Years ago, I practiced meditation as a path to awakening. I didn’t meditate much after my wife and I had our first baby, and yet, despite the round-the-clock stress and exhaustion, I’d suddenly never felt more awake in my life, for nothing less will do to care for a helpless, hungry, wailing infant.
It was, for me, the beginnings of a spiritual shift, one that I didn’t yet fully realize, but which hinted at a truth that my meditating self might never have discovered. The center of me is not in me. The center of me is in the other.
To have a child is to implant your mind and heart in that child, and to situate yourself in a family; and to situate that family in a home, and that home in a place. In the midst of it all is a lingering uncertainty. There is no guarantee the infant will arrive well, or grow well, or that circumstance will be kind in the long years that follow. Having a child requires deep faith of one kind or another.
Child, family, home, place, faith. Each of these is an ancient root, the kind of roots that modernity seems intent on pulling up and replacing or discarding. To have a child and family is to rebel against the Machine. But how long will that rebellion last in its current form?
Dutch scientists are developing an artificial womb in which premature babies can survive and develop outside a woman’s body. It’s already been done with animals, including the famous lamb in a biobag. Some have suggested it might even be possible, one day, to grow human embryos outside the body from the point of conception to full-term pregnancy.
Meanwhile, if you and your spouse are seeking in vitro fertilization, companies like Genomic Prediction will genetically profile your embryos—for a fee—so that you can pick a future child that is at lower relative risk for diabetes, depression, Alzheimer’s, certain cancers, or other medical conditions. Choice over chance is their motto.
The same company used to offer services to screen out embryos with low intelligence, and also to predict height, but later decided that these traits were “too controversial”.
Of course, ethical decision-making tends to follow popular sentiment rather than leading it, so what’s “controversial” today might be good and wholesome tomorrow.
Really, who wouldn’t be tempted to pick the taller child, or to avoid the child with the borderline IQ, if they could take a little peek at the gene patterns of a collection of embryos? Who wouldn’t feel the itching urge to pick the “best” future child—the smartest, most talented, and beautiful—according to their personal preference and desire, if that were possible?
And what couple, knowing the pain and difficulties associated with physical pregnancy and birthing, might not be tempted, at least a little, to grow their baby outside the body if it were perfectly safe and convenient to do so?
I’m skeptical that ethical conversations—as urgently as they are needed—will do much to stem our dark impulse toward artificial “transcendence”. To many people it will seem only natural when emerging reproductive technologies eventually transition from disease prevention to human enhancement, or “techno-eugenics”.
I don’t want to overstate the potential of the new technologies. Embryo profiling will never be perfect; the polygenic scores they’re based on account for only about 50% of the variance for complex traits like intelligence in a given population. The usefulness of such scores based on current reproductive technology also appears limited.
It’s not clear, either, if full external birth or “ectogenesis” will ever be a reality.
Still, the science will advance, as it always does, and even if it advances slowly, the trajectory is predictable. A society in the grip of a material worldview can only reduce everything, including children, into products, preferably bar-coded and ready for self-checkout. Choice over chance would still be the motto. Narcissism over nature might be more fitting.
What happens when human beings become customizable products? Will we one day create an “elite class” of human by optimizing embryos through polygenetic selection?
And if artificial wombs become viable, what does it mean for “ownership” of an embryo or fetus? For instance, if a growing fetus is transferred out of a woman’s body for medical or other reasons and placed in an artificial womb, but the woman then decides that she wants to abort the fetus, can her spouse override this decision because the fetus is no longer “part of” the woman’s body?
Or—to take the most extreme case—if an embryo is grown entirely outside of the body, does it belong to the egg donor, the sperm donor, the person who paid for the procedure, or the government that regulates the technology?
Questions like these may seem abstract or distant at the moment, but they will likely become tangible issues that our children or our children’s children end up grappling with.
My first child is no longer a baby but will be starting university in the fall. She is no longer hungry, wailing, or helpless. But the “spiritual shift” that occurred at the start of my own parenting journey hasn’t ended. The center of me is not in me but in the other; in my daughter and in my other children and—as I have increasingly come to see through the years—in all the people I am in relationship with, whether my family or not.
And I have often found myself failing, or stressed, or bewildered, in my efforts to be faithful to this realization. But I would not exchange all the failure, stress, and bewilderment for a life in which I upheld myself as the center. I’m convinced that when we empty ourselves of whatever good we have, whether small or great, we are blessed; when we are drained, we gain something back.
And yet the Machine constantly invites us to believe that we are the center, and that each of us can be happy as isolated centers. Sometimes I fall for the lie. How about my children? Will they fall for it? What about yours, or the people you care about?
I can’t predict the future, but over the last couple of years I’ve found myself imagining it, a bit grimly, through fiction; imagining a dystopian society divided between a Machine-based city people and a traditional, God-fearing rural people. The piece below is an excerpt from my forthcoming novel, Exogenesis, which is slated for publication by Ignatius Press.
Exogenesis: An Excerpt
The waiting room had the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. There, holographic children played mid-air. Children on tricycles, children in sandboxes, children leaping into their guardian’s arms; children blowing out birthday candles and swinging baseball bats; children of every skin color, race, and gender, and every one of them as beautiful and glowing as a holy icon.
Maelin tried to look eager. Everyone in the waiting room looked eager. Many were scrolling through candidate profiles on pocket omnis. One did not have to come to the birthing center to make a choice, but it was recommended as part of a ritual to help guardians emotionally bond with the new life they had agreed on.
“She is so deus!” cooed a woman next to her.
The woman, a blond, was fawning over an image on her device. The two people seated on either side of her, a Black male and an Asian female, echoed the sentiments as they leaned into the screen. The woman, noticing Maelin’s attention, tilted the screen toward her with a shameless grin. The image showed the profile’s predicted appearance as an adult. A naked figure, rotating with arms raised. Brown skin, blue eyes, blond hair. Biologically female, polysexual, a solid IQ of 120. High baseline mood, ensuring a positive outlook on life.
It took only a moment for Maelin to realize that the physical features of this perfect being mirrored those of the threesome. Children based on more than two guardians were becoming more popular, although some minor genetic editing was involved. Gene editing had been prohibited until recently, due to safety issues. The newer techniques had apparently addressed these concerns, and there was even talk of expanding the techniques to allow for four- and five-person guardianships.
“So deus!” the woman whispered.
Everybody wanted a deusborn child, of course, though studies of such children had revealed them to be underachievers as adults. Being deusborn was like being gifted with a fifth-echelon sports car; you drove it around to show off, but rarely took any risks for fear of scratching the paint.
Stefano leaned over to glance at the wunderkind profile, and smiled politely before returning his attention to his own omni screen. He was still scrolling through options. Was he uncertain about their three top choices?
He paused at a candidate, flicking a few years forward. A boy at eight years old. A homely face, the eyes set too close together. The estimated IQ was 90, almost a standard deviation below the population average. The baseline mood was “mildly dysphoric”—meaning prone to depression.
Who would want that one?
That one. As if the boy was already alive. Well, in a sense he was, but only a fetus, not a true child.
Where did he get the low IQ from? Was it from her or from Stefano? Genetic defects occurred in a small percentage of the egg-sperm couplings. Severely defective profiles were excluded by law, but mildly deficient candidates were retained as options. Nobody ever chose them, but they provided a contrast to the better candidates, heightening enthusiasm for their superior siblings.
Stefano thumbed the homely boy off the screen.
“Deus hunting?” she asked.
“No. Just want to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
He was still searching when, a few minutes later, the door of the waiting room slid open and a curator entered. “Guardians Maelin Kivela and Stefano Arvitis?” she called out.
Maelin and Stefano rose, taking each other’s hand, and followed the woman into a corridor. The curator wore a white, multilayered robe of subtly shimmering colors. Her manner, like the fabric, was airy and bright. “My name is Curator Nayanne,” she said with a radiant smile. “I will be showing your profile candidates. It’s right this way.”
They were brought to a room like an art gallery, with pot lights, hardwood floors, and paintings on the walls. Nayanne ID’d Maelin and Stefano with her omni, then led them to a circle of darker flooring in the center of the room. “I understand you have ranked your top three profiles?” she asked.
“Yes,” Stefano said, looking to Maelin, who nodded.
“Wonderful. Shall we bring them out, then?”
“Wait—can we see all of them?” Maelin asked. “If it’s possible…and it’s all right with you, Stefano?”
It was definitely not what they’d agree to, and he seemed thrown off by the change in plans.
“Uh—all of them?” he asked.
“I just feel as if…as if…”
Stefano looked at the curator. “Can we still do that? Can we see them all?”
“Of course,” Nayanne said pleasantly. “Many people do. This is an important choice, a sacred choice. It can be helpful to see them all. Sometimes, in seeing them, we feel an instinct that sways our decision one way or another. You’ve spent so much time studying your profiles, which can be such a rational process.” She said rational with pitiful emphasis. “But now we are coming to a moment that isn’t so rational. We are coming to a moment that will put you in touch with the mystery of life. May I say a prayer to the All-Spirit for you?”
Neither of them was particularly spiritual, at least not beyond visits to the E-dome, which was a passive experience. But they did not object to Nayanne’s request. The All-Spirit was the unofficial deity of the Lantuan State. It came in a variety of representations, some not even human, so as not to offend anyone’s sensibility. Most people did not take the All-Spirit too literally—and Maelin and Stefano certainly didn’t—but it was customary to show respect when they did. She and Stefano lowered their heads as Nayanne pressed her palms together.
“Oh Mother of Compassion!” she declared. “Oh Womb of the Universe! Oh Energy of Life and Serene Presence! I pray that Thou guide these two guardians today in this sacred moment. The Choosing is not to be undertaken lightly, but with trust, hope, and love, in ourselves and each other. Oh Giver of Life, bless these two guardians, Maelin and Stefano, and bless their Choosing. May the child of this Choosing bring light and compassion and peace into the world. Om, Om, Om!”
Maelin exchanged a glance with Stefano, knowing they were thinking the same thing. A real Mother Earther, this one.
Nayanne opened her eyes and smiled, looking refreshed. She pointed down at the darker circle of hardwood where they stood. “Stay right here. Don’t step out of the circle.”
Maelin and Stefano pressed together, as if suddenly on a life raft. Nayanne crossed the room and keyed buttons on a panel. The lights dimmed. The low hum of machinery sounded. The wall parted along a vertical seam, opening a slender gap. Maelin could make out a dim chamber on the other side. Nayanne keyed more buttons, triggering another gentle humming. Soon there was movement in the dim chamber. Something was approaching through the gap.
“Here they come,” Nayanne called out in a whisper. “Remember, keep your voices down. No loud noises. Here they are, your candidate profiles. Your creations!”
The first of the biopouches came through, hanging from the ceiling. It was the size of a large beachball, though oblong-shaped like a flower bulb and made of a thick translucent plastic—soft as blubber, Maelin had heard. It was nestled within a solid metal carrier—the pouch holder—which resembled a white egg cup. The holder had a slender high back that rose to a hook, which connected to a track in the ceiling. Behind the first pouch were others, more flower bulbs, or perhaps eggs or teardrops, each nestled in a holder and suspended from a hook, each glowing faintly from within. The ceiling track circled around the room in several large loops, forming a spiral that ended just over Maelin and Stefano.
The dangling pouches followed the path of this spiral; hundreds of pouches, each a massive bulb, each containing a curious pink clump in its glowing liquid-filled hollow. Lives, spiraling slowly around them. A giant chandelier of fetuses.
Maelin was trembling…
If you enjoyed this excerpt from Exogenesis, feel free to subscribe or like, and I will provide a further update on the novel’s release once details are available. Thanks for reading!