Last week, I wrote about efforts to bring the extinct passenger-pigeon species back to life. Doing so requires genetic modifications that are within our technical capabilities. To this post, a well-written aside was added as a comment. Its author shows that we humans might be advancing the physical sciences, but we are rapidly eliminating behaviors that make us uniquely human. Though the author chooses to remain anonymous, his tongue-in-cheek approach seems hauntingly familiar to me. Here is his comment to my “de-extinction” post.
What “we really need to de-extinct is civility on both coasts [of the USA]. The last northeastern and western strongholds of this long-suffering trait faded a couple of years ago and it's rumored that only a few pockets of civility remain in these regions. Fortunately, like kudzu, it seems to still thrive in rural areas where it has been found people even make eye contact with one another and do not spend their waking hours studying their shoelaces. if one goes far enough away from the northeastern coast and its western counterpart (we'll call it California), people still help others even if they are not next-door neighbors.
"Holding
your tongue" is a concept that is dying as a result of the demise of
civility. We are coached to talk over each other, to formulate our
response
before the other speaks, to use volume in lieu of logic, and caustic
blather is preferred over a well-thought-out position. Ah civility! I
remember when ...”
While science and technologies are Helping humanity revive extinct species, who’s minding the shop? What are we doing to ensure that humanity’s unique behaviors and attributes of civility, kindness, and compassion not only survive but thrive? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. Please do try to remain, well, um, civil.
Have a nice day.
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