One of the things that makes me nervous about CRISPR (gene-editing) technology is the artificial bottle-necking of human diversity according to the arbitrary wants of individuals socialized to perceive the world in a given way. The Earth changes, and humans are naturally suited to be adaptable partly due to the flexibility an individual has, but also for great variance which exists normally among humans and even family members.

The “world” lived in by anyone reading this is not the only “world” that exists on this planet, and did not exist centuries ago and will not exist any longer at some point in the future. To qualify that a kind of person is most suited to a world does not mean that their sense-making style, abilities, and aptitudes are most suited for all possible worlds. A psychopath is incapable of understanding that other people have feelings as they do and are capable of making decisions which would cause someone with empathy to at least hesitate. In this world, this is a major issue which we need to address, but there are many potential situations in the past 500,000 years since we attained our present taxonomy and probably over the next 500,000 years in which this quality would be a huge advantage for their ability to survive and procreate. Nature is not fair. The world we live in isn’t stable, and every hegemonic world power which has ever existed prior to the one we currently live under has collapsed. It’s possible the world we live in will persist forever, but honestly it’s not likely.

If the world changes and we’ve limited humanity by creating a race of people with a number of characteristics possible to express which are only advantageous in the world they were created in, that will truly be our end. Some of us as we presently exist could probably survive and re-build from nuclear war or the most severe consequences of climate change because of the nature of our adaptability and the diversity inherent to humans. Could we do that if we were all genetically engineered to have one of five or six faces and body types and truly enjoyed with no mental burden working from 9-5 doing bullshit work to enrich oligarchs while deriving true meaning and pleasure from the consumer goods we purchased? If we decide that that a specific set of characteristics is the norm and all else is deviant or lesser than the norm, it will be our doom when we have the technology to enforce this decision.