The idea of progress: What effect do these advances have on our society?

Ideas of progress

I am going to talk about the idea of progress. First of all, I would like to give a definition of the notion of progress. It is the theory that the different advances in technology, science and social organization can produce an improvement in the human condition. Progress implies a change and evolution but it‘s impossible without human. However, the speed of progress seems to have accelerated over the last few years and technological breakthroughs and scientific development are causing some people question this progress. What effect do these advances have on our society? To give the answer to this question, I have chosen two documents: a cartoon that shows the production of clones and the extract from the novel the Brave New World by Aldous Huxley which talks about the manufacturing of babies. So we will consider scientific progress and specifically cloning and advances in genetic engineering.

Now, science is on the rise. The term cloning, in biology, means the fact of reproducing living organism to obtain genetically identical beings. We analyzed in class a visual document in the form of a cartoon which represented a manufacturing plant producing clones. The cartoonist duplicated a factory conveyor belt where newly- produced nearly-naked men were appearing one by one. Four of them were exact duplicated-tall, muscular and tanned men who all had the same wide, tooth-baring grin. The odd man out was about half their size, pale and thin with disproportionately large feet and hands and is wearing effeminate pink underpants. He was lifted by his scalp by large metal tongs, to be dropped into the huge dumpster labeled which was full of other defective clones. The cartoonist was very critical of the idea of perfecting human genetics. Each of the perfect men taken individually does have very nice physical traits.  But all of these perfect men seen together is dehumanizing and an individual’s charm is usually due to our unique and often quirky combination of features. The cartoonist calls us to consider the idea of eugenics which was once viewed as a revolutionary idea. Indeed, in theory, eugenics aimed to improve humanity to make us better beings. The cartoon pushes the concept to the extreme, where everyone is identical. Nowadays, we view eugenics as a way of justifying racist and coercive public health policies.

We also looked at the extract from the book Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley in 1932. He described a dystopia where man has been subordinated to his own inventions. The world’s population is governed by a single political authority. Men are made in test tube and are duplicated to obtain genetically identical individuals from a single egg. They are undergoing brainwashing for they don’t feel emotion. “Sciences babies” is an extract from the book. The action takes place in the Department of Hatcheries and Conditioning. The director of this center explains that all human being are created in laboratory the fetus evolves in the test tube. Every egg develops into an adult without diseases. Huxley wants to warn us about the hazards of genetic engineering. We must be aware of these dangers. How dangerous and powerful technology and scientific research can be dangerous in the hands of the over consumer state. The novel of Aldous Huxley served as an inspiration of The Matrix, a science fiction movie where human are controlled in the virtual world by machines.

...