Valdiz and Bhopal, India remain. How about government? Do election manipulation seem a good mix with species manipulation? The military? The UN? The Pope? An undefined, unaccountable group of experts?
Face it, the way we are now with our species, no one can be trusted not to screw it up by incompetence or by self-seeking.
We are headed for disasters unimaginable. Unforeseeable equals unpreventable. Nothing will change that. Will we survive. Sure, barring a meteor strike. Eventually we will be better off than now. This is just one more excuse for our species to delay, to not do the right thing. There have been so many already.
So, whoever does it, how will it go? The last, few hopes first...aids, leprosy,...? Or the big payoffs, the big PR? Who bets we see a miracle food plant spread across the tilled fields of the earth, and no one knows..no one can know..what danger lurks to wipe it out completely, and with it most of the humans? |
