Genethic
One sunny day, as Sarkon the Prophet was about to leave for the vaporous mists of the spiritual paths in high spirits, he stumbled on Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist, who was looking very dejectedly down the emptiness at the Welgon Age's foamy border.
"What is the matter?" asked Sarkon, whose high spirits fell like a rock into empathic preoccupation.
"I just discovered the main reason for my stupidity," sighed Dr. Qworm.
"The main…? But you're not…" stammered Sarkon.
"You really are unable to tell a lie, aren't you?" Dr. Qworm sighed again. "Well, the better for you, and for the people around you. Wait – that would be me, wouldn't it?" he smiled weakly. "You at least were lucky with your genes," he whispered.
"My genes? Isn't that rather a question of force of will?" wondered Sarkon.
Dr. Qworm looked up from the blue void he was staring at and showed Sarkon very sad eyes. "It has just been discovered that will is a much weaker force than we thought it was. As a matter of fact, much of what we do and how we do it is powered by our genes," he explained. "A gene predisposing to violent behavior has been identified, for instance, as well as another for the dislike of physical effort. I made research in genetics too, and after lots of analysis and investigations, I identified a string of genes for stupidity."
"Well, that's a great achievement!" complimented Sarkon.
"But then," Dr. Qworm eyes turned towards the void again, "I discovered that I carried almost all of them."
There was a moment of silence. Sarkon didn't know what to say. "This is…"
"…Probably what you expected," Dr. Qworm finished for him. "I was such a fool with my senseless experiments, my Big Bang, my speed of stone, my length of light… It all makes sense now. I know I am plain stupid and will always be," he raised his eyes to meet Sarkon's, and in them the Prophet saw a despair he had never met before in the Mad Scientist's usual look of conceited pride.
"You are wrong –" Sarkon began softly, only to be interrupted in the harshest of manners.
"Of course I am wrong!" Dr. Qworm blurted out. "I'm always wrong, so why would I be right now?"
"Everything's alright, then, if you are wrong in saying you are stupid!" exclaimed Sarkon. "Besides, you know that genes can be beaten by force of will! Wouldn't somebody who knows he has a gene favoring violent behavior restrain himself from becoming violent, just like someone who has diabetes would restrain himself from eating sugar?"
"If that person has a certain degree of intelligence, certainly. But not if that person has the genes of stupidity, too!" countered Dr. Qworm.
"So you think you're too stupid to overcome your genetic stupidity? How stupid are you?!" exclaimed Sarkon, a statement he immediately felt sorry for.
"You made your point perfectly – very intelligently. That's exactly the way it is. I wouldn't have been able to explain it as well," Dr. Qworm conceded dejectedly. "I just don't know what to do."
Sarkon stroked his beard. Maybe he had a gene for kindness, because he started thinking about a way to get Dr. Qworm out of his despondency.
Sarkon decided to try convincing the Mad Scientist he wasn't that different from others. "Isn't stupidity relative, though? Take me, for instance. I can't think of anything to help you. Wouldn't that mean I am as stupid as you are, and that you're not that different from the rest of us?" he tried.
Dr. Qworm stared at him with the queerest of looks. "If your remark was intended to raise my spirits in any way, it fails miserably, because even if it did, it would mean that you were intelligent enough to help me, which would prove my being more stupid than you since I am not able to help myself! Besides, I can assure you that knowing I'm as stupid as you are is of no help at all to me!" he spat.
Darn! The Mad Scientist was too intelligent to be fooled into contentment this way, thought Sarkon. He had to try something else. "So that would mean I can't be able to help you by definition, since as soon as I would discover a way to convince you that you are not that stupid, it would prove your stupidity of not having thought about it yourself! Why am I even discussing this problem with you then?!"
"Because you are stupid?" Dr. Qworm blurted out.
"Got you there!" Sarkon jubilated. The Mad Scientist had walked right into his trap. "I am wasting my time trying to find a way to demonstrate that I am more stupid than you, which I can't possibly do without proving that I am less stupid than you, while you wisely don't even wish to discuss this problem that obviously can't have a solution! This means that I am indeed more stupid than you are, as you just mentioned! Now you have to admit you are not that stupid!"
Dr. Qworm was speechless. "Your… your demonstration was brilliant," he finally admitted.
"Wasn't it?" Sarkon smiled proudly, but then he saw Dr. Qworm's sad look again and went, Doh!
"Please don't say anything anymore," pleaded the Mad Scientist. "I appreciate your efforts, but you're only making it worse. I will have to live with my stupidity. But maybe…" he scratched his hairless cranium, "…Maybe I can help future generations to avoid my misfortune. The problem is on my genes, so maybe I could try genetic engineering!"
"What are you planning to do?" asked Sarkon, dubious. Dr. Qworm was, after all, stupid.
Dr. Qworm took a deep breath. "Having identified the genes responsible for stupidity, I will devise a process to locate their occurrence on unborn fetuses, and devise another process to correct these genes from their stupid – so to say – amino-acidic arrangement," he declared.
"You want to tinker with our very nature? With the foundations that make us what we are?" Sarkon shrieked in horror. "That's totally stupid!"
"Thank you for rubbing it in," Dr. Qworm commented sarcastically. "Of course it has to be stupid, since it's my idea. By implementing it, however, idiots like me won't be idiots anymore, and they'll sure be glad that science allowed them to be as wise and keen as anyone else!"
It was Sarkon's turn to take a deep breath. "Some flaws are the essence of humankind – they make us who we are, they make us different from each other – they make us interesting! Stupidity is one of those things! Never forget that stupidity is the best proof for free will![1] Suppressing it would be the first step in the suppression of the whole of humanity!" he pleaded. "I will not allow –"
"You are such an egoist!" eructed Dr. Qworm, interrupting Sarkon, who was completely taken aback.
"I? An egoist? How can you think…?"
"Of course! I see through your plan now – even my stupidity can't make me blind to that! You are against getting rid of all the genetic defects of humankind because you are afraid you won't be so much more intelligent than most people anymore! You are actually afraid you might be considered as stupid when people without flaws – and that doesn't mean without qualities – start being the norm!" spat the Mad Scientist.
"You are paranoid! All I was saying is that even our flaws are useful sometimes. Flaws are what make us human, and I cannot allow –"
"Speaking about flaws, Prophet? You should know a lot about that!" Sarkon was interrupted yet again.
Both he and Dr. Qworm turned to where the booming voice had come from. It was General Kwar's. The Dictator, probably bored from thinking up laws no one ever followed anyway, had left his parliament (or castle, or palace, or whatever else he called the hut in which he lived) and was striding towards them. "What is the matter? Not something about the speed of stone, I hope?" he asked, flashing a grin at Dr. Qworm.
"If only!" lamented Sarkon. "That, at least, was harmless! Now he's trying to suppress stupidity in all of humankind!"
General Kwar opened his eyes wide. Even he was impressed with the Mad Scientist's endeavor. "What are you going to do? Kill us all?" he asked.
Dr. Qworm rolled his eyes. "Don't be afraid – it's only for future generations! You both can and will remain as stupid as you are for the rest of your puny lives! But if I get it my way, future generations will be freed from the burden of stupidity forever; humanity will become as wise as it can possibly be, and consciousness's full potential will be reached at last!"
"Consciousness's full potential is what it is now, don't you see? Don't you realize that by suppressing an essential part of it – for stupidity is an essential part of what we are – you will only make consciousness poorer, weaker, and less complete? Don't you see that the possibility of making mistakes is essential for humankind?" Sarkon finished, breathless.
"Is it, really? Tell me, were you ever glad after you made a mistake?" Dr. Qworm asked coldly.
"That's not the way the question should be asked. The question that should be asked is, weren't you ever glad after you did not make a mistake?" countered Sarkon. "I bet you were, and it would be a sad thing to suppress all feelings of satisfaction after a work well done for the whole of humanity!"
"That feeling will be replaced by the satisfaction of having done something rather than nothing, and that's a feeling just as nice as the satisfaction of having avoided a mistake!" argued Dr. Qworm. "As a matter of fact, the absence of stupidity will motivate people to act, because they won't be afraid of making mistakes anymore! Science and economy will boom like never before, and –"
"We don't want to become think tanks or production machines!" criticized Sarkon. "Let people live their lives like nature made them!"
"Really? What else than thinking do you do, then?" asked Dr. Qworm with a grin.
"I…" Sarkon tried to think about something frantically, but nothing came to his mind. "Well, maybe all I do is think, but at least nobody tampered with my genes to make me do so! What I think is that by tampering with people's genes, you are taking an essential freedom from them! You are making them what you want them to be instead of letting them become what they want to be!"
"Maybe I'm taking freedom away from them. Yes, I would be taking away the freedom of being stupid. I would be taking away the freedom of egoism, the freedom of greed, the freedom of honor, the freedom of violence, the freedom of hurting other people – I would be taking away all the vices derived from stupidity! Now you tell me: are these vices setting us free, or are they making us slaves?"
"Wait a second," General Kwar intervened for the first time. "According to what you say, rearranging the amino-acidic arrangement leading to stupidity in certain genes would eradicate all the behaviors you just mentioned?"
"Of course!" exclaimed the Mad Scientist. "These behaviors are all consequences of stupidity!" he explained.
"So you are suggesting that, with extensive genetic engineering, we could create world peace, suppress hunger and poverty, ensure a harmonious together-living of all people on earth and progress at the fastest possible speed in wisdom and knowledge?" General Kwar asked.
"Theoretically, yes!" Dr. Qworm assured, crossing his arms defiantly.
General Kwar turned towards Sarkon. "I know that freedom of consciousness is the most important concept in the whole universe to you, Prophet, but… what genetic engineering could achieve isn't worth little, either. Wouldn't it at least be worth a try? I mean, we're not even sure the freedom you care so much about exists…"[2]
"Even if it does, there is no reason to think that this freedom would stop existing because of genetic engineering," emphasized Dr. Qworm. "People would live their lives as freely as they do now, only that they wouldn't be stupid!"
"Stupidity was the best proof for the existence of free will.[3] I'm not going to let it disappear and turn all of humanity into predictable robot-like beings!"
"There is no reason to think that humanity will turn into that. Life will still be full of surprises – only good ones! As a matter of fact, there will still be bad surprises that will depend upon non-human behavior, like natural catastrophes, bad weather, and so on…"
"…Which humanity will quickly learn to control, too, since scientific knowledge will progress at a stunning speed," Sarkon countered darkly.
Dr. Qworm rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. "Humanity has always evolved into controlling its environment more and more! That's the way we are, and I bet there's a reason for that! Genetic engineering would be the natural step further into the evolution of consciousness: now that consciousness has enough control over its environment, it will try to start controlling its own evolution! Believe me or not, but I say that genetic engineering is a natural and logical step in the evolutionary process of consciousness!" Dr. Qworm had to take a deep breath again to turn the color of his face from purple back to rosy pink.
General Kwar looked at Sarkon. "That's a theory that sounds plausible, doesn't it?" admitted the Dictator.
Sarkon was almost defeated. He couldn't think of an argument to oppose to the Mad Scientist's theory, but his feelings were a mix of disagreement and sadness. Maybe he just needed to admit he was wrong. Sometimes, such a courageous decision had to be taken even by the most hard-minded thinker. Maybe he needed to fold. Maybe he needed…
"Hullo," said a small voice coming from the Welgon Age's playground.
cookie the harlequin, having played enough for the day (it was close to midnight by then), was trotting towards them, his usual joy of living spread across his face. "What are you debating?" he asked. "It looked quite exciting from afar!"
"Oh, nothing you would care about," Dr. Qworm waved a hand and shrugged. "Just the future of humanity."
"He cares about that just as much as you do!" Sarkon burst out. "But unlike others, he lets this future have the choice of how it wants to be!"
"Genetic engineering doesn't take any choice away from anyone!" lamented Dr. Qworm. "Nobody here understands genetic engineering anyway, so I'm just wasting my –"
"Genetic engineering? Have you already gotten that far?" asked cookie, his eyes wide open.
"Do you know anything about it?" Sarkon, Dr. Qworm and General Kwar all asked simultaneously, their eyes wide open in astonishment, too.
cookie sat down and started stroking softly the grass leaves around him. "Genes are the Lego pieces consciousness is made of; experience is then the actual building process. Usually nature throws these pieces more or less randomly together, but it is also possible to prepare them by oneself. I didn't know science had gotten that far yet, however," he admitted.
"Science didn't; I did," Dr. Qworm proudly announced.
Sarkon knelt down to match cookie's height. "cookie, do you think we should pursue genetic engineering to the point of correcting human characteristics that appear as flawed to us?" he asked very seriously.
Before cookie had a chance to answer, Dr. Qworm knelt down too and asked, "cookie, do you think we should pursue optical research to the point of correcting human sight that appears as flawed to us?" he asked with a crooked smile.
"Hey, we already did that!" General Kwar remarked from above.
"That's exactly my point!" snapped Dr. Qworm.
"The actual point is…" cookie started answering.
"Yes?" both Sarkon and Qworm were suspended on the harlequin's lips.
"…Not trying it out would be like not trying to climb the highest peak, like not trying out communism or LSD, like not trying to go to the moon, like not trying to understand the why and how of the universe. It can be wrong or it can be right, but we'll never know unless we try. Human nature is too curious for not trying it out. I am curious. Aren't you?" he asked Sarkon.
Looking into cookie's eyes, Sarkon saw this curiosity, the one characteristic that had driven humanity to evolve so differently from any other form of consciousness. And he realized that what he saw was mirroring his own soul. "Yes, I am curious too," he whispered.
* * *
Dr. Qworm got up again. "It was about time!" he sighed. "I'm immediately going to work on creating genes without stupidity!" He started striding away.
"Wait!" called Sarkon.
"Ouch!" cried cookie.
Sarkon quickly caught up with Dr. Qworm. "This is going to spare you a lot of work," he said, opening the Mad Scientist's palm and putting something almost invisible – Dr. Qworm just felt a tickle – into it.
Frowning, Dr. Qworm looked at his open palm carefully. It was a string of cookie's hair.