(I am not the author, but it was powerful enough to repost)
Is our pursuit of leisure and our advancement of science pushing us toward GMO humans?
Below is an abridged version of an essay from a famous statesmen long ago. Powerful words. The last line of the essay says it all.
This present century has witnessed an enormous revolution in material things, in scientific appliances, in political institutions, in manners and customs.
Mankind has gone too far to go back, and is moving too fast to stop. There are too many people maintained, not merely in comfort but in existence, by processes unknown a century ago, for us to afford even a temporary check, still less a general setback, without experiencing calamity in its most frightful form.
Whereas formerly the utmost power that man could guide and control was a team of horses or a galley full of slaves, or… a gang of laborers like the Israelites in Egypt; it is today already possible to control accurately from the bridge of a battle cruiser all the power of hundreds of thousands of men, or to set off with one finger a mine capable in an instant of destroying the work of thousands of man-years.
There is no doubt that this evolution will continue at an increasing rate. We know enough to be sure that the scientific achievements of the next fifty years will be far greater, more rapid and more surprising, than those we have already experienced.
But equally startling developments lie already just beyond our finger-tips in the breeding of human beings and the shaping of human nature. It used to be said, ‘Though you have taught the dog more tricks, you cannot alter the breed of the dog.’ But that is no longer true.
…in a future which our children may live to see, powers will be in the hands of men altogether different from any by which human nature has been molded. Explosive forces, energy, materials, machinery will be available upon a scale which can annihilate whole nations. Despotisms and tyrannies will be able to prescribe the lives and even the wishes of their subjects in a manner never known since time began.
Great nations are no longer led by their ablest men, or by those who know most about their immediate affairs, or even by those who have a coherent doctrine. Democratic governments drift along the line of least resistance, taking short views, paying their way with sops and doles, and smoothing their path with pleasant-sounding platitudes.
There are secrets too mysterious for man in his present state to know, secrets which, once penetrated, may be fatal to human happiness and glory. But the busy hands of the scientists are already fumbling with the keys of all the chambers hitherto forbidden to mankind. Without an equal growth of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love, Science herself may destroy all that makes human life majestic and tolerable.
Projects undreamed-of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants; forces terrific and devastating will be in their hands; comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache, their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things.
[Abridged text from original essay 1931]
Winston Churchill – “Fifty Years Hence”
What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument. C. S. Lewis