Many of us inherit advantages for a successful, happy life -- it might be wealth or health -- by fortune of birth. In other instances, the course of events is fixed by the crucial choices we make. Sometimes when I look at how things have unfolded in my life, I marvel at how easily I could have gone in completely different directions. The smallest change, whether it was a matter of timing or following a whim, would have put me on another path. I might have zigged where instead I zagged.
Such ruminations, indulgences at best, regrets at worst, point to the randomness that permeates our lives. Living can feel like a roll of the dice. Each choice we make is a rejection of all alternate options. Yet there is only so much forethought possible. How do you weigh risk and on what presumed outcome do you wager? There is a cost for every decision. Sometimes we feel the sacrifice directly, sometimes we impose that sacrifice on others, often without our awareness.
If we use a Darwinian model, people with certain qualities have advantages that enable them to “do better” than others who lack these attributes. They pass these on to their descendants and forever alter the species. Is it simply the luck of the draw that deals out these coveted traits, or is some larger force, an intelligent design, at play? How much control do we really have in determining our fates?
Genetically enhancing the cards dealt by nature is the current popular paradigm. Vegetables and farm animals are custom-built to suit human appetites. Botox and hormone replacement keep us young. As we re-create ourselves, we inadvertently re-create the world in our image. And vice-versa. Heartier corn and big-breasted chickens are mass-produced to feed the hungry, but how will these modifications modify us? And why stop there? Human beings moved up the food chain by developing a bigger brain. Today we work out to shrink fat. Maybe someday we will all have two heads and no ass.
Drawing on the study of evolution, the dynamics of DNA, and the world of gaming, I am manipulating and playing with notions of chance, luck, physiological (mal)adaptation and chaos.
Perhaps like prey in a game of Three Card Monty, our sense of control is an illusion. And like a tortoise marching about the desert, unaware that his home will soon be a racetrack for off-road vehicles, it might be time for us to cash out. The odds are set, the marks have been selected, the fix is in.
Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.