the Matrix

I like Leon Kass

That doesn't really have anything to do with anything, I thought I'd just get it out there. I went through a period after my sophomore year in college that, looking back, was a significant finding myself period. Of course, I didn't really do any of the things that people usually do when they find themselves. About the most explosive--and stupidest--thing I did was to break up with T. (It lasted about three months.) But I also threw myself into reading contemporary things, to a degree I'd never done before. Magazines, particularly newsmagazines of different sorts. While I explored magazines I'd eventually come back to--say, The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly--two magazines stuck immediately. First was Might and second was The New Republic. What struck me about TNR was the cover story of the first issue I picked up: Kass's "The Wisdom of Repugnance."

I mention this partly because nostalgia is fun and partly because I'm fitfully reading the joint of review of Beyond Therapy and Enough in a recent Harpers. Beyond Therapy is the most recent book by the President's Council on Bioethics, of which Kass is the head and, by all accounts, the most determinative member. Enough is by Bill McKibben, who appears to be a fairly radical environmentalist. (I'm skimming bios, so that might be unfair; I'm not otherwise familiar with him, save for an awareness of his name.)

The Harpers review, usefully, is written in part to emphasize the similarity in their views, particularly regarding the engineering and selection of our children. Critics, such as this guy, argue that McKibben is incoherent in arguing against this sort of tinkering, because the only possible argument he can put forth is that it defiles man-as-created-in-God's-image.

I'm not so sure that this is the case. I think that there's a pragmatic argument, based on what we can already see around us, against the careful genetic selection and modification of children. I see parents who push their kids to become model children--top of the class, targeted for Harvard since preschool, that sort of thing. I have no doubt that I'm reacting to some easy journalistic tropes; nevertheless, I don't think anyone really contests that some parents see their children as attempts to produce the perfect second attempt at their own lives, be it as young models, in t-ball, or with grades.

I think, and I think most agree, that this saps at the child's ability to fashion his or herself. Certainly, no self-fashioning will be total; likewise, no parentally-induced fashioning will ever be complete. It's always a question of what balance to strike. And just as I would say that letting children find their own way from day one, with no parental involvement, is a recipe for disaster, so do I also say that this excessive parental management goes too far. The relevance of this to biotechnology is that genetic modification is one step further. I very much see it as not something new, but something more, and further into excess.

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