The "Final Solution" to killing babies with guns
In 2084 scientists discover that a few widely available ingredients, when mixed in just the right proportions in a microwave oven, could blow up the world. Take your choice. This is either: A.) Absurd science fiction, or B.) The reason we have not been able to detect intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
After much panic and many missteps, the scientists secretly come up with a solution. They declare a faux world-wide pandemic requiring that everyone be inoculated. Really the inoculation is a way to alter human DNA to finally eliminate evil.
Human history is all about empowering the individual. We call it productivity. In the old days if a farmer wanted to plant a crop she would use a spade. Nowadays, she can remotely control heavy machinery from the farmhouse using cellular technology with GPS. During the Revolutionary War, if a crazy man wanted to shoot little school children, he would have to shoot them one at a time, using his powder horn and ram rod between rounds. Back then even the most imaginative thinkers could not envision crashing a passenger jet into an office building.
How does the human brain work and how can it be altered to avoid all this? It boils down to hardware and software. So far neuroscientists have not been able to find any evidence of inputs beyond our five senses. Of course we can only directly detect one ten-trillionth of the electro-magnetic spectrum, and only have access to four of the eleven dimensions that string theorists in physics hypothesize.
Trying to avoid a human meltdown is like trying to avoid a meltdown at a nuclear power plant. Any threat to the hardware of the brain must be countered with software that, in an emergency, will put the brain into a state of suspended animation. There must also be fail safe mechanisms for software bugs or viruses.
The book “1984” was about an evil authoritarian empire controlling the world through thought control. Perhaps it’s time to write the sequel, “2084,” about a responsible government preventing our mass extinction.
Oh, I almost forgot, remember to get your “flu” shot!
Larry’s commentaries can be found via Twitter under NDProfMarsh.
Lawrence C. Marsh
Kansas City
4 months, 4 weeks agoHave you had your “flu” shot?
Lawrence C. Marsh
Kansas City
4 months, 4 weeks agoWe have almost eradicated polio, but recently polio vaccination health workers in Pakistan were killed by extremists who thought that the polio vaccination program was a CIA plot to sterilize the Pakistani population. If it turns out that murder is a disease of the brain, then the solution may be to find a vaccination that prevents it. Recent research that correlates a rise in murder rates with lead in the water suggests this, although the research is questionable, to say the least. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dunbar in Freakonomics correlate a drop in murder rates with abortions, but that research is equally questionable. Still, some neuroscientists have suggested that viewing murder as a medical problem may be more fruitful than viewing it solely as an ethical one.
Richard L Wagner
4 months, 4 weeks agoLawrence C. Marsh has posted online comments to his own online column.
Hey, tough room. heh.
Mark Hastert
4 months, 4 weeks agoWe have far too many fearful people who fervently believe the 1984 scenario.
Matt Henry
4 months, 4 weeks agoDo you mean believe it possible or believe it is happening?
We have far too many who don’t believe it is possible, because they are young and illiterate enough not to realize that it has happened so many times before. Thank you public school system. Why did these dystopian pieces come so regularly 100-50 years ago? Because those alive at that time and had seen how totalitarianism had snuck up on the world in so many ways, and in ways that most of the time were simply allowed to happen.