Would ya? Could ya?

"Let's imagine that... "
  So let us imagine a little bit. Suppose genetic modification, somehow, became a concrete science to the point of extreme intellectual and physical change and readily available. Never mind the money issue of such a thing for now.

  There is an episode of "Outer Limits" (if you are familiar, rock on, man) where for a price affordable to the upper-middle to upper class, during pregnancy, a child can be altered for drastically increased psychological and physical performance. While at first, during the first generation of superhuman kids, all is generally well. However, many issues quickly arise. One of which is that the middle and lower classes cannot afford this procedure and are therefore cut out from the (arguable) great leap in human progress. Another problem is that on rare occasion one of the gen-modded children would begin to mutate and go all freaky at puberty. Now, imagine the generation of physical and psychological super capable children beginning to dominate all fields of arts, science, etc. in a very short time span... At 18 years old, a young woman or man could and would take the jobs of their older peers with little effort, even those of their parents.
  The gap between the rich and poor, the successful and not, would widen drastically!
 
Imagine a sibling 5 years younger than you, almost incalculably smarter than you? A child at 13-14, though emotionally inexperienced, competing with you in everything. Potential opportunity for extreme envy to arise, profiling on both sides, probably new forms of hate and hate crimes across all cultures.
  If a ten year old child was more intuitive, better in logistic and abstract thought than their 30-40-50 year old parents? Superiority/inferiority complexes, guilt complexes... emotional distance between parents and child...
  In a single generation, a more primitive humanity becomes cast in shadow before the dawn of super-humans.

  So, let us suppose. Let us suppose we had this choice. The choice to give our children the potential and power we never had. The price, however, is to know that we the old humanity, are left behind to waddle in our own uselessness.
Would you do it?





 

A Controlled Society

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell remains a classic dystopian fiction novel about “the terrifying vision of a totalitarian future in which everything and everyone is enslaved into an [absolute sovereignty].” Margaret Atwood calls it one of her favorite books: “I read it again and again”.

Orwell wrote this novel in the late 1940’s, his goal was to give his readers a clear image of what life would be like if a free country was ran by a totalitarian government. The novel is set in London, a depressing city, where there is not enough food to go around for anyone, or enough clothes to put on your back. The city is pretty dilapidated, except for these giant pyramids shaped buildings that are above the landscape. The government, “Big Brother”, runs these buildings where every move is being watched. The social hierarchy differentiating power is much like the difference between the Compounds and the pleeblands. In Oryx and Crake, the science innovators and their families live in these beautiful secured compounds, whilst the rest of the society (the crazies, beggars and paupers) lives poorly in the cities.

            Both Oryx and Crake and Nineteen Eighty-Four foreshadow an extreme circumstance of the possible ending of humanity. Nineteen Eighty-Four rests towards the idea of a society that is controlled and manipulated primarily by the government. Each move, thought, and action is watched, recorded and punished, accordingly. There is no such thing as “being in love”, freedom of speech, or even though processing. The “Thought Police” can intrude into your thoughts due to hidden cameras and microphones placed into people’s homes, and if something seems out of line or risking government authority, you can be severely punished and tortured. When Winston Smith, the protagonist of the story goes against government rules, he is brutally punished, leading to “victory towards himself. He loved Big Brother” (311). They manipulated his mind and soul to such an extreme that he was left believing Big Brother was out there for the good of him, and that he will always obey this force.

In Oryx and Crake, we are also introduced to a society that is enclosed and controlled by a higher power. There are securities everywhere, you are not allowed to step foot out of the Compounds, unless you are being accompanied by a guard. If you fail to obey these rules, they will kill you. The people who live in these Compounds are so manipulated that they believe invasion of their privacy is needed and should be reinforced. When Jimmy’s mother, Sharon tells her husband that “their phones and e-mail were bugged” and that the cleaning ladies are undercover spies, his answer was that “she was getting paranoid, and anyway they had nothing to hide, so why worry about it?”(54) They are so brainwashed that they agree with these measures.

            

Before Oryx and Crake came… Slaughter-House Five

Since there are so many blogs about comparisons to Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I thought I would introduce a new discussion topic. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which we are all familiar with at this point in time, has a distinct resemblance to the war related novel Slaughter-House Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut.

Incase you haven’t stumbled upon it yet, Slaughter-House Five is a novel about a war soldier who was present during the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany and survived this historical period, and trying to re-tell his story in an antiwar novel.

Just like Oryx and Crake, the book is written in the first person point of view.

In Slaughter-House Five, we are introduced to the author, Vonnegut who witnessed the war, yet because he cannot seem to write up anything about his memory, he makes up a fictitious character, Billy Pilgrim to fulfill his empty spaces. Billy reminds me a lot of Jimmy from Oryx and Crake for many reasons. They are both put in situations where they have to act like heroes or soldiers, yet they have the complete opposite characteristic of a hero. They also inhabit an unknown place.

There is a sense of fantasy in both these novels; “The Crakers” which are a scientific creating of Crake “each one naked, each one perfect, each one different skin color […] but each with green eyes”(8) and “the Trafalmadoriens”, aliens shaped like toilet plungers, each with one hand containing an eye in its palm. Both these imaginative creations are a possibility of an “improved” society, and when these protagonist travel back to these worlds, they become a different person. Jimmy is now Snowman and Vonnegut is now Billy.

There is also a similarity in the structure of writing; there is no beginning, middle or end. The story unfolds at a random time, without a given ending. Vonnegut foreshadows and exposes the beginning and ending of the story in the first chapter “it begins like this: Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?” (22) While Atwood begins like this: “Snowman wakes before dawn” and ends like this: “Zero hour, Snowman thinks. Time to go.” Both novels unleash no particular information in the end of the story, as if it has not really ended.

Although there are many differences in the moral of these two novels, the ideas bore similarities hard to ignore. They both depict a place in time where the end of the world is a possibility, and they both theorize scientific creations. Do you believe we are driving our world to an apocalypse or world war? If so, is there any way to stop it? It seems we are so caught up in our own lives we do not take the time to look around and acknowledge what is going on around us. I would love to hear your opinions!

Pigoons: Future Lifesavers

Before I start, I should probably begin by providing you readers with an explanation to what a “pigoon” is. Pigoons are fictional characters created by Canadian bestseller Margaret Atwood, first introducing them in “Oryx and Crake”. As you read in the book, “The goal of the pigoon project was to grow an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig host – organs that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection […] and fend off attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses”(23).

"Organ-Oink Farms"

The book, preferably described by its author as being speculative fiction (and not sci-fi), offers the readers an insightful preview of what and where our world is heading. Corrupted societies markedly separated into either “rich” or “poor” classes, corrupted government, mega corporations (also corrupted) holding the future of society in the palm of their hands, and the growing, evolving branch of science are all things we must expect in the future if keep going down that path.

This “path” I speak of involves scientific advancements and breakthroughs having to do with xenotransplantation, genetic engineering, bringing back to life extinct animals, cloning, and so on. Also, all these buttocks injections and anti-wrinkle/anti-aging creams are something to consider as well. Indeed, in the book, Atwood mentions experiments in which “The main idea was to find a method of replacing the older epidermis with a fresh one, […] a genuine start-over skin that would be wrinkle- and blemish-free” (55). However, even in the book there were no effective methods found yet, and the volunteers came out looking like the “Mould Creature from Outer Space” with a greenish tone and peeling skin.

Anyways, pigoons are a perfect example of xenotransplantation – the transplantation of nonhuman tissues or organs into human recipients[1]. Although I am reluctant to the idea of making such experiments on animals only to dump them when we’re done with them, I actually like the idea developed in “Oryx in Crake”. In the book, the host does not get destroyed when their extra kidneys and livers are taken away; in fact, they keep living and grow more organs. Thus technically, no one gets hurts and lives are being saved. But does this make it ethical? Does it make it “okay”? And instead of keeping these “pigoons” locked up in a top-secure building and put them in an environment that suits them better, would any of you have anything to say against this kind of science?

Man's NEW AND IMPROVED Best Friend

Everyone has their own depiction of what they feel would be the perfect pet. Maybe a big animal or a small one, quiet or energetic; whatever would fit with you.

In the Story Oryx and Crake, you could see something related to this when Jimmy receives a creature from his father to keep as a pet. This creature is called a rakunk which you soon learn is a type of hybrid between a skunk and a raccoon.  This animal is described as a cute, clean, placid and calm. 

This defines a pretty cool pet to have as it has multiple pleasant qualities. As it was Jimmy’s first pet, these attributes seem like pretty good ones to have as it wouldn’t require too much special attention to take care of it.

The rakunk was created only as pure entertainment to the scientists in the labs. It was something they worked on during their free time. As it says in the book, “[it makes] you feel like God” (59). Dangerous animals that they created, they got rid of. The rakunk, the cute and adorable one, stayed. 

In the real world, things like this or related are happening all around. Wild animals are attempted at being domesticated in hopes of finding a new type of companion in the household. One example of this would be foxes. There are currently facilities and types of farms that could be found in Russia that house foxes. There they observe the changes their animals would do through as they expose them to more human contact and treat them like you would a normal pet. All of this is explained in an article from National Geographic, Issue of March 2011.

This could even be seen in things as simple as pet owners interbreeding different breeds of certain animals such as dogs and cats to get what they call “the perfect pet”, bred for reasons such as personality and looks.

This all shows how selfish human beings can be, with their need to control everything around them. They cannot be satisfied with what they have already and instead decide to meddle further into affairs that just sometimes shouldn’t be touched and just left alone. Sure having this “perfect pet” would be awesome, which I think so too. Who wouldn’t think that having a fox running around your house amusing? But is it really worth going through all this trouble to create something that wasn’t meant to be created in the first place?

Genetic Barriers

            What the future holds for the human race is something that is incredibly difficult to predict and is constantly changing. One concept that is often looked into is what would happen if life turned for the worse. This is a concept that has been explored by scientists and several authors and movie producers, with dozens of books, movies, television shows, and even video games showing different possibilities these have been. These range from exploring space, nuclear war, technological uprisings or just the death of the human race for nature to thrive. The book Oryx and Crake, written by Margaret Atwood, and the movie Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol, both predict futures where gene splicing and genetics dominated the planet.

            Gattaca takes place in the not too distant future, where genetics has become so large, up to the point where genetic modification is quite common and used to get the ‘best’ human beings possible. However, along with gene splicing, the society has changed with it, where jobs and education are all based around a person’s genes. In this future world, how far you go in life depends on how good your genes are, as the main character in the movie, Vincent Freeman, is unable to achieve his goal of going into space, as he has a heart problem, is myopic, has an expected life span of 30 years, and has the possibility of obtaining a mental illness. Due to this, he is unable to get the job he desires and must go through illegal methods to achieve his goal.

            The world of Oryx and Crake isn’t far off, as their society is ruled by corporations and seems to lack a government. In this possible future, genetic modification is widely used and big among the different corporations. Gene splicing in particular is especially big, and is even done as a pastime, as several animals were created for no better purpose than to pass their time, these often resulted in very dangerous animals that had to be destroyed. Along with animals, gene splicing created many dangerous viruses that are much more lethal than today’s viruses, capable of reducing a human into a puddle of goo. Splicing isn’t where it stops though, as cloning is a possibility in this universe, as Jimmy’s father tells him once while explaining the roll of pigoons in society.

            In short, both stories show futures that are very different from our own, where gene splicing and dicing has become very large and ends up dominating our life style. According to Atwood and Niccol, the future of human beings will remove anything natural from us, making us more and more reliant, and created, from genetic splicing. One must wonder, after seeing a world controlled by genes and another which freely manipulates them; how far will we go before we realize how much we are over dependent on splicing.

Is My Clone Ready Yet?

Humanity will always use science to try and push the human body to its limit as to extend the human body’s lifespan, and in extreme cases, even try to arise life from the dead. After reading Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein in class, what I believe is one of the most overlooked part of the whole story was the fact V. Frankenstein was able to bring life to an inanimate group of body parts. 

In today’s modern science, the closest experiment that resembles V. Frankenstein’s is the method of cloning. I recently read an article in Time magazine explaining how close we are to actually cloning individuals and an interesting scenario was brought up in my head. Lets say you and your boyfriend/girlfriend get in a train accident and one of the members needed an extra liver. Would you let yourself get cloned in order to receive that liver which is crucial for your survival? Just like V. Frankenstein, I’m sure many scientist right now are trying to perfection the cloning method in order to try and save thousands of lives in the very near future. However, just like Victor’s case, could the creation of cloning backfire and lead to serious consequences leading humanity to destruction?

To conclude, I am not one who usually pick sides however I have a simple question: Is cloning even considered ethical? If so what draws the line in science? It is evident that in the very near future this cloning method will be perfected and all we are left to do is sit back and hope that once again science manages a way to save humanity. 

When the Going Gets Tough, You Better Get Going

   How often do we see people try to run away or squeak out of of their problems? They try to take short cuts or just run and hide from the problem all together. The fact of the matter is, the longer we choose to run and hide from our problems, the worse they become and with time, they always end up catching up to us so in the end, it is best for us to face our problems at the root of them and do whatever we can to fix them right away.

   Both novels present perfect examples of this lesson in life. When Victor created his monster, he knew he had created a creature that was potentially dangerous to a lot of innocent people, what he should have done was contact the authorities and notify them of the monster but instead he chose to keep running and hiding. As time went on the problem grew worse, people's lives were lost including Victors own brother William.

  In the case of Jekyll and Hyde we see Dr Jekyll run from his problems as well. He is presented with multiple  opportunities to try and seek help to fix what he had done to himself. Once again Dr Jekyll chose not to tell anyone and the problem got worse, to the point were Dr Jekyll lost control of his other identity and Mr. Hyde took over and murdered innocent people just as he had already done before.

  The lesson to be learnt here is that what they say is true, you can run but you cant hide, eventually our problems will catch up to us if we keep running from them and when they do, they come back ten-full.

Different but the same?

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein is out to achieve fame and glory when he creates the creature, when he realizes what he has done is wrong he tries to escape the monster which leads to the killing of his loved ones. I listen to a lot of music in my spare time and this scenario reminds me of DMX's trilogy of songs Damien, Damien II (The Omen), and Damien III. These three songs tell a "fictional" semi-biographical story of DMX's rise to fame. He meets a man Damien who symbolizes the Devil and makes the mistake of selling his soul for glory and fame. The connection to the book is that through the songs is when DMX doesn't want to listen to the demands of Damien he escapes, and in the final two songs it explains how Damien haunts DMX and his family forever. Although they are not exactly the same the motives of glory lead to the demise of the main character in both scenarios. And I should mention you have to have a particular taste in music to enjoy these songs, but if you were to listen to them you would see the fascinating connection. I just think it is amazing how a book written in the 19th century can tie in to a rappers story, my friend said to me the other day "things change, but they never actually change" which i think fits so well with the connection of the book and song. So no matter what century it is you can always find a similarity or a common underlying moral.

"Our hearts, our voices - Must we too be dumb?"

"The Buried Life" by Matthew Arnold was, in my opinion, a very intriguing peom. It makes a great and obvious connection to us all in society today.

Though some people might deny it, everyone unintentionally or not, hides a part of themselves to the rest of the world. No matter how much you think you know a person, there will always be that side of them that will never be shown. In this poem, Arnold analyzes why people might do this. Of course, everyone has their own reason for doing so, but the most obvious ones are that we as individuals fear what society might think of us by exposing our "whole" selves. This concept of having a part of us that we don't show can, however, harm us in certain ways. Some people might not be always completely honest about things. Some people might totally isolate themselves, just to avoid having to deal with hiding a certain part of themselves.

Even with people that think they are always a hundrend percent completely themselves, this is not true. A good majority of the people today unknowingly hide some characterics about themselves, because we fear how much we will be judged.

Everyone in society has expectations of other to be themselves. So why are we still afraid to completely open ourselves to others? To some, the answer might be obvious, but to others they are utterly unaware of why they even do so. Autimatically, by not being yourself in the presence of others, you cannot be true to yourself. People hide behind "disguises" so they can feel accepted by society. No one should have to go through this, but unfortunately that is how our generation has developped.

With reference to the poem, Anorld puts emphasis how even people in love do not demonstate their complete selves. Love should be a means of self-discovery and find out who you really are, and this is not the case for most. You should feel totally comfortable with the person you choose to love, and if you don't that can cause damage to your relationship, maybe even putting it to an end.

My favortie quote in this poem is "... is even love to weak to unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal to one another how they really feel?" In my opinion, this is a really interesting quote. It is very profound and one hundrend percent true. Why should lovers have to hide some part of themselves? If you love someone, shouldn't it be ALL of them that you love?

So take a second and think, WHY do we mask our REAL selves? Should we go to that extent just to be accepted in society?

Russian literature example of Speculative Fiction

I started learning about the Speculative Fiction at Dawson college thinking that I've never met this kind of literature before, but I was wrong. Right after I've discovered the definition and some examples of it one book that I've read back in Belarus jumped into my mind.
It is a novel called "Heart of a Dog" by Mikhail Bulgakov. Even though main focus of the Wikipedia article I have linked here is how this novel criticizes and mocks the newly instated USSR, I believe that there is a lot more to this book that simple "opposition" to the regime.
The novel itself is a tragic story of a street dog who was picked up to perform a medical experiment of transplanting human organs into the animal body. As the result, this dog started turning into a human being. This creature started rapidly evolving from the role of the dog to the role of a member of a human society. It still had all the memories of his "dog" life, all the emotions and sympathies, but now he was expected to participate in the complex social interactions, which were even more complicated by the fact that the activists of the communist party became interested in him and started alluring him into the communist ideas. However, the doctor who "created" him was a strong proponent of the old imperial state, which complicated things even further.
The story ends when doctor decides that the experiment was a success and places the old glands into this "creature", thus turning him back into a dog.
This novel can give a lot of new topics to ponder and investigate, especially in the light of new developments in gene-engineering and medicine.
Here is a little image of this "creature" taken from the movie, which is as good as the book is.

My Two Parallel Lives

I live two separate lives. 

I was born in Paris. My mother is a Montrealer and my father is a Parisian. I lived in Paris until the age of 17, when my mother decided I should go to school in Montreal. It was tough for me. When you are a young girl of 17 years old, everything that counts is your friends; they are the center of your own world. It was also hard to deal with the feeling of fear. I was scared because in Montreal, I would have to deal with the unknown. I would have no friends, no landmarks. 

My first day at school was terrible. I felt lonely and lost in this different city, different country and different continent, where the culture and the mentality are totally different. Everything was different. I felt like I was not like all the other teenagers of my high school. They were all interested about me, because I was the new student, the "Parisian girl". It took a long time before I made new friends. I constantly felt lonely. 

To me, it seemed like I had to change a little so I could fit in the population. In a way, I liked to be different but at the same time, I did not. With time, my way to talk changed and my mentality changed. But I still felt lonely. It seemed as if nothing could change that feeling. I really felt like I wasn't home and I didn't belong there. 

When I went back to Paris for summer two years ago, I went back to my Parisian life. In one year, nothing had changed. I still had my friends, my bedroom stayed the exact same. I went back to my old Parisian lifestyle. I felt at home. When my plane landed in Paris, I told myself it felt good to be on the "territoire français", to be at home, where I know I fit in the population and I won't be different. I started talking as I used to talk with my friends before. 

When I got back to Montreal at the end of the summer, I was surprised myself to realize it felt like going home; a different one, but home. I felt lost. It was like having two cities, two countries, two homes, two lives. I started having more friends, I felt better in this city. I liked my school, I liked my new life let's say. When I left Paris, I felt uproot; and when I left Montreal to go to Paris last Friday, I felt uproot too...
I am currently in Paris. A year and a half has passed since the last time I came for summer.  And again, I feel like everything is the same. I still have my old habits and I still know where I am going when I walk throughout the city and I still know how things work here in Paris. When I got here, it took me one day to change. For example, when I am in Montreal and I speak French, I have a strong accent but not as much as when I am in Paris. Spontaneously, I get my strong Parisian accent back.

All this makes me feel like I have two homes. Every time I leave Paris, I am sad because I am going to miss the city; and every time I leave Montreal, I am sad because I am going to miss my home. 
My situation makes me think of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They are two different characters and personalities in the same body. Jekyll does things when he is in Hyde's form that he would not do when in his original form. I do things when I am in Paris I would not do in Montreal and vice versa. 

Live in fear and isolation

The story of the creature in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley reminded me about a particular situation in my country. I come from Mali formerly called French Sudan.Despite the culture and the good food, my country has a big issue that has been there over the years. The majority of the parents abandon or kill their albino child for the simple reason of difference or to have money. Albinism it’s characterized as a congenital disorder complete or a partial absence of pigment in the eyes, hair and skin. Albinos represent a small minority of my country and they are qualified as the ‘‘rejected of the society’’. In my country, killing an albino or take a part of their organs brings money, luck and a lot of benediction from god. Precisely, 10 000 albinos are killed in Africa every year. That’s really sad. I’m sure these people really feel rejected and insecure. It’s the same way the creature was feeling too. He was left out by Frankenstein and he was feeling really lonely and had no one to rely on. His physical appearance made everything harder for him. The way Frankenstein abandoned his creature makes me think about parents who kill or abandon their albino child. Parents and Frankenstein abandoned them because physically they are different. ‘‘Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? ’’ (160), said the creature to Frankenstein on how he was feeling lonely and rejected. I’m pretty sure that some of the albinos feel the same way like the creature. They have to live in fear and isolation. These people need help to be more secure and comfortable about themselves. If you want to know more about this issue click on the YouTube link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F6UpuJIFaY

Good or Bad Science?

As soon as the essay questions were first introduced to us on the previous Wednesday class, I knew I needed to write my blog post about the various scientific criticisms to which both Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, were being subject. The main idea that many could argue is that science was immorally used. Guided by their own ambitions, Victor and Dr. Jekyll lost all sense of proportion.

From a non-scientific point of view, I would readily agree that bringing dead matter to life or altering a living being is morally untenable.

The truth is that our society is in need of such experiments. Isn't the human race evolving through knowledge and research? Well it seems to me that without trial and error, and without  ego and 'self', there would be no real pursuit of knowledge and achievement.

Mary Shelley would likely have agreed with this notion since she used the analogy of Prometheous in the writing of her work, Frankenstein. The mythology is of a Greek character who stole the fire of Zeus and gave it to the human race. In the eyes of the gods, it seemed like a traitorous act, on the other hand, in the evolution of mankind it was an essential ingredient.

Although there is a mix of good and bad in the exploration of science, there are some instances so horrendous and extreme that it is difficult to discern any value whatever in such efforts. More often than not, the results are flawed. A terrible but relevant example would be the ghastly devilry of a Dr. Mengele during World War II.

The line may be sometimes blurred and each instance must be examined on its merits.

How would you define the line of the unacceptable? (If there is such a line)