Monday, Dec. 03, 2007 5:18 pm

Globalisation and Genetically Modified Babies Are Okay

On the bus into work the ice crystals on the window formed a stained glass backdrop to the drooping head of a grey-faced Tatarian woman: the sun, shining through them, expanded and glowed around her.

Dostoevsky often wrote about the slanting rays of the setting sun. I can't help but wonder that his regeneration and conversion in Siberia took place in part because of these slanting rays. Where I experience mild enchantment, Dostoevsky, so sensitive to his environment, would have felt religious rapture.

Bunin too remarked on his own ability to experience the world, his sensitivity to sight and sound. Not only that, he had the memory to recall it, and the talent with words to place his life on the page.

I feel things, I think, relatively keenly, but my memory is poor.

Today I bought a pair of adidas shoes. Usually I avoid trainers. They make my feet stink. These promised various new systems and airflows, odour control and so on. But what was I doing in an adidas store in the first place? The truth is I am fascinated by mass culture. I am beginning to believe in globalisation. I believe, for instance, that throughout all of history, up until only recently, the human race has done its best to divide itself into warring factions that reinforce, through culture, their own separateness from the commonwealth of humanity. Globalisation, at last, is a moving together of humanity. It is true that there are forces such as marketing and advertising driving it, but our cultural identities have always been decided for us by "external forces", and nobody has ever once set themselves apart from everything and objectively chosen for themselves their own cultural life. Formerly I would complain that children in Slovakia and the USA spend their afternoons in exactly the same way. Now I no longer care, and even think it is a positive thing.

It would be impossible, in any case, to make us all entirely the same. People object to genetic engineering, the preparation of perfect babies and so on. The idea that this would create generations of clones, would somehow eliminate variety, is a reaction such as a science-fiction writer might come up with - one of slight exaggeration for the purposes of drama. I am genetically very similar to my brother, yet I consider myself very different to him, and I am very different to him. It is quite possible to make people clever and healthy and kind, with only a slight reduction in diversity.

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