I recently read a blog post that had me shaking my head. A PhD in something Philosophy and Ethics and blah, blah, blah, is publishing a paper advocating human engineering as a possible means to avert climate change disaster. This includes wearing patches to induce a negative reaction to bovine (or any kind of meat) proteins. This also includes genetically tailoring your kids to be smaller. This includes indoctrinating (brainwashing?) your children to avoid having children at a young age (um, like abstinence programs that already do not work?). At first I thought it was a joke. But it is not a joke.
The “solutions” put forward are largely “voluntary” – I’m assuming as some parts are fairly vague on just how such a plan might be implemented. And yes, I’m using scare quotes for a reason. And this reason: ideas that often sound good on paper, are never implemented in the manner most academics, altruistically, hope them to be.
So just to give a quick recap, here are the ideas presented:
- Meat patches – patches that will basically make you sick from eating animal proteins
- Creating Toy Children – use genetic and biological enhancement to make your kids smaller. Maybe small enough to put in a small purse until they’re 18 – 20.
- Brainwashing – Before we even get to creating Toy Humans, we need to give the youngin’s some “cognitive enhancement” to be sure they don’t reproduce too early, if at all.
- Pharmacological “Enhancement” to make people
whiny, sad bitchesmore empathetic and altruistic. This method is to remove the word “I” from the lexicon of all people. We need to be more willing to take one for the Team every time someone says “we need”.
Unfortunately, ideas that didn’t seem to make the cut:
- Post birth abortion – Give parents a 30 day return policy on kids
- Suicide is good – cognitive enhancement to ensure that everyone knows suicide is really a “good” thing.
- Gay Water – If you can invert the 90% straight / 10% gay percentages, we’ll have fewer children (and better fashion). Spike the water and no one will be the wiser.
My (quite possibly, equally unoriginal) ideas are just as equally valid. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepare to see them misunderstood. (H.L. Menken)