Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
view of the good person—and if so, it is a serious limitation of his
work—what protection do we have that we are not making the same
mistake? If we choose to enhance a particular characteristic of current
value, what assurance have we that we are not using our science to per-
petuate our self-image?
Givenness and Serendipity
By contrast, I am arguing that we are given to ourselves, yet we do not
know what has been given. Insofar as I have a future, I do not know
myself. Part of that future will be the result of choices I make for reasons
that I am aware of and understand. But it is also the case that my future
contains surprises for me—changes in attitude, twists of fate, unintended
consequences, or simple growth and maturity that I neither anticipate
nor understand given my current experience and knowledge. Whatever
I will be in twenty years, or twenty days for that matter, will be the result
of happenings both anticipated and unanticipated. I will be more than,
or less than, and in any case different than my current hopes for myself.
That, of course, is what distinguishes me from my machines and my pets.
The surprises my car holds for me involve how long it will work, not
what kind of work it will do, while my dog holds surprises not only of
longevity but also obedience. In part, what makes my pet more inter-
esting than my car (and considerably less useful) are the surprises he
holds in store for me.
My children illustrate the same point on a much more profound level.
There is a role played out by my desires for my children, but there is a
strange and remarkable interaction between parental design and the
child's emerging life, in which both elements have their role to play, the
dominant one being the child's life.
This is the point of importance for the thought of genetic enhance-
ment. I cannot claim to know the full adequacy of my plans, nor can I
claim the power to bring those plans to completion. I am a player in the
drama of life and its regeneration, but only one player among many, only
one limited, mistake-prone intelligence, one storm-tossed, blindly
insightful emotional presence. The only antidote I have to my finitude is
time, the time to let myself, my children, and my friends live themselves
into what they are. If I try to choose the future of my children (or my
