Self-enhancement Technologies
In the article “Enhancement Technologies and the Modern Self” by Carl Elliot from the University of Minnesota, Elliot argues that “The more skin lightening cream that is sold, the more stigmatized dark skin will become”(p.367). It’s not the cream that should be forbidden or the technology but the people that should be educated. It’s already happening for a while and it took over two thousand years to be where we are so it will not change overnight.
Carl Elliot continues “Being in touch with your inner feelings, desires and aspirations have become essential for self-fulfillment, and self-fulfillment has become a necessary component of a meaningful life. If you are not fulfilled, your life is not measuring up to the promise of what a human life could be. “(p.370)
It might be true that it is easier to be a fulfilled person by self-acceptance than by technology enhancement interventions but when we see more severe cases of people being helped by such interventions as medication for depression, plastic surgeries or even mechanic body parts, we see that technology is not the problem. It is the measure; as a popular Brazilian saying said: “the difference between the poison and the medicine is the dosage.” Regulations will have to say when is too much and when the leaders lose track everyone will pay the price and nature will retaliate and teach us the lesson. Only our morals can save us.
What worries me is the accessibility and advantages the technology gives certain classes over others. For example, coding being used to control basically everything in the world but only a few percentages of the population being able to read it. Like coding, self-enhancing technologies should be democratic and available to all.