Medicine and Technology
We live in an age in which it is easy to look down on cultures that are suspicious of technology. We hear about the children of Christian Scientists dying after their parents refused a blood transfusion and forget that some data indicates that Christian Scientists actually had higher life outcomes than those that went to doctors when the cultivar first evolved—mostly due to doctors at the time being leech-happy opium addicts. (Note: One of our test readers thought we meant Christians that were scientists. Christian Science is a denomination of Christianity unique for believing that reality is purely spiritual and the material world an illusion.)
While technophobia had a place in the past, surely it is not culturally advantageous anymore … right? We live in an age in which apps have been designed to hijack simple dopaminergic reward pathways and create dangerous addictions, lowering the time individuals have to spend on the meaningful things in their lives. Memes have become especially virulent as we’ve become more connected than ever before. This allows for “supervirus memes” to evolve which erode traditional cultures at rates we had not thought possible (consider Mormons going from four kids per family to almost below replacement rate in less than a decade).
Perhaps there is something to technophobia. After all, the Anabaptists (Amish and Mennonites), cultures that have proved most resistant to these threats, are extremely technophobic.
Cultures that approach technology with suspicion and believe that indulgence in technology leads to sin are almost always going to be healthier than those that outright ban it. Consider Mennonites: While they use cell phones with internet access and Facebook for getting jobs and work, they voluntarily password-protect many apps then give those passwords to their spouses or friends. To us, Mennonites (specifically the Beachy Amish), represent the ideal balance for which a technophobic culture should aim. They allow technology where it is directly efficacious but maintain rules and views that prevent it from corrupting them.
While we can see technophobia as being a winning strategy for some Houses registered with the Index, it is not one that will ever sit fully comfortably with us personally. Instead, we lean toward the other extreme. As our culture frames it, problems that stem from technology result from a failure to dig deep enough into one’s technological options or through considering some solutions “unethical” or “off limits.”
For example, we handle dopaminergic addiction brought on by technological devices through a combination of education and pharmaceutical intervention. We created a coming-of-age ritual in which our kids train rats in Skinner boxes, developed a holiday tied to overcoming dopaminergic addictions, and teach our kids how to leverage pharmaceuticals like Naltrexone to block opioid pathways. We have even debated incorporating TMS systems—transmagnetic stimulation systems (TMS) can temporarily shut off and reboot parts of the brain—into our kid’s emotional education.
As we have noted elsewhere, our House’s culture is as technophilic as possible when it comes to fertility technology and the production of children (Bloomberg even did a piece on us titled: “The Pandora’s Box of Embryo Testing Is Officially Open: Genetic testing companies promise they can predict someone’s probable future health. Some parents don’t want to stop there” and Insider covered our bullish attitude in another piece titled: “Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take ‘control of human evolution.’” [[77]](#_ftn77) [[78]](#_ftn78)). Given our theological mandate for intergenerational improvement, we have been using the most cutting-edge technology available in our own family planning and expect our children to do the same—which for our kids could mean aggressive gene editing combined with in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG).
We might recommend that some branches of our family consider the introduction of visible genetic markers to their lines (such as purple skin, uniquely collared eyes, or whatever marker is easy and safe to introduce), creating both more of a unique perception of our community by society at large and a feeling of community identity. (While some might be horrified by this idea, it is much less extreme than something like circumcision as a cultural identifier, which strictly takes something away from a person. We are all born with an ethnicity we did not choose—it is arguably both empowering and functional to just manufacture a new one when you start doing heavy gene editing.)