Our bodies are just not good enough?

Till the 19th century Chinese little girls would get their legs deformed in order to fit into a lotus shoe. Women would wear breath taking (literately) corsets to get their waists to be a certain size. Even as far back as the Egyptian time natural elements and colors where used to boost the natural look of the face/body. All this makes me think about the natural step forward in controlling our bodies. Like the humans in Ribofunk who get all kinds of animal upgrades like corral spikes to whiskers and beetle legs. It seems that the body just of itself without any adjustment is looked down upon as weaker then the other, as uncool or unfavorable. But why is it that the body is not enough? To me that's an important question, I think that humans have gone a far way, maybe even to far in indulging their consent desire for something better. Thus the likelihood that humans are going to become less human and more of something else via technological advances doesn't seem too far fetched.

I think that the body is wise and knows how to feel and protect its inner environment. Yet even nowadays people take medicine for things like the common cold or a headache without giving the body a chance to fight and improve its immune system on its own. I'm not arguing that some people, who REALLY need it, should stop taking their pills, but rather saying that by giving pills and other things like technology control over our bodies we make our bodies weaker in the end.

What was interesting in this book is how being a human is seen as something different in that world. As more and more people change their bodies they loose % of their human DNA, so a line of 51% is drawn to separate the humans and the new form of slaves -splices and the kibs. The line itself is an interesting thing which implies that somewhat has to determine the measurement for humanity. Someone has to say that this is human and this is not. Yet who can have that kind of power, or rather who can really be trusted with that kind of responsibility? I think no one should be. In this book both the people (who seemed less and less human from their exterior) and the splices (those below 51%) all kept their human emotions of love, hate, etc. Which means that no matter how advance our bodies become our weakness lies in our emotions and in the way we think, and if those "weaknesses" aren't changed all the upgrades in the world won't make a human more happy. Its hard to say that emotions are only our weakness' but they are to a point, on the other hand they are also a way of feeling alive and enjoying life. You can't have one side without the other. Or can you???

In an idealistic plan it would make more sense to work on mastering and upgrading our emotions rather then our bodies because those the way we think is what matters in terms of how we look at the rest of the things in life. Again that can lead to complete elimination of emotions like in a movie i saw, which is again an extreme, yet it seems that humans tend to like to go for extremes rather then try to achieve a stable middle ground.

How do you control something as it becomes more and more advance? I guess you have to follow alongside the path and also upgrade, get new stronger arms, faster legs, better eyes and there doesn't seem to be a limit in sight. Yet in the end the path leads to destruction in one way or another when the advances just get too high stake and the effects become global, but human desire to know about the greatest and latest, and to compete for that, will eventually bring us to an end, if not serious measures of control are implemented.

So all in all this book makes me think that the world we have to concur is world inside our own heads. Our bodies can be changed through varies manipulations, but no matter how much you progress on the outside your flaws will still be there to haunt you in your head. Therefore the place to start a war should not be with your body or with other people it should be with yourself and your unrealistic or destructive expectations from life.