When Natural Reproduction Ends - Genetic Choice Replaces Gender Reveal In The Post-Human Generation

Ours will be the last recognizable, old-fashioned human generation – a human race unchanged since the emergence of homo sapiens 200,000 years ago.  Soon genetic engineering and symbiotic interface with the computer will alter this living fossil and render it recognizable only to paleontologists who will look upon it as today’s scientists look at Neanderthals, apes, and dinosaurs.  Slow, progressive Darwinian evolution will be a thing of the past.  Radical, immediate, revolutionary change will be the new algorithm.

Since the human genome was completely sequenced, the identification of specific gene configurations linked to human characteristics and behavior has become routine; and the engineering of some of those sequences to modify or eliminate them has proceeded quickly.  It will not be long before all genetic sequences will have been identified, codified, sorted and catalogued, and available for modification. 

Natural reproduction will be a thing of the past.  Leaving such an important decisions to chance when selective certainty is a reality would be folly. Within only a few years, parents will be able to select the child they want and not be held to any racial, intellectual, or physical constraints of traditional reproduction. 

The DNA of the most intelligent, the most beautiful, and the most athletic men and women alive today, and that harvested from the genetic material of those who have died will be available to all. 

In short, the guesswork will be taken out of reproduction, the stakes will never be higher and classical free market principles of supply and demand will include humanity's most precious commodity -selective fertility. 

Naysayers are already protesting biogenetic laboratories. The outcry is already loud and insistent.  Artificial reproductive choice is  a clear distortion if not perversion of God’s will.  Once parents can choose from a catalog and pick the child they want, the human race will become little more than Barbie clones and Hollywood automatons.

Yet such selectivity is already happening.  The market for high-quality eggs is booming.  The ova of women of breeding, beauty, and intelligence go for a premium, and the same prices are paid for the sperm of aristocratic, handsome, intelligent men from Yale. 

Genetic defects are weeded out before in vitro fertilization, and expectant couples can be sure of desirable results. Some DNA of the 'natural' parents can be combined with imported material - only that which will add to and not detract from that donated - and the product is assured within a high degree of probability to be what was expected. 

That is now, so it is easy to imagine how easily prospective parents would opt for even more aggressive and satisfying genetic recombination. 

Post-human reproduction will not only be a matter of personal beauty, intelligence, artistic ability, or physical prowess but will enable us to more easily adapt to a changing environment. The second important implication of this rapid evolution will be Man’s complete control of his environment.  No amount of global warming, Ice Age cooling, or variant climate change will be of any consequence.  

Just as agriculturalists are genetically modifying plants to be resistant to drought, pests, and soil depletion; so will human engineers be able to modify our genome to adapt to current environmental conditions.   Cities will not have to be changed to accommodate global warming.  Human beings will change. 

The ability to thrive in water, to breathe different compositions of air, and to live well in either colder or warmer climates will be easily programmed.  Environmentalism will die as a movement, and human modification will be the focus of all attention.  The alterations are infinite. 

On a recent BBC World Service program, a group of space scientists were gathered to discuss these and other aspects of the post-human era.  “What about the human soul”, the moderator asked, wondering whether or not these post-humans would still be human.   

None of the participants were particularly troubled by the question, since they all had assumed that the soul was no more than the particular configurations of DNA which resulted in varying degrees of insight, intelligence, creativity, and sensitivity.  Post-humans will be no different, they all agreed.  Only their individual genomes will have been altered to produce a very different human reality – in other words a different human soul.

“What about God?” would have been the next question had time remained; and indeed the subject is essential.  Religious conservatives will certainly object not only to tampering with God’s creation but playing God; but equally faithful but less doctrinaire believers will only conclude that God’s hand is miraculous and all-powerful.  Everything that happens on Earth or anywhere in the universe was caused by him.  He simply set the ball rolling.

Secularists will be the least distressed.  There is no God to be offended.  Evolution, whether happening the old way or the new, is simply a neutral, value-free progression from past to present.  There is no purpose to evolution, and the only reality is change.  The concept of  anicca - impermanence is an undeniable and inescapable fact of human existence from which nothing that belongs to this earth is ever free – has long been at the heart  of Buddhism.

On a more practical level, such assisted reproduction will eliminate unwanted babies. Women will opt for voluntary sterilization, male serial sexuality for so long criticized as misogynist at best and socially irresponsible at worst will be freed from artificial social constriction, and insular communities - such as inner cities which have never been able to refresh the gene pool, will finally be able to reach out beyond restrictive covenants. The children of the ghetto can be of greater intelligence, beauty, and ability than those destined to finish their lives there. 

The Law Of Unexpected Consequences will certainly have its day.  As much men might dream of a mating pool of stunningly beautiful blonde, blue-eyed women, would this be too much of a good thing? It certainly would be a great thing to have America filled with Einstein quality geniuses, its museums and art galleries filled with new Rembrandts and Picassos.  Tinkering with the unknown leads to more unknown, of course, but the genie is out of the bottle.  There is no putting it back, and the post-human revolution is upon us. 

An ancillary aspect of the revolution is the ultimate mind-computer interface.  Already the electronic patterns of thought are being deciphered, brain implants already common, and once the system is complete, every human being will have access to all the world's information and will be able to manipulate it at will. 

Engineers, currently working on a mind-machine interface will soon be able to seamlessly and completely link the human mind with the electronic circuitry of the computer thus creating a purely virtual world in which individuals will be able to instantaneously have access to all the world’s information, images, and experiences; to manipulate them at will,  and to create worlds of their own choosing. 

Artificial Intelligence, now just an important, revolutionary interface with human agents, will soon be completely integrated within the human brain.  Virtuality will not simply change the means of perception; it will define a completely new way of thinking - an unlimited, unimpeded, infinite intellectual and sentient world. 

Genetically engineered human beings, living in a perfectly virtual world where physical reality is meaningless and irrelevant, will be of a new race, a post-human race.

Pink bonnets and blue blankets, gender reveal parties, and the old saws of masculine and feminine will be footnotes to history.  There will be nothing similar between the human and the post-human.  Everything must go, fire sale for the irrelevant, the hand-me-downs, and the tried-and-true.  Darwin never anticipated such an abrupt, technologically mediated change in the evolutionary algorithm, but then again, how he could he have? 

There will be new Darwins in a hundred years who will discern patterns in the post-human ways of life, reproduction, survival, death, and prosperity, and will write about them.  Until then, there is more reality in the old Marvel comic books than what's coming down the pike. 

The False Premise Of Cultural Equivalence - Some Cultures Are Simply Better Than Others

Myrna Levitt was one of many American progressives who loved living in the city.  It was ethnically and racially diverse and gave her a sense of rightness and social responsibility.  She had fought long and hard for inclusion, tolerance, and good will to men, and here in her quarter of the the city, she saw that her efforts had paid off. 

Until the day when the peace and security of the multicultural idyll broke, and swarms of black teenagers descended into her neighborhood from across the river and trashed it. Store windows smashed, cars set on fire, trash bins overturned, and street signs pulled down. 

There was no reason for such mayhem - it was not George Floyd Day or a BLM protest.  It was just because they could - cell phones, perfume, electronics, high-end clothes were theirs for the asking. Police were under restraint - the City Council had recently passed a Juneteenth Resolution acknowledging persistent racism and white supremacy, and instructed the police to show tolerance for what was considered a legitimate cry for justice. 

 

The protests of these young black men was not unlike any other revolutionary protest, said progressives.  When a restrained reply to white oppression failed to release the ties that bound them, more aggressive, demonstrative measures were called for. 

The inner city had long been lionized by progressives.  Despite its social dysfunction - absent fathers, high rates of incarceration, drug trafficking, prostitution, and racketeering - black communities were lauded as naturally expressive social units descended from a noble African tribal culture; and that any disruption in this harmonious, sensitive, and environmentally in-tune sensitivity was merely temporary and the result of persistent racism.  

The reality was anything but harmonious and sensitive.  Assault, rape, murder, and larceny were hallmarks of the black community which lagged far behind white, Asian, and Latino populations in positive indicators.  Levels of educational proficiency, social mobility, professional and economic success, viable families, and contribution to the commonweal were at the lowest levels on any measured scale.  The culture of the black community - fatherless children, serial sex, dependency, entitlement, and anti-social behavior - was antithetical to historically successful societies. 

Cato the Elder, the Roman educator responsible for the education of the young, future leaders of the empire, wrote triptychs, codes of behavior which were to be the model not only for senators and members of the royal court, but for all Romans.  Cato stressed honor, discipline, courage, respect, compassion, tolerance, and patriotism along with more traditional elements of an education.  He understood that a moral ethos was the center of any successful civilization. 

No successful civilization has been without this core ethos.  Those that have honored and encouraged it most have been Japan and China.  Confucian and Shinto principles of right action are still deeply rooted in Chinese and Japanese cultures and provide the fulcrum for all public and private activities.  Despite the radical and remarkably rapid Westernization of these societies, these principles have never been altered. 

These Asian cultures are thousands of years old and were built on highly structured societies.  They were definitely hierarchical, imperial, and dynastic; but the core principles of the culture were universal. 

India is no different.  It, like China and Japan, is thousands of years old, and its Hindu principles of right behavior are persistent and universal within a modernization which parallels that of China.  While it focuses more on the individual and his path to spiritual salvation and less on community and social solidarity, it still is a culture with deeply-rooted ethnical, moral, and religious principles. 

African culture never had this predominant, extensive high civilization. The Gao and Ghana empires were territorial and left nothing behind.  The culture of the continent in many respects never progressed past the modalities of the earliest human settlements, and those of the diaspora are legatees of that history. Even more telling, the slave trade valued the most basic human traits - physical strength and fertility - and cared little for any of the more mature and subtle aspects of human development. 

The culture of the New World African diaspora would never emerge from this legacy; and while individuals would certainly emerge and prosper - i.e. accept, incorporate, and champion the ideals of the majority culture - most would not. 

It is no surprise that Jews in America not only prospered but contributed disproportionately to the culture, society, and the economy.  The poorest Jews in the New York City ghettos insisted on learning, education and excellence. Chinese immigrants were no different and the best, most elite public schools were filled with Chinese students.  Harvard recently lost a Supreme Court case for discriminating against highly qualified Chinese students to make way for affirmative action blacks. 

Culture - not money - was the engine of success for these groups, and both quickly made their way out of the ghetto into the mainstream and then to the very top of American society. 

In short and in other words, America is fighting a culture war not a racial one, and unless progressives - those who have repeatedly and deliberately insisted that black, diaspora, inner city culture is the equal to all others - realize and accept the reality, the inner city is doomed to yet another generation of malfunction. 

Europe is no different.  Liberals in Western Europe insisted that all cultures were equal and all have a place alongside traditional white European society.  As a result, immigration to Muslims from Africa and the Middle East was not only tolerated but encouraged.  In a short space of time, these immigrants formed their own tight, culturally sealed, radically religious communities and refused assimilation. 

With few exceptions Muslim culture has lagged far behind all others. Muslims in India, for example, have always been at the bottom of all socio-economic indicators.  In Malaysia where Chinese, Indian, and native Malay populations are almost equally divided, the Muslim Malays have always been far behind every other ethnic group. 

Muslims throughout the rest of the world have similarly low academic and social performance.  In some countries like Turkey where thanks to Ataturk's secularization, fundamentalist Islam is less prevalent, performance is more Western; but the eastern half of the country, profoundly Muslim lags far behind. 

Europe is now in crisis mode and conservative governments which have vowed to reject illegal immigrants and to deport those who refuse to adhere to majority cultural norms are taking power throughout the region.  

Finally politicians are facing reality and stating it - Western culture and civilization is superior to that of Muslim Africa and the Middle East, and they will do everything to protect it. 

American progressives have dismissed the idea of cultural superiority and have rejected America's European heritage as racist and colonialist.  As a result the core values which have been at the center of European civilization since ancient Greece and Rome are also being rejected.  

America has become a morally adrift place, one in which diversity has replaced centrality, where anything goes has replaced a foundational ethos.  It cannot end well. 

The conservative government of Donald Trump - like those now of Europe and Latin America - is beginning to roll back the extreme measures of the Left which have fragmented and divided the country; but until the population at large - not just the conservative half - endorses the essential principle that culture matters and that some cultures are indeed better than others, divisions and cultural disunity will continue. 

Electric Cars And Indeterminate Sex–We Live In A Hybrid Age

Jan Bossey was well into his sexual transition, feeling a bit dodgy and off his feed at times, but the hormones had kicked in nicely, and that Springtime, feminine feel that he had so long been waiting for, had finally arrived.  He put on his Easter bonnet – yes, he knew it was too early, but he simply felt like it, and his new self gave in far more easily to whim and fancy than his old self had.  

When he was a Senior Vice President at a major consulting firm on the Route 128 tech corridor, he had been decisive in his attitude, peremptory and unforgiving in his management, and absolutely determined and goal-oriented in his life.  He was a feared supervisor not because of the harsh punishment meted out to laggards, but because of his stature.  There was no one in the firm with more intelligence and resolve than Jan Bossey.

It was a complete surprise when it was learned that he was unhappy in this premier macho role and had opted to transition.  During initial psychological counselling his feelings about femininity were probed, and while he was not exactly asked to pick from a Chinese menu of options, it amounted to that.  Like everything else in modern genderism, there was a spectrum, ranging from tough Bernal Heights flannel and jackboots tough girls to sweet, frilly, pretty things and everything in between.  Of course, the counselor noted, gender transition was not yet an exact science, no bulls eyes, only approximations.

Jan, feeling if one was in this thing, then one had to be all in, he opted for the frilly end of the gamut.   His mother, like him a romantic and vaudevillian at heart, looked like Toulouse Lautrec’s Jane Avril, all feather boas, black stockings, petticoats, and dancing shoes.  “I feel pretty, no matter what anyone says, especially your father”, she said to young Jan who was always her most attentive audience, sitting on the plush dressing room divan waiting for his mother to emerge.  

All that anticipation and delight when she finally threw open the door and danced before him had taken hold at a very early age; and despite the many years of suppressing it and becoming an ur-macho Simon Legree, it never went away.  So the choice of the girly-girl persona was easy enough.

Yet, as he proceeded in his transition, he felt that there was something wrong – a niggling sense of incompleteness and dissatisfaction.  He was stuck between second and third gears, he thought on his last trip up and down the Strip in his hemi Dodge Charger.  This too will pass, advised his transition counselor.  One does not simply pull out all that nasty male stuff in one go.  Soon enough he would see the changes he was expecting, and today, the day she donned his Easter bonnet and headed for St. Maurice’s church to flirt with the men talking golf with Father Brophy, the change was secure.

Or almost.  As much as the counselor told him to dismiss his persistent, recurrent dreams of pursuit and penetration, he was always a man in them.  What was this all about?  Despite his current demission and removal from the psychiatric pantheon, Freud’s insights could not be totally dismissed.  Psychiatry was not all behaviorism and drugs, but the psychological potpourri of genes, hormones, childhood, and their weird dynamics.  If he was chasing women in his dreams, it had to mean something.  Perhaps ‘that nasty male stuff’ his counselor referred to was not just a flimsy thing easy to extract, but something more permanent and resistant to the daily doses of progesterone injected every day.

This middle state, this inconclusive, changeable period of neither here nor there was not unpleasant at all, for what man or woman could feel both male and female?  The very pleasant calm before the storm, the final explosive burst of pure sexuality at the end of the transition process.

Jan had always liked cars, and the Dodge hemi was but the last in a line of muscle cars he had had ever since he turned eighteen.  There was that reconditioned 65 Corvette; the 64 GTO, 389, Hurst three-on-the-floor transmission, racing tuned double carb beast; the chopped and channeled Camaro which tipped out at 150 without so much as a groan or a shimmy.  

He went to car shows and admired the cars he could never afford – Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Maseratis.  He liked to hang around body shops, garages, and racetracks.  He bought a TR-3 for $500 dollars back in the day, took it to Lime Rock and raced in the short track at the foothills of the Berkshires, did his own tune ups, lubes, and brake jobs.  Cars and men were one.

On that very Sunday when he went out in his Easter finery, he noticed a number of hybrid cars in the church parking lot.  Now what were they? he asked permitting himself a moment of doubt.  Of course he knew what they were – little underpowered four-wheelers designed to save energy, to turn on and off, gas and electricity, and designed to get you there without much fanfare.  It was the idea of a hybrid that piqued his now highly sensitive metaphysical interest – something, like him in his current transitionary stage, that was neither this nor that, neither here nor there.

He had never had much patience for Teslas until Elon Musk’s designers made one that would go 0-60 in under two seconds and was one of the fastest production cars on the market.  Musk never got on this neither fish nor foul hybrid bandwagon.  He went all in for electric, and he would make Tesla the peer of the fastest Ferrari on the road.  A macho car despite its batteries and plug-ins.

The hybrids were delicate little nothings that flipped on an off, never made a fuss, and were nothing but shows of environmental purpose for the leafy neighborhoods of Northwest Washington.

So wasn’t he a hybrid? A neither here nor there male/female?  There was no technique for scraping all the XY chromosomes from his DNA and replacing them with double X’s.  Not like sparkplugs or alternators.   He would be an XY male for the rest of his life, like it or not, Easter bonnets notwithstanding. 

But doesn't nature trump nurture in these behavioral days?  It was what you believed you were not what you actually were that counted, that made a difference.  If you truly believed that you were a woman, and that the belief could be augmented by a shot or two of female hormones, then you were a woman, no questions asked.

Yet the hybrid image stayed with Jan and he couldn’t shake it.  He was becoming what he never intended to be – a she-man, he-woman, a sexual hybrid.

The hybrid cars and Freudian dreams put the brakes, so to speak, on Jan’s transition.  He could wear an Easter bonnet whenever he wanted with all his equipment intact, or revert to Dodge Charger hemis; retake the fifth floor of his old firm and rule the roost like he once did, or join the secretarial pool.  

The transgender, gender fluidity advocates had a point.  Sexual expression was a matter of preference, so go with your personal flow. Where Jan got off the bus was denying genetic determinism.  As many frilly dresses as he might wear, no matter how many high heels, handbags, perfume, and eyeliner were his, he would always be Jan Bossey, tough guy.

He went overboard on the return – full beard, heavy drinking, Harley Hog in the garage – but soon settled back into his own particular maleness.  A few friends asked where he had been for the past year or so, but he demurred – family business, personal affairs and that sort of answer – but soon enough that hiatus had been completely, absolutely forgotten.