Opting out of the future

The more I read about how biology is going to change the face of the future, which I am sure it will, the more questions I have about why we would want to do the things that we are planning to do. While I find the convergence of the mobile, the internet, and the computer changing the way I live and think, do I find the changes that biology will bring equally exciting? I am not so sure. And what are these changes that I talk of? The following two topics keep demanding my concern.

Extending the human age
Designer babies
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/515
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/39





Extending the human age

Predictions range from doubling one’s age using anti-aging pills to creating immortal beings using biotechnology. I am using the word biotechnology loosely here to encompass all the technology that will revolutionize biology.

Doubling one’s age? Immortality? Is that what most people want? Has a survey been done of how many people would want to do that in the current scenario? Most people I have spoken to think that seventy years is good enough for any human being. Admittedly, my sampling is extremely insufficient to generalize things, but I am quite sure that in the current world most sane people would agree with that number. Let me list out the reasons:

We do not have unlimited resources: We have only a certain amount of land, water, and air to share on this planet. If we are going to make people double their life spans, where are we going to get the extra resources from? Advances in biology must culminate with advances in other areas especially those related to the survival of the species. The only thing that still levels the rich and the poor is that they all die within a few decades of each other. Increased life spans will mean that the rich get extra time to over-utilize the resources on the planet. And not having sufficient food, water, and air for everyone is bound to lead to increased social unrest. If a recession as bad, and hopefully as fleeting as the current one, can lead to starvation deaths, imagine what doubling of life spans would do.

For a moment, I will consider that rapid strides in Agriculture, food technology, and other areas will take care of all my concerns. Am I optimistic now? Well, read on.

We will still have generation gaps and still be governed my maps: How many of us know the names of our great grand parents, and how many of us even care? Going by Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene”, we automatically favor the latest generation but the reverse does not hold true. The future generations do not share any reciprocity with their previous generations. Till a certain age we are loved, and till a few more years, tolerated. Fortunately, as of now, many of us die before our future generations wish us dead.

In many countries, the old are becoming a burden on the economy, and the governments for the sake of being politically correct will not go on record to say that their economies would improve if the old would die leaving behind some new ones in their place.

And how many of us want our politicians to live forever? Aren’t they already living more than we want them to? What will happen to those like me who want to die in their 70s? Will we be provided with an option of not availing the option of living longer?

If the old are going to stay young and fit, will they not encroach into jobs meant for the young ones? Will the young and fit ones at 80 hit on girls in their 20s? Or will the young ones just go and throw the old guys out as they do nowadays leaving a lot many old men on the streets? Or will jobs become redundant because advances in science mean that no one will have to earn their living? Everyone will play their favorite sport all day, watch their favorite TV show, and read their favorite books without having to earn any of them. And everything will be created by robots.

I am not sure if these are fantastic ideas, or if I really like them. But then, I live in a different world. I live in a world that does not know how it is to expand the reach of the species to other planets, to conquer spaces within one’s planet hitherto occupied by other species, and in a planet where countries still go to war for reasons that are not reason enough.

Designer babies

According to a presentation I saw on http://www.ted.com/, we will soon be able to dictate the kind of kids that we want to have right down to their personalities. In effect, countries, if they want to, can dictate the nature of their societies. Theocratic states can have people that follow the dictates of their holy books without a question; capitalist states can have people who can think only money, and so on and so forth. Social engineering will have a new definition.

Considering that most parents are not suitably trained to be parents even in the current age, it would be a little too much to expect them to order the right kind of baby. Most people in most countries have babies because it is a hormonal thing, and not because they want to further the cause of humankind. It would be a little too much to expect them to customize their baby without them making all kinds of wrong choices.

The only dark colored children, at least in countries like India where fair is in, would be of those parents who are mighty liberal, or want a touch of the exotic in their life. Of course, the exotic kids might end up not liking their exoticity, or the gay kids not being excited about their minority status. In all probability, children in minority will take their parents to court for making all the wrong decisions.

Assuming that we will be able to define intelligence, we will have very intelligent people, and hopefully, very empathetic people everywhere. There will be no murders. Everyone will be able to read Einstein very well, and make conversation about everything under the sun over a cup of tea. And these set of intelligent people will choose their own type like most societies are bound to do, and the universe will be just perfect. And because everyone is so intelligent and science has left them with very little to do, they will probably bore each other to death with all their socializing. That is the cynical me speaking. Don’t bother.

And what about the bad countries, the ones that want to encroach into the other’s territory? Their children will be custom-made for war, and easily subdue those countries where liberal attitudes run high. Countries will then have to define the number of people who will breed violent children, the others who breed intelligent children, and so on. Smells like dictatorship but hopefully isn’t. Also sounds like encroachment of reproductive rights, but then again, maybe not.

What about excellence? What about love? Will these elusive words get proper definitions? My son will have an IQ level of 250 by the time he reaches 20. My daughter will fall in love when she is 18, and then get ready to have a baby when she is 40. She will be drawn to and marry someone who is fair, from her own clan, and who has a certain IQ level.

In an universe that is almost uniformly intelligent, what will everyone do? Everyone understands Einstein, everyone has the same opinion on how to make movies, everyone abhors mediocrity, and everyone has the same opinion on Mozart, Einstein, and Shakespeare. Interesting. There will not be too much of idolization obviously because everyone is an idol unto themselves, a somewhat skewed correlation to Shankara’s Aham Brahmasmi, or I am God. Needless to say, the concept of God will be redundant in the scheme of things because the world now has established its own order. Whether the new order will still be hierarchal and whether there will be new Gods I do not know. I also do not know what it will mean for competition when everyone is supernatural unto themselves. As I remind myself, I live in a different world where people compete for everything, including their fifteen seconds of fame.

The new children, as the scientists put it, will be devoid of this excess and unnecessary baggage we carry. Their brains will shed all things that we have carried for generations for lack of choice. They will not be us, they will be something else. They will not relate to our fears, anxieties, passions, and deeds. Unless there is something that will make us adapt to them, we will be redundant in their world.

Would I love to be in such a world? Not unless they re-engineer my brain to suit the different realities. My brain is a product that is millions of years old, and carries all the trappings of evolution. It is designed to react in ways that most of my ancestors reacted, and has all the failings thereof. It is designed to age, to fail, to create future experiences based on the past, and to believe in things that a rational mind would not readily believe in.


Of course, the kind of world that I want to be in is completely different. It would be pretty much like the present order but with more peace, more hygiene, more fun, and more love – more of the better things that most of us enjoy, and less of the things we dread. People in my ideal world would still die, but with no pain and with a joy of having led life on their own terms unfettered by the dictates of society. As long as science makes this a possibility, I am game. The moment they look beyond that into societies like the ones I described, I think I will opt out.