refleXions - updated December 02, 2001

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A Contemporary Perspective on the 21st Century

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November, 2001

How ironic -- we aren't even two years into the new Century and already Century-defining events are in motion.  After the spectacular anti-climax of Y2K, we are embroiled in the "War on Terrorism" (which could easily escalate into World War III), and today it was reported that human embryo was cloned in a laboratory in Massachusetts.

My immediate reaction: "knew it was coming eventually".  Scientists used a jolt of electricity to incite the cell to divide.  Second reaction: images of Frankenstein, Rocky Horror and The Boys From Brazil flashing through my mind,, even though the technology is not even approaching that level. The laboratory insists that cloning is intended for "therapeutic" purposes. Not for the embryo, however.

So far, only living cells can be cloned. Can you imagine the opposite? You know there's somebody crazy enough to serve up leftover Lenin or reheated Hitler. Even though cloning is literally at an embryonic stage, the theoretical possibilities are staggering. Or maybe I've read "Dune" one too many times.

Third reaction: more sober -- wild hypotheses aside, we're dealing with a new technology, just as we were with the Bomb. Gaining the ability to use new technology doesn't mean that the understanding to control it is there.  It calls for wisdom.

I'm not feeling terribly confident.

To Clone or Not To Clone?

What's your initial reaction to the news that a human embryo has been cloned? Send in the Clones - this is a scientific/medical breakthrough. Quit cloning around - stop based on religious/moral/ethical reasons.

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Who's it gonna be?

Imagine that full-term, human cloning was successful. Who's going to be the first person to be cloned? Lenin Hitler Bin Laden Einstein Kennedy Martin Luther King Stephen Hawking Churchill The first scientist that figures out how to do it A random sample

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Summer, 2001 

(this entry written prior to the events of September 11, 2001)

People living through the Turn of the 20th Century must have shared the same ambiguous feeling we sense at the infancy of the 21st Century. They could not have known that the 20th Century would bring two World Wars, weapons capable of destroying the Earth many times over, horseless carriages, the cure for Polio, a man traveling to the Moon and returning to Earth unharmed. They probably did not imagine civil and racial unrest that often escalated into violence, culminating in shocking rounds of assassination, televised to the world through recently developed means of mass communication. As the 21st Century unfurls, we watch with excitement and apprehension, wondering what events will define the decades of the 21st Century.

Each decade readily brings to mind singular events, an overall feeling, even a name: "The Roaring Twenties"; "The Big Eighties".  However, the first decade of the 20th century seems to have been remembered as only a vague prelude of decades to follow. We even refer to its first ten years with the nondescript title,  "the 1900's".  Looking back at the 20th Century's first decade, we tend to single out only the years during which a definitive event occurs, such as 1904 - the year of the San Francisco Earthquake. Trying to pinpoint a name for the first decade of the Century may be likened to predicting what the current decade will be remembered for while still living in it.  There is a sense of unfinished business, the "lame duck" years bridging one century to another.

This sense of incompletion applies to the first decade of the 1900's.  Even though history tells us what came next, there are retrospective inquiries:  How could it have been different?  Did events in the 1900's lay a foundation for the rest of the decade, or were the first 10 years just a wind up?  Will events put in motion by the past century come to fruition? And, turning our attention forward, what can we expect in the 21st Century?  World War III?  Cloning?  A new logo for Fox?  Time will tell.