NP - Stem Cell Fumble

[barbara100 at jps.net]

>>The evil is autonomous and
> > will continue with or
> > without us.

No, evil is not autonomous, and it wouldn't continue on with or without us.
I read a passage in GR just yesterday where Enzian and his narrator are
discussing /thinking rocket technology and technology as a means of power.
I marked it so I could go back to read it again,  but I think he means to
say is that when utilizing the powers of technology, we have to consider our
motivation as it relates to our sense of power.  Power's obviously a big
theme with Pynchon--you see it in the freaky cage-boy sex, and you see it in
his characters and  top secret organizations.  But where the rocket is
concerned,  Pynchon's talking about deadly technological power in the hands
of nin-cum-poop eaters and militaristic sex monsters! You think Pynchon's
trying to tell us something?

"Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been
iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger
Schwartzkommando especially), 'All very well to talk about having a rocket
if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't *wanted*
to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go
ahead, capitalize the T on technology, defy it if it'll make you feel less
responsible--but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the
eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are__'
"We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were
never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were
encouraged to avoid..."    (GR p607)

I say if all we're doin' is decimating (if you could really call it that) 60
or so lines of stem cells (whatever they are, so small they probably be
floatin' down the bathroom drain and we don't even notice).  If it's gonna
be a choice between rocket science and stem cell research (and it does come
down to a Technological choice, no doubt),  I say let 'em have all the
*sacred*  lines they can get their microscopes on if it'll save even one
block!









----- Original Message -----
From: wood jim <jim33wood at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: NP - Stem Cell Fumble


>
> --- David Morris <fqmorris at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > We've been sliding down this slope since DNA was
> > discovered.  It's too  late
> > to stop it now.  Much evil can and probably will be
> > done, but what we're
> > aiming for is the good.  The evil is autonomous and
> > will continue with or
> > without us.
>
>
> I tend to look at these issues not as matters of
> discovery or science, but technology. And, from the
> Greeks, I understad that technological problems are
> problems for moral philosophy. I know it's stupid, but
>
> I agree with Nancy Reagan on this, well, not really,
> but we have to find a moral position from whcih we can
> just say no. Once the technology enters the culture it
> will evolve and no one, not the techno/political
> elite,
> masters of information not knowledge, not even god, if
> she exists, or nature, miss scatter brains her own
> self, can say how. When you introduce earth worms to
> an environment where they were not, you don't get the
> old environment plus the worms, you get a can of worms
> or a new  environment. This can and often does work to
> human advantage, sometimes even to the advantage of
> other species, but there are alwasy winners and losers
> and we simply cannot ALWAYS know or predict with
> information who or what they will be with any degree
> of certainty or moral certitude.
>
> Think about the alphabet as technology. Good
> arguments, retrospectively, can be made, that the
> alphabet is
> a benificial technology. But, as we have just read GR,
> we know that it was not benificial to all. But my
> point is, the time to decide if a technology is
> morally
> something we want, is before it the can of worms is
> opened.
>
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