Play the Blame Game

I just read a book called "Next", i'm guessing it isn't an old book, since a movie adaption is out. Go catch it if you've no time for the book, it really gives you a chilling yet hopeful view of the future, and it also raises questions about yourself and those around us.

Currently the human genome has been unravelled and daily scientists and researchers are discovering new funtions and lnks for different genes. These include behavioural genes, genes for diseases, genes for certain thought pathways, basically everything that makes you, well, you. Further research (and some common sense) tells of how environment also affects the outcome of a persons physical, mental and emotional personality.

View it this way, when you are born, based on your genetic makeup you could have a certain "statistics" chart which tells of everything you will be, can be and should be. If we had quantam computers and had understood all the genes functions, at birth each person could have a chart telling something like:
Diabetes: 12.52%
Breast cancer: 1.41%
Alzheimers by 50: 4.32% by 60: 8.52%
.
.
.
Sociopath: 2.45%
Psychopath: 6.32%
Philantrophist: 32.53%
.
.
.
Maths: 65/100
Language: 89/100

And etcetera, a thousand page report predicting all the possibilities and aptitudes and talents of a person, without regard for environment. And perhaps at this time there'd be guidelines for parents to follow to repress certain traits and to promote some others, improving the percentages. A world without criminals, a generous world, a world of talent. Utopia.

Yet that is far from now, anyone reading this now would probably not be alive to see any such development, if it ever occurs. So we live in a world where when we are mature enough to look critisizingly at ourselves to realise our flaws, we somehow know inside that its our genes and how we were brought up that led to some of our negative (and positive) traits.

We slip into a hellhole of blame, looking at our past in angst and regret and we waste our life and energy writhing in discontent. I walked that path and still do at times, when the world seems against me, when i cannot repress my urges and my desires and my actions, when i do things i regret, and continue to regret. I look back, i blame, and theres always only two people my finger keeps shaking at. My parents.

Your parent's passed you your genes, they brought you up. When you screw up, is it they to blame? People may tell you "hey its your personality thats weak!" but isn't your personality given by your parents too? When you need to blame someone, you inadvertantly yet unavoidably end up seeing only your parents. (and your foster parents/whoever, if applicable) I grew up bitter, i still am at times. I've wasted much contemplation on this issue, ultimately hurting only myself and my parents, without worthful cause.

So why blame? Our parent's can never forsee how we'd turn out, their actions and upbringing were not likely aimed at shaping our personality negatively. Even if they wanted to shape us to a perfect vision, they would not have the knowledge to do it, they cannot predict the unforseen, about things out of their control.

I am no christian or muslim or whatever, i do not really believe in a higher power. But when they say "God makes us", i say it is not from clay or earth that he did, that he gifts us with talents, but with numbers and statistics. By altering occurences and interactions, we are moulded into what we are. If God does exist, that is his medium to his final plan.

Genetic research holds wonders beyond our wildest imagination, breakthroughs would literally break through us, healing and improving and immunising us. To critics saying it is "playing God", i can only say that creation and invention is playing God. That means everything not natural, would then be a perversion of His creation. These people should live in caves if they wished to hold true to their cause. The alteration of genes is not much different from tearing branches off a tree to build a hut, it is an improvisation, a modification to our environment to adapt to changes.

I personally embrace gene research, and i encourage all else to read up about it and its possibilities, and to make a balanced view on their stand.After all, "If you don't do it here, research is still gonna start in Shanghai" - Next, Michael Crichton

call me ungodly if you will, but can you call yourself godly?

fragility

Haven't been blogging for a while, been quite caught up with mugging, and spending some time on some game called granado espada, which is pretty ok, despite the continuous lag and the rather linear leveling system.

Also, I've been lacking inspiration, motivation even, to blog. Why i am not sure, its just a phase perhaps.

A serious injury seems to put life in another perspective for a person. Now i walk on pavements worrying that some stiff leaf would knock into my fragile right eye. I lean on my right arm, i raise it up and i worry if it would hold, or if it would give way and rip off its socket yet again. All this where previously i had no worries for such matters, where pain and injury were common daily affairs, for most were far less lasting than even the longest sicknesses.

It seems to be the human condition to always look at things when it is too late. Wars, pandemics, extinctions have all occured because at some point, someone high up said "hey, screw planning, it worked last time, so why not do it again?". Only when they (their underlings actually) are mired up in their own blood and bodies do they realise that they'd just made a grave, unretractable mistake. So this is reflected in the smallest of our actions. Many smoke knowing the health risks but treat it all with confident flippancy, having never suffered its symptoms. Many jaywalk, having never experienced fatal or near death experiences (my current count: 6) with vehicles. We do all these simply because the merely possible consequences of our actions do not seem significant enough to trouble us, usually because we have never experienced it first-handed.

So we have a word: foresight. Few have it, though many claim (or privately convince themselves) they have it. This word is part of a long list of qualities world leaders should posess yet within that list it shines as the most elusive, the hardest quality of all for voters to gauge. Only through leadership and decades of policies and social change can foresight be measured. And by then, as it seems to be with all things, its too late to change our actions or decisions.

Just a random thought, with no lesson but the commonly preached "look before you leap".