In the Amazon Series “The Man in the High Castle” where the Axis powers won World War II and carved up the United States, an ex-pat moving to the Nazi Sector is given a tour by the wife of a prominent official.
Was forced to watch this in 10th grade Biology class to immunize us against the evils of Eugenics. I distinctly remember it having the opposite effect on me.
Communism, Fascism, even our current Neoliberal “Meritocracy” treat both the individual and society as one would an animal and its herd; something to be managed, trained, bred, or even culled.
And like in animal husbandry, these various political economies, which certainly includes capitalism in all of its forms, treat people according to the perceived economic or monetary worth, not as people who are of intrinsic worth because they are people. Moreover, the way this economic value is determined is always decided by an elite who derive personal profit, power, and even status by their decisions on what and who is worthy of existence.
It’s also a sad state to note that even though this movie had an agenda that you can certainly extrapolate to the current. “Everyone is a potential rocket scientist” or “pitbulls are good dogs with bad owners” mentality it was none the less a great film that’s compelling, entertaining, and great to look at. Films like this were commonplace then but it is so rare to find anything like this in cinema for the past 20 some years…
I’m elder millennial as well and suffer the same affliction of rewatching movies of my past with my kids and seeing them sometimes in an entirely different lens philosophically but they all mostly still stand up as films/entertainment even if I have left the message behind me.
This is a complex and nuanced take on a film that I too admired when I was young but now see with a more jaundiced eye. I think it’s clear that both individuals and societies need an animating Spirit, and that is a problem that no amount of genetic engineering can solve. For all its perfection the world of Gattaca is sterile and devoid of Spirit; its inhabitants have something like an Olympian ennui. There’s a part in Voltaire’s Candide where Candide and Dr. Pangloss find a utopian realm [El Dorado maybe?] where everyone is content and there is no want or privation. Even though both of them have gone through the absolute worst the world can offer, they get thoroughly bored after two weeks and leave. A really wise comment on the human condition.
Fortunately epigenetics makes it very daft to argue even from a genetic deterministic perspective that outcomes are set in stone. You can have the best genome in the world, but if they’re not expressed at the right time to the right level you can still fall short of your maximum potential. Ofc, gene expression is often a result of environmental cues, so…
As I like to tell people, everything in the natural world is an equilibrium system.
The Gattaca scenario where the majority of the population are now genuinely biologically superior übermenschen who inevitably end up oppressing anyone whose parents didn't augment them isn’t the problem.
Rather, modern fear of a biotech eugenicist dystopia should be based around the idea of zero-sum competition forcing modifications nobody *wants* but which are economically mandated.
Imagine a modification that makes "people" who genuinely enjoy slaving away 24/7. And everyone else has to compete against them.
Only you don't have to, Robin Hanson and Scott Alexander already did.
Was forced to watch this in 10th grade Biology class to immunize us against the evils of Eugenics. I distinctly remember it having the opposite effect on me.
Communism, Fascism, even our current Neoliberal “Meritocracy” treat both the individual and society as one would an animal and its herd; something to be managed, trained, bred, or even culled.
And like in animal husbandry, these various political economies, which certainly includes capitalism in all of its forms, treat people according to the perceived economic or monetary worth, not as people who are of intrinsic worth because they are people. Moreover, the way this economic value is determined is always decided by an elite who derive personal profit, power, and even status by their decisions on what and who is worthy of existence.
It’s also a sad state to note that even though this movie had an agenda that you can certainly extrapolate to the current. “Everyone is a potential rocket scientist” or “pitbulls are good dogs with bad owners” mentality it was none the less a great film that’s compelling, entertaining, and great to look at. Films like this were commonplace then but it is so rare to find anything like this in cinema for the past 20 some years…
I’m elder millennial as well and suffer the same affliction of rewatching movies of my past with my kids and seeing them sometimes in an entirely different lens philosophically but they all mostly still stand up as films/entertainment even if I have left the message behind me.
This is a complex and nuanced take on a film that I too admired when I was young but now see with a more jaundiced eye. I think it’s clear that both individuals and societies need an animating Spirit, and that is a problem that no amount of genetic engineering can solve. For all its perfection the world of Gattaca is sterile and devoid of Spirit; its inhabitants have something like an Olympian ennui. There’s a part in Voltaire’s Candide where Candide and Dr. Pangloss find a utopian realm [El Dorado maybe?] where everyone is content and there is no want or privation. Even though both of them have gone through the absolute worst the world can offer, they get thoroughly bored after two weeks and leave. A really wise comment on the human condition.
I’d love to hear your changing thoughts on American Beauty.
Fortunately epigenetics makes it very daft to argue even from a genetic deterministic perspective that outcomes are set in stone. You can have the best genome in the world, but if they’re not expressed at the right time to the right level you can still fall short of your maximum potential. Ofc, gene expression is often a result of environmental cues, so…
As I like to tell people, everything in the natural world is an equilibrium system.
The Gattaca scenario where the majority of the population are now genuinely biologically superior übermenschen who inevitably end up oppressing anyone whose parents didn't augment them isn’t the problem.
Rather, modern fear of a biotech eugenicist dystopia should be based around the idea of zero-sum competition forcing modifications nobody *wants* but which are economically mandated.
Imagine a modification that makes "people" who genuinely enjoy slaving away 24/7. And everyone else has to compete against them.
Only you don't have to, Robin Hanson and Scott Alexander already did.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/poor-folks-do-smilehtml
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/06/poor-folks-do-smile-for-now/
Rather than Gattaca we should be fearing Nebu.
https://bassoe.substack.com/p/bosun-and-the-jihad
Is there anybody whose watched Gattaca with a sense of fandom but who has not also read Brave New World?
I never really liked the movie. The world/society seemed sterile/soulless