The Happiness Equation

Chapter 8b - Confrontation

"Mr Mercier. This is a one-off protest to address an atypical concern. You think we would make a habit of this kind of protest? You know as well as I do the crisis we are currently facing. We are cold, hungry and tired. Only this pressing issue and the importance of what we have to bear on it has brought us together and given us the will to make this stand. So please can we stop dwelling on labels and reputations. These things are not important right now."

Jim shrugged his shoulders, "that is fine by me, addressing the issue at hand is what this conference is all about."

Samantha took her chance to ask a question, "So then Mr Mercier, I assume you have been watching this interview progress keenly. What do you make of Mr Brunt’s theory of genetically selecting matches? Would it improve our society as he suggests, whilst also appeasing the feeling of unfairness and exclusion currently suffered by the low income sector of the population, giving them a more reasonable route to get in the gene pool for the next generation?"

"It is quite a complex subject as you can appreciate, but I will try my best to explain it as succinctly as I can. The reason the happiness equation I am proposing can work is based on a key factor. It regulates and taps into the human spirit, bringing it in to harmony with the social organism. But it does no more than this. It does not control it from above with commands, or from below with needs. For we cannot control the human spirit. Without true freedom on the individual level society always crumbles and falls apart. You can create the most perfect genetic beings you like. But no matter what you do here, no matter how perfect they are, individuals cannot carry society. They still rely on, and feed off, societal order. A thing tantamount to our happiness as my equation shows. But this order will degenerate under Marks proposals by attempting to control a process that already works harmoniously. Loving relationships is one of the few areas where the human spirit has always prevailed. It is crucial in any free and happy society. What we need to be doing right now is extending this harmonious approach to other aspects of society, not undermining it in one of its strongholds for the sake of a dubious scientific experiment."

"Do you have a response to this Mr Brunt?"

"Thankyou Miss Swanson, yes I do. History is littered with cultural practices we thought could not be overcome, such as religious rituals, abstinence, chastity. But with time we have come to see them as merely superstitions. The same can apply to the cultural practice of long-term family relationships of exclusive love and affection once we begin to appreciate the more rational alternatives. The genetically chosen matches may well choose to have a relationship anyway."

"And if they don’t Mr Brunt?" Asked Samantha.

"Then communitarian projects will be set up to look after them and watch over them to ensure they achieve optimum development."

Jim interjected, "are you seriously suggesting that control through science of the most basic human drives of affection and to procreate can be compared to the overcoming of religious superstitions?"

"Why not? Those superstitions were also once taken to be basic human drives..."

"We all know now Mark that this Enlightenment process of spreading natural science influence reached its peak some time ago and began to decline at the turn of the 21st century. It has declined these past hundred years or so for a good reason. It tried to put the human spirit in too tight a box and the human spirit broke out in defiance: Finding new ways to make science work for our benefit, rather than us working for its benefit. This is an old debate, settled a long time back..."

"I am saying the debate needs to be reopened. If other countries make use of this technology with success where will that leave us?"

"Other countries may or may not follow that route, but if they do it will be their mistake and their loss. The rational mind has its limits Mark. At times it must give way to the much more powerful unconscious forces gathered in our psyche. This is not irrational in a detrimental sense, because it is for our own benefit. It allows love to grow. Trust, freedom and happiness result from it. It may not give us a precisely tuned world of our own making, but it gives us the best world we can hope to inhabit."