This is the most corrosive effect of liberal neo-eugenics: in positing that an individual ideal of embodiment is something that can be specified, quantified and realised, it creates a framework for torturing both our children and ourselves. Why are we not this perfect thing? Why are we not fitter, happier, more productive? I’m not particularly sentimental about the value of disability in any particular case, but I think it is crucial to acknowledge disability as part of human variation. In treating ever more traits and qualities as things to be measured, ranked and diagnosed, we are doing the opposite – turning variation itself into something like disability.
I would pay to ensure my kid didn’t have any disabilities, but not to ensure they were strong or tall or had a certain hair or whatever. Just to be sure they were healthy so they could fuck their life up however they felt fit
I think in an ideal world, I would be okay with doing like a genetic assay to see what would need to be done to give my child the best possible start in life.
So like if they could filter out everything that’s bad from my DNA and make sure that only the best parts of me and my significant other made it to our kid, that would be okayish with me.
But once you’re at that point, you’re already covering the cost for IVF, and part of me would prefer to just make kids the old-fashioned way.
For me personally, I think it would be okay to use techology to get the best baby, but pretty much impossible to objectively define what’s actually best. Every improvement in evolution started as a random mutation with new properties. Not everything was necessarily an improvement at that point in point in time, but then - due to a changed environment - suddenly turned out to be a huge advantage.
In the last ice age, it was super important to be as hairy as possible.
For a very long time it was crucial to be physically fit, strong, fast etc.
In the last decades physical attributes were mostly replaced with intelligence to succeed in life. But who knows if intelligence will still be that important if technology further advances?
With climate change many places of the world will have tougher consitions. So should we optimize for heat resistance, low water consumption and efficient food processing?
If I were to design the perfect baby as a template for every new human, I would focus on psychology. E.g., I’d try to lower greed and jealousy and instead try to make humans who are more emphatic and easily satisfied with what they have. So while having skills ‘just good enough for survival’, the main target would be happiness. So like an ascetic mixture of human and sloth that’s just sitting around smiling even if not everything is perfect and fully optimized.
Humanity, compared to all other species that we know, so far managed to achieve an insane amount of growth. But I’d say while our wealth grew and processes became more and more complex that didn’t necessarily make us happier. We still hate each other, fight each other and our lifes are full of drama, crisis and issues. We are unhappy no matter what we have as long as something could be better, something could be improved, someone else has more.
So that’s why I see the human ambition as the key factor for our success in the world so far and at the same time as the ultimate flaw in our genome that should be eliminated.
