The Human Genome Project "is the grail of human genetics... the ultimate answer to the commandment, 'Know thyself'".
The system has not stabilized yet. Some planets are much bigger than others and have, like Saturn, a ring of sub-planets around themselves. Some, like China, would like to replace the USA as the Number One Sun, the "Middle Kingdom" of our universe. The few nation-planets can be seen as big pyramids, built of many small, family-like pyramids. The bigger units, as we said with Socrates, p. 00, are the sum of the smaller parts; that is, of human individuals and their genes and DNA-segments inside each of the small pyramids. The statement attributed to Walter Gilbert is right. The new genetic knowledge, "the grail", will bring us closer to a scientifically correct Delphic self-knowledge than anything yet known. It will tell us that the Thaleian view of us as inflated bacteria from a drop of water is, by and large, scientifically correct. The Genesis idea that we are God-like and can remake nature by fiat will more and more be recognized for what it is - human vanity bordering upon hubris. Professor Gilbert is a relatively unknown philosopher in today's heap of Nobel Prize winners. Progress in knowledge, as in anything else that has to do with our instruments, is now a collective affair, a "co-thinking within Superbrains". All modern social pyramids are such Superbrains. Pyramids have, by and large, the same form. When they grow in size, this means, by necessity, that the gaps between the top (Dr. Gilbert), and the bottom, (you and me), will also grow. Inside a growing Superbrain, the more capable and intelligent tend to flow upwards, and the less so, downwards. The growing gaps take the form of increasing differences in income, power and status. Those at the bottom become envious and, like Amos and Marx, start to cry for Equality. The successful respond by defending themselves behind a wall of arrogance. Historically, this seems to be an almost unavoidable process within all social pyramids, as well as between the small and big ones. Given the extremely myopic here-and-now perspective of almost all individuals, this deterministic rule is seen by few, understood by fewer and accepted by the fewest. The result is that we are drifting towards new class conflicts, this time on a global level. Unless we are able to stop the drifting! One way to do so might be to face the fact that we are not equal, but unequal, born so - but marginally! Between any two unrelated individuals there are approximately three million differences in our DNA-building blocks. It sounds like a lot, but it is only one tenth of one percent of the three billion DNA-segments of which we are made. Genetically, however, "the most different humans on the Earth are less different than two gorillas from the same forest in West Africa". Thus, from a gorilla point of view, all Homo sapiens praedators are extremely similar. It is, indeed, fully correct that in front of God or Nature all humans are created alike. Add the truth that the small differences that do exist, the 0.1 percent, were not created by ourselves, but by the distribution of the genetic deck of cards when we and our closest forefathers (back, say, for ten generations) were born. Knowing this about ourselves, all feelings of arrogance and envy seem highly unjustified, even stupid! |