Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.
-Leon Kass

Aldous Huxley may well prove to be the great prophet of the twentieth century.

In his novel Brave New World, Huxley showed us a future world in which a select band of leaders control a society by science and entertainment rather than by dictatorship. There is lots of playful sex; lots of “feelies,” which is a sort of movie you experience through all the senses; lots of music and recreation. Developments in human genetics in this brave new world allows scientists not only to do away with most diseases, but also to clone people for specific jobs. The idea of a family is regarded as unnatural to the point of nausea. Certain areas are set aside for humans existing outside of this new world; there are reservations for savages, or primitive peoples, and remote islands for humans who rebel against the conformity of the state. In Huxley’s novel, however, most people remain happily hooked to their sex, drugs, and feelies.

We’ve had lots of drugs, sex, and entertainment, at least in the West, for two generations now, and quite soon we will apparently take up cloning as well. On Jan. 22, 2001, Britain’s House of Lords voted overwhelmingly to allow the cloning and maintenance of human embryos up to 14 days old for the purpose of medical experimentation. According to author Wesley Smith, an international group of experts recently announced their own private plans to clone human beings, supposedly to provide biological children to infertile couples. (Of course, a clone is not a biological offspring of two parents, but is instead a much younger sibling of one “parent,” a sort of twin who may be 70 years younger than the donor.)

Other scientists are rushing to use their newfound knowledge to combine species. Recently some of our more playful scientists added jellyfish genetic material to a cloned monkey embryo, manufacturing a monkey that glows in the dark. (Every house needs one!) Australian scientists announced they had created a “pig-man.” (And you thought this was an episode on " Seinfeld!") They allowed the hybrid to develop for two weeks before destroying it. In 2000, a biotech company took out a European-wide patent on embryos containing cells both from humans and from mice, sheep, pigs, cattle, goats, and fish. Sheepman wouldn’t need to buy clothes, while fishman could exist on kelp, leaving more hamburgers for the rest of us - except that hamburgers are verboten in Europe as a result of mad cow disease, caused in large part by the mistakes of science. Didn’t these guys ever hear of Dr. Moreau and his collection of freaks?

Much of this rush to clone human beings and other animals has less to do with science than with money. There’s big bucks to be made in the various medical arts of human reproduction and development. Aborted human fetuses are already being used in various medical experiments, and there is a budding industry in the “harvesting” of human organs. We may soon reach the point where the wealthy might decide to have themselves cloned, keep the results in storage, and thus act as their own organ donors.

Others take a more idealistic approach to cloning. They find in cloning the possibilities of a sort of “master race.” Our premier American Nazi institution these days seems to be Princeton University, which is home not only to Peter Singer, who advocates infanticide for the handicapped, but also to scientist Lee Silver, who hopes through cloning to create a “special group of mental beings ... as different from humans as humans are from primitive worms. Eugenicist Joseph Fletcher, writing in the 1970s, said that cloning would “... permit the preservation and perpetuation of the finest genotypes that arise in our species.” He may sound like a Dr. Goebbels, but Joseph Fletcher is as American as Mom, apple pie, and medical experimentation on human fetuses, both living and aborted.

Given that cloning seems likely to happen - we’re simply too stupid to avoid it - let me sketch out my own plan regarding human evolution. You heard it in this paper first, folks: the Post-modern Neo-Global Little People Plan.

Shrinkage is the answer. Many of us in the bioethical community - I count myself in that august company, having cut up a frog once in biology class while comforting my disgusted lab partner - believe that we can solve the majority of problems faced by humanity simply by reducing the height of human beings. If we can miniaturize radios, computers and ponies, we can miniaturize people. Therefore, I strongly suggest that we immediately initiate efforts, through cloning and genetic selection, to make every human being on the planet three feet tall.

Such a reduction in the height of human beings would bring innumerable advantages. We could build smaller houses; the ceilings would need be no higher than five feet. We could drive much smaller cars, giving real meaning to the “compact” models. Shorter people would eat less food, use less material for clothing, and sleep in smaller beds. We could build smaller golf courses, smaller swimming pools, and smaller cemetaries. All these savings would do much to alleviate the strain on the resources of our planet.

By breeding a race of munchkins, we will also create smarter, more ambitious, and more compassionate human beings. Everyone knows that short people try harder; look at David and Goliath, look at Napoleon. Everyone also knows that short people are smarter than tall people; they had to sit near the front of the class to see past their gargantuan classmates, thereby impressing the teacher with their apparent diligence. And although there is no one so fierce as an ill-tempered midget - a name some disparage as insulting, but which will under this plan become a tag of honor - most reasonable observers believe that short people are kinder than tall people. This higher compassion among the diminutive undoubtedly derives from years of asking tall people to get the peanut butter jar off the top shelf in the kitchen.

For centuries we human beings have been growing taller, and reversing this trend will not, I know, be simple. We must begin by exerting certain social and economic pressures. The NBA should immediately ban all players over 6” tall from playing basketball. Manufacturers should build cars and houses aimed at people 5’9” and shorter. Hollywood should institute a series of television advertisements and sitcoms in which the buffoons are all tall people. The service academies and our police forces should lower their height requirement. Randy Newman could be enticed to write a song titled “Tall People.”
Once these measures were in place, once we have stigmatized tall people, both the United States and the United Nations could begin instituting laws supporting the suppression of tall people. Legislatures could ban marriages between tall people. The government could begin a program of forced sterilization against tall people. States could refuse tall people access to college. Graduated income taxes could be levied according to height rather than income.

With the help of such selective eugenics, as well as the active cloning of short people, I am convinced that within six generations the world would be a smaller, better place. I see a global village populated by bright and merry munchkins wearing Birkenstocks and driving Volvos, each living in peace with their neighbors, each shuddering at the thought that cruel giants once roamed the earth, slamdunking basketballs and wearing size 14XXX shoes.

Don’t like the idea? All right, I have another one. When we start the cloning, let’s make all human beings about 5’7” tall. This new human being has blue eyes, brown hair, somewhat knobby knees, white skin, freckles that disappear at age 14, and a belly that appears around age 40. This new human being enjoys reading and evening walks in his middle age. His mechanical aptitude is limited; he can change the oil in a car, but otherwise doesn't know diddly about the workings of an engine. He can paint a house, but can’t saw a board to specifications. This new human being - dare I call him, like Nietzsche, the uberman, the superman? - enjoys “Andy of Mayberry” reruns and old movies and dislikes most televised sports. He loves his family but admits to daydreams of being alone on the Outer Banks. He loves his Catholic faith but wishes that everyone, including himself, would work a little harder at it. He votes according to his conscience rather than with a particular party. He eats too many treats and drinks too much coffee. He works reasonably hard, though without any huge success. He never worries about alien invasions or who will be in the NCAA Final Four.

Yes, I like this approach to our brave new world and human reproduction even better. Then everyone in the whole world could be just like me.

(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars Bookshop on Main Street in downtown Waynesville.)

 

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