Sunday's Report

[weaktwos]

Work went productively. After work, I felt movieish, so I made haste to a nearby theater to see "The Island", starting Ewan McGregor (of the clan MacGregor, I assume. There certainly can be only one Ewan. purrrrr) and Scarlett Johansson. I enjoyed the movie, despite the fact that plotwise it wasn't all that exceptional. The action sequences were fun, though. It makes for a delightful escape from reality. Your mileage may vary, however, if you don't think Ewan and/or Scarlett are as solar-hot as I do.

The movie does bring up an interesting issue, however. Ewan and Scarlett's characters, Lincoln and Jordan, respectively, are clones. They are, in the eyes of the antagonist Merrick, a product. Rich people pay millions to have themselves cloned so that if they need an organ transplant, etc., they can merely harvest their clone. They can also have their clones deliver a baby to term for them. Real nice service, here.

However, the kicker is that the clients don't realize they are doing something rather dastardly. They are told by Merrick and his marketting team that the clones are in a persistent vegetative state. They don't realize that these people develop feelings and what we perceive as a soul.

What gives these clones hope to live in their rather sheltered lives is the Lottery for "the Island". It's a paradise for them, and clones "win" this opportunity. In reality, their "owners" need an organ, or their baby delivered, etc.

Lincoln finds out the truth and because Jordan is his best friend, he rescues her, and they make an escape.

Their plan? To find their "owner" so that the owner can realize what he/she is doing and help them stop this practice.

Of course, when the owner of Lincoln finds out, he tries to turn Lincoln in. When confronted with a choice, humans will do whatever they have to in order to survive, even if that means killing a clone who thinks and feels human.

The plot did have some holes in it. I'm thinking that sentience is not a requisite for good organs, but I guess we'll see how our own cloning technology goes.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could clone someone and they did in fact have their own "souls"? What would that say about God? What is so special about humans if we could create our own living, breathing, thinking, feeling beings without procreation?

Would people who aren't interested in being lifelong romantic mates, but who both want children have a clone of their combined genetic code?

Comments

[imlac.livejournal.com]

"The plot did have some holes in it. I'm thinking that sentience is not a requisite for good organs, but I guess we'll see how our own cloning technology goes."

That's not really a plot hole. Plot holes are gaps in the progress of the story. It's more like a background assumption. Without it there could be no movie.

"Wouldn't it be interesting if we could clone someone and they did in fact have their own "souls"? What would that say about God? What is so special about humans if we could create our own living, breathing, thinking, feeling beings without procreation?"

This last question is illogical. Cloning is procreation. It's not sexual (though it may or may not involve gestation in a human body) but it's procreation nonetheless. And as for 'what is so special about human beings...', well, for one, we're the only species known to us that can procreate in this manner. What makes us special isn't some soul, some essence. It's what we can do, what we choose to do, and what we accomplish.

As for what it would say about God... Frankly I don't see why it would say anything. In Vitro fertilization didn't say anything about God. Neither did cloning Dolly. Why should cloning humans?

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

My post wasn't very thoroughly communicated or thought out.

On plot holes: I felt they didn't not adequately present the case for why sentience was requisite for making the the organs thrive. Perhaps sentience is even the wrong word for what I'm trying to say. Living an actual life is probably better. What later bothered me was the development that the clones were developing memories from their owners, even though they didn't have these memories on the outset. And this was the cause for Lincoln's curiosity about his world and what lie beyond his little world, causing the main conflict of the movie. Those issues diminished the enjoyment of the movie.

As for procreation: point taken. I meant standard sexual human procreation. And to some extent you have a point. To my knowledge, we're also the only species that wants to or tends to laugh when someone farts. As far as I can tell, other animals don't seem to care too much.

However, in in vitro fertilization, at least you're still using sperm to fertilize the egg, and the fertilized goop goes back into the uterus for gestation. Cloning seems far more advanced than that. Furthermore, given the whole religious right flap about stem cells and cloning, it's clear that it would be perceived as more of an issue than these more standard approaches to helping human procreation.

And Dolly. Dolly is on a lower rung in our food chain, so we're already accustomed to killing an animal for our own benefit (in this case, nutrition and wool). In a way, we already kill fellow humans for our own benefit (wars for the sake of financial/strategic gain, for example), so no, it really isn't a big deal. However, creating a fellow (seemingly) human life for the sake of killing it, tends to emphasize the issue that we as humans are/can be rather more predatory than we care to admit.

[imlac.livejournal.com]

They certainly didn't do a good job of explaining why the clones needed to be sentience. That's probably because there is no good reason why they'd need to be sentient. So they just had to make something up and assert it as if it were the case. Try it yourself: if you were the screenwriter how would you bring it about such that the clones needed to be sentient (because without that there's no movie.) As for the 'psychic connection' they had with their 'owners,' that just seemed like an unnecessary throw-away bit. I guess they thought they needed to explain why he was getting curious (and also give them an excuse to kill all the other clones to heighten the third-act tension.) Personally, I'd have been fine if they hadn't done any of that. He's curious because that's human nature and, try as you might, you can't account for everything in human nature genetically.

"To my knowledge, we're also the only species that wants to or tends to laugh when someone farts."

That's entierely cultural. Not all cultures think farts are funny or rude. (And humans are definitely not the only species that laughs). But then again, I guess not all cultures clone living beings, either. Nonetheless, there seems to be a difference in kind between evolving to the point where we can create genetic copies of living organisms and finding humor in basic biological functions.

"Furthermore, given the whole religious right flap about stem cells and cloning..."

The Catholic church has taken sternuous objection to in vitro fertilization. But more to the point: those people are wrong. There is no special moral problem with IVF, stem-cell research or cloning (though moral problems may arise from cloing, as they did in the movie.) You're right that they will THINK there are problems. But they'll be wrong.

"creating a fellow (seemingly) human life for the sake of killing it..." Oh sure, there are moral problems there. But you were asking about the soul and God, not moral problems.