Do All Roads Lead to Rome?

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. - Albert Einstein

Once upon a time, there was a loud Big Bang that gave birth to a powerful being called Theory. She carried on procreating and along came her little special ones; Destiny and Choice. Never did she imagine that infants born of the same zygote could grow up to be so different; nor did she anticipate that the succession of chaos they would create, would last until the end of time.

Debates and discussions regarding destiny, fate, and/or choice never reach an absolute conclusion. As time has evolved, so has our dependency on tangible faith and belief systems. These are generally supported by facts, with specific reference to scientific evidence. It is with this that people’s belief in fate and destiny has dwindled. In addition, as time has gone by, the definition itself has altered.

The concept of fate has existed throughout all civilizations as well as mythologies. In Greek mythology, the three Goddesses dispensing fate were known as the Moirae, and they appeared in the child’s life three days post-birth. The child’s destiny was then laid out through the mystic spinning of the Goddesses threads. This in turn determines the world’s events, through all these intertwined threads of fate. Not only is this belief common to mythology, it is consistent with most spiritual and religious doctrines in some form or another.

That brings us to a very important question; can we control our fate to a certain extent or are we merely puppets with invisible strings that we call intuition? Is it completely out of our hands (no pun intended)? This conversation usually proceeds as follows:

Dim-Wit: Yes it is completely out of our hands.

Athena: If our fate is completely out of our hands and it is written out for us, how is one penalized for committing a crime? If it is our destiny to murder, to steal, and to be evil, why must you suffer for the so-called sins that are your pre-written destiny?

Dim-Wit: Are you saying that God makes people commit crimes??

Athena: Well, based on your definition of fate being completely out of our hands, yes that is exactly what I am saying.

Dim-Wit: No, we all have choices, and if we make the wrong choice then it is our own fault.

Athena: So then a part of fate IS in our hands through choice, therefore not everything is maktoob (pre-written) in the context in which it is understood.

Dim-Wit: What?? You blasphemous child!!! Everything IS maktoob!! Do not blame God for the Satanic acts of you and your generation!

Athena: I am not; I am blaming your dim-witted and inconsistent logic trying to understand your logic.

And therefore (for those who believe in fate) it seems that it is not entirely out of our hands. It is usually combined with choice. Considering that there is a certain element of choice involved, it makes you wonder why we bother with all this in the first place! But there is always a reason we bother, especially when it concerns death. You reach a fork in the road and you decide to go right. That choice leads to your death. Had you chosen left, you might have lived. But wait, you were fated to turn right, were you not? If you had turned left, would you have died anyway? Or would your destination (death) have been prolonged due to a different choice? I have drawn some illustrations to demonstrate what it is that I am trying to say. Does it look like Illustration 1, 2, 3 or 4? Does it look like anything at all? Could it be an empty post-it where nothing is shaped but just is?

The questions are endless, with no answers in sight. It could be for this very reason that the concept of faith exists; due to the fact that human minds have difficulty grasping the vastness of life and the universe, such that barriers and boundaries are usually required, in order to maintain an ounce of sanity in this crazy world. Also, the thought that a loved one could have lived they chosen left instead right, can be unbearable.

Many wonder why we bother discussing topics as such, where an attempt to answer a question only yields more questions. Some question, due to the fact that their actions are directly related to their end destination (death), and they are driven by the fear/thought of what comes after. Therefore all their actions are influenced by what they assume will buy them a one-way ticket to Heaven. Preferably First Class. Others question in an attempt to stretch their own minds and the minds of others. Not in order to find answers, but to understand that life is much bigger than we are, and that ‘the safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.’- Voltaire.

Chains of Subjugation

Your barks, they stab me
They cause me to bleed
Through my melting flesh
And off the ashes you feed

Your roars, they burn me
Toxicity, carved into my soul
Frantic, I am floored
Desperate to remain whole

Your hisses, they paralyze me
Drowning in my own tears
You watch and assimilate, gleeful
I'm choking through your cheers

Your acrimony, it ignites me
And through your flames I rise
Careful, for my heat does flare
It is you who I despise

Cursed through your enmity
You’ve planted roots of sin
Wrapped in your bitter fury
Emancipate me, where do I begin?

It is Life that bequeaths fire
Entrusting us to tame its treasure
Such delinquency, such desecration
Disclose your damaged roots of pleasure

Bestowed with luminous wings
I flutter and strive to glide
But chains of subjugation do follow
Of what use if I am tied?

A hope to fly through your zephyrs
A dream to dance away the gale
Though belligerent is your filthy storm
And through fallacies of bliss do I fail

But this harness of restrain will disintegrate
Through the venom of your acid discourse
It is then that I glide afar, into oblivion
Withdrawing from your odious remorse

Regret and repent you will
For the darkness of night does burn
Don't reach for me at sunset
Only your spiteful shadow shall return

Lessons in Line

You may have come across your personality twin or even your opposite, but have you ever met your tangent?

A witty wise child once humbly approached me with the stated question. Prior to our deep delve into the darkness, some background information must be provided for those who suffer from short term memory loss and/or mathematical impairment.

Dictionary.com tells us that a Tangent Line is ‘a line or a plane that touches a curve or a surface at a point so that it is closer to the curve in the vicinity of the point than any other line or plane drawn through the point.’

The correlation between mathematics and human behaviour might not be as independent as one would imagine. After all, mathematics was born to support science, which is the child of Divine creation (AKA God). For all the Atheists and Agnostics who beg to differ, I leave you with the First Law of Thermodynamics which states that Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another. This means that even those who do not believe in ‘God’ per say, must believe in a higher power or field of some sort. You may use the word Energy to replace what has been referred to as Divine creation if you like (although Energy itself is the first infant of the Divine creation). But hey, tomato tomato right?

Returning to the topic at hand, the above statement gives indication that one associates it with their soul mate or life partner. However when equating tangent lines to human relationships, it seems the appropriate affiliation to assign here is that of acquaintances, friendships, or even family relations at times. For simplicity’s sake, we will only consider friendships, ceteris paribus.

A tangent can touch a curve at any given point, which indicates that there are infinite amounts of potential tangent lines, and in turn it supports that people are multidimensional. Analysing it through a lens untarnished by ‘Civilization’, you can conclude that this concept mirrors that of human interactions and it demonstrates that people require more than one kind of relationship. Our personalities are attributed to our genes as well as our environment and experiences, and it is this diversity that sculpts our building blocks. Stimulation is always desired in various forms be it mental, physical, or emotional, which proves a need for more than one tangent line to our curves. Guys, don’t get ahead of yourselves, I am not referring to your so-called ‘birth right’ of Polygamy.

It is through these tangents that we expand our horizons and attempt to break down barriers. It is through these experiences and situations where we have opportunities to learn from different races, religions, cultures and backgrounds. When meeting the right (or wrong) type of person, the slope of your curve might change, along with their tangent line. Our slopes are continuously changing as we grow older and wiser, and as we gain more exposure. It is due to this that certain encounters affect us more than others. There are those who touch your life for just a moment, however the ripples of their impact imprint themselves onto your souls, changing the slope of your curves. Therefore it is inaccurate to use the analogy of the tangent line to model committed relationships, because they eventually diverge away from each other. For this reason, it is more appropriate to consider the geometric concept of the Asymptote.

An Asymptote is a line whose distance to a given curve tends to zero. It may or may not intersect its associated curve. This term is more correctly associated with committed relationships, due to the fact that regardless of the point of inception, the aim is to enjoy the journey whilst working towards infinity. Therefore it is safe to say that everyone has met some sort of tangent in their lives, however not everybody has met one of their asymptotes.

Our generation has been blessed with the greatest gifts, as we are able to bathe in an ocean of unlimited opportunities. But instead, we concentrate on all the barriers and metaphorical boundaries that separate us. If we were to break open our minds and remove the filters from our eyes, we would see that no matter who we encounter in our lives, and as different as we may be to one another, we share at least one tangent.

Accept the differences and embrace the tangents.

Faces of Loneliness

It eats through your soul
A vulture that devours its way through
A tongue that melts into the emptiness
Brings its only companion to you

A lifeless heartbeat
Hysterically throbs through silence
It weeps, it bawls, it roars
Its hunger resorts to violence

Bleeding with fury into the echo
With wrath it slowly claws in
It breeds into the vacuum
Provocation that leads to sin

These baneful parasites
Nurture and feed with iniquity
Conflicting perceptions, antagonistic senses
Such submissive familiarity

A dynamic, invisible seed
Flourishes into hostile vice
Promises of love, hopes of life
What illusions does it entice?

Blissful hallucinations
Mirages of twittering serenades
Time, then the vision eludes you
And into solitary it fades

With empty breezes
Do the winds pine and yearn
Quivering fires that dwindle
But remain do the scars that still burn

It eats through your soul
A vulture that devours its way through
A tongue that melts into the emptiness
It's over, there's nothing left to do

Designer Babies - A New Phenomenon

Science and technology are continuously advancing at an exponential rate, one that most of us are struggling to keep up with. Genetic engineering and genetic modification have always been subjects under great scrutiny, due to the ethical issues that accompany the scientific growth and progression. It started over a decade ago with the world’s first cloned mammal, Dolly the Scottish sheep. A year later came Lucy the Canadian mouse, who was the first mammal with artificially implanted genes. The unique aspect of Lucy was that the artificial genes could be inherited by her offspring, a phenomenon proving scientists may eventually be able to manipulate the human genes.

Many years and many discoveries later, we arrive at yet another controversial issue; that of Designer Babies. According to www.bionetonline.org, a designer baby is 'a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics'. Currently there are only two types of advanced reproductive technologies that are legal; the first involves sex determination, where you can choose to have either a boy or a girl, and the second technique screens the embryos for a genetic disease, where only the healthy embryos will be implanted back into the mothers womb.

IVF initially only assisted the infertile to procreate, but now it potentially allows the parents to determine the genetic make up of their offspring. This is done through a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). In PDG an embryo is created by IVF and then a single cell is removed. After the embryo is grown to an eight cell stage it is genetically tested for defects and/or for the sex of the baby. The parents then decide whether to implant the embryo in the mothers’ womb or to discard it.

Although currently PGD does not involve the genetic modification of human embryos, it does not mean that it is risk free. Some researchers fear that the removal of one or two cells from eight cell embryos might have unknown problems for the well-being of the people created by PGD. Defenders of PGD respond that the cells of eight-cell embryos are still capable of forming all the cells of the human body, despite the removal of cells at such an early stage. Even with all the conducted research, it is still too early to tell who is right in this dispute due to the fact that the technology has only been in use for under a decade. It is also only a matter of time before it is possible to genetically modify a human embryo as researchers have gained much knowledge of the human genome.

So where does all this scientific technology stand? How far can we go in orchestrating reproduction? We are running an endless race with no finish line in sight. Due to this, we need to pause and think about the moral and ethical limits. And to find an answer, other questions must be addressed:

1. Is there a moral or ethical difference between using genetic technologies to prevent disease and to enhance human capacities?
2. Should parents encourage genetic enhancement for their future children?
3. What effect will all this have on society?

Is there a distinction between treating or preventing disease and enhancing traits? It is difficult to find definitions of disease suitable to serve as a moral guideline for genetic technologies. A disease is a condition that is abnormal and harmful to society. The problem with this definition of disease is that it is not specific enough. Illnesses such as cancer and multiple sclerosis fall into the broad and accepted definition, but what about homosexuality? There are certain societies and cultures that perceive homosexuality as an illness and a defect, a trait that is harmful to society. Scientists are inclined to believe that homosexuality arises from a combination of factors such as genetic and environmental. Currently there are no documented discoveries that support this inclination. However, if it were to be discovered that there is a malfunction in the brain that leads to homosexuality, does that deny them the right to exist?

There are debates that preventing a disease is the same as enhancing human capacities. If you can prevent a person from developing a disease, you improve their health which in turn could possibly extend their life span. Others argue that they are not the same due to the fact that improving your IQ is not preventing a disease; it is in fact enhancing the capacity of human beings.

In addition to that, the more liberal frame of thought is that parents manipulate the surroundings and environment of their children everyday to lead to an enhanced life. They send them to good schools, they prevent them from the influence of negative company and they introduce them to religion. All this is done with the aim to shape them according to what the parents deem right. On the other hand, there are people who argue against all this innovation saying that there is a significant difference between upbringing and genetic enhancement. hey believe that such enhancements are unnatural and would lead to the loss of humanity in future generations.

If genetics progresses in this manner, life will change and people will change. It has already begun. The balance in the world is being disrupted and nature is being tampered with. In some countries it is legal to choose the sex of your child. It is a relatively easy process, as the Y chromosomes are smaller than the X chromosomes and they carry less DNA. They are stained with a nontoxic light-sensitive dye, allowing scientists to sort sperm by sex. This type of freedom is guaranteed to disrupt nature’s course of action and this is because there are many countries and societies where the life of a boy is regarded to be of higher value.

Due to all these factors, there is a growing anxiety concerning innovation and people’s ability to cope with it. People are generally opposed to change but when it concerns science, many view it only from one side of the fence. It seems the undefined line of bioethics keeps getting distorted and less clear. We are now allowed to choose the sex of our child. How long will it be before we can determine and select their height, weight, eye colour, and hair colour? Is that ethically wrong too? Why are we allowed to choose the sex of our child, but not the eye colour? NY Times states that 'by around 2010 parents will be able to genetically ensure their babies won't grow up to be fat or alcoholic, and by 2050 arrange to insert an extra gene into single-cell embryos within 24 hours of conception to make babies resistant to AIDS'. There was a time when we questioned the ethics of surrogacy as well as sperm donors. Sperm banks created a huge controversy as it was said that it was equivalent to ‘shopping’ for the correct DNA. As time went by, the shock of these innovations subsided and eventually society accepted them. It is very possible that with time people will be open to the idea of designer babies along with many other scientific discoveries.

It is however, important to understand the affect all this has on society and humanity. We are the ones to shape the future of the coming generations, and although science opens up doors that many of us never thought to exist, we are responsible for the butterly effect that follows. Designer babies are one of the many concepts which have progressed from theory to reality. We now have to understand where it will lead to and where we should draw the line of scientific implementation.