Prelim thesis on ethics and societal justice

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With all the argument over colour and race, the solution lies simply in
creating a society in which colour and race are indeterminate. In other words, each
person will be able given the opportunity at one point in their life to choose physical
phenotype, through the use of gene reprogramming, leading to a society which no
longer causes people to waste time and energy over matters of pure superficial
appearance. Analogous to the cosmetic aspects of gene therapy, the event
occurring once will ensure government records of each person’s chosen phenotype,
at the same time reducing the cosmetic genes of pigmentation to their proper
realm, a personal matter of appearance only.

Pertaining to all the incidences an individual feels outcast, ignored, hurt, or

denied opportunities because of skin or hair colour, one realizes that each incidence
is based on the same foundational belief: that we can define a person strictly on the
basis of their phenotype (hair, skin, eye colour). To one who has felt mislabeled or
categorized in a painful way, it comes out of the deep-rooted problem that society
fears to dismantle the linkage between appearance and intrinsic qualities. Is
phenotype truly indicative of who a person is? When one is examined, does the fact
that there is red hair or blue eyes or dark skin contain this person’s intelligence or
ability or personality? The certain truth is that there is no link between the genes
that control phenotype and the factors of intelligence, character, or ability. Outward
appearances serve no purposes except to provide a cosmetic profile with which to
function in the world, the tiny DNA change amongst billions of genetic code that is
the outer layering on a person. This phenotypic profile is what allows us to have an
identity and work in the world, so people know who one is by seeing their face. But
there is no linkage between this profile and other aspects that in fact define a
person, namely across the broad spectrum of personality, character, creativity,
ability, and world view. Phenotype has no genetic correlation with any of these
factors. The availability of a gene reprogramming event, once in each person’s life,
is the achievement of personal freedom and ending of the tyranny of phenotypical
linkages that society relies on.

First of all, the human genetic code is universally shared property owned by
all mankind. The idea that humanity comprises one entity, that humans, or homo
sapiens, are one species means that across cultures and races, the basic human
genetic code itself is shared property. If the human race were comprised of many
separate species, it would make sense that each species has the right to its own
genetic colouring and common DNA characteristics, but since it is widely recognized
that there is one species: the human race, then the genetic colourings of all the
ethnicities across the world belongs to only the human race in its entirety. The gene
reprogramming event can therefore allow any human being (above and beyond 25 –
a recognized age of maturity) to choose one phenotypic look for themself that will
be recorded in government databases, to prevent crime, and go on with life
thereon.

We are, all together, one humankind. Any human has the right to use the
genetic programming of anything within the human race itself, including different
colours of hair, eyes, and skin. However, properties that exceed the boundaries of
the human race, such as supernatural hair colours or abilities of other species,
would not be within the property of human beings. For example, unnatural fur types
like pink or blue, or the ability to fly by growing wings, would be non-human traits
and therefore not allowed to be accessed by human persons to modify their own
genetic codes. The reason for this is based on the past. We have seen the
development of many societies with different phenotypes. For example, we have
Sweden with a preponderance of light hair and eyes, Italy with dark hair and varied
eyes, China with tan skin and dark hair and eyes, Kenya with dark skin and eyes,
and Australian aborigines with dark skin, light hair, and dark eyes. None of these
societies have died out due to their phenotypes. We cannot, therefore, associate
any phenotype with physical health, mental intelligence, or other intangible
abilities. The allowal of humans to choose amidst the human genetic phenotypic
code is a recognition of our shared humanity and a prevention of extreme genetic
engineering, such as growing eagle wings or shark eyesight. Because there are no
societies on earth with inhuman traits, such as blue hair, or bat wings, we cannot
allow such engineering without knowing the ramifications. So the technology is
limited to human physical cosmetic traits only, since such instances will have no
danger of causing the downfall of any societies. The commonality and universality
of the human race allows any members wherewithin to access and modify DNA after
other members of the human race, but only the human race.

Concurrently, a gene reprogramming event will correct inbalances in the

standards of beauty around the world. It is a researched fact that in non-western
countries, pale is desired. Women in East and South Asia routinely buy skin-
lightening creams, and even many political leaders of African countries choose
multiracial wives in the community. What does this mean if one is able to choose a
skin, hair, or eye colour (only once) in their life? That pale blondes will no longer be
special. The epitome of exclusivity and rareness, the blonde female, will become
easily achieved by anyone, where in rendered non-unique and at least less special.
Women of darker colouring will no longer feel common, being ignored by the media
surrounding one. When something is achievable to the masses, it is no longer
viewed as extremely valuable or special. Only then will women of various ethnicities
be viewed more equally and as beautiful in the eyes of the men of various
ethnicities, who will no longer feel the need to chase the rare. It is easy for slogans
to say that these men should learn to love the women for their natural colour tones,
to not chase after the paler is beautiful ideal, but the truth is through centuries,
even milleniums of human cultural development, people keep chasing after the
rare. For unfathomable cause, it appears due to the rarity of such females, and not
that this actual phenotype is linked to intrinsic qualities. The only true way to create
more equality for different appearances is to make access available, so that blonde
hair, or pale skin is “on the market,” no longer holding social stratification value.

Not only this, but also the availability of choosing phenotype can aid in
ending discrimination in the workplace. In many Western countries, there have been
laws put into place for affirmative hiring procedures, laws that prevent companies
from arbitrarily discriminating against employees. But what about other well-off
economies like Japan or Brazil? There exists unspoken bias against dark-skinned
workers, especially in major industries like fashion or television, and the truth is that
this bias can’t be regulated or even directly pinpointed. Only with the allowance of
choosing colours will true discrimination end in the future wealthy nations. Equally
important, it is the hidden truth that there still exists discrimination against high-
wage jobs or new employees due to darker skin tones. The existence of the ability
to choose one’s skin, eye, or hair colour will enable people to judge non-superficial
qualities as more important, since one is unable to know whether a person who is
dark was once light or light when once dark. The only qualities that one can
evaluate others by must pertain to inner traits, factors of intelligence, agility, true
qualifications for the job. Discrimination in the workplace will become nonsensical
because physical attribute becomes nothing more than a cosmetic event.

The truth is that this technology exists and has existed since the dawn of
humanity. Inventors around the world have engineered ways for humans to change
their phenotype for decades, centuries. And some of these technologies are
actuarially harmful, whether it be roasting one’s skin in a tanning bed or going blind
from colour contacts, or even, like the ancient Greeks, bleaching one’s hair in
cancer-causing oxides. The most important thing now is that government have the
ability to regulate this cosmetic technology in a fair, reasonable way. As stated, for
the government to say people have no right to access the common human
phenotypic code, and reprogram their appearances would make no sense. While
there is the case of unfairness for people to make themself smarter or more
athletic, since it would directly impact job performance and lead to winning
competitions or wealth, phenotypic appearance isn’t linked to these factors. It is
cosmetic, through and through. It only overrides people’s conventional challenges
of what someone is supposed to look like, and allows one to define themself as they
wish. The government can regulate this technology adequately by limiting the age
of choosing the gene reprogramming event to 25 years old or older, and allowing
people to access such technology just once in their lives. People have a freedom to
modify their superficial traits as they wish, but are stopped from excess of
continuously doing so, creating a chaotic system, and waste of money.

Furthermore, the government must know where to draw the line, neither too
far nor too near. To disallow any form of gene reprogramming would be limiting
individual freedom and perpetuating a society that seethes on phenotypic
stereotypes and unfair linkages. However, for people to do whatever is wanted,
however is wanted, creating flying fish-gill-breathing red or green monsters is
dangerous to the entire world. Conversely, limiting the transformation to existing
mankind-shared characteristics, and the reprogramming to one time only, in a
lifetime, would be the fair and just use of such technology for societal ethics and a
better world. Also, the reprogramming for superficial appearance must be done in
all cells of the body, so as not to create human chimeras, with one body part a
certain colour and another a different one. This would extend beyond humanity’s
usual traits. Regulators must try to moderate what people want, so they won’t rebel
in extremism, nor be allowed to frivolously waste money and threaten the world
with extreme non-human traits.

Finally, this technology is only the extension of the idea that skin colour
shouldn’t matter, and we are one human race. Skin colour doesn’t matter, one can
choose it at a gene reprogramming event, and we will be unable to form opinions on
something that is cosmetic and on the market like lipstick. The practical application
of the theory that one’s skin colour shouldn’t affect one’s job performance or ability
to solve problems can’t be achieved through mere rhetoric only. By limited
allowance of gene reprogramming, employers and corporate deciders will see
indeed that one person who was this colour today and a different colour after
undergoing the (one time) transformation still performs the same, has the same
attitude, personality. The society will view each person by their self-styled and
chosen phenotypic profile for identification purposes only, and smart employers will
focus on hiring people for intangible qualities, what they can do and produce.

One might say that allowing all cells to be reprogrammed includes

reproductive cells, so children will become the colouring of choice the parents made
themselves. However, this shouldn’t matter in the long run, because as children
reach older than twenty-five, they will also be able to choose, only one time, their
outer appearance, and the conundrum is solved.

Heritage will not be erased nor will diversity be lessened because of

randomization. For a person who chooses to give himself blond hair, there might be
a man across the world turning brunette. For someone who chooses to acquire light
skin, there is another person who might want dark skin that is more resistant to
sunburns. Even if people chose to modify their colouring, this would not affect their
practice of the culture they feel they are most attached to. The fact that others will
not be able to tell whether someone is X looking because their parents were X
looking or they chose it means that others are unable to tell someone what
viewpoint they should have, how they should act, or who they should date. Diversity
will not be lessened for the very simple reason of randomization. With billions of
people in the world, each person having a unique perspective, there is no guarantee
that everyone will become living zombies of each other. It is, in fact, ridiculous to
presume as such because there are currently available hair dyes and eye contacts
in all colours, and people buy them due to personal preferences. The only effect will
be the random choices of many people, all registered clearly under the government
they live under. It is all up to the free will of the people, and the beauty lies In one’s
freedom of individual choice. The choice of one’s phenotype is the confirmation that
one’s phenotype has no linkage to intrinsic traits that define a person, and the once
gene reprogramming event allows one to be defined by no other except for
themself in how to live a life.

The burdens that one carries around due to others belief that their phenotype
is an intrinsic trait will be nonexistent once one can make this phenotypic decision,
and just have fun enjoying life to the fullest, whether in the workplace, at parties, or
just in an ease of self. Furthermore, a person who has felt the jealous eyes of others
because of the job position they have, or the person they are dating, or the way
they live their life, will break free of the societal pressure based on phenotype.

Most clearly, the entire shared human phenotypic gene pool must be open to
everyone, because there is no legitimate case to judge whether others are allowed
to look a certain way or not. By case example, can we say that someone who is half
French and half Korean is more justified in choosing to dye her hair blonde than
someone who is half Somalian and half Cuban? What about someone who is Italian
choosing to go blonde? Does it really matter, or must we always continue to
quantify people on a spectrum of how much, or to which direction they are allowed
to exhibit certain phenotypes. The simple fact that most human phenotypes once all
existed in Africa, where the intense sunlight and dry heat caused selection against
those individuals mutated with light pigmentation, means that we are all able to
access any phenotype we choose. For religious, the shared identity of humankind is
clear when we are all able to access any phenotype code desired. Environments
supported certain pigmentation types but the human genetic code is one common
entity, so the clear reasoning that we are all Homo sapiens makes it absolute we
should each be able to access whichever phenotype one so choose.

Some argued that once this technology allows anyone to achieve the
phenotypic diversity they desire, Middle Eastern, South American and South Asian
women might dominate the ranks of modeling, given the exhibition of more
averaged proportions, which trends to human attractiveness. However, even though
some traits are unique to certain populations, they are considered attractive due to
varied randomization of the world. For ex, men with smaller eyes have been found
to indicate maturity and women with larger teeth are considered frank and good-
natured by many. These factors are not in the matter important, once phenotype
becomes a pure choice, so one must focus on intangibles like personality and
character, and the fear that certain regions will dominate certain fields is
unfounded.

Another argument in regards to this technology that is as a matter well-

founded is to end the plague of large-scale genocide and war that have lead to
global atrocities like the Nazis and the Darfur wars. First off, at the study of political
science, we learn at the base of Hitler’s obsessive mind was the idea that Jews were
collecting up all the wealth, in the mercantile trade, in everything related to
Germany’s future political and financial power. For Hitler, the power struggle
essentially lay between who should have the money in Germany: Germans or Jews.
The means by which he enacted an entire massacre against a segment of society
was by the ideology of phenotype corresponding to ancestry. As Hitler observed,
many Jews, especially ones who kept religious and didn’t intermix with Germans
much, had dark side locks, whereas Germans were more prone to blonde hair. But
Hitler himself had brown hair. This caused many historians to wonder whether he
was crazy, because he himself did not have blond hair. But research indicates that
he was aware to rid Jews of the power they held in Germany as merchants and
business owners, he would have to craft an ideology that correlated Jews to a
certain look and Germans to another look. To do so, he created the mythological
“Aryan” race, free from Jewish or Slavic ancestry, not realizing that all humans are
one species. In Hitler’s mind, the only people who should have blonde hair and blue
eyes were Germans, and these would be their identifiers. If you were German you
had blonde hair and blue eyes, if you were Jewish you had dark hair and dark eyes,
and other propaganda he linked phenotype with intrinsic traits by. But what about
people who were Jewish who had blond hair? The use of the Star of David as a
badge that Jews were forced to wear forced many blonde Jews to their death,
because Hitler regarded as the worst possibility that Jews should pass as a German.
This helped to enhance Hitler’s strict assignment of phenotype to ancestry, by
eliminating blonde Jews for the simple fact that they were Jewish, he wanted strict
phenotypic identification in the future to link one’s phenotype with who a person
was, an unalterable part of their identity. Hitler wanted to ensure that if you were
German, you had to look German, and if you were Jewish, you had to look Jewish,
corresponding to his stereotypes of what each should look like. Under his ideology,
the institution of murder was powered by the assignment of entire communities to
their most likely phenotypes, by the rigid categorization of people into what they
should or shouldn’t appear on the surface. In his programs, Hitler used the fact that
you could not then change your phenotype because it was born as a method to
categorize groups of people and begin systematic targeting. Similarly, in Darfur,
there has been massacres on both sides, one the Janjaweed, against the other side,
the Zaghawa, Masalit and other African tribespeople. The side in power has crafted
ideology and propaganda to help identify the enemies and lead to widespread
killing so as to solidify in their minds what each group should look like. But as we
see throughout history, the human spirit essentially rejects such cruel ideologies
imposed by dictator states that disallow individual freedom. The Arab Coalition for
Darfur has decried the acts of violence and murder taking place in the country,
avowing that crimes committed by leaders must also be punished. Similarly, many
Germans hid Jews and helped transport them across country borders, while
Germans in other countries arranged for their escape. This pattern repeats
throughout history, of groups that institute murder by creating identifiers for their
enemies, using phenotype as a linkage to intrinsic traits, the convenience of
appearance being unalterable that allows for systematic targeting of a group and
the horror of war.

Reviewing this history, one will wonder how can we put an end to, or at least
combat the likeliness of such atrocities happening over and over throughout time.
One method is of course to enact punishment for those who dare to inflict violence,
or even murder, someone, just on the basis of how they look. But can we ensure
that the human tendency to want power can ever be vanquished? The answer, if
one is a realist, is no. Segments of society will always be fighting to be at the top,
and the easiest way to do so is through phenotypic propaganda, by assigning
ideologies to what people of a certain community should look like, and how they
must work together to defeat the other groups. There is no guarantee at all that a
leader hungry for power will not again use the convenience of fact that people are
born with a (so believed) unchangeable phenotype to wage institutional war and
murder against a certain people. The only way to combat this is to disassociate
certainty of religion or community with phenotype. Imagine if the German SS officer
could change his genes the next day to dark curly hair and swarthy skin, while the
gay Jewish paraplegic could easily give himself blonde hair and blue eyes. And what
of a German infant born of two blonde parents who chose to turn himself dark-
haired? The impossibility of a concentrated effort against a given people, the basis
of a genocide, is clear to be seen. And what if the Hutus or other tribes people could
give themselves fiery red hair while the Janjaweed also could randomly become
varied in phenotype and appearance? For any fascist leader, there would be no way
to begin forming propaganda based on what people look like that will start a civil
war between two groups vying for power, if both groups are unidentifiable, if
someone’s appearance gives no clear indication as to where his loyalties lie. When
one grows to accept the fact that people of a certain religion or community do not
have to look a certain way, they recognize the validity of each of us looking the way
we want, so that we can live in peace as a civilized, prospering humanity.

At the end of the day, we must have the courtesy to say to the world:
“Phenotype is not a big deal. Do with it as you like, just once, and then get over it.
We can spend our energy on things that require working together, rather than
fighting and emotionally wounding each other, all on the basis of insecurities and
fear of genetic freedom.” When we are confident enough to allow every single
person to choose a phenotype, whether it be light, dark or brown, then we can
finally be confident enough to call ourself one big humanity. The basis to a better
world is achieved with regulation when we disassociate phenotype with human
ability, intelligence, and kindness, and the existence of private genetic freedom lets
us live and love thereon after in a confident self-defined world.