Great article, thanks. Yes, this technology has huge implications. For one thing, it gives us an opportunity to think more deeply and holistically about what the phrase "healthy baby" really means.
A "healthy baby" is not just a baby without medical issues. That's too narrow a definition. To think more holistically, we can propose that healthy baby is a new human being who will add net positive value to the society in to which it is born. A baby is not an isolated phenomena, but instead part of something far larger upon which it depends. The baby depends on society, and society upon the baby. It's not two things, but one, a single unified interdependent system.
To understand "net positive value" we might ask what are the biggest obstacles to human flourishing, and how does a new human being relate to those challenges?
My answer would be that violent men present the biggest threat to human flourishing, as is being illustrated so clearly today in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and countless other places. Weaker societies around the world are already collapsing under the pressure brought by violent men, and no nation is immune. We here in America can be erased in just minutes from multiple sources.
Seen this way, the crucial question is whether a new baby will evolve in to yet another violent man. To my knowledge there's no way to know that currently, and so the question must be simplified to, will this baby be male?
And here is where such conversations collapse. At this point we become unwilling to explore further because we are suffering profoundly from the illusion that the status quo is sustainable. In a self delusional wishful thinking manner we complacently assume that we have the option to continue as always, dodging large inconvenient troubling questions such as gender selection.
And so the world the new "healthy baby" is born in to is not at all healthy, but instead suffering from the civilization threatening disease of violent men. And by ignoring this, and refusing to think deeply and boldly about such matters, we may be condemning the healthy baby to a coming tidal wave of pain.
Great article, thanks. Yes, this technology has huge implications. For one thing, it gives us an opportunity to think more deeply and holistically about what the phrase "healthy baby" really means.
A "healthy baby" is not just a baby without medical issues. That's too narrow a definition. To think more holistically, we can propose that healthy baby is a new human being who will add net positive value to the society in to which it is born. A baby is not an isolated phenomena, but instead part of something far larger upon which it depends. The baby depends on society, and society upon the baby. It's not two things, but one, a single unified interdependent system.
To understand "net positive value" we might ask what are the biggest obstacles to human flourishing, and how does a new human being relate to those challenges?
My answer would be that violent men present the biggest threat to human flourishing, as is being illustrated so clearly today in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and countless other places. Weaker societies around the world are already collapsing under the pressure brought by violent men, and no nation is immune. We here in America can be erased in just minutes from multiple sources.
Seen this way, the crucial question is whether a new baby will evolve in to yet another violent man. To my knowledge there's no way to know that currently, and so the question must be simplified to, will this baby be male?
And here is where such conversations collapse. At this point we become unwilling to explore further because we are suffering profoundly from the illusion that the status quo is sustainable. In a self delusional wishful thinking manner we complacently assume that we have the option to continue as always, dodging large inconvenient troubling questions such as gender selection.
And so the world the new "healthy baby" is born in to is not at all healthy, but instead suffering from the civilization threatening disease of violent men. And by ignoring this, and refusing to think deeply and boldly about such matters, we may be condemning the healthy baby to a coming tidal wave of pain.