“You probably have already seen this... I know the situation that we are in... I have a sense of what is happening to our ecology...there are far fewer birds than when I was a child...It can be as simple as that... We are individuals and we can only do what each of us is equipped as individuals can do....I get hurt when I sense you being bitter and angry and I feel you are wasting energy being that way. You have a wonderful creative mind...that can be freed to other purposes when it’s not bogged down in bitterness and anger towards those we cannot control. We cannot control others...we can only control ourselves. You have talents... Share them...use them to make some difference...some small difference there in Oregon...a small difference that can grow... who knows where it will lead...”
- an American Conservative
Part One - The DNA Frontier
In the basement of Mac Hall at OHSU I came across a massing of corporate and institutional communications–flyers, brochures, folders, postcards, catalogs. Two examples caught my eye. The first was an 8 1/2” x 11” trifold, printed on an 80 pound cover stock that allowed it to stand rigidly, the contemporary 4 color process created a seamless blue gradient to make the message read airy and coolly, and the typography unflinchingly stated “Get the Gene You Want”. The inside spread housed a handsome chart that described the production flow of managing gene sequences.
Next to the trifold was a 30 page catalog. There you could shop for then purchase the laboratory supplies, instruments, and machines that allowed any human being with proper knowledge to engineer genes.
“Our large, collaborative faculty apply
experimental approaches that include
molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry,
and microscopy. Using these tools, we pursue
an understanding of the regulatory
mechanisms that underlie the behavior of
cells, tissues, and organisms.”
- http://www.ohsu.edu/cellbio/
“The function of the nucleus is to maintain the integrity of genes and to control the activities of the cell by regulating gene expression.”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_nucleus
“Gene expression, or simply expression, is the process by which the inheritable information which comprises a gene, such as the DNA sequence, is made manifest as a physical and biologically functional gene product, such as protein or RNA.
Several steps in the gene expression process may be modulated, including the transcription step and the post-translational modification of a protein. Gene regulation gives the cell control over structure and function, and is the basis for cellular differentiation, morphogenesis and the versatility and adaptability of any organism. Gene regulation may also serve as a substrate for evolutionary change, since control of the timing, location, and amount of gene expression can have a profound effect on the functions (actions) the gene in the organism.”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression
Next to the pile of communications in the basement of Mac Hall, there was a vending machine. The kind of vending machine you can find across this country which normally serve up candy bars and snack chips. Yet, the object of this vending machines purpose was to dispense concentrated samples of enzymes.
Taken together, a dedicated student can learn management strategies to manipulate the structural quality of a cell, the internal functioning of a cell, and the resources within the environment which a cell lives. This body of knowledge is growing. Human beings now regularly intervene upon the lives of cell communities (tissue). Of course there is the desire to better manage the much more complicated task, the task that cells themselves have already achieved, the management of complex tissue structures (organisms).
“Genetics is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. Knowledge that desired characteristics were inherited has been implicitly used since prehistoric times for improving crop plants and animals through selective breeding. The science comes from human experience to improve crop and animals through the use of method such as domestication. However, the modern science of genetics, which seeks to understand the mechanisms of inheritance, only began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics
Part Two - Cataloging a Conversation on Politics and History
Last night we took two sides on an issue. I was against human beings existence as it now stands due to the brilliant yet clumsy implementation of its corpus of knowledge and the integrity of the organizations that manage the implementation of that knowledge. Too much power has been accumulated and this species is not responsible enough to wield its power. I continued by doubting that we would ever be so organized. We are adept at observing and engineering though we lack the faculty to manage a reasonable balance after we have intervened. A reasonable balance would mean less luxury for human beings for the sake of luxury, less death to other life forms as an expense of that luxury and to cease the activities which destroy ecosystems that spawn life.
You defended human beings as they are now, and you defended America in particular. Your arguments are used by conservatives in general and those who are against the ideas of a liberal society. For the American Right I sense that they believe that strength, particularly spiritual, economic and military strength, is the virtue that will allow them to prevail-which in the end is quite clannish and tribal. One of the favorite slogans for the American Right while sabre rattling in 2001-2002 was, “You are either with us or against us”. Blind faith in free markets is a core belief of the American Right, too. Advocating capitalistic consumption simply because they find their good fortune boosted by that kind of organization is not a justification for how that organization affects all other life forms and impacts the ecosystems that we share.
In our conversation, your first defense was that human beings did not need to be brilliant in its use of the knowledge they have accumulated. Human beings need not be burdened with accountability and do not have responsibility towards the environmental situation they have created. It is out of the individuals control thus it should be put out of the individuals mind. Human beings need only to survive and human beings need only pursue and experience joy. Human beings should succumb to the idea that they have no control and that human beings simply need ‘to be’. This is quite enough for you I imagine due to your faith in the lovely qualities of the human soul. This perspective might help an individual sort through their identity, an aid for contemporary personal reflections on the self. Though this conversation is not about the individual human being.
Your defense for human beings then focused on an abstraction–the experience of joy itself. Your sense of ‘joy’ was based on something deeply private and quite ethereal. In context of the conversation, you insist that the human ability to experience private joy some how justifies any social, environmental or ecological cost. You did not want to speak of the daily atrocities that modern human society inflicts upon the world. Private joy is all that needs to be considered.
At its root, your defense was tiredly Western. To be Western, one discusses the world with human experience considered supreme. The entrenched power of the Christian church, along with its brother the Humanities, do nothing but perpetuate this view point unquestioned.
In the end your last counter point was simple and Bushian. America is not evil compared to other evil civilizations, therefore it was good. This is empty rhetoric and text book egocentrism.
To counter this perspective, I viewed human beings as a social group and spoke about its accumulated history. This tactic must give an ironic nod to the Humanities itself, particularly the French Structuralists, Post-Structuralists and ultimately Foucault. In our conversation I looked back on the grisly history of modern culture. I began the time line with American Civil War atrocities, footnoted a contemporary war in China that saw 20 million perish in over a decades time, and then, like a good high school debate from the 1980’s, emphasized the impact of the nuclear bomb. I quickly advanced a time line of American war, industrialization, and technical dominance by human beings upon the massive variety of life forms that inhabit this planet.
We have created an existence overwhelmed by industrialized process. We nurse life to maturity in order to slaughter it for food. We mine resources, manufacture to our delight, then create nasty sinks where we dump our waste. This unchecked activity destroys numerous habitats and ecosystems. The ecological footprint in order to maintain this kind of civilization we so enjoy is stressing fresh water supplies, radically altering the climate and the quality of the air, land and ocean.
The examination of our material world shows how human beings, particularly over the past 150 years, have not shown a collective maturity to handle the knowledge that they are creating. We use it predominantly in this society for wealth creation–a collective activity which does not redeem our existence.
No comments:
Post a Comment