Athena: Is Biology the New Fate?

Dear Augustine,

I read this article the other day (x) about whether or not you would choose to know "the secrets hidden in your baby's genes" and it reminded me so much of all the things that we read nowadays that talk about our genes or our brains and their relationship to everything from our health to our behavior. A few weeks ago, I was in the midst of grading Oedipus essays about the role of Fate vs. Freewill when I came across one of these articles...and it struck me that in many ways Biology is the new Fate.

By and large, our culture doesn't put much stock in prophecies anymore. The power of it in plays such as Macbeth or Oedipus falls on deaf ears to modern students. They understand it when it's explained to them, can relate it sometimes to personal religious belief [or religious belief as they've seen it], but its power is nothing like it seems it was in the ancient world--or even in Shakespeare's time.

Science has demystified the world, and in so many ways that's a good thing. We know about germs, we don't believe mental illnesses are caused by 'evil spirits' and our treatment [though it still has far to go] of people with sickness of various sorts has changed for the better because of it. And yet there are still moments when I see hints of a certain determinism in certain streams of scientific thought. Sometimes, it's harder to argue against that.

But there's a deep part of me that wants, needs to fight fight fight against it. There's something in me that screams for control and wants to fight like the tragic heroes against Fate--biological or otherwise--to defy the odds, to spite any forces beyond my own choices that would seek to control me. I will be no force's puppet, playing out some scene in response to stimuli or genetic coding or predestination of any kind.

Yet I remember that in the old stories, it's the very struggle against Fate that brings prophecies to pass. In such a case, perhaps ignorance is bliss? What we don't know can't shape us, at least not consciously, and at least we can delude ourselves into thinking that our choices are our own. And while there's a part of me that desperately wants to know everything, I think the part of me that needs control--even if only the illusion of it--is so much stronger.

+Athena