while i’m not a proponent for the complete repeal of human rights, i am a big fan of the book 1984, by George Orwell
however, being written in 1948, orwell’s tribute to british socialism run amok is hardly a scary book any more. what with the discovery of dna, new and more horrible weapons of mass destruction, and advances in computers and information technology, if 1984 were written today, it would be put on the ‘duh’ rack of pulp science fiction that makes stories out of obvious trends
there was a story on the news today that i have been waiting for a long while – the attorney general of the u.s. has actually proposed keeping a dna record of all criminals, much like the fingerprint record started so long ago by scotland yard.
of course, since it’s dna, and the general public links dna tagging with movies like gattaca and books like a brave new world
the fbi already has every piece of information about a criminal’s physical appearance, whereabouts, known activiies and associates on file, so why not a record of their dna?
crime scenes are filthy with it, even when there are no fingerprints. and it is an almost 100% conclusive proof of identity. the perfect fingerprinting system, if you will. i suppose people are afraid of having their own dna on record for silly things like traffic violations, or being somehow linked to a crime by leaving a stray hair behind in someone’s apartment.
or maybe they’re afraid of being discriminated against if their dna were to show up as having a genetic disorder, tendency toward alcoholism, cancer, shortened lifespan, or something as yet undiscovered. and that’s what scares the human rights activists
and it all comes back to that, doesn’t it? human rights. what about having children? is that a right? or a privelege? hell, it used to be the duty of every living human of childbearing age to have children. that, of course, was when humanity was actually evolving, becoming better adapted to the envoriment in which we lived.
now, though, it seems that reproducing should be a privelege, since the right is being abused by those who are least suited to procreation: the young, poor, uneducated, and depraved.
and so, it’s time we started enforcing birth control. contraceptive agents in the water, surgical procedures at birth, parenting cerification, something. i have my own ideas as to how it should be done, but i’ll save those for another time. as to the original topic of this rant, dna tagging, it should be obvious that the technology and mechanisms for dna-based discrimination are in place already, and the morality of some areas of society are leaning toward it.
and is that a good thing?
yes. yes it is. dna-based discrimination, in the workplace, in social circles, in reproduction, are all natural occurences already. to bring them out in the open by use of science is ideal, since it is through technology that we stopped evolving
some may see this rant as evidence that i am a racial purist, but they are shortsighted. in reality, racially pure individuals are the least likely to suvive, for many reasons. it takes generations of inbreeding to produce a group that can be so different from the general population as to be called a ‘race’ which results in genetic deficiency, specialization, and a number of unhealthy aspects in their genetic makeup.
the ideal human is a mix of all races, with no ties or affiliation with any one genotype.