The White Man's Burden and Genetically Engineered Babies

Pear’s Soap ads, in addition to creating a distinction between clean, good smelling, white Christians, and “them”, also employed the phrase, “the white man’s burden”. Using this phrase from Rudyard Kipling’s Poem not only made imperialism a noble endeavor (i.e. washing the dirty salvages clean), but also a moral obligation, as we the “civilized” whites had an obligation to help the “uncivilized” savages better themselves. To what extent then, is genetic modification a noble endeavor, and is it or can it be a moral obligation? Of course, answering these questions relies heavily upon which moral and theoretic lens one sees this question through, but across the entire spectrum—from those for and against imperialism to those for and against genetic modification—these issues blur the lines between what is natural and artificial, deeply complicating the methods employed to measure what is noble and moral, while cementing a structure in place that makes the distinction between “us” and “them” possible only by virtue of the relationship between the two.

The parallels between “the white man’s burden” and genetically engineered babies run along the lines of noble endeavor and moral obligation. Again, whether or not the two are held as noble or moral depends largely on the institutions that develop and affect specific kinds of intellectual faculties. The structure however, that these practices have set in place, is a structure that makes the relationship between one who uses soap and one who does not, or the relationship between a genetically engineered baby and a baby that exists through conception, possible only by virtue of their relationship between one another. To be frank, one who stinks, only stinks in relation to one who smells good. A genetically modified baby is seen as unnatural or unmoral only in relation to a baby conceived naturally. What this does is complicated how we define what is defined as moral and noble because this social structure shapes a person’s self-understanding and interest. To put it another way, depending on where you fall in the structure, your conception of what is moral and noble and will shaped, internalized, and appear self-evident. It boils down to ways of seeing and ways of knowing, and often times these ways of seeing are predetermined for us.

The question then, is not whether or not “the white man’s burden” or genetically engineered babies are noble endeavors or moral obligations; it is instead a question how to understand, unpack, and separate oneself from a structure that has become so embedded into one’s culture as to literally shape one’s subjectivity and self-understanding. What this structure does do, is help to explain why there was a tension between those in the past that were for imperialism and the westernization of the undeveloped world and those who were not, and why the is a tension between those in favor of genetically developed babies and those are who not. For each position, there is a life experience and a structure in place to help shape a person’s self-understanding, and ultimately lead them to a position on a particular issue. Separating ourselves from the structure however, is not a matter of a choice; the structure is a part of us, it shapes how we think, act, and understand. Often times the advent of a new structure, or set of structural relationships, or way of seeing, is what exposes the current structural power at work. The ushering in of a new paradigm perhaps may help us to separate ourselves from our current structure, but it simply replaces the old with the new. Gauging whether or not something is noble and moral is contingent upon which angle we approach our measurement from, but the tools at out disposal for that measurement are contingent upon the structural power working on and through us. Conceptions of natural and artificial, noble and dishonorable, moral and immoral, exists only in relation to one another. They are not themselves natural. It is for that reason that these questions will continue to exist and complicate our understanding of understanding itself.