Page 219 - Flaunt 170 - The Phoenix Issue - Ever Anderson

So then what? The lines of technology and genetics get blurred constantly on television and in media on shows like Black Mirror and most things on HBO. What if it was an afford- able option to choose your child’s traits the way you customize your burrito? You hand select how they should look, which diseases you’d like them to avoid, and possibly even alter some- thing that might run in their family, like hair loss or the like. So you create this idealized child and expect them to function and relate to kids that don’t have altered genetic makeup. During a TED talk entitled The Ethical Dilemma of Designer Babies, American biologist Paul Knoepfler poses the question of whether, “your genetically-altered little girl is too smart for the rest of the kids she plays with. She’s surpassed their reading, and she’s seemingly smarter than her parents. She is also very alert and may exhibit anger issues. Humans are not foolproof and it’s nearly impossible to know how the genetically-altered offspring will fare, because we just haven’t seen enough case studies.” Pushing our natural-born children to succeed at a level that seems tyrannical will only get worse with the addition of genet- ically-grown intellectual traits. We want more, but do we need it? You can be anyone you want to be and don’t need to alter your genetic makeup. There are plenty of new technologies that allows for the superficial customization of appearance, especially through apps that help us put our best hips forward. Take dating apps; you can customize your ideal candidate and even add avocado to them should you find them worthy. But if you met Mister Avocado, and they were a jerk, you probably wouldn’t ask for a second date. Or maybe you would. When you separate a person from the system they created and create a world in which the person functions just as they did with human experience as without, the lines of perception start to blur, and in comes the sense of monetary entitlement. It’s important to live honestly and to know what you want as a contributing member of society, but when you start to think that what you want rests in changing the DNA sequence for someone you’re creating, it’s probably time to stop alternating between E! And the Discovery channel. EXCERPT: Taken from Catrachos by Roy G. Guzmán, out in May 2020 via Graywolf Press Queerodactyl After they locate and excavate your wing fossils, perseverance might be the trait you’re known for. How swiftly you sloped downward to pick up the carcasses floating just above the bloodstained surface of your old neighborhood. In the laboratory, the paleontologists will use radiometric dating to zoom into what bequeathed you that agency to fly. This one might have outlasted all the others, they’ll say. Might have even seen each one disappear behind a bolt of fire blasted from who knows where. Or you might have been the first to vanish, directly in the way of the asteroid’s course. Who will, in the end, exhume our myths conclusively? A young angel’s bones, shaped just like yours, were uncovered this morning. A group of diggers hadn’t found anything exciting for months—in jeopardy of losing all their funding. I, too, have buried myself under the heavy presence of change, from a longing, perhaps, to find my remnants, or their profiles, in places where curious strangers might prize them. Church is anything with a pair of wandering hands and a bucket. I, too, have questioned the usefulness of finding a body stuck in a perpetual position of near flight—arms extended like the incandescence from a lamppost at night—and wished it be mine. 213