{"id":5169,"date":"2020-09-19T14:02:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-19T18:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/?p=5169"},"modified":"2020-09-20T15:00:38","modified_gmt":"2020-09-20T19:00:38","slug":"be-careful-what-you-wish-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/2020\/09\/19\/be-careful-what-you-wish-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Careful What You Wish For"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the book\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em> by Mary Shelly, mad scientist Victor Frankenstein creates a living being out of human corpses, that came to be known as the Monster. \u00a0Although maybe with good intentions, Victor creates a “hideous” Monster and becomes afriad of it shortly before abdonding the Monster. \u00a0Ultimately, the two of them die near the Northpole \u00a0where Frankenstein was looking to take revenge against the Monster for murdering his bride Elizabeth. \u00a0As far as messages about science, technology, and society go in the book, \u00a0I think one of the most obvious messages is the principle of limits and how we treat others. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Towards the very end of the book, another one of the characters named Robert Walton turns back from reaching the North Pole because he knew he had reached his limit. \u00a0Unlike, Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein was never able to understand his limits and how far he should take his science. \u00a0When creating the Monster, he failed to recognize the humanistic qualities that Victor was placing on him, and only cared about making a great creation. \u00a0Victor should have taken a second to think if recreating a being out of dead bodies was right, and what kind of quality of life the Monster would have. \u00a0He was unable to understand that by making a creature that could potentially be different from a lot of humans, the creature would need special care and attention, not less care. \u00a0When relating the principle of limits to todays science, technology, and society, \u00a0I think we a currrently at an ethical crossroads that Mary Shelly, and others at the time of publishing her book, could only dream about. \u00a0Our society and its scientists have a moral obligation to decide if we should be able to recrate life, \u00a0extend life through speical treatments, and how intrusive our technological devices should be in our lives, among other many things. \u00a0I think its incredibly important for us to consider the quality of life for all people, including that of the things we could potentially create, when thinking about scientific and technological innovations. \u00a0Reason being, when it comes to down it, \u00a0the most impotant thing in life for all people is simply the quality of life people have. \u00a0Creating highly advanced techonlogy may be impressive and useful, but could also negatively affect a lot of lives more than its intended positvite impact. \u00a0Hopefully our society can learn from fictironal stories, like that of\u00a0Victor Frankenstein, and not repeat the same mistakes.<\/p>\n

Another theme in the book was treating all people with respect and not leaving people on the outcasts of society due to their differences in appearance or disabilites. \u00a0 The Monster was outcasted after being created by Victor, and in the end, ultimately caused Victor a lot of pain by way of killing two people he loved. \u00a0If he had treated the Monster nicely, maybe the outcomes of Victor’s loved ones and himself might have been different. \u00a0In our society, we will all be much better off if we treat evryone with kindness and respect, as we will not only get along better, but we will most likely have a lot less anger and violence in our everyday lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the book\u00a0Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, mad scientist Victor Frankenstein creates a living being out of human corpses, that came to be known as the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9925,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[469283],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9925"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5170,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5169\/revisions\/5170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}