I don't wanna be cloned today!

I don't wanna be cloned today!

    The other day, somebody was really happy with my service at work and said "We need to clone you, we need 5 more yous in the world". I was dying to say, when my inner catholic bioethicist kicked in, "we don't need more mes, we need more people to up their game". I think her comment, more than extremely well-intended, hit a sensitive chord in me!

    A great and very important Book says “For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do”. Structural sin is real, and so are social privileges. I was blessed, and praised be the LORD, to have a very good nutrition during my first 3 years of life, as well as amazing pre-natal care.

 These are rights, but at the end of the day, at least in the Dominican Republic, more than 6 out of every 100 children are left behind; this results in cognitive development stuning. When I was born (November, 1992), it is estimated more than double the amount of children were left behind. 

 This results, and this theory I first learned from Dr. Allende, former chilean president, in perpetuating inequity. He said babies without enough Milk were at a disadvantage during a speech in the ‘70s because the developing brain stunts without enough protein. 

Today, we don’t know if cow’s milk gives you cancer (I still eat Ice Cream at some point associated with Israeli War Crimes like Ben & Jerry’s; I’m more worried about smoking e-cigarettes, want to quit). But Allende’s theory has gained mainstream “scientific acceptance”: poor-fed children make for adults less able to fend for themselves and “lifting themselves by their bootstraps” when they enter the workforce or set-up a small-business in a free-market mixed economy such as the United States, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Vietnam and Colombia. 

However, and I don’t want to whitewash nor trivialize states/governments not doing their jobs, businessmen violating the law, unions not doing their job, I still see that individual agency is something vital. It is a most firm conviction I hold that people still have a degree of agency, no matter how harsh the situation is and even Karl Marx would agree: man makes history, though not in conditions of his choosing. 

Injustice is real! Impunity is real, too! But vagrancy, shamelessness, and not doing all one can do is a huge issue, too!

 I hate judging people who can do better and choose not to. Sometimes, the guy who seems to be half-assing life is working twice as hard because others are not playing by the rules. However, at the end of the day, cloning someone who didn’t have to face child stuning due to structural poverty-bred malnutrition isn’t the solution. The solution to the world’s ills is that those who can do more, and they know who they are, have to start doing so!

 If somebody likes the way I do things, I totally understand I’ve had opportunities others have not had. However, why is cloning me a better solution than for people who have had the same, or more, opportunities to get their stuff together?

 And, by the way, if you think you’re productive for ⅓ of your day, on most days, I don’t think you’re the problem. The mere fact that you tally how productive you are makes me think you’re aware idle hands are right next to the Enemy’s hand.

 But if your conscience is stinging you right now, I would totally recommend talking about work and duty and ethics to a trusted spiritual counsellor. And if you don’t have one, goodriddance: go get one! You’re probably right: if you don’t think you’re doing “your part”, and you don’t have a go-to guy for “spiritual wants and needs”, you’re probably not doing your part.

 Agnostics can go get a philosopher, but by the time you can verbalize you’re agnostic, I’m sure you already know a thing or two about ethics, and you probably know like minded people who know philosophy even if they don’t have accredited credentials. 

Es cuanto. 

    Have been thinking about the Lion Fish lately. Its symmetry is considered very beautiful and some think it resembles, like other things in nature, the Fibonacci sequence. It is also poisonous but is considered to attack for self-defense purposes only which is why it is respected: beautiful and dangerous. There is a thing though, we are not sure how the Lion Fish found its way from Asia to the Americas, but it wreaks havoc on local ecosystems...Beautiful, dangerous, but harmless unless provoked when in its natural habitat or, to redount, in a healthy ecosystem, the ecosystem where he belongs... 

    In the Caribbean Basin, it wreaks havoc. If the Lion Fish was human, short-termed thinkers would wonder why return to Asia if they can rule in the Caribbean Basin... And, after all, they never asked to be brought here in the first place...

    The best reason I would posit to persuade? In Asia, the Lion Fish has long-term security. If it remains in the Caribbean Basin, sought after by hunters instead of respected by fishermen, at some point there will no longer be a Caribbean Basin which means, at some point, there won't be good Basins anywhere...