A rainy day in the Pleiades
It is getting late at night now and I am sitting in the office of my apartment. There is class tomorrow, and though I am too tired to study, I also have no interest in going to bed. The lights in the rest of my apartment are off, and I push my chair back from my desk, and turn off my desk lamp and monitor. Now the apartment is very dark, and I close my eyes, but there is still an orange glow from the monitor that my retinas have not been able to blacken out yet. My mind is still adjusting to the pitch black serenity after closing all those websites that overwhelm us with useless information. It is about this time that I start to collect and organize my thoughts from the day. It is also the time when I start to pick up on that long running internal debate I’ve been having for twenty something years, the conversation where I try to digest those big existential questions, like what the purpose of my life is.
In a short essay I wrote a couple months ago, I tried to make the case that people are happiest when they are able to turn off all the sources of noise in their life (such as websites that present never-ending commentary on news items of complete insignificance), avoiding an overdose of new movies, books, music, and articles. Instead, we could attempt to focus on a few tasks that will make us truly happy, such as performing a chosen line of work, exercising, and going back to just a few old classics and re-studying their moral lessons. We should do away with the constant need to keep up with the latest cultural events. What I felt was missing from my last essay was that even though focusing on your work might take your mind off of doubts, and regrets, and generally anything that might bring melancholy, even if a person is not unhappy because they are busy, they will still be clueless as to the greater purpose of a lifetime of effort. Who would want to live in the dark about such an important question? I want to know where we are headed. Industrialized society is less than two hundred years old, and hopefully we will have many more centuries of progress, but toward what end is the sum total of all these two hundred years of human activity leading? I believe I’ve found a somewhat satisfying answer to that question. But this new “answer” is only half of the picture. Let me get back to this in a moment.
Before sitting at my desk this evening I was taking my evening shower, and after about ten minutes of a shower that was going on for far too long, I’m living in a desert after all, the water was just beginning to cool down from piping hot to just warm. It reminded me of a time when I was at summer day camp when I was six years old. The campers were taking a day trip out to the Everglades for an air boat ride. It was towards the afternoon, but the sky was growing overcast, and then it started to pour rain. There were probably about twenty of us on the boat, and I don’t remember getting along with the other campers that summer, in fact I don’t think I liked any of them. But with the rain coming down, I headed toward the front of the boat to huddle beneath the aluminum covering, which provided a small space to crouch underneath. I was squatting for a few minutes, and we were still far from getting back to the landing and shelter, when I sat back and sat in a puddle on the floor of the boat, so my shorts got wet. It was around that same time that I felt I needed to pee, and unable to hold back, I went in my already wet shorts. But with all the rain, and everyone soaking wet, I wasn’t overly concerned that those campers I didn’t like, and that didn’t like me, would notice. So I sat for a while longer, and saw a small frog also taking shelter right next to me. Twenty years later my thoughts remain clear about a few minutes from that day. I remember thinking that the frog was afraid I would move towards it and hurt it, or cause it to move. It didn’t want to of course, because it was taking shelter from the rain just like I was, and the outside only offered forbidding showers, and many more kids to stay away from. A six year old might be able to believe a frog on a boat understands his feelings. The look in its eyes made me feel that he understood that I was just as cold as him, and only wanted to get back to the dock. My shower was cold now, and I shut it off.
I bring up the story of the frog for two reasons, it was much easier to understand me then (I didn’t have to meditate with the lights in my study for a half hour to clear up and make sense of a days events in my mind), and my desires were also much simpler. In fact, not much more complicated than the frogs. I wanted a warm towel, and some shelter.
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This week I had a test in the renal system, so for the past week or so all the students in my class have been studying intensely, some in the library and others at home. I took a little break from my reading, and walked over to a pleasant young woman to see how her studying was going. She and another guy from my class were talking about what kind of doctors they were hoping to become, and how difficult it might be to get the exact residencies they wanted. The young woman confided that she really wishes she had gone to school in America, because what she wants is to be an ophthalmologist. I suppose, for foreign medical graduates, it is a very difficult residency to be accepted in. The conversation drifted to her ideal husband, “he will need to have read at least one book in the past year, and a textbook doesn’t count.” I thought her desires seem very difficult to satisfy. To you those may not seem like terribly difficult goals to reach, but I think if those are a person’s requirements to be happy, one stands a great risk of falling short. What if you could be happy with far less?
The book requirement I can understand, but think of those long years of training to become a specialist in the medical profession. If she had wanted this since she was a teenager then it has already been almost a decade, including finishing high school, and college, and a couple years of medical school, and she still has so much further to go, at least the rest of medical school, a residency, a fellowship. And let’s be honest with each other, if she ever reaches that goal, that too might no longer satisfy her, and there always be one more mountain to climb before she can find that completeness she, and the rest of us, are looking for. I think Alan Watts described that potential disappointment best,
“… and all that time that thing is coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, that great thing, that success you’re working for, and then when you wake up one day, about forty years old, you say my god, I’ve arrived. Ha-ha, I’m there! And you don’t feel that different from what you always felt. And there’s a slight let down because you feel there was a hoax, and there was a hoax, a dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything. We thought of life by analogy was a journey, with a pilgrimage. Which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end. Success or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or dance, while the music was being played. ”
Epicurus, held tranquility to be highest mental state, his philosophy is quickly summed up in this saying, if thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from desires. Becoming an ophthalmologist sounds fairly difficult. Adding that notch to your belt may sound satisfying, after all there is so much that accompanies it, wealth, status, respect from your friends, and family, and your community, and appreciation on behalf of your grateful patients. But think of the great pains it takes to get that point. From the age of 18, if one is as swift as possible in their education, and training, they will be easily in their thirties before any of this comes about. Thirty years before one finishes their training, assuming one actually finds completion and total fulfillment, and tranquility at the end. Is my friend saying she won’t be happy until that day? Think of how many disasters can befall her from now till then. I need only name a few, she may get sick, or some terrible accident can happen. I am reminded of two stories about two surgeons. On a business trip the doctor was pulled over by police and placed in hand cuffs. They thought he had stolen the car he was driving, but of course he hadn’t it. They put the hand cuffs on so tight, and for so long, that they damaged the nerves in his hands, so that he could never operate again. The other surgeon was similarly young. He was working in America, but took his fiancé to visit his family back in Nepal. As part of their trip they decided to take a tour of Mt. Everest by plane, and it crashed killing all aboard. What was the point of all those years of training and school, unless they were very enjoyable? Certainly, these are rare cases, but the fact that they exist at all should give us enough pause to think very carefully about how we are going to choose to invest our time, and our precious youth.
This young woman may also change her mind about her goals, and switch to a different career, and perhaps all that hard work will have gone to waste. Feelings of failure are the price we pay for having great ambition. If that happened to me, I might look back on the first third of my life and think, well, I’ve passed a lot of tests, and acquired a lot of knowledge, but what have I actually made in my life? I think we could all be a lot happier a lot sooner if we could do one of two things, reduce our requirements for seeking completion, or if we choose high goals, that require the effort of many years to bring to fruition, make sure they are worthy of our sacrifice. I will argue for the latter, but it certainly helps to reduce unnecessary desires.
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Now, I think back to that frog, who I presume only wanted to stay out of the rain. What possessions did I really care about then, what material requirements, and goals did I need to reach to feel relaxed and satisfied with my life? There were remarkably few. I liked three books most of all, Flags of the World, Illustrated guide to Norse myths and legends, and of course, its counterpart, Illustrated guide to Greek myths and legends. What else was important to me then? It was important that I wake up at eight each morning to watch the GI Joe cartoon before school. Lastly, what I remember really wanting, but maybe only eating on one or two occasions at the most, and I think it was denied to me because it wasn’t kosher, was the Lunchables lunch pack, specifically, the one with the circular ham slices, cheese, and Ritz crackers. Let’s compare that list with the incredibly complex requirements it takes for me to be happy at twenty seven. I’ll just name a few, the completion of my medical diploma, finding a good woman to date, my many material possessions, expensive food and drinks on occasion, and this only scratches the surface. Age six: three books, time to watch a TV show, and a cheap snack. At age twenty seven my medical education alone will set me back more than a hundred thousand dollars.
It took only a frog to understand me then, now I read constantly, even with my library of books, and I only feel like I am beginning to understand myself again. What went wrong between six and twenty seven, that my requirements for tranquility and peace of mind became so much more complex, and distant?
I agree with Watts to the extent that his cautionary lesson helps us avoid activity whose end purpose doesn’t bring any true satisfaction. But I still think it’s very worthwhile to accomplish great tasks, and endeavor to complete projects that afford us a mental calm and relief only be found in looking back on the effort of long years, which had a very specific end, the experience of aesthetic contemplation.
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At the time of that conversation, with the pleasant young woman, I really wanted to describe to her what a mistake I think she, and so many of my peers are making. That just as only people that love each other should get married, given the choice, only people that a) love their work (“it was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing and dance”) or b) are certain that if they complete their task they will be able to marvel at the beautiful creation of many hard years of effort, or c) ideally, they both love their work, and love contemplating its finished result, should pick a specific field of work.
As a young man, especially one surrounded by other smart young people at a university, of the many aspects of my life that bother me, one of the most troubling is the need to maintain appearances, to present an unemotional professional front among ones colleagues. The French called it comme il faut, which means ‘as it should be’. It’s the need to act properly, to keep up with social standards. I would like to blast this stifling phenomenon off the map of all my relationships. Comme il faut, is why we can’t tell people how we really feel. Why we can’t tell some people that when we smile or say thank you, we really want to say we love them. Or if we despise someone, we will hold back and just ignore them until they get the point. If we can’t tell each other how we feel, or that we think our friends are making mistakes with how they are living their lives, then what point is there to any conversation? To discuss the weather? What could be less relevant?
I was having dinner with a friend of mine the other night. We started the dinner with the usual topics of conversation. Generally, how are you doing? Then, more specifically, what class are you in now? “Oh, I see, you’re in the pediatrics rotation. Any funny stories?” And when there was nothing left to talk about from our work lives, we talked about the news. Sensing the conversation was becoming forced, and that our food was nearly all eaten, I wanted to move the conversation to another area. Not events at work or school, or news of other people’s lives from around the world, but about our personal lives. Specifically, I wanted to talk about romantic relationships, and sex, or lack thereof. This is obviously an area that makes my friend very uncomfortable. But I think it is the most vital conversation to have. What is the point of work, or understanding the world, if we can’t understand ourselves? I didn’t just want this to be another night of skimming the surface, I wanted to hit deep. I asked him, “are you hitting on any women at work?”. He replied, frowning, and tersely, “no, I’m very busy.” “Well, let me tell you what I would do. If I was you, I’d study at some cafes in Tel Aviv, on the weekends. I’d also move out of your terrible shared apartment, and find a cheap studio where you could bring a girl back to have some privacy. Don’t forget, you’re 24 now, but you won’t be in your twenties forever, and as you get older the women you’ll be able to date will, because of societal judgments, need to be older too, and perhaps, less attractive. So don’t wait.” He replied: “Eric, I really don’t need or want your advice on this. In any case, who are you to tell me anything? How are you doing? You seem to offer a lot of advice, but you’re still single. So maybe we can talk about something else.” “Sure”, I said, “but the difference between you and me is that even though we are both unsuccessful, at least I am trying.” His reply, “Eric, I really don’t want to talk about this.” It was at this point that he pulled out his phone, and started looking at the internet, transfixed by his glowing screen, instead of talking to me; it was what could have been an important conversation among friends now threatening to turn into a familiar scene. Take a look at a photo a friend took of what we might call a family dinner, in the year 2011.
I tried very hard to overcome that need to act ‘as it should be’. I don’t know why my friend can sometimes appear so miserable, though I strongly suspect it has to do with his fear of rejection by women, and his lack of female mating. I think there are ancestral psychological needs, and in ones twenties, it’s actually unhealthy not to mate with at least some frequency. I look at some of my classmates and I understand why they feel so lost. It is the lack of romantic personal relationships, and most of all a lack of understanding of their place in the world. In college I often felt like a lost zooplankton, alone in a deep, dark and vast ocean. I found some consolation in books, and of course, in friendships. Friendships that were strengthened by my desire to speak honestly about what I needed on a deeper psychological level than just discussing work or the news.
I am lately feeling like I am beginning to understand my place in the world, even if there is so much I feel may be lacking in my social life, and even if I am occasionally struck by melancholy that I am not on the right road to finding completion or aesthetic contemplation at the end of my long journey. Our industrialized society, at just two hundred years old, from the perspective of the cosmos is embryologically young. But as one of its members, I feel a need to understand its direction, and what role I am to play among its billions of individuals. In his recent Times article One giant leap to nowhere, Tom Wolfe writes about Wernher von Braun’s vision for the future of the space program and humanity:
NASA’s annual budget sank like a stone from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3 billion in the mid-1970s. It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun. Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program was really all about.
It’s been a long time, but I remember him saying something like this: Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.
Von Braun’s vision was the clear view I needed to begin to understand how my life might have any significance. When I look at my friends who look lost, who look miserable and unhappy, I see their lives in two halves. First, are they in love? Second, what contribution are they making to helping us leave this planet? This is our common purpose. If you feel like you’re useless, its most likely because you are, and it might actually be healthy in the long run that you occasionally feel this way. It’s because you’ve haven’t been productive. Are you a discoverer, an interpreter, a technician? What role are you playing in constructing our way off of this Earth? What is your contribution to industry? If this isn’t the answer of why the world moves, then I don’t know of any other. In the 1940’s, on the main streets of America, the respect we gave to friends or strangers, or how we assigned status, could be measured in their contribution to the war effort, to end fascism. In this new century, we might consider judging our friends, and perhaps understanding their confusion better, by whether they know if they understand this new important task.
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In a larger sense though, even if we are able to preserve human civilization, and save ourselves from the perils of nuclear weapons, and every other calamity we now must deal with in one way or another, we may always feel lost. Even we can somehow find a way to send our distant progeny to the safety of new stars or even galaxies, will they not feel the same way we do, sitting in their dark apartments many generations from now? They will also have to try to reconcile their work lives with their inner lives, and attempt to address the permanent questions just as we try. What is my place in the world? What will make me happy? How do I find completion, and serenity? In a recent interview, Ken Burns addresses the misconception that our generation is fundamentally different than any other,
"We think the past is gone, the people are anachronistic, because we're alive, that we live much more complex lives than they do. Not true. They felt love, and jealousy, they had equally as intellectual conversations as we have. And have had for thousands of years. We have to figure out a way to remove the arrogance that the present exerts over the past."
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What about us is worth saving? In the improbable chance we find a way to save ourselves, we might think long and hard about what kind of people we will send to seed the cosmos. It would be sad to think that our far-distant descendants, thousands of years into the future, may sit around, just as lost as we are. Will they look back and wonder why we went through such great effort, and sacrifice, only to safely preserve new generations of humans who may have lost any insight into what life is for? What will be the regrets of our descendants, staring out of their windows on rainy days, and quiet nights? We must focus on von Braun’s vision, but we must also not fail to continue contemplating that other imperative of life on earth, not just how to save ourselves, but how to know ourselves. That we may always wonder how to perfect our lives, is a prospect equally concerning and beautiful.
One of my favorite sources of wisdom writing is a single poem known as Hávamál, the sayings of the high one. Its verses were said to be given by the Norse god Odin. The viking-age poet who composed these lines counseled moderation:
When he meets friends, the fool gapes,
Is shy and sheepish at first,
Then he sips his mead and immediately
All know what an oaf he is,
He who has seen and suffered much,
And knows the ways of the world,
Who has traveled', can tell what spirit
Governs the men he meets,
Drink your mead, but in moderation,
Talk sense or be silent:
No man is called discourteous who goes
To bed at an early hour
It is now very late, and I have just one more glowing screen I need to shut off before I can step into bed, and fall asleep. I’ve given you a piece of my mind tonight, and offered a lot of advice, solicited or not. It would be a shame for me to not follow it myself. So please forgive me if I go to bed now, at a not so early hour.
A rainy day in the Pleiades
It is getting late at night now and I am sitting in the office of my apartment. There is class tomorrow, and though I am too tired to study, I also have no interest in going to bed. The lights in the rest of my apartment are off, and I push my chair back from my desk, and turn off my desk lamp and monitor. Now the apartment is very dark, and I close my eyes, but there is still an orange glow from the monitor that my retinas have not been able to blacken out yet. My mind is still adjusting to the pitch black serenity after closing all those websites that overwhelm us with useless information. It is about this time that I start to collect and organize my thoughts from the day. It is also the time when I start to pick up on that long running internal debate I’ve been having for twenty something years, the conversation where I try to digest those big existential questions, like what the purpose of my life is.
In a short essay I wrote a couple months ago, I tried to make the case that people are happiest when they are able to turn off all the sources of noise in their life (such as websites that present never-ending commentary on news items of complete insignificance), avoiding an overdose of new movies, books, music, and articles. Instead, we could attempt to focus on a few tasks that will make us truly happy, such as performing a chosen line of work, exercising, and going back to just a few old classics and re-studying their moral lessons. We should do away with the constant need to keep up with the latest cultural events. What I felt was missing from my last essay was that even though focusing on your work might take your mind off of doubts, and regrets, and generally anything that might bring melancholy, even if a person is not unhappy because they are busy, they will still be clueless as to the greater purpose of a lifetime of effort. Who would want to live in the dark about such an important question? I want to know where we are headed. Industrialized society is less than two hundred years old, and hopefully we will have many more centuries of progress, but toward what end is the sum total of all these two hundred years of human activity leading? I believe I’ve found a somewhat satisfying answer to that question. But this new “answer” is only half of the picture. Let me get back to this in a moment.
Before sitting at my desk this evening I was taking my evening shower, and after about ten minutes of a shower that was going on for far too long, I’m living in a desert after all, the water was just beginning to cool down from piping hot to just warm. It reminded me of a time when I was at summer day camp when I was six years old. The campers were taking a day trip out to the Everglades for an air boat ride. It was towards the afternoon, but the sky was growing overcast, and then it started to pour rain. There were probably about twenty of us on the boat, and I don’t remember getting along with the other campers that summer, in fact I don’t think I liked any of them. But with the rain coming down, I headed toward the front of the boat to huddle beneath the aluminum covering, which provided a small space to crouch underneath. I was squatting for a few minutes, and we were still far from getting back to the landing and shelter, when I sat back and sat in a puddle on the floor of the boat, so my shorts got wet. It was around that same time that I felt I needed to pee, and unable to hold back, I went in my already wet shorts. But with all the rain, and everyone soaking wet, I wasn’t overly concerned that those campers I didn’t like, and that didn’t like me, would notice. So I sat for a while longer, and saw a small frog also taking shelter right next to me. Twenty years later my thoughts remain clear about a few minutes from that day. I remember thinking that the frog was afraid I would move towards it and hurt it, or cause it to move. It didn’t want to of course, because it was taking shelter from the rain just like I was, and the outside only offered forbidding showers, and many more kids to stay away from. A six year old might be able to believe a frog on a boat understands his feelings. The look in its eyes made me feel that he understood that I was just as cold as him, and only wanted to get back to the dock. My shower was cold now, and I shut it off.
I bring up the story of the frog for two reasons, it was much easier to understand me then (I didn’t have to meditate with the lights in my study for a half hour to clear up and make sense of a days events in my mind), and my desires were also much simpler. In fact, not much more complicated than the frogs. I wanted a warm towel, and some shelter.
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This week I had a test in the renal system, so for the past week or so all the students in my class have been studying intensely, some in the library and others at home. I took a little break from my reading, and walked over to a pleasant young woman to see how her studying was going. She and another guy from my class were talking about what kind of doctors they were hoping to become, and how difficult it might be to get the exact residencies they wanted. The young woman confided that she really wishes she had gone to school in America, because what she wants is to be an ophthalmologist. I suppose, for foreign medical graduates, it is a very difficult residency to be accepted in. The conversation drifted to her ideal husband, “he will need to have read at least one book in the past year, and a textbook doesn’t count.” I thought her desires seem very difficult to satisfy. To you those may not seem like terribly difficult goals to reach, but I think if those are a person’s requirements to be happy, one stands a great risk of falling short. What if you could be happy with far less?
The book requirement I can understand, but think of those long years of training to become a specialist in the medical profession. If she had wanted this since she was a teenager then it has already been almost a decade, including finishing high school, and college, and a couple years of medical school, and she still has so much further to go, at least the rest of medical school, a residency, a fellowship. And let’s be honest with each other, if she ever reaches that goal, that too might no longer satisfy her, and there always be one more mountain to climb before she can find that completeness she, and the rest of us, are looking for. I think Alan Watts described that potential disappointment best,
“… and all that time that thing is coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, that great thing, that success you’re working for, and then when you wake up one day, about forty years old, you say my god, I’ve arrived. Ha-ha, I’m there! And you don’t feel that different from what you always felt. And there’s a slight let down because you feel there was a hoax, and there was a hoax, a dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything. We thought of life by analogy was a journey, with a pilgrimage. Which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end. Success or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or dance, while the music was being played. ”
Epicurus, held tranquility to be highest mental state, his philosophy is quickly summed up in this saying, if thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from desires. Becoming an ophthalmologist sounds fairly difficult. Adding that notch to your belt may sound satisfying, after all there is so much that accompanies it, wealth, status, respect from your friends, and family, and your community, and appreciation on behalf of your grateful patients. But think of the great pains it takes to get that point. From the age of 18, if one is as swift as possible in their education, and training, they will be easily in their thirties before any of this comes about. Thirty years before one finishes their training, assuming one actually finds completion and total fulfillment, and tranquility at the end. Is my friend saying she won’t be happy until that day? Think of how many disasters can befall her from now till then. I need only name a few, she may get sick, or some terrible accident can happen. I am reminded of two stories about two surgeons. On a business trip the doctor was pulled over by police and placed in hand cuffs. They thought he had stolen the car he was driving, but of course he hadn’t it. They put the hand cuffs on so tight, and for so long, that they damaged the nerves in his hands, so that he could never operate again. The other surgeon was similarly young. He was working in America, but took his fiancé to visit his family back in Nepal. As part of their trip they decided to take a tour of Mt. Everest by plane, and it crashed killing all aboard. What was the point of all those years of training and school, unless they were very enjoyable? Certainly, these are rare cases, but the fact that they exist at all should give us enough pause to think very carefully about how we are going to choose to invest our time, and our precious youth.
This young woman may also change her mind about her goals, and switch to a different career, and perhaps all that hard work will have gone to waste. Feelings of failure are the price we pay for having great ambition. If that happened to me, I might look back on the first third of my life and think, well, I’ve passed a lot of tests, and acquired a lot of knowledge, but what have I actually made in my life? I think we could all be a lot happier a lot sooner if we could do one of two things, reduce our requirements for seeking completion, or if we choose high goals, that require the effort of many years to bring to fruition, make sure they are worthy of our sacrifice. I will argue for the latter, but it certainly helps to reduce unnecessary desires.
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Now, I think back to that frog, who I presume only wanted to stay out of the rain. What possessions did I really care about then, what material requirements, and goals did I need to reach to feel relaxed and satisfied with my life? There were remarkably few. I liked three books most of all, Flags of the World, Illustrated guide to Norse myths and legends, and of course, its counterpart, Illustrated guide to Greek myths and legends. What else was important to me then? It was important that I wake up at eight each morning to watch the GI Joe cartoon before school. Lastly, what I remember really wanting, but maybe only eating on one or two occasions at the most, and I think it was denied to me because it wasn’t kosher, was the Lunchables lunch pack, specifically, the one with the circular ham slices, cheese, and Ritz crackers. Let’s compare that list with the incredibly complex requirements it takes for me to be happy at twenty seven. I’ll just name a few, the completion of my medical diploma, finding a good woman to date, my many material possessions, expensive food and drinks on occasion, and this only scratches the surface. Age six: three books, time to watch a TV show, and a cheap snack. At age twenty seven my medical education alone will set me back more than a hundred thousand dollars.
It took only a frog to understand me then, now I read constantly, even with my library of books, and I only feel like I am beginning to understand myself again. What went wrong between six and twenty seven, that my requirements for tranquility and peace of mind became so much more complex, and distant?
I agree with Watts to the extent that his cautionary lesson helps us avoid activity whose end purpose doesn’t bring any true satisfaction. But I still think it’s very worthwhile to accomplish great tasks, and endeavor to complete projects that afford us a mental calm and relief only be found in looking back on the effort of long years, which had a very specific end, the experience of aesthetic contemplation.
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At the time of that conversation, with the pleasant young woman, I really wanted to describe to her what a mistake I think she, and so many of my peers are making. That just as only people that love each other should get married, given the choice, only people that a) love their work (“it was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing and dance”) or b) are certain that if they complete their task they will be able to marvel at the beautiful creation of many hard years of effort, or c) ideally, they both love their work, and love contemplating its finished result, should pick a specific field of work.
As a young man, especially one surrounded by other smart young people at a university, of the many aspects of my life that bother me, one of the most troubling is the need to maintain appearances, to present an unemotional professional front among ones colleagues. The French called it comme il faut, which means ‘as it should be’. It’s the need to act properly, to keep up with social standards. I would like to blast this stifling phenomenon off the map of all my relationships. Comme il faut, is why we can’t tell people how we really feel. Why we can’t tell some people that when we smile or say thank you, we really want to say we love them. Or if we despise someone, we will hold back and just ignore them until they get the point. If we can’t tell each other how we feel, or that we think our friends are making mistakes with how they are living their lives, then what point is there to any conversation? To discuss the weather? What could be less relevant?
I was having dinner with a friend of mine the other night. We started the dinner with the usual topics of conversation. Generally, how are you doing? Then, more specifically, what class are you in now? “Oh, I see, you’re in the pediatrics rotation. Any funny stories?” And when there was nothing left to talk about from our work lives, we talked about the news. Sensing the conversation was becoming forced, and that our food was nearly all eaten, I wanted to move the conversation to another area. Not events at work or school, or news of other people’s lives from around the world, but about our personal lives. Specifically, I wanted to talk about romantic relationships, and sex, or lack thereof. This is obviously an area that makes my friend very uncomfortable. But I think it is the most vital conversation to have. What is the point of work, or understanding the world, if we can’t understand ourselves? I didn’t just want this to be another night of skimming the surface, I wanted to hit deep. I asked him, “are you hitting on any women at work?”. He replied, frowning, and tersely, “no, I’m very busy.” “Well, let me tell you what I would do. If I was you, I’d study at some cafes in Tel Aviv, on the weekends. I’d also move out of your terrible shared apartment, and find a cheap studio where you could bring a girl back to have some privacy. Don’t forget, you’re 24 now, but you won’t be in your twenties forever, and as you get older the women you’ll be able to date will, because of societal judgments, need to be older too, and perhaps, less attractive. So don’t wait.” He replied: “Eric, I really don’t need or want your advice on this. In any case, who are you to tell me anything? How are you doing? You seem to offer a lot of advice, but you’re still single. So maybe we can talk about something else.” “Sure”, I said, “but the difference between you and me is that even though we are both unsuccessful, at least I am trying.” His reply, “Eric, I really don’t want to talk about this.” It was at this point that he pulled out his phone, and started looking at the internet, transfixed by his glowing screen, instead of talking to me; it was what could have been an important conversation among friends now threatening to turn into a familiar scene. Take a look at a photo a friend took of what we might call a family dinner, in the year 2011.
I tried very hard to overcome that need to act ‘as it should be’. I don’t know why my friend can sometimes appear so miserable, though I strongly suspect it has to do with his fear of rejection by women, and his lack of female mating. I think there are ancestral psychological needs, and in ones twenties, it’s actually unhealthy not to mate with at least some frequency. I look at some of my classmates and I understand why they feel so lost. It is the lack of romantic personal relationships, and most of all a lack of understanding of their place in the world. In college I often felt like a lost zooplankton, alone in a deep, dark and vast ocean. I found some consolation in books, and of course, in friendships. Friendships that were strengthened by my desire to speak honestly about what I needed on a deeper psychological level than just discussing work or the news.
I am lately feeling like I am beginning to understand my place in the world, even if there is so much I feel may be lacking in my social life, and even if I am occasionally struck by melancholy that I am not on the right road to finding completion or aesthetic contemplation at the end of my long journey. Our industrialized society, at just two hundred years old, from the perspective of the cosmos is embryologically young. But as one of its members, I feel a need to understand its direction, and what role I am to play among its billions of individuals. In his recent Times article One giant leap to nowhere, Tom Wolfe writes about Wernher von Braun’s vision for the future of the space program and humanity:
NASA’s annual budget sank like a stone from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3 billion in the mid-1970s. It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun. Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program was really all about.
It’s been a long time, but I remember him saying something like this: Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.
Von Braun’s vision was the clear view I needed to begin to understand how my life might have any significance. When I look at my friends who look lost, who look miserable and unhappy, I see their lives in two halves. First, are they in love? Second, what contribution are they making to helping us leave this planet? This is our common purpose. If you feel like you’re useless, its most likely because you are, and it might actually be healthy in the long run that you occasionally feel this way. It’s because you’ve haven’t been productive. Are you a discoverer, an interpreter, a technician? What role are you playing in constructing our way off of this Earth? What is your contribution to industry? If this isn’t the answer of why the world moves, then I don’t know of any other. In the 1940’s, on the main streets of America, the respect we gave to friends or strangers, or how we assigned status, could be measured in their contribution to the war effort, to end fascism. In this new century, we might consider judging our friends, and perhaps understanding their confusion better, by whether they know if they understand this new important task.
-
In a larger sense though, even if we are able to preserve human civilization, and save ourselves from the perils of nuclear weapons, and every other calamity we now must deal with in one way or another, we may always feel lost. Even we can somehow find a way to send our distant progeny to the safety of new stars or even galaxies, will they not feel the same way we do, sitting in their dark apartments many generations from now? They will also have to try to reconcile their work lives with their inner lives, and attempt to address the permanent questions just as we try. What is my place in the world? What will make me happy? How do I find completion, and serenity? In a recent interview, Ken Burns addresses the misconception that our generation is fundamentally different than any other,
"We think the past is gone, the people are anachronistic, because we're alive, that we live much more complex lives than they do. Not true. They felt love, and jealousy, they had equally as intellectual conversations as we have. And have had for thousands of years. We have to figure out a way to remove the arrogance that the present exerts over the past."
-
What about us is worth saving? In the improbable chance we find a way to save ourselves, we might think long and hard about what kind of people we will send to seed the cosmos. It would be sad to think that our far-distant descendants, thousands of years into the future, may sit around, just as lost as we are. Will they look back and wonder why we went through such great effort, and sacrifice, only to safely preserve new generations of humans who may have lost any insight into what life is for? What will be the regrets of our descendants, staring out of their windows on rainy days, and quiet nights? We must focus on von Braun’s vision, but we must also not fail to continue contemplating that other imperative of life on earth, not just how to save ourselves, but how to know ourselves. That we may always wonder how to perfect our lives, is a prospect equally concerning and beautiful.
One of my favorite sources of wisdom writing is a single poem known as Hávamál, the sayings of the high one. Its verses were said to be given by the Norse god Odin. The viking-age poet who composed these lines counseled moderation:
When he meets friends, the fool gapes,
Is shy and sheepish at first,
Then he sips his mead and immediately
All know what an oaf he is,
He who has seen and suffered much,
And knows the ways of the world,
Who has traveled', can tell what spirit
Governs the men he meets,
Drink your mead, but in moderation,
Talk sense or be silent:
No man is called discourteous who goes
To bed at an early hour
It is now very late, and I have just one more glowing screen I need to shut off before I can step into bed, and fall asleep. I’ve given you a piece of my mind tonight, and offered a lot of advice, solicited or not. It would be a shame for me to not follow it myself. So please forgive me if I go to bed now, at a not so early hour.
Family dinner at Sushi Tomo (December 2011)
Sketch No. 2: The Lady at Indian Creek
July 20, 2008
TO LIVE ON A SANDBAR. Collins Avenue is named for the coconut farmer who tried to first transform the wild mangrove-thicket of 1900s Miami Beach. It runs North and South along this long, thin ocean breaker. High above the hot canyon, tower old monolith apartment buildings. Fashionable in 1940, but out-dated in 1950; innovative in 1960, and a forgotten experiment in 1970. The towers rise and fall, sand castles in the sky, new ones rising every winter like any new migrating flock of ibises, and out by the end of the season. Most white, some are pink, but more rarely a dark green one, floating like sea cucumbers in the Sargasso Sea. But sea cucumbers sound too whimsical; they are more nearly white Styrofoam chunks of discount supermarket coolers. Crushed by some beach-goers foot and washed out to sea ten years ago, on Memorial Day, on Labor Day, or Tuesday. It doesn’t matter. There is nothing special about these parched white, concrete giants. Nothing special except the occasional shade they provide at the right time of day, a cool black shadow cast over the hot streets.
The mangroves were cleared by black men, nearly slaves, who came here two years before, maybe, or left two years later, after the thick branches were cleared. After the mosquitoes were gassed, or so I imagine, I don’t really know. They went home to Bahamian mosquitoes, and other trade winds. The cousins of my night breezes, a hundred nautical miles east. But maybe they never went home. Those men died of yellow fever. Coughing up something black, right here. Here, where my pen writes in black ink. Nothing, and then a mangrove, and then a pen, and then nothing. Forever. But for a moment, there was a quiet sand bar, and wilderness for a million years. And all that rose and fell in the balmy sky were flights of birds, and the occasional lizard or worm dropped from their clutches in mid-flight, on the way to a nest.
But on the way to my elementary school, and sometimes on my way home I would always pass certain people, buildings, machines, pharmacies. From that white van, or school bus if you prefer, what machines did I see? I remember the smell of tar from at least four years old. I am not sure why, though only two smells stand out as strongly. Mercury from a lab in college, and then mango. It’s orange, pulpy insides, and green, purple skin, smothered by a cars tire after dropping from a tree to the street below. The fragrance of that sorry fruit could fill the night air for at least a block away. The tar may have been from a roof under repair. But the machine I think of now is the steamroller, smoothing the streets, paved over sand. The other machine is the steamboat and dock, where now stands a rowing club. It had those typical Mississippi River paddle propellers on the back, and three levels of decks. I had always intended to ride on it, past Allison Island, to nowhere, and back again. Why was it there? For tourist’s, maybe, I think that might make sense. It seemed like a relic of Jazz Age Miami Beach; gangsters from New York could tour these freshly cleared mangrove islands, sipping the milk of machete-cut coconuts.
And from their high-perches, thousands of old ladies were pouring coffee at eight in the morning. They poured it from high above the avenue in their sun-weary towers. Buildings who spent too many years in the sun, like bathing beauties who flocked here, they were young winter birds too, once, for the season. But they never left. These white towers, faces to the sun, and now wrinkled in premature old-age. Aunts, mothers, grandmothers, look past old postcards from some distant part of the hemisphere, hanging on their refrigerators. And also look past the new post cards that are now old again. Staring below at this white bus cruising north to elementary school, like a hermit crab in its shell, under the shallow beach’s waves. This hermit crab carried in it nine-year-olds. Stomachs filled with cereal, and backpacks carelessly tossed on the vans’ black, greasy floor. Their shoes untied, hiding what they picked from their noses under the beige rubber-leather seats. Shouting at each other, or reading end-to-end of their history text books to look for photographs or paintings.
Some boys and girls were staring out the windows at other cars, and apartment buildings, and old ladies on balconies. From that bus window I often saw one man, and one lady, when I wasn’t talking to Dmitri, or Gleb. Those two were immigrants from Ukraine and Russia, whose parents moved here because they loved a warm seaport. The man always wore a blue shirt and sandals. So there are no misconceptions, he was homeless. His white skin was now red, baked on everyday he could not find shade. His face held a thick blondish-beard, which was more nearly a nest, or mangrove thicket, waiting to be cleared, dry as coral rock. I would see him for years, and then never again. How can I not wonder if he ever saw me? Where was he born? What was the first day he decided to live outside, and how did he get to Miami Beach? Or did he always live here? A day could not pass if I did not think how easy it would be for him to quickly look normal. This nine-year-old, staring from his school bus window, would imagine himself as that bum. I would walk into the public bathrooms at North Shore Park, and have collected enough spare change to buy a razor to clear that beard, and buy some new clothes to start a new life. I never had any plans after the beard-shave, but it was a very good start, I thought. So for eight, nine, and ten years old, I would see the blonde-bearded homeless man, the same blue shirt, and sandals, walking north and south. But we never spoke.
At North Shore Park, where my father played tennis on hot Saturday afternoons, I would buy a soda and sit at the edge of the tennis courts. Slowly pouring the ice-cold, bubbly, drink around ants, and then on ants crawling aimlessly. Occasionally, I would rescue a few by blowing the wet, brown, fizzy, bliss out of their way. But most would drown in a cold, sweet death, never to make it back to their ant piles, dark caverns, and mine shafts. On the way home, in the old, gray Oldsmobile, I would suck on the cloth seatbelts. Those seatbelts absorbed hundreds of weekends of salty sweat. Slightly hungry, they were not the best meal I ever had, but not the worst. Passing by old motels on Biscayne Boulevard I read all of their curious names. They were creative, and referred to real places in blue-collar dreams, like Casablanca, or The Gold Dust, The Sinbad, and Vagabond. Now the motels have given way to tall hotels, whose names are meaningless, and sound sophisticated, and empty.
Only one man drove us to school: “Shep”, the black school-bus driver who had one tooth in his gums, always a tooth pick in his mouth, and one more tooth he rolled around with this tongue like an enameled peanut. And on those rides my nine-year olds eyes fell in love with one woman who has never moved in all these years, the lady at Indian Creek. She sun bathes everyday, but is still white and has never aged. A statue was placed at the Indian Creek Apartments many years ago, I do not know when. Her hair is cut short, just above her shoulders, and she is leaning back on what looks to be a marble column. She is as naked as the day she was born, though of course she was never born. Her white breasts face the sun as she leans backwards to soak up all the warmth, and invisible cool waterfall gliding down over her frozen body.
Every morning I rode that school bus, I had to look at that body, white and nude. But I never said a word to anyone about her. And now after twenty years, I never saw her closer than the distance from the street. As if I came to close, I would know, for certain, she is not real. Did my friend with the bushy blonde beard, blue shirt, and sandals, ever stare longingly at her hard, stone, body? Or gaze from the top of her head, to her navel, and slender legs? Why didn’t I go on that steamboat, or ask that homeless man those questions that burned inside my elementary school head? Or take a closer look at her until now, when I will snap a photo of her? I had often thought of photographing her; to stare with wonder seemed innocent, but to photograph I thought petty, and vulgar. I will photograph her from a distance, because that is how, too quickly driving by, I stared at her for years. But she has never aged, and never moves, and I hope, never will.
We walk out on to balconies to watch others move below us, and are we are left restless, ever-unsatisfied. Our parents came to these shores to be free of want and endless dreams, but we are always in motion, north and south on Collins Avenue. Crawling north to school, and home again, to tennis courts, and south once more to shave. We were all migratory birds, and shifting ocean sands, sea cucumbers, and hermit crabs. You and I were palm fronds swaying in the night winds, always moving, and never still.
July 20, 2008
TO LIVE ON A SANDBAR. Collins Avenue is named for the coconut farmer who tried to first transform the wild mangrove-thicket of 1900s Miami Beach. It runs North and South along this long, thin ocean breaker. High above the hot canyon, tower old monolith apartment buildings. Fashionable in 1940, but out-dated in 1950; innovative in 1960, and a forgotten experiment in 1970. The towers rise and fall, sand castles in the sky, new ones rising every winter like any new migrating flock of ibises, and out by the end of the season. Most white, some are pink, but more rarely a dark green one, floating like sea cucumbers in the Sargasso Sea. But sea cucumbers sound too whimsical; they are more nearly white Styrofoam chunks of discount supermarket coolers. Crushed by some beach-goers foot and washed out to sea ten years ago, on Memorial Day, on Labor Day, or Tuesday. It doesn’t matter. There is nothing special about these parched white, concrete giants. Nothing special except the occasional shade they provide at the right time of day, a cool black shadow cast over the hot streets.
The mangroves were cleared by black men, nearly slaves, who came here two years before, maybe, or left two years later, after the thick branches were cleared. After the mosquitoes were gassed, or so I imagine, I don’t really know. They went home to Bahamian mosquitoes, and other trade winds. The cousins of my night breezes, a hundred nautical miles east. But maybe they never went home. Those men died of yellow fever. Coughing up something black, right here. Here, where my pen writes in black ink. Nothing, and then a mangrove, and then a pen, and then nothing. Forever. But for a moment, there was a quiet sand bar, and wilderness for a million years. And all that rose and fell in the balmy sky were flights of birds, and the occasional lizard or worm dropped from their clutches in mid-flight, on the way to a nest.
But on the way to my elementary school, and sometimes on my way home I would always pass certain people, buildings, machines, pharmacies. From that white van, or school bus if you prefer, what machines did I see? I remember the smell of tar from at least four years old. I am not sure why, though only two smells stand out as strongly. Mercury from a lab in college, and then mango. It’s orange, pulpy insides, and green, purple skin, smothered by a cars tire after dropping from a tree to the street below. The fragrance of that sorry fruit could fill the night air for at least a block away. The tar may have been from a roof under repair. But the machine I think of now is the steamroller, smoothing the streets, paved over sand. The other machine is the steamboat and dock, where now stands a rowing club. It had those typical Mississippi River paddle propellers on the back, and three levels of decks. I had always intended to ride on it, past Allison Island, to nowhere, and back again. Why was it there? For tourist’s, maybe, I think that might make sense. It seemed like a relic of Jazz Age Miami Beach; gangsters from New York could tour these freshly cleared mangrove islands, sipping the milk of machete-cut coconuts.
And from their high-perches, thousands of old ladies were pouring coffee at eight in the morning. They poured it from high above the avenue in their sun-weary towers. Buildings who spent too many years in the sun, like bathing beauties who flocked here, they were young winter birds too, once, for the season. But they never left. These white towers, faces to the sun, and now wrinkled in premature old-age. Aunts, mothers, grandmothers, look past old postcards from some distant part of the hemisphere, hanging on their refrigerators. And also look past the new post cards that are now old again. Staring below at this white bus cruising north to elementary school, like a hermit crab in its shell, under the shallow beach’s waves. This hermit crab carried in it nine-year-olds. Stomachs filled with cereal, and backpacks carelessly tossed on the vans’ black, greasy floor. Their shoes untied, hiding what they picked from their noses under the beige rubber-leather seats. Shouting at each other, or reading end-to-end of their history text books to look for photographs or paintings.
Some boys and girls were staring out the windows at other cars, and apartment buildings, and old ladies on balconies. From that bus window I often saw one man, and one lady, when I wasn’t talking to Dmitri, or Gleb. Those two were immigrants from Ukraine and Russia, whose parents moved here because they loved a warm seaport. The man always wore a blue shirt and sandals. So there are no misconceptions, he was homeless. His white skin was now red, baked on everyday he could not find shade. His face held a thick blondish-beard, which was more nearly a nest, or mangrove thicket, waiting to be cleared, dry as coral rock. I would see him for years, and then never again. How can I not wonder if he ever saw me? Where was he born? What was the first day he decided to live outside, and how did he get to Miami Beach? Or did he always live here? A day could not pass if I did not think how easy it would be for him to quickly look normal. This nine-year-old, staring from his school bus window, would imagine himself as that bum. I would walk into the public bathrooms at North Shore Park, and have collected enough spare change to buy a razor to clear that beard, and buy some new clothes to start a new life. I never had any plans after the beard-shave, but it was a very good start, I thought. So for eight, nine, and ten years old, I would see the blonde-bearded homeless man, the same blue shirt, and sandals, walking north and south. But we never spoke.
At North Shore Park, where my father played tennis on hot Saturday afternoons, I would buy a soda and sit at the edge of the tennis courts. Slowly pouring the ice-cold, bubbly, drink around ants, and then on ants crawling aimlessly. Occasionally, I would rescue a few by blowing the wet, brown, fizzy, bliss out of their way. But most would drown in a cold, sweet death, never to make it back to their ant piles, dark caverns, and mine shafts. On the way home, in the old, gray Oldsmobile, I would suck on the cloth seatbelts. Those seatbelts absorbed hundreds of weekends of salty sweat. Slightly hungry, they were not the best meal I ever had, but not the worst. Passing by old motels on Biscayne Boulevard I read all of their curious names. They were creative, and referred to real places in blue-collar dreams, like Casablanca, or The Gold Dust, The Sinbad, and Vagabond. Now the motels have given way to tall hotels, whose names are meaningless, and sound sophisticated, and empty.
Only one man drove us to school: “Shep”, the black school-bus driver who had one tooth in his gums, always a tooth pick in his mouth, and one more tooth he rolled around with this tongue like an enameled peanut. And on those rides my nine-year olds eyes fell in love with one woman who has never moved in all these years, the lady at Indian Creek. She sun bathes everyday, but is still white and has never aged. A statue was placed at the Indian Creek Apartments many years ago, I do not know when. Her hair is cut short, just above her shoulders, and she is leaning back on what looks to be a marble column. She is as naked as the day she was born, though of course she was never born. Her white breasts face the sun as she leans backwards to soak up all the warmth, and invisible cool waterfall gliding down over her frozen body.
Every morning I rode that school bus, I had to look at that body, white and nude. But I never said a word to anyone about her. And now after twenty years, I never saw her closer than the distance from the street. As if I came to close, I would know, for certain, she is not real. Did my friend with the bushy blonde beard, blue shirt, and sandals, ever stare longingly at her hard, stone, body? Or gaze from the top of her head, to her navel, and slender legs? Why didn’t I go on that steamboat, or ask that homeless man those questions that burned inside my elementary school head? Or take a closer look at her until now, when I will snap a photo of her? I had often thought of photographing her; to stare with wonder seemed innocent, but to photograph I thought petty, and vulgar. I will photograph her from a distance, because that is how, too quickly driving by, I stared at her for years. But she has never aged, and never moves, and I hope, never will.
We walk out on to balconies to watch others move below us, and are we are left restless, ever-unsatisfied. Our parents came to these shores to be free of want and endless dreams, but we are always in motion, north and south on Collins Avenue. Crawling north to school, and home again, to tennis courts, and south once more to shave. We were all migratory birds, and shifting ocean sands, sea cucumbers, and hermit crabs. You and I were palm fronds swaying in the night winds, always moving, and never still.
Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis: A New Moral Imperative
Introduction
The purpose of this discussion is to examine the moral permissibility of preimplantation
genetic diagnosis (PGD) within the context of a conventional
ethical approach to reasoning [1]. Beyond the numerous medical questions
surrounding the procedure, are many ethical considerations. The most basic
question is how much significance is given to the life of the embryo. Although the
moral significance of the procedure does not derive from its exact
implementation, for the sake of clarity, it is helpful to provide some background
on how embryos are presently screened. If different protocols are devised in the
future, the present analysis of how ethical arguments may influence the basic
controversial aspects of its practice will be relevant.
Before fertilization, the egg can be examined, as it produces two small cells
(polar bodies), for a number of chromosomal abnormalities. PGD is performed as
an in vitro procedure, in the following steps: a sperm sample is collected and
placed in a dish with eggs [2]. After fertilization, 8-cell stage embryos undergo
biopsy. One cell is removed for examination by polymerase chain reaction, and
Fluorescence in situ hybridization. PCR can determine single gene defects, and
FISH reveals relatively larger problems in the genome, such as aneuploidy [2]. After
these tests, the remaining embryo is prepared for uterine insertion. Of course, if
there is some reason to believe that if the embryo is less than ideal, it will be
destroyed.
PGD poses a conflict at the societal level [1]. Even though the blastocyst under
question is in most cases somewhere between six to a hundred cells, it is still a
very early stage human life. It would be hard to imagine that anyone of
conscience, whose job it is to dispose of unwanted embryos (especially for reasons
as potentially inconsequential as aesthetic considerations) to not feel even slightly
awkward when discarding those few cells. Of course to put this in perspective,
there is something on the order of 100 trillion cells in a full grown human [3]. Yet
despite its microscopic nature, there is much debate surrounding this practice.
This raises many questions: what constitutes ideal offspring, and does less
than perfect equal a green light for elimination? Is the idea of perfection an
objective notion? Given that our society contains a minimal safety net, is it fair
to make others support the care of an unhealthy child, when there was the
opportunity to prevent its development even before pregnancy? It would be
impossible to thoroughly discuss all of these questions in this paper. Therefore,
the focus will be on the following issue: I will argue that since the social costs of
PGD are so minor in comparison to the social costs of raising an unhealthy child,
it is morally impermissible to forego diagnosis.
Normative Ethics in the Biotech Age
In gene therapy trials, there is a consensus on what therapies are allowed (Figure
1). Only patients whose lives depend on the treatment, and for which no
reasonable alternatives exist, may receive the correct form of DNA. Currently, no
trial may administer a vector which will also induce change in the germ-line. This
is before an embryo even forms; no procedure may change an egg or sperm. No
procedures may be performed to resolve narcissistic flaws; not that the science is
even ready for that level of sophisticated intervention. Yet, if gene therapy could
help patients that are unhappy with their physical appearance, is there any
reason for them not to receive treatment? What makes this any different than
people risking their lives in plastic surgery procedures? Other than the
complexity of the alteration, there is no meaningful difference, from a moral point
of view. It is hard to believe that we should exclude psychological misery, or
vanity, from more common pathologies. If social rejection can lead to suicide, is
that different than intractable heart disease, or terminal cancer? The end-result
in every case is death.
One might raise this point: what if the change you make affects future
offspring? That is to say, people choose to have cosmetic surgery, whereas no
potential part of an embryo chooses to have genetic enhancement, it is forced
upon it. But if there is no detriment to cells in the germ line, how is this
proscribed gene therapy any different than that uncontroversial and benign form
of genetic discrimination, the picking of whom to mate with, or positive eugenics?
How does the debate over heritable gene therapy relate to the thesis of this
essay? If parents decide with whom to mate based on any number of traits, then
in effect they are changing the potential make-up of their offspring. So, the
possibility of heritable gene therapy, choosing the best mate, PGD, picking a
good pre-school, and so on, are all just stops along the road of reproductive
personal choice. The controversy at each step arises when a gamete becomes an
embryo, and when and if that embryo is afforded a right to life.
Yet, embryos have no choice in any number of things that may negatively
affect them. They have no input in how their host cares for them during
gestation, and continuing through a large part of their infancy. Since PGD
concerns an embryo, it is admittedly more problematic than heritable gene
therapy, which focuses only on pre-meiosis gametes. If it can be agreed that the
value, and dignity, of an 8-cell human embryo should carry less concern than a
fully mature infant, then choices made over its fate should be relatively
insignificant to the concern of the infant. Simply put, decisions that put children
at much greater risk, made for possibly trivial reasons, are hardly discussed.
Getting ears pierced can increase attractiveness or lead to a deadly bacterial
infection. Should we stop mothers for imposing this possibly fatal practice on
their baby daughters, who had no choice in the matter? Why then does great
debate occur over a more minor issue, the life of an embryo? A future scale of
importance, and claim to rights, should resemble this descending order of
priority: child, embryo, and then gamete.
It is important to evaluate what the goals are in these medical procedures.
The common goal of gene therapy is for recipients to be healthier, and therefore,
happier. No reasonable physician would want to cause harm to the patient. So in
that sense, there is some murkiness in deciding the risk of the operation against
the benefits of aesthetic enhancement. Does the risk of surgery ultimately justify
the patients desires, and is the desire for a more youthful appearance equal to
necessity? In this scenario, it would be helpful to perform a cost-benefit analysis.
The trouble is how to go about empirically quantifying the proposed benefits of
physical transformation.
Perhaps no one would mind if there were very few of these diagnostic
operations, but what if it was very commonplace? Given the rapid progress in
genome sequencing technology, it is not hard to imagine that we will see, in short
order, the convergence of sequencing “ideal humans” and comparing these perfect
genomes to the embryos of every hopeful set of parents (Figure 2). It is plausible
that billions of PGD procedures could occur over the course of a generation.
With that in mind, it would be interesting to examine how that concerns the
issue of rights, and moral character [1].
After recognition of the moral issue, the question turns to how the scientific
and medical community should respond. Since this procedure is seemingly
performed often enough for it to be debated, it is safe to assume that most
members of the powers that be do not take an absolutist position on the issue.
That is, there are not sufficient numbers of people who think embryo biopsy is
always wrong, and calling for it to be illegal. Can we then infer that destroying
cells with gene defects before pregnancy is a societal good?
The Utilitarian approach asks what results in the best overall consequences [1].
That is, the ethical choice is the one that produces the greatest utility, or
benefits, for all parties [1]. Ignoring scientific difficulties regarding PGD for a
moment, this question is the core problem for both proponents and detractors of
embryo diagnosis: how to determine interests in an embryo. Does the embryo
care if it lives or dies? Even if it does not care, does that mean killing it is not a
bad result? If a comatose patient is murdered, it may not be sufficiently aware to
care that it is dying, but what if it had the possibility to regain consciousness?
Then certainly, it would follow, such an act has negative consequences. Is killing
an embryo as wrong as killing someone in their sleep? The answer is, of course
not. Viewed through the perspective of a society guided by this writers ethical
norms, we would lose nothing close to the value of a mature human, after each
PGD procedure. So, it is true that killing embryo can have a negative
consequence if was done for no purpose at all, that is, to kill embryos for its own
sake. But when measured against the potentially positive consequence of a
happier, more benevolent, generation of humans, the negative consequences
appear to be insignificant. What is really being considered is not the emotional
state of those eight cells, but how we treat human life.
The political philosopher Robert Nozick [4,5] noted the following:
“Utilitarian theory is embarrassed by the possibility of utility monsters who get
enormously greater gains in utility from any sacrifice of others than these others
lose. For, unacceptably, the theory seems to require that we all be sacrificed in
the monster’s maw, in order to increase total utility. Similarly if people are utility
devourers with respect to animal, always getting greatly counterbalancing utility
from each sacrifice of an animal, we may feel that ‘utilitarianism for animals,
Kantianism for people’...”
The example above is an argument against utilitarianism. Although the whole
point of the thought experiment is to bring up the idea of someone who
experienced much more utility than any real person, for the purposes of this
essay, parents that discard potential offspring can be considered to be utility
monsters. They should hardly view this label in a positive light. Nozick uses
“utility monster” to refer to a hypothetical agent who had an enormous capacity
to experience utility. Although parents are just people, and therefore are by
definition not utility monsters (to Nozick), for the sake of argument it helps to
compare parents and embryos, the way monsters are described relative to people.
As full grown humans, we know what its like to feel “alive” as most other
mature people feel. Unfortunately, we can only guess at what it is like to be an
embryo. Parents that choose PGD, self-decide their superiority to embryos.
Superiority is a greater capacity to experience well-being. In this way, they
rationalize the probable destruction of the cells under biopsy. For the couple,
more utility can be gained by the examination and selection of a perfect child, or
maybe no child at all, than any benefits gained from the existence of a random
child. Some parents, those that would opt out of the procedure in question, either
deny they have superiority, or find it insufficiently reasonable (the promotion of
utility) to justify killing an embryo. That is, any increased utility does not justify
killing a human life, an absolute moral wrong. Others possibly feel unqualified to
infer what might be lost, or gained, in destroying an embryo. Who can decide if
the greater capacity to experience well-being rationalizes killing a human life,
(even a microscopic one, without a single nerve cell or memory)? To justify PGD,
it simply has to be accepted, based on current scientific evidence, that embryos
just do not matter very much at all.
Save for the fact that these cells are of the human species, the embryo is not
conscious. It is just genetically near-identical and has the potential to grow into
something resembling ourselves. Everyone agrees that is special, awe-inspiring,
and so on, but does potential matter? In the abortion debate, it is often remarked
that the terminated fetus could have been the next great artist, or scientist; but,
is it not just as probable that baby could be the next tyrant? On average, every
humanitarian is as likely as each moral monster. How can we quantify this? Look
around our world, most people are neither monsters, nor saints. PGD combines
the possibility to pick children, with the moral predicaments that afflict the
abortion debate. My argument is that we should care a great deal less about an
8-cell embryo than a developing fetus in utero.
Finally, let us consider any utility a newly born individual would add to the
world. This is a bad argument for the following two reasons. First, if that embryo
is not chosen, the clinician will just pick another to take its place. The net utility
in society remains the same, if not perhaps even increasing because a happier,
healthier individual can now experience life. Secondly, if opponents of PGD feel
every embryo wasted is one less life to add, or experience utility, consider what
the world would be like in opposite case. What if our norms required couples to
add as many people to the world as possible, regardless of how that would affect
conditions and well-being for those already alive? If a couple is only going to have
a small number of children, we should encourage them to them get as close to
their preference as they would like. No one is saying parents should not love their
offspring equally, but what is the reality? If this couple only wants one child, for
instance, think how many possible children they are not producing. They may
not be destroying a zygote, but at the least they had the opportunity to create
more. Would creating more babies increase net utility?
After addressing the reservations of those concerned about respect for every
possible human life, we can begin to justify the moral necessity for PGD. First,
all parties have to be persuaded that the current concern for pre-differentiated
cells is overblown. In the final analysis, the moral choice, in the utilitarian
scheme, is to maximize well-being. If the fears of those alarmed over the
destruction of embryos can be dispelled, the only real significant party left is the
parents. From this perspective, it is ethically required that parents select the
child that would make them happiest.
Bibliography
[1] “A Framework for Thinking Ethically” The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa
Clara University. http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html
[2] Marik JJ. Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis: eMedicine from WebMD.
http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic3520.htm [Updated: 4-13-2005]
[3] NIH: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “Human Cells 101.”
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/fragileX/sub3.cfm
[4] Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. (1974) p. 41-42 (New York: Basic Books.)
[5] Feser, Edward: Robert Nozick (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nozick.htm#SH2a
Figure 1: Acceptable procedures in Gene therapy.
Figure 2: A possible method for child selection.
Introduction
The purpose of this discussion is to examine the moral permissibility of preimplantation
genetic diagnosis (PGD) within the context of a conventional
ethical approach to reasoning [1]. Beyond the numerous medical questions
surrounding the procedure, are many ethical considerations. The most basic
question is how much significance is given to the life of the embryo. Although the
moral significance of the procedure does not derive from its exact
implementation, for the sake of clarity, it is helpful to provide some background
on how embryos are presently screened. If different protocols are devised in the
future, the present analysis of how ethical arguments may influence the basic
controversial aspects of its practice will be relevant.
Before fertilization, the egg can be examined, as it produces two small cells
(polar bodies), for a number of chromosomal abnormalities. PGD is performed as
an in vitro procedure, in the following steps: a sperm sample is collected and
placed in a dish with eggs [2]. After fertilization, 8-cell stage embryos undergo
biopsy. One cell is removed for examination by polymerase chain reaction, and
Fluorescence in situ hybridization. PCR can determine single gene defects, and
FISH reveals relatively larger problems in the genome, such as aneuploidy [2]. After
these tests, the remaining embryo is prepared for uterine insertion. Of course, if
there is some reason to believe that if the embryo is less than ideal, it will be
destroyed.
PGD poses a conflict at the societal level [1]. Even though the blastocyst under
question is in most cases somewhere between six to a hundred cells, it is still a
very early stage human life. It would be hard to imagine that anyone of
conscience, whose job it is to dispose of unwanted embryos (especially for reasons
as potentially inconsequential as aesthetic considerations) to not feel even slightly
awkward when discarding those few cells. Of course to put this in perspective,
there is something on the order of 100 trillion cells in a full grown human [3]. Yet
despite its microscopic nature, there is much debate surrounding this practice.
This raises many questions: what constitutes ideal offspring, and does less
than perfect equal a green light for elimination? Is the idea of perfection an
objective notion? Given that our society contains a minimal safety net, is it fair
to make others support the care of an unhealthy child, when there was the
opportunity to prevent its development even before pregnancy? It would be
impossible to thoroughly discuss all of these questions in this paper. Therefore,
the focus will be on the following issue: I will argue that since the social costs of
PGD are so minor in comparison to the social costs of raising an unhealthy child,
it is morally impermissible to forego diagnosis.
Normative Ethics in the Biotech Age
In gene therapy trials, there is a consensus on what therapies are allowed (Figure
1). Only patients whose lives depend on the treatment, and for which no
reasonable alternatives exist, may receive the correct form of DNA. Currently, no
trial may administer a vector which will also induce change in the germ-line. This
is before an embryo even forms; no procedure may change an egg or sperm. No
procedures may be performed to resolve narcissistic flaws; not that the science is
even ready for that level of sophisticated intervention. Yet, if gene therapy could
help patients that are unhappy with their physical appearance, is there any
reason for them not to receive treatment? What makes this any different than
people risking their lives in plastic surgery procedures? Other than the
complexity of the alteration, there is no meaningful difference, from a moral point
of view. It is hard to believe that we should exclude psychological misery, or
vanity, from more common pathologies. If social rejection can lead to suicide, is
that different than intractable heart disease, or terminal cancer? The end-result
in every case is death.
One might raise this point: what if the change you make affects future
offspring? That is to say, people choose to have cosmetic surgery, whereas no
potential part of an embryo chooses to have genetic enhancement, it is forced
upon it. But if there is no detriment to cells in the germ line, how is this
proscribed gene therapy any different than that uncontroversial and benign form
of genetic discrimination, the picking of whom to mate with, or positive eugenics?
How does the debate over heritable gene therapy relate to the thesis of this
essay? If parents decide with whom to mate based on any number of traits, then
in effect they are changing the potential make-up of their offspring. So, the
possibility of heritable gene therapy, choosing the best mate, PGD, picking a
good pre-school, and so on, are all just stops along the road of reproductive
personal choice. The controversy at each step arises when a gamete becomes an
embryo, and when and if that embryo is afforded a right to life.
Yet, embryos have no choice in any number of things that may negatively
affect them. They have no input in how their host cares for them during
gestation, and continuing through a large part of their infancy. Since PGD
concerns an embryo, it is admittedly more problematic than heritable gene
therapy, which focuses only on pre-meiosis gametes. If it can be agreed that the
value, and dignity, of an 8-cell human embryo should carry less concern than a
fully mature infant, then choices made over its fate should be relatively
insignificant to the concern of the infant. Simply put, decisions that put children
at much greater risk, made for possibly trivial reasons, are hardly discussed.
Getting ears pierced can increase attractiveness or lead to a deadly bacterial
infection. Should we stop mothers for imposing this possibly fatal practice on
their baby daughters, who had no choice in the matter? Why then does great
debate occur over a more minor issue, the life of an embryo? A future scale of
importance, and claim to rights, should resemble this descending order of
priority: child, embryo, and then gamete.
It is important to evaluate what the goals are in these medical procedures.
The common goal of gene therapy is for recipients to be healthier, and therefore,
happier. No reasonable physician would want to cause harm to the patient. So in
that sense, there is some murkiness in deciding the risk of the operation against
the benefits of aesthetic enhancement. Does the risk of surgery ultimately justify
the patients desires, and is the desire for a more youthful appearance equal to
necessity? In this scenario, it would be helpful to perform a cost-benefit analysis.
The trouble is how to go about empirically quantifying the proposed benefits of
physical transformation.
Perhaps no one would mind if there were very few of these diagnostic
operations, but what if it was very commonplace? Given the rapid progress in
genome sequencing technology, it is not hard to imagine that we will see, in short
order, the convergence of sequencing “ideal humans” and comparing these perfect
genomes to the embryos of every hopeful set of parents (Figure 2). It is plausible
that billions of PGD procedures could occur over the course of a generation.
With that in mind, it would be interesting to examine how that concerns the
issue of rights, and moral character [1].
After recognition of the moral issue, the question turns to how the scientific
and medical community should respond. Since this procedure is seemingly
performed often enough for it to be debated, it is safe to assume that most
members of the powers that be do not take an absolutist position on the issue.
That is, there are not sufficient numbers of people who think embryo biopsy is
always wrong, and calling for it to be illegal. Can we then infer that destroying
cells with gene defects before pregnancy is a societal good?
The Utilitarian approach asks what results in the best overall consequences [1].
That is, the ethical choice is the one that produces the greatest utility, or
benefits, for all parties [1]. Ignoring scientific difficulties regarding PGD for a
moment, this question is the core problem for both proponents and detractors of
embryo diagnosis: how to determine interests in an embryo. Does the embryo
care if it lives or dies? Even if it does not care, does that mean killing it is not a
bad result? If a comatose patient is murdered, it may not be sufficiently aware to
care that it is dying, but what if it had the possibility to regain consciousness?
Then certainly, it would follow, such an act has negative consequences. Is killing
an embryo as wrong as killing someone in their sleep? The answer is, of course
not. Viewed through the perspective of a society guided by this writers ethical
norms, we would lose nothing close to the value of a mature human, after each
PGD procedure. So, it is true that killing embryo can have a negative
consequence if was done for no purpose at all, that is, to kill embryos for its own
sake. But when measured against the potentially positive consequence of a
happier, more benevolent, generation of humans, the negative consequences
appear to be insignificant. What is really being considered is not the emotional
state of those eight cells, but how we treat human life.
The political philosopher Robert Nozick [4,5] noted the following:
“Utilitarian theory is embarrassed by the possibility of utility monsters who get
enormously greater gains in utility from any sacrifice of others than these others
lose. For, unacceptably, the theory seems to require that we all be sacrificed in
the monster’s maw, in order to increase total utility. Similarly if people are utility
devourers with respect to animal, always getting greatly counterbalancing utility
from each sacrifice of an animal, we may feel that ‘utilitarianism for animals,
Kantianism for people’...”
The example above is an argument against utilitarianism. Although the whole
point of the thought experiment is to bring up the idea of someone who
experienced much more utility than any real person, for the purposes of this
essay, parents that discard potential offspring can be considered to be utility
monsters. They should hardly view this label in a positive light. Nozick uses
“utility monster” to refer to a hypothetical agent who had an enormous capacity
to experience utility. Although parents are just people, and therefore are by
definition not utility monsters (to Nozick), for the sake of argument it helps to
compare parents and embryos, the way monsters are described relative to people.
As full grown humans, we know what its like to feel “alive” as most other
mature people feel. Unfortunately, we can only guess at what it is like to be an
embryo. Parents that choose PGD, self-decide their superiority to embryos.
Superiority is a greater capacity to experience well-being. In this way, they
rationalize the probable destruction of the cells under biopsy. For the couple,
more utility can be gained by the examination and selection of a perfect child, or
maybe no child at all, than any benefits gained from the existence of a random
child. Some parents, those that would opt out of the procedure in question, either
deny they have superiority, or find it insufficiently reasonable (the promotion of
utility) to justify killing an embryo. That is, any increased utility does not justify
killing a human life, an absolute moral wrong. Others possibly feel unqualified to
infer what might be lost, or gained, in destroying an embryo. Who can decide if
the greater capacity to experience well-being rationalizes killing a human life,
(even a microscopic one, without a single nerve cell or memory)? To justify PGD,
it simply has to be accepted, based on current scientific evidence, that embryos
just do not matter very much at all.
Save for the fact that these cells are of the human species, the embryo is not
conscious. It is just genetically near-identical and has the potential to grow into
something resembling ourselves. Everyone agrees that is special, awe-inspiring,
and so on, but does potential matter? In the abortion debate, it is often remarked
that the terminated fetus could have been the next great artist, or scientist; but,
is it not just as probable that baby could be the next tyrant? On average, every
humanitarian is as likely as each moral monster. How can we quantify this? Look
around our world, most people are neither monsters, nor saints. PGD combines
the possibility to pick children, with the moral predicaments that afflict the
abortion debate. My argument is that we should care a great deal less about an
8-cell embryo than a developing fetus in utero.
Finally, let us consider any utility a newly born individual would add to the
world. This is a bad argument for the following two reasons. First, if that embryo
is not chosen, the clinician will just pick another to take its place. The net utility
in society remains the same, if not perhaps even increasing because a happier,
healthier individual can now experience life. Secondly, if opponents of PGD feel
every embryo wasted is one less life to add, or experience utility, consider what
the world would be like in opposite case. What if our norms required couples to
add as many people to the world as possible, regardless of how that would affect
conditions and well-being for those already alive? If a couple is only going to have
a small number of children, we should encourage them to them get as close to
their preference as they would like. No one is saying parents should not love their
offspring equally, but what is the reality? If this couple only wants one child, for
instance, think how many possible children they are not producing. They may
not be destroying a zygote, but at the least they had the opportunity to create
more. Would creating more babies increase net utility?
After addressing the reservations of those concerned about respect for every
possible human life, we can begin to justify the moral necessity for PGD. First,
all parties have to be persuaded that the current concern for pre-differentiated
cells is overblown. In the final analysis, the moral choice, in the utilitarian
scheme, is to maximize well-being. If the fears of those alarmed over the
destruction of embryos can be dispelled, the only real significant party left is the
parents. From this perspective, it is ethically required that parents select the
child that would make them happiest.
Bibliography
[1] “A Framework for Thinking Ethically” The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa
Clara University. http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html
[2] Marik JJ. Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis: eMedicine from WebMD.
http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic3520.htm [Updated: 4-13-2005]
[3] NIH: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “Human Cells 101.”
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/fragileX/sub3.cfm
[4] Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. (1974) p. 41-42 (New York: Basic Books.)
[5] Feser, Edward: Robert Nozick (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nozick.htm#SH2a
Figure 1: Acceptable procedures in Gene therapy.
Figure 2: A possible method for child selection.
Sketch No. 1: On Miami Shore
July 31, 2005
At night, under the bridge near my house, the Biscayne Bay flows; its pleasant, quiet waters glide
over the sand at its bottom, mixing with the warm waters of the Atlantic. These dark waters teem
with creatures that I can hardly see. A darkness like nothing we have known, for half their lives.
Perhaps they dart through the beauteous ocean waves, seldom illuminated by moon light or the
bright stars over head.
The bridge I stand on links the two islands on either side from North to South, but the
water flows from East to West and back again. Always we are crossing each others’ paths, but never
in the same direction. The cloud banks roll overhead, whimsical and indifferent, floating in ecstasy, a
shepherd to the cold wind that brushes the pine leaves and palm fronds.
I open my front door and walk the two blocks to the bridge. The moon greets all who walk
at night. Some of us are tired of reading our books, some too restless to sleep, and there are others,
like me, who would rather just walk. Is this not why our ancestors crawled out of the great waters: to
walk about. How much brighter the moon and stars appeared to that hungry fish that pulled itself
from the crashing waves of the Cambrian seas. That tired creature struggling to fulfill its
evolutionary destiny under the knowing glow of moonlight.
I walk to the bridge but something is wrong. I was uneasy before coming here but now I
recognize what has really been troubling me. The bridge’s renovation was finished a few months
ago, and now the “painting” has been finished as well. I remember now, the old bridge had wide
slits where even low dogs could see through to the bay. The handrail was supported by white (paint
chipped) columns with brown spinal cords of rusty rebar. The waters would flow through for
everyone to see, even small children who were not tall enough to peer over the edge of the bridges
wall.
Now the wall is solid, but worse yet it is painted over, with an artist’s rendition of the waters
of Biscayne Bay. Now there is only one kind of wave, the one he had imagined: bright and garish,
green and blue from the afternoon sun. And there will be no room left for imagination of what the
waves look like by those too young to see over the walls. Was that Lenin who said, give me four
years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted? For four years a child
will not be tall enough to look over the bridge to see what the water is like, because the new wall is
painted and solid, there are no spaces left to stick their arms through. No spaces where their arms
are dusted with the chalk from the columns’ white paint. The artist has coated the wall that blocks
the waves, the only rendition children will see until they are old enough, and tall enough, to no
longer care what the waters look like. No wonder for what these waters appear as at night, a
supplanted imagination, and no longer a vision of their own. No thoughts of the night where the
colors are faint, and sublime, and rarer.
In his collection of essays The Soul of the Night, Chet Raymo reminds us why the colors of the
night are more beautiful than the saturated reflections of day, “But today, ostentatious October fills
my window, demanding attention, squeezing its energy into every inch of the frame... October’s
color redounds to nature’s credit. Color in November is the work of art… Like color in November,
color in the night sky is the work of art. The night sky is November all year round.”
When I was three or four, my house keeper Heidi used to walk with me to the bridge on the
island I used to live on. It too was solid, but not ruined by a painter’s vision of the waters, imposed
on the bridge walls. I desperately tried to pull myself up above the white walls, and when I was lucky
Heidi would lift me up onto the edge so I could see the water for myself. I wonder if those walls had
been painted then, green and blue, and unmoving, like “ostentations October,” if I would ever have
come back at night to see how they look for myself. Like the weary student who reads the summary
or watches the movie in place of the book, my mind would have been set. Dried like concrete, the
actor’s face pressed into their minds, a mutant plot, paraphrased, shortened, flashy, and over too
soon. I was fortunate, I suppose, to have known the bridge as a good book. But now it is the hurried
movie, and why struggle to look over its edge when it has already been painted for you? Maybe this
is my allegory of the bridge, “To them I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadow of
the images,” I hope children still long to look deep into the water over the edge of the walls.
If I come across this little memory so many years from now, suffocating in dust at the
bottom of an old wooden drawer, and awakened from its sleep, I fear there will be no darkness left
in the night sky to be remembered. Just a faint brown cover of absorbed metropolitan lights; but I
suppose the night and its dim reflections in the waters will be more valued then. Perhaps they will be
seen against the dark waters and the shadow of images finally exposed as incompetent imitations of
the true night-soaked ocean waves.
I look over the wall, as the waves flow under my feet, beating and lapping against the bridges
columns. I rest my arms on the ledge and spit into the bay. In a second the water ripples, and faint
green needlefish dart to the center, their simple glow circling around the gentle waves. I suppose this
is what I was always waiting to see: what it was that lived in these quiet waters, what the sun’s light
had always blocked.
The waters slip into thin translucent lines of serene glowing green, excited by the sleek
needlefish bodies streaming through these heavens. The slivers disappear until I drop a small leaf
into the water and the light glows again. The creatures spinning in the waves are content in their
watery homes. I imagine that even they, though light in the oceans is hard to come by, are shy when
radiating their subtle artistry upon us.
The leaf in the water is a special treat, and the fish gather around it like the cloud banks
ringing the moon overhead. The powerful lights of our homes obscure the night sky with their
incandescent hums, as the luminescent waters come out to greet their celestial counterparts. In their
gentle bodies Luciferase and other enzymes interact to produce the chemical lights responsible for
the glowing streams of water. It is rather fitting that this light is so far removed from the stars in the
sky above, fallen from the heavens. As the city stands smoldering across the bay, its lights are red
and dull like a fire seen from across the sea. The needlefish circle back into their watery home and
the bridge’s waters are black again. Raymo tells us “Night is the black-and-white print. The stars
twinkle in a monochrome of pure silver chloride. The stars are resonantly colorless.” At least for me,
my bridge is no longer a connection between these islands, it is a parapet onto the night itself, a
looking glass onto the glowing waters I have waited long to see.
July 31, 2005
At night, under the bridge near my house, the Biscayne Bay flows; its pleasant, quiet waters glide
over the sand at its bottom, mixing with the warm waters of the Atlantic. These dark waters teem
with creatures that I can hardly see. A darkness like nothing we have known, for half their lives.
Perhaps they dart through the beauteous ocean waves, seldom illuminated by moon light or the
bright stars over head.
The bridge I stand on links the two islands on either side from North to South, but the
water flows from East to West and back again. Always we are crossing each others’ paths, but never
in the same direction. The cloud banks roll overhead, whimsical and indifferent, floating in ecstasy, a
shepherd to the cold wind that brushes the pine leaves and palm fronds.
I open my front door and walk the two blocks to the bridge. The moon greets all who walk
at night. Some of us are tired of reading our books, some too restless to sleep, and there are others,
like me, who would rather just walk. Is this not why our ancestors crawled out of the great waters: to
walk about. How much brighter the moon and stars appeared to that hungry fish that pulled itself
from the crashing waves of the Cambrian seas. That tired creature struggling to fulfill its
evolutionary destiny under the knowing glow of moonlight.
I walk to the bridge but something is wrong. I was uneasy before coming here but now I
recognize what has really been troubling me. The bridge’s renovation was finished a few months
ago, and now the “painting” has been finished as well. I remember now, the old bridge had wide
slits where even low dogs could see through to the bay. The handrail was supported by white (paint
chipped) columns with brown spinal cords of rusty rebar. The waters would flow through for
everyone to see, even small children who were not tall enough to peer over the edge of the bridges
wall.
Now the wall is solid, but worse yet it is painted over, with an artist’s rendition of the waters
of Biscayne Bay. Now there is only one kind of wave, the one he had imagined: bright and garish,
green and blue from the afternoon sun. And there will be no room left for imagination of what the
waves look like by those too young to see over the walls. Was that Lenin who said, give me four
years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted? For four years a child
will not be tall enough to look over the bridge to see what the water is like, because the new wall is
painted and solid, there are no spaces left to stick their arms through. No spaces where their arms
are dusted with the chalk from the columns’ white paint. The artist has coated the wall that blocks
the waves, the only rendition children will see until they are old enough, and tall enough, to no
longer care what the waters look like. No wonder for what these waters appear as at night, a
supplanted imagination, and no longer a vision of their own. No thoughts of the night where the
colors are faint, and sublime, and rarer.
In his collection of essays The Soul of the Night, Chet Raymo reminds us why the colors of the
night are more beautiful than the saturated reflections of day, “But today, ostentatious October fills
my window, demanding attention, squeezing its energy into every inch of the frame... October’s
color redounds to nature’s credit. Color in November is the work of art… Like color in November,
color in the night sky is the work of art. The night sky is November all year round.”
When I was three or four, my house keeper Heidi used to walk with me to the bridge on the
island I used to live on. It too was solid, but not ruined by a painter’s vision of the waters, imposed
on the bridge walls. I desperately tried to pull myself up above the white walls, and when I was lucky
Heidi would lift me up onto the edge so I could see the water for myself. I wonder if those walls had
been painted then, green and blue, and unmoving, like “ostentations October,” if I would ever have
come back at night to see how they look for myself. Like the weary student who reads the summary
or watches the movie in place of the book, my mind would have been set. Dried like concrete, the
actor’s face pressed into their minds, a mutant plot, paraphrased, shortened, flashy, and over too
soon. I was fortunate, I suppose, to have known the bridge as a good book. But now it is the hurried
movie, and why struggle to look over its edge when it has already been painted for you? Maybe this
is my allegory of the bridge, “To them I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadow of
the images,” I hope children still long to look deep into the water over the edge of the walls.
If I come across this little memory so many years from now, suffocating in dust at the
bottom of an old wooden drawer, and awakened from its sleep, I fear there will be no darkness left
in the night sky to be remembered. Just a faint brown cover of absorbed metropolitan lights; but I
suppose the night and its dim reflections in the waters will be more valued then. Perhaps they will be
seen against the dark waters and the shadow of images finally exposed as incompetent imitations of
the true night-soaked ocean waves.
I look over the wall, as the waves flow under my feet, beating and lapping against the bridges
columns. I rest my arms on the ledge and spit into the bay. In a second the water ripples, and faint
green needlefish dart to the center, their simple glow circling around the gentle waves. I suppose this
is what I was always waiting to see: what it was that lived in these quiet waters, what the sun’s light
had always blocked.
The waters slip into thin translucent lines of serene glowing green, excited by the sleek
needlefish bodies streaming through these heavens. The slivers disappear until I drop a small leaf
into the water and the light glows again. The creatures spinning in the waves are content in their
watery homes. I imagine that even they, though light in the oceans is hard to come by, are shy when
radiating their subtle artistry upon us.
The leaf in the water is a special treat, and the fish gather around it like the cloud banks
ringing the moon overhead. The powerful lights of our homes obscure the night sky with their
incandescent hums, as the luminescent waters come out to greet their celestial counterparts. In their
gentle bodies Luciferase and other enzymes interact to produce the chemical lights responsible for
the glowing streams of water. It is rather fitting that this light is so far removed from the stars in the
sky above, fallen from the heavens. As the city stands smoldering across the bay, its lights are red
and dull like a fire seen from across the sea. The needlefish circle back into their watery home and
the bridge’s waters are black again. Raymo tells us “Night is the black-and-white print. The stars
twinkle in a monochrome of pure silver chloride. The stars are resonantly colorless.” At least for me,
my bridge is no longer a connection between these islands, it is a parapet onto the night itself, a
looking glass onto the glowing waters I have waited long to see.