Dick & Jane & Social
Evolution
I have repeatedly written of utopia, a bell that will not in our lifetimes
be placed upon the capitalistic dog. Well, … maybe no. There is a DNA bell waiting for our biotechnology to finish making.
Dick and Jane were married in 2033. But rather than speculate upon difference,
I will do the standard, undistracting fiction of pretending that the future is different only in ways important to the story. They have chosen to have genes added, to have a whiz kid.
We find Dick and Jane leaving
a birthing clinic at the Temple
University Hospital in North Philly. They are getting into their old Ford. Dick and Jane know from
the problems they had in public schools and confirmed by their first child that they are on the left side of the bell curve. Their son Leroy, who is in the 5th grade, is in class for slow learners,
and it’s an inner-city school. Since they have been steadily employed for
3 years, and feel they can afford another child. They have decided to have a
bright, athletic one. Intelligence can now be guaranteed by adding a genes package
to her egg. The entire procedure runs $7,000, with one set of genes, which Jane
thinks is a prudent investment—and it comes with a guarantee.
“Not bad,”
Jane says holding Dicks hand as they left the clinic where she had donated a dozen eggs, and Dick a cum bag still warm. “But you didn’t have to grunt so loudly when you cum. They could hear you in the hall. Christ, I was so embarrassed.”
Dick, “But
Honey, it was for you. I got the nurse to allow you to help me cum.”
Jane: “You sounded like a donkey. She made a face at me when
we left the room.”
Dick changing the topic, “We’d be having a winner, Honey Bunch will be a super bitch. Taller, brighter, and with rocket knockers. She’ll be
dunking by junior high, that be good enough for me.”
Jane pulls her hand back,
“I am not even pregnant yet, and you have chosen her name.” How’d
bout Sophie?”
Dick, “I’d was only joking about the name. The basketball
genes are worth the extra 4 grand.”
Jane, sarcastically, “You can dunk, and all id got you was a job at Wal-Mart, stocking shelves.”
Dick, “Yes, but this
one”, point to Jane’s stomach, Dick injects, “will find us stupid. . . too smart ass good for us!”
“Shut up, Dick, if
you want any when we get home. We decided this a month ago, and you keep griping, worse than you mother! You think I don’t know that it’s the extra 13 grand; that is on your mind, a down payment on
a new car, etc. You’d be proud of this one, dribble with either hand and
an academic scholarship. Four grand for supper brains, and 4 for sports, and
2 for looks, plus 3 for the procedure, that’s a deal.”
“It took us 3 years
to save for it, and I had to borrow 4 grand from your father,” Dick says frowning.
“Yes, that means
the same old car for another year or two while you pay him back, “ Jane responds.
“Besides our daughter will not be bitching about why she isn’t smart like Lori. Did you want to explain that you were too cheap to do this for her!
Shit, most of our neighbors have done the same for their children in the last year.
They all want smart ass kids. You want to have your daughter in a special class for slow learners, like you were; in the zoo!”
“God damn, damn it,”
Dick stammers in anger “you always have to bring it up. And I keep telling
you that it was not for my smarts, but for my attitude, that be why I was in the zoo.”
“It makes me howl inside to think of the zoo, sure a funny group of kids in your class,” Jane says teasing
Dick.
Outside the car, Dick, “This shit talk makes me hungry.”
Jane continues. “The Jones and the Jacksons have had it done. Do you
want our daughter to be inferior, like our son?”
Dick pensively, “Shit,
putting it that way. You’d be right.”
Jane, now annoyed, “I
want a child I can brag about like those Jewish bitches do on the bus. Sit behind
a couple of them and that’s all you hear about, there son done this, and there daughter is doing that. For a half hour that is all they can talk about. They want
every one on the bus to know. I can’t wait until we go down town and sit
in front of a couple of those Jewish bitches.”
.
Soon the conversation deteriorates into gossip about their neighbors as they drive the 4 miles to their ghetto home.
In our future world, the problems of medications, of transportation, and employment are with us, but finally, there
is hope at the end of the tunnel, for the next generation. The medical establishment
has prevailed upon government to lift the ban on gene implantation into eggs. This
happened because Canada now was had performed in 2039 over a million of these procedures on visiting Americans, and that numbers
was expected to double next year. Parents want whiz kids—which is
what they are called. The HMOs, which had taken over all the hospitals and most
clinics, had pressured Congress to act in their financial interest. They will
make millions in this elective procedure, which is not covered by insurance. Billions
in revenue were being lost to Canada.
Congress and the Executive Branch feared the backlash
of a vocal and large, fanatical religious minority, so they kept side stepping the issue—much as they done with the
abortion issue a century before. Several leaders encouraged, through off
the record statement, to have the Supreme Court overturn the legislation banning gene implantation.
The procedure was essentially worked out by the end of the last millennium, but it was not until 2033
that the last pieces of the gnome and variations within the gene pool were sufficient understood that it became possible to
insert whole segments of genes and the appropriate DNA code between the genes (introns) so that its expression could be accurately
predicted. Thus in Canada,
Europe, China, and Japan
starting in 2034 parents were having gene packages inserted into an egg prior to fertilization. Children were produced of superior mental and physical abilities.
Our
government had seen the writing on the wall. They feared there would be a generation
of brilliant scientists and inventors in all those countries that permitted gene splicing.
Plus they were also going to be supper athletes, and crime is correlated with low IQ,
The writing was on the wall.
Turning the clock ahead
30 years from when Dick and Jane had their first enhanced daughter. Now the routine is done by all but the poorest people,
the Orthodox Jews, the Amish, conservative Catholics, and the Pentecostals. Muslins, and like.
Society has reached critical mass, 48% of the voters can understand Godel’s Theorem, understand corporate greed,
and understand Plato and the political reforms he recommended. They are able
to see beyond the media garbage and it free-trade message. This depth of vision
has entailed a third major political party, and major changes in the actions of the old Twiddle De and Twiddle Dumb parties. The politicians, drug companies, and HMOs (who run the medical system) are going to
get their asses bit by the snake they allowed to be born.
A third party was born out of youthful activism of the whiz kid born.
Dick and Jane’s last two children, now old enough to vote, are among those activists; moreover, Jane now votes
for the New Democratic Party (NDP), as well. The next election will surely
give them control of government, and they already control the police and military, that is because 83% of those under the
age of 30 are whiz kids.
History won’t repeat itself:
In 1935 a much more radical
Labor Party (than today’s) took over the British government, but their peaceful revolution was hardly revolutionary
in its laws concerning private property and the structure of government. Band-Aids
during the Great Depression were not cures; a few nationalized industries and some socially responsible laws do not equal
a evolution to a just society. The NDP will not repeat history. Their first acts will end soft money, and limit political donations.
They will thus get big business out of government. The second will be
to hand the media over to the universities so that it serve an educational function, and raise issues barely touched by our
corporate media. After this, the NDP will step by step work to build a just society
and maximize the efficiency of the economy.
Will the system overturn before the generation of whiz kids, not for at least a hundred years. Socialism had a 70 run, but collapsed primarily because politicians ran the economy. Image Kerry or Bush and the likes running our economy. That
Russia pulled itself up from extreme poverty, comparable to
Mexico in 1921, to become a world power is proof of the potential
for socialism. If instead of politicians there were guardians like those proposed
by Plato, then Kruchiev said before the UN, "we will bury you." Kruchiev thought
the West would be buried by the success of Socialism through the Soviet example which would inspire uprisings of labor.
We will be buried once there is a perspicacious electorate by their demands for a higher standard of living and social
justice.
