Ethics on the Island

I am writing my paper on morality and ethical issues raised on LOST. Unfortunately I'll have to finish this paper before the series ends, so some of my theories may end up being wrong...but by and large so far LOST has maintained that the lines between good and evil are not clearly drawn. There are some decisions made by the characters that are flat out perceived as wrong on the show (such as Ben's sacrifice of his daughter for the greater good, or Sayid's attempt to kill Ben as a child to prevent him from committing atrocities later in life). However, a significant portion of my paper is going to be on the simple inability to distinguish the good from the bad on the Island, much as real life is like. I have been pleasantly surprised to find this theme ongoing with every new episode that airs, since the "good" side fighting against the supposedly evil monster nevertheless do a number of things that cannot be seen as right by any means (such as the sacrifice of innocent bystanders). It appears that LOST is attempting to capture the human condition and the confusion that occurs when you aren't sure if you're fighting for the right side. This makes alot of sense to me...after all, the evil of someone like Hitler is purely hindsight, since at the time he was followed by millions of people, many of which were good people. But, as was famously pointed out, the best lie is the one that is 99% true. I am very very curious to find out who, if anyone, holds the key to the whole truth in LOST.

Is Creativity Valuable?

If we lived in a future in which we all had the same or similar capacities to do all tasks (i.e. being able to download languages at will, able to do complex math mentally, able to lift heavy objects...etc.), I would like to think that jobs would be divvied out according to who had a passion for which job. Even if person A and person B are "equally qualified" to be editors, for example, if person A is more excited about editing, then it seems that he/she is best for the job b/c of the likelihood of creative ideas arising from that passion. Person A and person B might have identical GPAs, the same schooling, the same test scores...etc., but person A seems slightly more qualified to me b/c of wanting to apply the essence of his/her being to the workplace. That is what makes individuals unique--creativity.

It should be mentioned that by creativity, I am not referring to artistic ability necessarily. I think some people excel in creativity in developing sports strategies(think about how Butler was able to take on Duke), engineering (practical solutions to practical problems [maybe why a bridge is collapsing or why a certain computer command is ineffective] often arise b/c of a creative mind), teaching (being the first person to make learning fun for a student)...etc. I think creativity is something essential to being human. Maybe it is expressed in varying degrees in different people, but more often than not, I think that people who claim to have no creativity in anything simply haven't discovered their strengths yet.

I worry that creativity is undervalued these days, though, b/c as a nation, as an economy, we're more concerned about gross domestic product, not just in goods but in people. We want babies to be "Baby Einsteins" b/c we want them to be get have a head-start in school and thus a head-start in the job market. After all, why else do we go to school anymore except to be on the track to a career? People always say that there are serious problems w/ the school system, the economy...etc., but I think that ultimately if people are affirmed for their individualities--the areas in which they are creative and therefore unique--we might fix some of those problems.

Legal Limits

One of the questions brought up today in class is whether there should be legal limits to advancing, improving, and extending humans and their life. One example was if it should be legal to replace someone's heart simply because it would make them a better athlete, or make them stronger. I do think that there needs to be some type of regulation to control these types of actions. If one is allowed to infinitely enhance themselves or others, then things would no doubt get out of control. What would be stopping people from creating "superhumans"? I feel that our humanity would suffer greatly. While I personally hope that we do not reach a point where we need these certain laws to prevent these things from happening, certain laws would definitely be necessary to regulate enhancing a human's life.

Extended Life

What if one day technology allowed us to live a longer life?

Would this be a good thing? In my opinion this would not be good. As mentioned in a blog before mine, no one wants to die. But dying, I believe is what is best for all of humanity. This is because many problems would stem from living longer lives. For instance just to name a few (I can think a lot!): over population, decreased natural resources, increased disease, increased antibiotic resistance, and increased poverty (or division b/n 3 social classes).

My main concern is towards humanity. If people are able to live longer, yes they do in fact get to cheat death for a little bit longer, but the repercussions of this longer life span might actually wipe out humanity at a faster rate. If the world runs out of resources or disease runs rampant, then more people are going to be wiped out faster than anyone can reproduce.

Ironically, the attempt to extend humanity would ultimately wipe it out.

Technology, Humans, and the Future

Interesting topic we're discussing right now in class.... Technology can certainly make life better for humans. The topic at hand is replacing organic/biological systems in the body such as the kidney, liver, etc, with man-made ones... This certainly would fix a lot of health problems, however this raises a lot of serious ethical issues as well... At what point during the process of replacing organs does one cease to be human ?

Think about it for a second. You look like a regular human being. You think like a regular human being. But you have all mechanical 'innards.' So, are you really human ? What happens to the soul, the essence of what it means to be human ?

When I think about being human, I think about our 'mortality.' At some point, we must cease to exist. It's part of being human. It must occur in the natural order of things. Supplementing humans with artificial cells and organs would disrupt this 'natural' order of things, thereby supplanting the core essence of what it means to be human...

Limits on Life?

Today, we've discussed living for hundreds of years. Would we really want to live that long? Someone mentioned the current overpopulation problem we have in the world. I would imagine that it would continue to be a problem if we lived for hundreds of years instead of just living for 70-80 years. But what would we really need in order to live so much longer than we do now? Would we need some type of physical regeneration capability? How will we fight off cancer or other diseases? Could our economy survive if we lived longer? Would we have enough natural resources to sustain our growing society? This topic really makes me think. No one wants to die, but what if dying is what is best for us?

Repo men

I don’t know how many people have seen the new movie Repo Men but it brings up some really interesting points that we have been talking about in class. At the very end the movie it revealed that main character is actually died for more than half of the movie. It turns out that the main character was put into a dream like state after losing significant amount of his brain. This man is really against technology but is forced in to state because his friend feels bad for accidentally killing him. The question is how bad is it if this man has no clue what is going on? He is happy in this dream like state but if he knew the truth he would be very angry. Some people might think that this man might be better off in dream like state than died but I do not agree because he would never have gone along with this in life. However I do not have anything against people if technology was possible who might choose to go into this dream like state. I believe that people should be able to choose their own path of death.