And (s)he sang freedom songs

It has been a long day, and I fell to wondering where any of this biochemistry-oriented skull-fuck cramming I'm undertaking right now is going. What will be the role of biochemistry and biotechnology two hundred years from now? One possibility is that we'll collectively revert to a simpler time as the present society collapses and its technocratic superstructure takes its final bow, not having enough knowledge trapped inside human skulls and massless internet databases to sustain its spastic lumbering. Then again, the more likely possibility is that the creature will survive because of the massive survival potential of its massless internet databases and the fact that (ideally) a biochemist can blend into the general populace will allow the body of knowledge to propagate itself past the collapse of any particular society or way of life. In the future we might have our science thrown back at us in unrecognizable ways; we might revere it as the godhead, we might bow down to our overlords of metallic paste and circuits and DNA and protein and cartilage, huge monstrosities of unauthorized experimental that managed to escape our very sophisitcated cages and turned their desire to live into a necessity of dominance. And my job might be to polish and maitain that beast at the threat to my life. It is one possibility among countless others.

The more I learn, the more I wonder how we can help, and the more I realize the terrifying potential of our sin-against-nature technology. The best I can do is ask to be let in to the inside of that particular club.

Any endeavor is only as ethical as the people that participate in it. And I wouldn't trust my colleagues. I don't trust the people watching my colleagues; I don't trust the system housed in gigantic grey buildings; I don't trust the clicking machines and the maliciously whirling centrifuges and the gels and microarrays that will stare back at me mournfully.

Consider: "we gave up on writing with a point at its moment of highest potential, when everyone could have effortlessly churned out manuscripts of self-actialization. But we rejected it as flaky. Something tells me we'll do the exact same thing with the redemptive power of science; mark my words, masses of people will reject the "nihilism" or materialist explanations even as they provide them with free livers and a quality of life undreamed of by people living even twenty years ago."