blog 5

In the essay “The Man on the Moon” George J. Annas writes that “The new ideal human, the genetically engineered ‘superior’ human, will almost certainly come to represent ‘the other.’ If history is a guide, either the normal humans will view the ‘better’ humans as the other and seek to control or destroy them, or vice versa” (236). This Annas’ argument seems to be true. People have a tendency of thinking that they are better than anything else. That is kind of human beings’ instinct. when people recognize the others who they think are inferior than them, they attempt to destroy and regulate them by justify their behaviors.We can see many examples throughout our past histories.

Annas shows a conqueror, Pizarro who was the army of Spain. He conquered the Incas in Peru. The purpose of his conquest was to change the beliefs of the native people who used to live in the Incas. Since his belief was that God is the only one we have to trust and have a faith for him, people in Incas was “the other” who was non-believer, and antagonist. By plundering Incas’ land, he wanted to change their thoughts and religion that they believed. Furthermore, he even commits an act of brutality by killing people.  Basically he tried to destroy people who he think were inferior. He wanted to control them by justifying their standardized ideas are absolutely right.

People’s tendency of destroying “the others” can clearly be seen not only Annas’ essay, but also the movie “Gattaca” which covers the future story about genetically engineered people. In the same way as the historical experience, there are a group of genetically engineered people who think they are superior, and there also exist people who were born naturally without any of genetic manipulation. In the movie, the director predicts that future society’ s appearance will be ugly since either people who are superior or inferior try to control “the others” (236). Their appearance exactly reflects our past disastrous history which I mentioned earlier. The movie shows that the superior humans, who have the best genes from their parents, control and limit the naturally born humans. The main character Vincent was the weak, and non-powered human. He always faces limitations made by genetically engineered people. The superior people made the limitations to make sure that they are better human beings by justifying that they have better genes and can do much better than non-genetically engineered people.

This serious problems come from the people’s mind of they are better than the others. Since people think that they are superior, and attempt to control the inferior people, the result will be tragedy like I mentioned.