Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Monsieur René and his Gridlock Kids
Before reading Descartes' meditations, I only had enough of a grasp on his influence as to say, 'there's this guy that is a major proponent of Western culture's domination for the past 400 years' - a statement of which, predictably, I could convince no one.
It's still hard to sell to people the idea that we're living in our the shadow of a father many of us never knew or have even heard of.
Nearly every day I am reminded of some latent bastion of his work and the rules by which we try desperately to live. This is evident as one confronts any situation that imposes a binary mindset, a polarized black and white scenario which doesn't quite seem to envelope the weight of the choice at hand; a key example being neoclassical economics: according to the rudimentary grid, a Cartesian coordinate plane, we will behave as rational consumers in order to make the system work... And indeed the system functions on some level, but the rationality of the rational thinkers might be, in a relative way, totally fucked.
Look at it this way: this system of economy is nearly impossible to run the way it is supposed to be, because it presumes a simplistic ideal of rationality and facilitates human suffering; so if we're being true Cartesians, our long-standing attempt to maintain it is a failure.
But it works for some, no?
Obviously it isn't that simple then. The failure of economics is not complete, thus the binary model is what truly fails us here.
I'm getting an uncanny connection to The Matrix here, in more ways than I'd care to admit: for one, in Keanu Reeves' feeling that 'something just doesn't seem right about reality,' which applies in the sense that in fact, something does not seem quite right about the rules we follow for the sake of participating in society, with our irrational minds and bodies; and yet to be told of the existence of an Architect who built a system at odds with these qualities is going to mean nothing unless we can think of another way to run their invention.
Now I'm not saying I think we're literally subjects connected to an artificial reality while our bodies float in a pod of bile on a giant mechanical hive that harvests our physiological energy into a power grid. But you've got to appreciate the metaphor.
It's still hard to sell to people the idea that we're living in our the shadow of a father many of us never knew or have even heard of.
Nearly every day I am reminded of some latent bastion of his work and the rules by which we try desperately to live. This is evident as one confronts any situation that imposes a binary mindset, a polarized black and white scenario which doesn't quite seem to envelope the weight of the choice at hand; a key example being neoclassical economics: according to the rudimentary grid, a Cartesian coordinate plane, we will behave as rational consumers in order to make the system work... And indeed the system functions on some level, but the rationality of the rational thinkers might be, in a relative way, totally fucked.
Look at it this way: this system of economy is nearly impossible to run the way it is supposed to be, because it presumes a simplistic ideal of rationality and facilitates human suffering; so if we're being true Cartesians, our long-standing attempt to maintain it is a failure.
But it works for some, no?
Obviously it isn't that simple then. The failure of economics is not complete, thus the binary model is what truly fails us here.
I'm getting an uncanny connection to The Matrix here, in more ways than I'd care to admit: for one, in Keanu Reeves' feeling that 'something just doesn't seem right about reality,' which applies in the sense that in fact, something does not seem quite right about the rules we follow for the sake of participating in society, with our irrational minds and bodies; and yet to be told of the existence of an Architect who built a system at odds with these qualities is going to mean nothing unless we can think of another way to run their invention.
Now I'm not saying I think we're literally subjects connected to an artificial reality while our bodies float in a pod of bile on a giant mechanical hive that harvests our physiological energy into a power grid. But you've got to appreciate the metaphor.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Therese Neumann
The thing from this class that I will remember most is the case study of Therese Neumann. It really intrigues me and I still think about it on occasion. It kind of changed the way I see the world. It’s a prime example of something that can’t be explained no matter how hard you try. Faith is a powerful thing and it allows people to view what is possible in a very different light. For example, everything we know tells us that it is entirely impossible for a person to survive for 40 years by eating nothing but The Holy Eucharist but faith allows some people to view this as possible. I find it odd how scientific fact can be totally dismissed if you believe hard enough in something (ex. Evolution, inedia, stigmata, etc.) and we see this as a totally acceptable fact of society. I guess it leads me ask the question, why is it ok to dismiss the facts sometimes and not others?
C@|^T3$!@N
There were actually quite a few things that i will take away from this class so i might be a little random in what i am talking about, but the thing i will try to focus on is the concept of our Cartesianized culture cuz that is the one thing i will be most likely to remember if asked about this class in ten years.
Does anyone else feel like when the term "cartesian" was used in the classroom it was often said with some contempt? At first it was somewhat enlightening to me to understand what cartesian meant and to consciously recognize how ingrained the concept was in society. But I don't fully understand the negative connotation attached to it in the classroom. I think the fear of cartesianism, if you will, is that it will annihilate all other ways of looking at things and though i understand the concern i don't think it could ever completely take over. For example...
I know that even if i was given a recipe and followed it perfectly i could never cook as well as someone who just new what to do and measured things "by eye"
I would much rather watch a baseball game then look at a sheet of paper that had every possible stat about the game.
If i meet a girl I like i more than likely wouldn't graph her attributes and see what the R squared value is between the function of my ideal girl and the one i just met... then again I think that may be what e-harmony does... ok I may have just talked myself out of any reasonable argument i had lol
I know there are many more example but i suppose the fact that i couldn't think of many more maybe gives some credibility to the fear of the cartesian takeover.
I also think that maybe a lot of things would be similar even if they weren't cartesianized. For example i was told that at one point their was a kind of split in the way writing music was seen. One group of people wanted there to be rules to everything, if an exception was found then another rule was there to account for it, the other group thought that it should be up to the musician to do what he thought sounded "good". Well as it turned out both groups of musicians ended up sounding exactly that same. You could say that the rules were unnecessary and inconvenient or you could argue that they allow a better understanding to a less advanced musician.
I think maybe that last argument hold part of the answer. To the untrained musician, or whatever it may be, a cartesian layout is greatly helpful in gaining an understanding of the topic, but to someone who is very skilled at something (musician, chef, economist, even engineer perhaps?) it shouldn't be seen as an absolute boundary but rather as a generally good thing to base your work on. So yes I think it is beneficial to recognize that we are cartesian and we should understand its influence on us but if those two things are done i think there is nothing to fear from the cartesian takeover itself.
Anyway back to what i will take from this, I guess I always "knew" that things tended to be based on graphs and grids and ratios in our society but that fact that it was given a name in this course definitely got me thinking about it more and i think it will be good for me as an aspiring engineer to better understand the benefits and limitations of a cartesian way of looking at things.
Have a great summer everyone!
Does anyone else feel like when the term "cartesian" was used in the classroom it was often said with some contempt? At first it was somewhat enlightening to me to understand what cartesian meant and to consciously recognize how ingrained the concept was in society. But I don't fully understand the negative connotation attached to it in the classroom. I think the fear of cartesianism, if you will, is that it will annihilate all other ways of looking at things and though i understand the concern i don't think it could ever completely take over. For example...
I know that even if i was given a recipe and followed it perfectly i could never cook as well as someone who just new what to do and measured things "by eye"
I would much rather watch a baseball game then look at a sheet of paper that had every possible stat about the game.
If i meet a girl I like i more than likely wouldn't graph her attributes and see what the R squared value is between the function of my ideal girl and the one i just met... then again I think that may be what e-harmony does... ok I may have just talked myself out of any reasonable argument i had lol
I know there are many more example but i suppose the fact that i couldn't think of many more maybe gives some credibility to the fear of the cartesian takeover.
I also think that maybe a lot of things would be similar even if they weren't cartesianized. For example i was told that at one point their was a kind of split in the way writing music was seen. One group of people wanted there to be rules to everything, if an exception was found then another rule was there to account for it, the other group thought that it should be up to the musician to do what he thought sounded "good". Well as it turned out both groups of musicians ended up sounding exactly that same. You could say that the rules were unnecessary and inconvenient or you could argue that they allow a better understanding to a less advanced musician.
I think maybe that last argument hold part of the answer. To the untrained musician, or whatever it may be, a cartesian layout is greatly helpful in gaining an understanding of the topic, but to someone who is very skilled at something (musician, chef, economist, even engineer perhaps?) it shouldn't be seen as an absolute boundary but rather as a generally good thing to base your work on. So yes I think it is beneficial to recognize that we are cartesian and we should understand its influence on us but if those two things are done i think there is nothing to fear from the cartesian takeover itself.
Anyway back to what i will take from this, I guess I always "knew" that things tended to be based on graphs and grids and ratios in our society but that fact that it was given a name in this course definitely got me thinking about it more and i think it will be good for me as an aspiring engineer to better understand the benefits and limitations of a cartesian way of looking at things.
Have a great summer everyone!
Friday, May 7, 2010
“What remains as an excess that can’t be assimilated and what are you going to do with the gift I bestow, I who am such strange stuff?”
Today while waiting for the bus I started reading a new book and without even getting past page lowercase x I ran into CSCL 3331:
So what did I end up doing? Making pictures and Calling for Art and (soon) curating an art exhibition (do I know how to do that? Sure!….) which has social themes related to intersections of science and culture, but was not what I’d set out to do. (I was hoping for, maybe, a writing sample.) In this class, and really, in these last months outside of class as well, I kept running into art. Not that I was running away from it, but I see now that there was a way in which I had seen it as isolated from other fields--there was a Washington Avenue next to my idea of art. Sometimes art comments on or examines other fields, or is displayed in their lobbies, but there was a separateness I felt of it not reaching or connecting with people in the same way, and pulling a different cultural weight. It is hard, visiting galleries or museums, to not have a sense of art existing in air-tight rooms and not being experienced by many.
But what I kept running into in this class is that art is again and again entering these other realms and interacting and speaking and just pretty well refusing to go away--and making an impact. Whether its Michael Chricton or youtube or poetry or dance or Olympic figure skaters or activists flown here from India by the art department, or Anne Fausto-Sterling working with a playwright, it’s going on, and apparently it’s letting me know. Again and again in the margins of my notes I wrote STORYTELLING.
Tonight, for example, I went to meet this woman who emailed me about the exhibition and is making a TPT documentary about a CSA farm and was having an open studio tonight. In the meantime, I’d heard from another artist, who, as it turns out, has exhibited all sorts of places and has an impressive background of work. So I go and see the woman and her documentary and it was great and we chatted and she said, well let’s walk around the building--and who is sitting on the couch drinking wine, but artist #2 and so we have a conversation. She shares the work she has done bringing rural people’s stories to the public in their own words and images, for the last 30 years, and, as she said, public conversation has finally caught up and includes farmers, too. And here I’ve stepped into the scene to make some collection of my impression at my moment in time. Maybe it is because it is a dark and stormy night but I feel I’ve stepped into the river of the conversation of everything.
We are so lucky to have the image of Washington Avenue, with the two sides volleying thoughts and ideas and people back and forth whether they realize it or not. You can’t create science without creating culture, and most likely, these days, a facet of culture can’t exist without science trying to come up with an explanation. A woman can’t just bleed from her hand and not eat for thirty years without someone wanting to know why. (Though the bleeding woman may never care to hear your explanation, she has her own.)
And speaking of that bleeding woman, we learned about so many strange things that people do--cutting off their own healthy limbs, raising a son as a girl after he’s been attacked by a dog, making our own food supply crappy, opting out of the gender system, building misogynistic paranoia about eco-terrorists. . . . An array of things that don’t assimilate into our idea of the typical, the known. But all of these strange people did make a little more sense and feel a little more understandable when we dropped beneath the tag line of their story, and ventured into the un-assimilated parts, investigating the strange of that which was unknown…..I leave intrigued by humanity. It really is fascinating, the things that we do, and what we think we know.
_______________________________________________________
1 Michael Taussig, Walter Benjamin’s Grave (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
“It is more like having the reality depicted turn back on the writing, rather than on the writer, and ask for a fair shake. “What have you learned?” the reality asks of the writing. “What remains as an excess that can’t be assimilated and what are you going to do with the gift I bestow, I who am such strange stuff?”...One intriguing thing I am thinking about from this class is the idea that we often think we are doing one thing but we might really be doing something completely different. Here I was taking this class in order to start figuring out my plans for graduate school after being out of school for a while--planning to move ahead to some sort of social sciences degree (having received an undergraduate degree in art).
...we don’t think sufficiently about the fact that when we explain the unknown we reduce it too quickly to the known. That is the first problem. We strip the unknown of all that is strange. We show it who’s boss, the basic rule of a university seminar. We tolerate neither ambiguity nor that which won’t conform. The second and even greater misfortune here is that we thereby forget how strange is the known.
...Therefore the task of the writer, as I see it, is to play with this dual function of words; pretend they are what they refer to--that they do take you to the rain forests of the Pacific coast---and at the same time recognize the artifice. This I call the nervous system, one of whose functions is to make manifest the hand of the writer so as to perturb the fiction masquerading as what we call truth, which is, of course, what we call culture too.”1
So what did I end up doing? Making pictures and Calling for Art and (soon) curating an art exhibition (do I know how to do that? Sure!….) which has social themes related to intersections of science and culture, but was not what I’d set out to do. (I was hoping for, maybe, a writing sample.) In this class, and really, in these last months outside of class as well, I kept running into art. Not that I was running away from it, but I see now that there was a way in which I had seen it as isolated from other fields--there was a Washington Avenue next to my idea of art. Sometimes art comments on or examines other fields, or is displayed in their lobbies, but there was a separateness I felt of it not reaching or connecting with people in the same way, and pulling a different cultural weight. It is hard, visiting galleries or museums, to not have a sense of art existing in air-tight rooms and not being experienced by many.
But what I kept running into in this class is that art is again and again entering these other realms and interacting and speaking and just pretty well refusing to go away--and making an impact. Whether its Michael Chricton or youtube or poetry or dance or Olympic figure skaters or activists flown here from India by the art department, or Anne Fausto-Sterling working with a playwright, it’s going on, and apparently it’s letting me know. Again and again in the margins of my notes I wrote STORYTELLING.
Tonight, for example, I went to meet this woman who emailed me about the exhibition and is making a TPT documentary about a CSA farm and was having an open studio tonight. In the meantime, I’d heard from another artist, who, as it turns out, has exhibited all sorts of places and has an impressive background of work. So I go and see the woman and her documentary and it was great and we chatted and she said, well let’s walk around the building--and who is sitting on the couch drinking wine, but artist #2 and so we have a conversation. She shares the work she has done bringing rural people’s stories to the public in their own words and images, for the last 30 years, and, as she said, public conversation has finally caught up and includes farmers, too. And here I’ve stepped into the scene to make some collection of my impression at my moment in time. Maybe it is because it is a dark and stormy night but I feel I’ve stepped into the river of the conversation of everything.
We are so lucky to have the image of Washington Avenue, with the two sides volleying thoughts and ideas and people back and forth whether they realize it or not. You can’t create science without creating culture, and most likely, these days, a facet of culture can’t exist without science trying to come up with an explanation. A woman can’t just bleed from her hand and not eat for thirty years without someone wanting to know why. (Though the bleeding woman may never care to hear your explanation, she has her own.)
And speaking of that bleeding woman, we learned about so many strange things that people do--cutting off their own healthy limbs, raising a son as a girl after he’s been attacked by a dog, making our own food supply crappy, opting out of the gender system, building misogynistic paranoia about eco-terrorists. . . . An array of things that don’t assimilate into our idea of the typical, the known. But all of these strange people did make a little more sense and feel a little more understandable when we dropped beneath the tag line of their story, and ventured into the un-assimilated parts, investigating the strange of that which was unknown…..I leave intrigued by humanity. It really is fascinating, the things that we do, and what we think we know.
_______________________________________________________
1 Michael Taussig, Walter Benjamin’s Grave (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
Final Post
Things I learned in CSCL3331:
-Michael Crichton did more than just Jurassic Park.
-The origins of soap.
-Germs didn't exist before Louis Pasteur
Living in a world where people carry around pocket sized containers of hand sanitizer and working for a woman who is a germophobe, it's hard to imagine a world where germs don't exist. I was really interested by this idea that was brought up in class. Things don't "exist" until you find them and name them. Or the things down at the bottom of the ocean that don't "exist" as far as I'm concerned. This class made me very intrigued by all of the things that have come into existence and all of the paradigm shifts that have happened throughout history because of them. It's crazy–what a completely different world people were living before DNA existed!
I am also coming away with the idea that people live in different "realities". Like the discussion in class on Thursday about using this idea to help with a stubborn professor, maybe this will help me too in my relationships with my extended family who (good, bad, or otherwise) comes from a different reality than mine.
Thanks for a fun semester!
-Michael Crichton did more than just Jurassic Park.
-The origins of soap.
-Germs didn't exist before Louis Pasteur
Living in a world where people carry around pocket sized containers of hand sanitizer and working for a woman who is a germophobe, it's hard to imagine a world where germs don't exist. I was really interested by this idea that was brought up in class. Things don't "exist" until you find them and name them. Or the things down at the bottom of the ocean that don't "exist" as far as I'm concerned. This class made me very intrigued by all of the things that have come into existence and all of the paradigm shifts that have happened throughout history because of them. It's crazy–what a completely different world people were living before DNA existed!
I am also coming away with the idea that people live in different "realities". Like the discussion in class on Thursday about using this idea to help with a stubborn professor, maybe this will help me too in my relationships with my extended family who (good, bad, or otherwise) comes from a different reality than mine.
Thanks for a fun semester!
The CSCL 3331 Experience
I can honestly say I feel like I've learned more about myself, life, and other people in this class than I've learned in any class I've taken throughout high school or college. For once, I felt as though I was in a class that was strictly based around each individual and all of our unique opinions, thoughts, theories, etc. Rather than a class where we're presented with information, expected to memorize it, learn it, and apply it, and basically just go through the motions day after day until it's over. I felt like every person that spoke out had the ability and the opportunity to alter the entire path that our topics were going in, and feeling like we has students had control over some of the information we were learning, and how we wanted to learn it, is something that I'll always appreciate about 3331. And there are many things that I feel honored to be taking away from Science and the Humanities (now "Culture"), that I know will be stuck with me for the rest of my life.
One of these things is my newfound confidence to never stop asking questions, and to never be afraid to ask questions about everything. I'm guilty of reading studies, experiments, reports, news stories, you name it, and just agreeing with whatever the author says and not allowing my thoughts to stray far from the point that he/she is stating, and the facts that he/she has to back it up. It's something that I'd never given a second-thought to before. They're the experts, they know what's best, so I'll just shut up and listen. But SciHum gave so much insight into how insulting it is to us as humans to just accept what we're given at face value, without ever questioning its "legitimacy" (Thanks to Ben, I'll always associate that word with him). I remember reading Not in our Genes by Richard Lewontin early on in class, and him mentioning that scientists are never free from biases or outside influences, and this is something that until reading that, I'd never given consideration to before. Scientists, after all, are still humans, like the rest of us (well, maybe except for Esther, that cyborg) and therefore are still susceptible to falling for all of the weaknesses that we as humans face. Our society really puts an emphasis on the scientists and the experts for legitimation, so much that we've stopped being able to trust ourselves when it comes to anything.
Crichton's book, State of Fear also aided in making me think more about taking whatever it is we read at face value. His book is a prime example of how facts can be skewed in almost any which way, in order to help support or disprove a certain standpoint or belief. Like many said in class while we were discussing State of Fear, we know better than to believe Crichton, but the way he presented all of the information and facts, along with the fictitious story used to weave them all together, it was hard not to find our thoughts drifting toward his side of the field now and then.
So, I might be royally fucked now after this class because I'll be skeptical of everything and never admit to believing in something until I've had the opportunity to ask every question, read all the information on it that I can find, and consider the possibilities of the opposite side of the spectrum. But I figure, I'd rather be crazy and confident in what I believe, than indifferent and ignorant of all of the knowledge and opinions that there are out there.
I hope you all have an awesome summer, I had a great time with everyone this semester, and I'm genuinely sad that this class has come to an end. And thanks Ben and Robin for making this class as remarkable as it was.
Art and corruptions and blather
On Thursday we discussed the supposed structure of a 19th century Utopia credited to a German individual whose name I don't remember (sorry, Ben). It involved the different spheres of what I'll collectively call "life" existing separately--science, politics, religion, art, what have you. When the spheres overlap or bleed into each other, that is called a "corruption." It is these corruptions that disrupt the Utopia.
In a class built on examining these intersections and overstepped boundaries, it's easy for us to agree that what makes life at all interesting is these corruptions. Science and culture (media and politics, school and religion, Thing 1 and Thing 2) go hand in hand. Purism will only lead to the death of the medium.
While the blending of science and ideology/money/etc. is the reason something called "science studies" can exist, the complications are often as frustrating as they are fascinating. No study can reach the public without layers of "non-science" resting above or below it, and in the end the corruptions seem to keep us from the truth (whatever the truth is). Whether Crichton is telling us that ideology funds research and alters the published findings or Pollan is explaining that friendly government support of corn farmers is actually destroying America's health, it's pretty clear that the facts are hard to get to.
I thought, originally, that the art sphere might be the only one that has doesn't do much to disguise the truth (or "truth"). If art imitates life, its existence is dependent on collision with the other spheres. No matter what statement it's making, no matter how the public receives it, in the end art is only art and always up for interpretation. Fiction is not equal to fact. After learning about the effect State of Fear had on powerful decision-makers (/Deciders) and revisiting how storytelling has reshaped ethics and policy in the past, however, I rethought this. We all might be hardened skeptics, rearing to point out sensationalism or fat cats when we see 'em, but a carefully constructed story--even one that uses sensationalism to critique sensationalism--can catch anyone off-guard. Instead of being the least known or most innocent part of the equation, I believe that art and its emotional power might be the most dangerous part. It is not sitting back and taking in religion and war and science--it is pushing outward and, through mixed media especially, passing admirably for truth.
As scary as State of Fear's power is, I think the sneaky, oft-underestimated power of art is awesome.
Morphing
The lyrics of a song that I like by a weird french band called Elsiane are going to be the inspiration for this post. Because I feel like what I am taking away from this class, or this semester in general, or this period in my life, relate to this song. The title is "Morphing".
Look in the interior it's all full of life
look in this shadow but always leave the light on
mysterious all full of life
loom into shadows but always kept the light on
I'll discover it over I'll be hovered and mostly gone
I'd like to restart it all over with mountains full of gold
Discover the way only in the inferior
Constantly followed holding into light
Mysterious all full of love
Doom into shadows but always leave the light on
I realize it's in my mind installed
I find it's in my mind in stone
I'll discover it over I'll be hovered and mostly gone
I'd like to restart it all over with mountains full of gold
I've been stumbling all over I'll be stuck in this lonely and
I'll minimize the evil kind of love destroying
All the evil kind of thoughts installed
Settle down my evil start minimize my evil side
One of the most intriguing concepts discussed in class this semester, in my opinion, was that of "Viral Information". Fetishes spread because people are made aware of the fetish. Fetishes are created because someone with a bizarre perspective posted it on the internet. Information can change us - and one of the environmental factors which dictates how we are going to 'play out' in this world is exposure to ideas. 100 years ago someone with an identical genome to mine would not have been the same person. There would have been a LOT of similarities, for sure. Maybe even the same general temperament. But she wouldn't have birth control, she wouldn't know about apotemnophilia, she wouldn't be studying Computer Science and she would probably have been raised either orthodox Jewish or Catholic. Can you imagine? Because I really can't.
What I am taking away from this is simultaneously humbling and empowering. It is a realization that hurts my pride, on some level, and it is this: There are in fact things that I don't want to know. I have taken pride for a long time in being someone who wants to know everything, all the time. I thought that a great sign of my strength and awesomeness was that I could know things, experience things, and come away with little to no baggage. But I'm getting older. I'm realizing that there is always baggage. I'm realizing that there are a lot of things that, once known, will never allow me to go back. I can do my best to learn new things which are better than the old things, to construct fantasies which allow me to cope, to "cast things in a new light"... I can do mental push ups and exercises in emotional control, but fundamentally, my own brain is a black box, even to me. And that is scary!
While walking in the rain today, I tried not to kill earthworms. But when I see a centipede, I want it to be dead. Immediately. I am not a rational being. I can try to rationalize the impulses I have using my toolbox; evolutionary psychology, past experiences, things which turn randomness into concrete, validated reality. But Sartre was right - we are just justification machines, and what we learn at any given moment, what we decide about a thing at any given moment, is tweaking our self projection into both the future and the past. And even with that, I don't feel consistently "me". I can't tell you why my knees were shaking at my final performance yesterday. I can't tell you why I was desperate for my boyfriend's attention on Tuesday and nearly indifferent enough to break up with him on Wednesday. Sometimes I just want to conclude that I'm crazy - but then I look around, and I realize - the very desire to rationalize my actions, to be consistent, is making me crazy. Because its like trying to fit a square peg into a circle. And in that sense, sanity is just accepting the bliss of ignorance - it is accepting not that you can't know, but that sometimes there really isn't anything to know. There is no way to take control. There is the black box sitting on my shoulders, taking information in and doing who-the-hell-knows-what with it. But I HATE that! So I am going to keep trying to force myself into some rational framework, I know it.
So this is two-fold, I suppose. On the one hand, destroying some of life's illusions can really take the fun out of things. Plenty of illusions can't be destroyed, but some are destroyed by science, by studies of human nature, and by statistical 'facts'. On the other hand, when you learn things, the knowledge can change you.
Here are a list of things that I have recently considered that I don't want to know:
1. When and how I am going to die.
2. When and how my future relationships will fail (or really, even that they are all statistically likely to fail. Whoever told me that, I hate you. And thanks, I guess.)
3. Older men are attracted to younger women (my dad is 20 years older than my mom and pretty much hasn't dated a woman his own age since he was 20.) Pretty much I am just going to believe that, if this is a general truth, I will be the exception to the rule. Alternatively, I will never get married because I don't want to be fighting stupid ugly human nature.
4. People are highly likely to cheat on their spouses.
5. I'm never going to be a super hero. Or if I am, I will probably never be 100% sure I am totally, rock solid, doing the right thing.
6. There is a fetish for young amputee girls.
7. I am prone to alcoholism, and it makes me stupider.
8. I like beer.
9. Hangovers suck.
10. Growing apart is easier than growing together.
11. My brain is going to trick me into making the same mistakes twice... or a million times.
Alright, enough of this moroseness. Happy summer, everyone! I had a great semester with y'all.
Look in the interior it's all full of life
look in this shadow but always leave the light on
mysterious all full of life
loom into shadows but always kept the light on
I'll discover it over I'll be hovered and mostly gone
I'd like to restart it all over with mountains full of gold
Discover the way only in the inferior
Constantly followed holding into light
Mysterious all full of love
Doom into shadows but always leave the light on
I realize it's in my mind installed
I find it's in my mind in stone
I'll discover it over I'll be hovered and mostly gone
I'd like to restart it all over with mountains full of gold
I've been stumbling all over I'll be stuck in this lonely and
I'll minimize the evil kind of love destroying
All the evil kind of thoughts installed
Settle down my evil start minimize my evil side
One of the most intriguing concepts discussed in class this semester, in my opinion, was that of "Viral Information". Fetishes spread because people are made aware of the fetish. Fetishes are created because someone with a bizarre perspective posted it on the internet. Information can change us - and one of the environmental factors which dictates how we are going to 'play out' in this world is exposure to ideas. 100 years ago someone with an identical genome to mine would not have been the same person. There would have been a LOT of similarities, for sure. Maybe even the same general temperament. But she wouldn't have birth control, she wouldn't know about apotemnophilia, she wouldn't be studying Computer Science and she would probably have been raised either orthodox Jewish or Catholic. Can you imagine? Because I really can't.
What I am taking away from this is simultaneously humbling and empowering. It is a realization that hurts my pride, on some level, and it is this: There are in fact things that I don't want to know. I have taken pride for a long time in being someone who wants to know everything, all the time. I thought that a great sign of my strength and awesomeness was that I could know things, experience things, and come away with little to no baggage. But I'm getting older. I'm realizing that there is always baggage. I'm realizing that there are a lot of things that, once known, will never allow me to go back. I can do my best to learn new things which are better than the old things, to construct fantasies which allow me to cope, to "cast things in a new light"... I can do mental push ups and exercises in emotional control, but fundamentally, my own brain is a black box, even to me. And that is scary!
While walking in the rain today, I tried not to kill earthworms. But when I see a centipede, I want it to be dead. Immediately. I am not a rational being. I can try to rationalize the impulses I have using my toolbox; evolutionary psychology, past experiences, things which turn randomness into concrete, validated reality. But Sartre was right - we are just justification machines, and what we learn at any given moment, what we decide about a thing at any given moment, is tweaking our self projection into both the future and the past. And even with that, I don't feel consistently "me". I can't tell you why my knees were shaking at my final performance yesterday. I can't tell you why I was desperate for my boyfriend's attention on Tuesday and nearly indifferent enough to break up with him on Wednesday. Sometimes I just want to conclude that I'm crazy - but then I look around, and I realize - the very desire to rationalize my actions, to be consistent, is making me crazy. Because its like trying to fit a square peg into a circle. And in that sense, sanity is just accepting the bliss of ignorance - it is accepting not that you can't know, but that sometimes there really isn't anything to know. There is no way to take control. There is the black box sitting on my shoulders, taking information in and doing who-the-hell-knows-what with it. But I HATE that! So I am going to keep trying to force myself into some rational framework, I know it.
So this is two-fold, I suppose. On the one hand, destroying some of life's illusions can really take the fun out of things. Plenty of illusions can't be destroyed, but some are destroyed by science, by studies of human nature, and by statistical 'facts'. On the other hand, when you learn things, the knowledge can change you.
Here are a list of things that I have recently considered that I don't want to know:
1. When and how I am going to die.
2. When and how my future relationships will fail (or really, even that they are all statistically likely to fail. Whoever told me that, I hate you. And thanks, I guess.)
3. Older men are attracted to younger women (my dad is 20 years older than my mom and pretty much hasn't dated a woman his own age since he was 20.) Pretty much I am just going to believe that, if this is a general truth, I will be the exception to the rule. Alternatively, I will never get married because I don't want to be fighting stupid ugly human nature.
4. People are highly likely to cheat on their spouses.
5. I'm never going to be a super hero. Or if I am, I will probably never be 100% sure I am totally, rock solid, doing the right thing.
6. There is a fetish for young amputee girls.
7. I am prone to alcoholism, and it makes me stupider.
8. I like beer.
9. Hangovers suck.
10. Growing apart is easier than growing together.
11. My brain is going to trick me into making the same mistakes twice... or a million times.
Alright, enough of this moroseness. Happy summer, everyone! I had a great semester with y'all.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
black box
One of the things im taking away from this class is the idea of the black box. how things such as atoms have alawys existed, but were never accepted until they were proven toe exist. what else in the world fits into this claim? from this claim i am reminded of a certain Simpsons episode where Mr. Burnes' father fired an employee for having 4 atoms on him. it kinda shows the level of thinking most people display in a certain period of time, and how we fear what we do not know.
The Real Danger of State of Fear
One thing that I actually really enjoyed was reading Crichton’s State of Fear. It was his profound statement that “the footnotes are real” that really made me pay more attention to what he was actually saying. He was legitimizing his work, with what many people believe as “truth” aka science. What is unsettling about Crichton’s work is his ability to make the readers question their own beliefs, especially in regards to the “reality” of science. Science is the one thing that people go to to prove something. But Crichton makes one think twice about doing this. He focuses on the fact that science data can be interpreted in a way that fits one’s hypothesis. Now, when I look at scientific papers I realize that I cannot take them at face value just because they are “scientific” and have footnotes with references to other works.
I worked through Crichton’s reading in depth because of the debate. My working group randomly picked the affirmative side and we ended up changing a lot of the minds in the class. I was actually shocked by the amount of people that did not agree his book was dangerous when we started the debate. We tried to make it very clear that we were not trying to censor his work in any sort of way, but just that it was dangerous to the public. It was his use of science in legitimizing his argument that really blurred the line between narrative (his fictional work) and “reality”-what we know as science. It was interesting to see as the debate went on, that we gained a lot of support. I think it was the fact that Crichton and his work questioned the one true thing many believe as “reality.”
As you can see throughout this post I do not say reality but “reality.” I put it in quotes because throughout this class I think what once was reality became “reality.” I have come to notice that it seems as though what one may perceive as “reality” is different from another. I thought it was disappointing that someone brought this up at the end of class so there wasn’t much discussion but I would have liked to hear other thoughts about it.
Final post
Something that really made me think more than anything else in this class was Descartes. What made it...bother me (I'm not sure that's the right word, but nothing else seems to fit) is that without it, we wouldn't be as advanced as we are today. But with it, it creates so many challenges to us because it is so ingrained in our cultural and scientific consciousness that we think that there isn't any other way to view the world. The natural world isn't so cut and dry, no matter how many little categories we create. Creating different, separate categories isn't practical or useful in any way. By using Cartesian maps, even it helps us see the tress in the forest, it gets harder to see the forest.
But without it, we'd be completely overwhelmed and lost. I must admit that I was/still kind of am stuck in the Cartesian way of thinking. When we are younger, we think in terms of absolutes, black and white, no shades of gray, and as we get older we gain more experience that real life isn't always one way or the other (even though it would be much simpler that way). But we never lose our Cartesian way of thinking unless we are presented with it and shown that things don't have to be seen this way, like what happened in this class with Anne Fausto-Sterling.
It was disconcerting at first, and I'm still grappling with this because it's a major change in my way of thinking. I don't like gray areas or uncertainty, and both of those things make me extremely anxious and sometimes give me panic attacks. So this change in thinking is going very slowly for me, so I don't get overwhelmed and start freaking out unnecessarily. But I think this change will be for the better. Like everything else in life it's about finding that balance and re-adjusting every so often.
Have an excellent summer everyone!
But without it, we'd be completely overwhelmed and lost. I must admit that I was/still kind of am stuck in the Cartesian way of thinking. When we are younger, we think in terms of absolutes, black and white, no shades of gray, and as we get older we gain more experience that real life isn't always one way or the other (even though it would be much simpler that way). But we never lose our Cartesian way of thinking unless we are presented with it and shown that things don't have to be seen this way, like what happened in this class with Anne Fausto-Sterling.
It was disconcerting at first, and I'm still grappling with this because it's a major change in my way of thinking. I don't like gray areas or uncertainty, and both of those things make me extremely anxious and sometimes give me panic attacks. So this change in thinking is going very slowly for me, so I don't get overwhelmed and start freaking out unnecessarily. But I think this change will be for the better. Like everything else in life it's about finding that balance and re-adjusting every so often.
Have an excellent summer everyone!
Blog posting #10 (due FRIDAY 5/7, 11:59 P.M. (comment due SATURDAY 5/8, 11:59 P.M.)): Final reflection/discussion
This last post is real open...and meant as a kind of final reflection/discussion. We'd like you to do the following:
1) Choose one thing from this class (a text, an issue, a concept, an object, a theme, a case study, etc.) that you are taking away with you from this class -- something that still excites you, or bothers you, or intrigues you. Ideally, something that has changed, even in some small way, the way that you see and act in the world.
2) Describe it, briefly: what it is, and why it excites/bothers/intrigues you.
3) Reflect on what about it you are taking away from this class, and how it has (in whatever way) altered your thoughts about and actions in the world. If possible/appropriate, make reference to how the issue played out in class discussion, in the context of other topics/issues/themes/texts/concepts/cases we have been dealing with. If you recall what one or two of your colleagues had to say about it, bring that in too!
1) Choose one thing from this class (a text, an issue, a concept, an object, a theme, a case study, etc.) that you are taking away with you from this class -- something that still excites you, or bothers you, or intrigues you. Ideally, something that has changed, even in some small way, the way that you see and act in the world.
2) Describe it, briefly: what it is, and why it excites/bothers/intrigues you.
3) Reflect on what about it you are taking away from this class, and how it has (in whatever way) altered your thoughts about and actions in the world. If possible/appropriate, make reference to how the issue played out in class discussion, in the context of other topics/issues/themes/texts/concepts/cases we have been dealing with. If you recall what one or two of your colleagues had to say about it, bring that in too!
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
More on The Pill
Here's an article that was in the New York Times this week on The Pill:
It started more than one revolution
It started more than one revolution
2x2
There have been several presentations about various drugs and ethics that I've been thinking about for the past few days. For example, the presentation on steroid use along with the one of the more recent presentations on ADHD were two that I noticed some pretty close similarities on. Two of the most noticeable of them both being how easy and readily people can get these drugs, regardless of most, if not all, factors, and how many people have taken, or currently are taking these drugs. The ADHD medication is dosed by 'severity' of the supposed ADHD - mild, moderate, or severe - and how doctors claim to be able to diagnose the different severities, especially on young and naturally energetic kids, is beyond me. The steroid generation we are living in is almost so common now, it doesn't even surprise most people when they hear the 'breaking news' of one of their favorite athletes being busted for doping. Another thing I found interesting, is how easy and often the system seems to be beat when it comes to getting these drugs, or being tested for them. Many athletes who have tested positive for anabolic steroids seem to get off the hook with just a slap on the wrist and a "don't do it again" speech, and I have known several people who have never considered themselves as having ADHD, but found a way to test positive for it to get the prescription medication. One question I have about these scenarios, is do doctor's realize how easily the system can be played, and do they even care about stopping it? Or is the idea of how much money they can make with all of the prescriptions, or the bribes for getting athletes off the hook just too tempting to keep them from intervening? The black box of what really goes on in between the process of testing kids (or adults) for ADD/ADHD and determining whether they truly suffer from this "disease," and what happens in between the testings and the results of athletes who are almost always rumored to be doping, is a process I don't think I'll ever understand.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Toxic Garbage Dump in the Pacific: the Movie
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/toxic/toxic-garbage-island-full-length
Thanks to Alex and his group; here's a follow-up.
This is a powerful piece. Explains the science pretty extensively, and they wouldn't need much embellishment... it's all there.
Thanks to Alex and his group; here's a follow-up.
This is a powerful piece. Explains the science pretty extensively, and they wouldn't need much embellishment... it's all there.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Redesigning "Facts" - Our daily bread
I've had some major technical difficulty posting this. Kind of a 2x3...
What sticks out to me is the extensive web that we've illuminated through our rain of presentations - a web of thought processes and ideologies that build discursively upon, and thus depend upon, one another. Although their manifestations in say, the pill controversy as opposed to the prison system may seem to emerge at a distance, they are of course directly linked.
For starters, without the social atmosphere required for the Eugenics movement, neither of these phenomena could exist in the way that they do today. As the prison group pointed out, the criteria for 'most likely to be disposed to criminal behavior' was at a time largely based off of physical indicators such as one's build; since certain builds might have seemed more genetically prone to particular races or types of people, and because anyone in prison would be considered a degenerate, the Eugenics folks were likely on the same page with those at the penitentiaries.
The hard work of Margaret Sanger helped to define what sort of pills one can take legally for certain purposes which some deemed immoral; on the other hand, many tenants of the prison system are there because of different results in the same battle, over what constitutes immoral medication and thus what medication is made illegal.
In the evaluation of my own group's poster on the Large Hadron Collider, our benevolent facilitator noted his relief in the depth of our presentation, mostly in light of initial doubts springing from his first look at the poster itself. The potential problem, built into our display, was that it fit the form of a 'conventional science fair' backdrop, listing facts in their respective places... in other words, it appeared to uphold what we might call a model of gridlocked reference, relying on a more or less Cartesian plane to separately list the 'science' of the LHC versus the 'skeptic' point of view - binary and basic, but as we know, not that simple.
Fortunately my group was aware of the discursive circulation in and around the LHC, including the wealth of "YouTube experts" and "cranks" whose rhetoric pervades public awareness more than I had known.
The first thing this course emphasized for me is the notion that there are no objective facts, and yet I think we continue to struggle with the years we have spent consuming just that. After all, we are irrational beings still plugging ourselves into rational grids. Our grades for this project will be charted on a grid. This course in the future will be listed on a database that depends on thousands of binary codes (the internet and the University's registration software).
I've been toying with talking about "facts" as artifacts... pieces of meaning that we find here and there and from which we build a sense of place and reality; like shards broken off of a massive and mythical black box called Life, the Universe, and Everything, facts are often interpreted through science as simple elements of truth, regardless of whether or not we know the big picture: eventually, we'll put it all together once we have enough of these little shards. Wrong!
Keep up the work. By remembering what we see in front of us now, we can continue to remind each other, and hopefully those who find themselves "settled" into reality as well, that we are not just receivers or discoverers of fact, but that we work hard to make them.
What sticks out to me is the extensive web that we've illuminated through our rain of presentations - a web of thought processes and ideologies that build discursively upon, and thus depend upon, one another. Although their manifestations in say, the pill controversy as opposed to the prison system may seem to emerge at a distance, they are of course directly linked.
For starters, without the social atmosphere required for the Eugenics movement, neither of these phenomena could exist in the way that they do today. As the prison group pointed out, the criteria for 'most likely to be disposed to criminal behavior' was at a time largely based off of physical indicators such as one's build; since certain builds might have seemed more genetically prone to particular races or types of people, and because anyone in prison would be considered a degenerate, the Eugenics folks were likely on the same page with those at the penitentiaries.
The hard work of Margaret Sanger helped to define what sort of pills one can take legally for certain purposes which some deemed immoral; on the other hand, many tenants of the prison system are there because of different results in the same battle, over what constitutes immoral medication and thus what medication is made illegal.
In the evaluation of my own group's poster on the Large Hadron Collider, our benevolent facilitator noted his relief in the depth of our presentation, mostly in light of initial doubts springing from his first look at the poster itself. The potential problem, built into our display, was that it fit the form of a 'conventional science fair' backdrop, listing facts in their respective places... in other words, it appeared to uphold what we might call a model of gridlocked reference, relying on a more or less Cartesian plane to separately list the 'science' of the LHC versus the 'skeptic' point of view - binary and basic, but as we know, not that simple.
Fortunately my group was aware of the discursive circulation in and around the LHC, including the wealth of "YouTube experts" and "cranks" whose rhetoric pervades public awareness more than I had known.
The first thing this course emphasized for me is the notion that there are no objective facts, and yet I think we continue to struggle with the years we have spent consuming just that. After all, we are irrational beings still plugging ourselves into rational grids. Our grades for this project will be charted on a grid. This course in the future will be listed on a database that depends on thousands of binary codes (the internet and the University's registration software).
I've been toying with talking about "facts" as artifacts... pieces of meaning that we find here and there and from which we build a sense of place and reality; like shards broken off of a massive and mythical black box called Life, the Universe, and Everything, facts are often interpreted through science as simple elements of truth, regardless of whether or not we know the big picture: eventually, we'll put it all together once we have enough of these little shards. Wrong!
Keep up the work. By remembering what we see in front of us now, we can continue to remind each other, and hopefully those who find themselves "settled" into reality as well, that we are not just receivers or discoverers of fact, but that we work hard to make them.
roids vs. cosmetic
when it comes to the sports worlds its all about competition, and trying to one up your opponent. so some athletes decide to take steroids to become stronger and to extent the longevity of their careers. players who can play longer and stronger usually get paid more money so in the end its mainly about getting paid as much as you can and just take the effects the steroids will have on your body.
for the cosmetics, the group mentioned how each year over 12 billion dollars are spent on cosmetic procedures a year. in our fashion driven society the person who gets the job is not always the person is the most qualified, but sometimes who dresses the part. so again the issue of price is shown as a means to drive the demand.
for the cosmetics, the group mentioned how each year over 12 billion dollars are spent on cosmetic procedures a year. in our fashion driven society the person who gets the job is not always the person is the most qualified, but sometimes who dresses the part. so again the issue of price is shown as a means to drive the demand.
2x2
The two posters that struck me was the plastic surgery and the performance enhancing drugs.
One of the concepts I got from the performance enhancing drugs is where can the line be drawn for using drugs to make a living vs. cheating? I honestly believe if it is a safety issue or a legal drug, then it should be fine to use. But when people, like fans, are paying for a sport that should be deemed "clean," then 'roids, meth, etc. should not be used. I think it's okay for truck drivers to use things to keep them awake so they don't run my car over while they're passing out.
A concept I got from plastic surgery is that it can become an addiction like a drug. More of an addiction to achieve "perfection" vs. feeling that high that you can never get after the first use.
The one link I see between the two is money. Models, actresses/actors, and adult film stars use plastic surgery to help make more money, like some athletes use steroids to pad their stats and get that fat contract and achieve perfection. It is weird to know that society wants to know who has what kind of plastic surgery done and be perfectly fine paying to watch their movies or buy the magazine that they're on the cover on. On the other hand, in the sports world, any illegal drug that an athlete uses to gain an advantage is something most of society would not want to pay for.
Bottom line - both subjects involve two different industries putting something forgein in their body to achieve "perfection" and/or make more money.
One of the concepts I got from the performance enhancing drugs is where can the line be drawn for using drugs to make a living vs. cheating? I honestly believe if it is a safety issue or a legal drug, then it should be fine to use. But when people, like fans, are paying for a sport that should be deemed "clean," then 'roids, meth, etc. should not be used. I think it's okay for truck drivers to use things to keep them awake so they don't run my car over while they're passing out.
A concept I got from plastic surgery is that it can become an addiction like a drug. More of an addiction to achieve "perfection" vs. feeling that high that you can never get after the first use.
The one link I see between the two is money. Models, actresses/actors, and adult film stars use plastic surgery to help make more money, like some athletes use steroids to pad their stats and get that fat contract and achieve perfection. It is weird to know that society wants to know who has what kind of plastic surgery done and be perfectly fine paying to watch their movies or buy the magazine that they're on the cover on. On the other hand, in the sports world, any illegal drug that an athlete uses to gain an advantage is something most of society would not want to pay for.
Bottom line - both subjects involve two different industries putting something forgein in their body to achieve "perfection" and/or make more money.
limbo
Birth Control and Designer Babies.
Of course they are both related to babies, and controlling the outcomes related to babies--but on the surface maybe you hear “birth control” and hear “no babies,” and hear “designer babies” and think “yes babies!” But really they just seem to circle around and around to each other. No babies, no babies now, yes babies, these babies not those babies, yes any and all babies.
In our everyday political dialogue, we are usually divided into two camps related to reproduction: Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. In this class we’ve often seen that two categories can be deficient, but this is what we are given.
So if you are pro-life, you could be for or against birth control, but you are more likely to be against the morning-after pill, and most likely against RU-486. If you are pro-choice, it’s assumed you are pro-birth control, pro-morning-after-pill, and probably pro-RU-486.
The ideas, I gather, behind the pro-life argument include that anything that denies the existence of a human that is “supposed” to be here is immoral, interfering with the work of God, and ultimately, an act of murder. This is often backed up by Science that details the workings & legitimacy of the life of the fetus. The ideas behind the pro-choice argument include that a woman who exists in this life already should be able to control what is created by her body, esp. in the case of something that will require care for 18 years or more. You could say, in terms of God, that it recognizes the woman also as a creature made by God, given the ability to make choices by God. Science is also used in these arguments to state how a fetus is different from a person.
If we think about Designer Babies, how do they fit in to the idea that some life is “supposed” to be here? Would a pro-lifer potentially argue that if a woman cannot get pregnant, it is because God has not willed it? Would her use of in vitro then be just as unnatural as birth control? I do not feel that I have heard this argument coming out of the pro-life camp as often as we hear anti-abortion sentiment--perhaps it is because fertility treatments are “right” because they are bringing to life something we all know is right: cute babies who wear sunglasses and hiccup inside the womb. Alternatively, it could be argued that God sent us genetic testing and IVF and so they are all fair game, or that it is simply a biological urge that cannot be denied, so women can’t help but strive to have a baby by any means.
Beyond fertility treatments, designer babies include modifying specific genes or traits in a potential baby--this can further enter into the discussion of whether or not we are playing God/interfering with natural creation as we make these decisions. What types of human life do we prefer, accept, and avoid? Are some of our technologies un-natural? Immoral?
We saw the image on the Birth Control poster stating “The Pill Kills.” We saw the eugenics tree on the Designer Baby poster. Driving on 35 in any direction we see the use of scientific “facts” on billboards to legitimate the idea that the fetus is a person already. Making your opposition out to be murderers is a powerful tactic. Doing so with accompanying numbers and statistics and research institutions is even more powerful.
This makes me think of cord blood banking--an expensive procedure when done privately, to save your baby's cord blood for a later date, if needed for disease treatment. Telling a parent (who can afford it) that banking cord blood may save their child’s life someday is probably going to make them do it, even if the evidence doesn’t exactly say that the blood will actually be effective. Similarly, both birth control and “designer baby” procedures are relatively new on the scene of mankind, and both take significant action to alter the functioning of a human body--and we may or may not have anticipated the long-term effects. (Are women gaining in freedom while risking their bodies and hormones to a larger experiment?)
These particular “scientific” issues are extremely emotional. It seems clear that trying to be objective about birth control or babies is a really, really, really hard task. No one wants to lose a child, no one wants their child to suffer a painful disease, and no one wants to inadvertently kill a child. These issues are complicated.
When we pretend they are not complicated is when it all gets extra dangerous.
We began this class reading the work of a bioethicist with a background in medical science, but I get the feeling that most (“hard”) scientists do not consider themselves to be working primarily to create society’s ethics. However, these various debates sift out our values, deciding what is acceptable and what is not. If you really want to declare what is or is not acceptable, backing it up with Science sure seems to help a position gain strength.
Its easy for this to invite cynicism. Instead what Latour points out to us is that we must be honest with ourselves, not expect way too much of our efforts and our conclusions. We must come around again and again, exploring our current ideas of reality, until, eventually death trumps us and the next person takes over.
Of course they are both related to babies, and controlling the outcomes related to babies--but on the surface maybe you hear “birth control” and hear “no babies,” and hear “designer babies” and think “yes babies!” But really they just seem to circle around and around to each other. No babies, no babies now, yes babies, these babies not those babies, yes any and all babies.
In our everyday political dialogue, we are usually divided into two camps related to reproduction: Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. In this class we’ve often seen that two categories can be deficient, but this is what we are given.
So if you are pro-life, you could be for or against birth control, but you are more likely to be against the morning-after pill, and most likely against RU-486. If you are pro-choice, it’s assumed you are pro-birth control, pro-morning-after-pill, and probably pro-RU-486.
The ideas, I gather, behind the pro-life argument include that anything that denies the existence of a human that is “supposed” to be here is immoral, interfering with the work of God, and ultimately, an act of murder. This is often backed up by Science that details the workings & legitimacy of the life of the fetus. The ideas behind the pro-choice argument include that a woman who exists in this life already should be able to control what is created by her body, esp. in the case of something that will require care for 18 years or more. You could say, in terms of God, that it recognizes the woman also as a creature made by God, given the ability to make choices by God. Science is also used in these arguments to state how a fetus is different from a person.
If we think about Designer Babies, how do they fit in to the idea that some life is “supposed” to be here? Would a pro-lifer potentially argue that if a woman cannot get pregnant, it is because God has not willed it? Would her use of in vitro then be just as unnatural as birth control? I do not feel that I have heard this argument coming out of the pro-life camp as often as we hear anti-abortion sentiment--perhaps it is because fertility treatments are “right” because they are bringing to life something we all know is right: cute babies who wear sunglasses and hiccup inside the womb. Alternatively, it could be argued that God sent us genetic testing and IVF and so they are all fair game, or that it is simply a biological urge that cannot be denied, so women can’t help but strive to have a baby by any means.
Beyond fertility treatments, designer babies include modifying specific genes or traits in a potential baby--this can further enter into the discussion of whether or not we are playing God/interfering with natural creation as we make these decisions. What types of human life do we prefer, accept, and avoid? Are some of our technologies un-natural? Immoral?
We saw the image on the Birth Control poster stating “The Pill Kills.” We saw the eugenics tree on the Designer Baby poster. Driving on 35 in any direction we see the use of scientific “facts” on billboards to legitimate the idea that the fetus is a person already. Making your opposition out to be murderers is a powerful tactic. Doing so with accompanying numbers and statistics and research institutions is even more powerful.
This makes me think of cord blood banking--an expensive procedure when done privately, to save your baby's cord blood for a later date, if needed for disease treatment. Telling a parent (who can afford it) that banking cord blood may save their child’s life someday is probably going to make them do it, even if the evidence doesn’t exactly say that the blood will actually be effective. Similarly, both birth control and “designer baby” procedures are relatively new on the scene of mankind, and both take significant action to alter the functioning of a human body--and we may or may not have anticipated the long-term effects. (Are women gaining in freedom while risking their bodies and hormones to a larger experiment?)
These particular “scientific” issues are extremely emotional. It seems clear that trying to be objective about birth control or babies is a really, really, really hard task. No one wants to lose a child, no one wants their child to suffer a painful disease, and no one wants to inadvertently kill a child. These issues are complicated.
When we pretend they are not complicated is when it all gets extra dangerous.
We began this class reading the work of a bioethicist with a background in medical science, but I get the feeling that most (“hard”) scientists do not consider themselves to be working primarily to create society’s ethics. However, these various debates sift out our values, deciding what is acceptable and what is not. If you really want to declare what is or is not acceptable, backing it up with Science sure seems to help a position gain strength.
Its easy for this to invite cynicism. Instead what Latour points out to us is that we must be honest with ourselves, not expect way too much of our efforts and our conclusions. We must come around again and again, exploring our current ideas of reality, until, eventually death trumps us and the next person takes over.
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