Updated: 10/1/02; 4:29:30 PM.
Benblog
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Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Someday, we should be able to trace geneaology using DNA. Someday, maybe even spectrally, examining vast tracts of DNA and DNA remains, maybe reconstructing an entire ancestry, down to the first humans, down to the fabric of the universe. Would that be like God, recreating ourselves, even our images? Is that what God is, knowing the pollen floating in the air above my keyboard contains within the history of the entire universe, and it's future?

I wonder how that might transform humans, either bringing us together, or creating further divisions, splits along ancestral as well as ideological grounds. If technology were focused on discovery origins, what type of knowledge would we have today? Would psychics be the astronauts?

Anymore, when people ask me to make predictions on the future of such and such or so and so, more and more my answer is that prognostication is for people who have lived hundreds of generations, or even tens of generations. We do not know. And the outcome, the question itself, often posits knowing that some path we're on today is wrong, when we will only know the damages or benefits of that path long, long after we first took it.

That's one bone I have with "no regrets" policies - policies will have their own regrets, intended or not. I think a better approach might be, to paraphrase Thich Nhat Hahn, to minimize suffering.


1:02:49 AM    comment []


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