The Sperm And The Egg :: Evolutionary Evolution

Currently Listening To :: Allure :: Jay-Z

Few directors draw as much love and hate as Spike Lee, and the same could be said about his films - if the reviews are anything to go by, She Hate Me is a Spike Lee joint that fits the mould. A movie about corporate crime and lesbian issues, it suffers from poor character development but shines in their interaction, even if the story is disjointed.

But as with all things, there are silver linings. Take the character played by emcee Q Tip, the protagonist's best friend. While waiting to make a deposit at the local sperm bank, he ponders the possibilities of combining the sperm and eggs of luminaries together. This made me think of the concept of 'designer babies' that I first read about in Francis Fukuyama's book "Our Posthuman Future - Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution". Limitations on reality aside, the concept is the stuff dreams are made of.

While this may smack of the Third Reich and their attempt to create a master race, I have to say that while their heads may have been in the right space, they were definitely too narrow-minded. Why focus on creating soldiers when there's so much more to life?

What if we could meld the genes of Marc Jacobs and Donatella Versace? The music of Yo Yo Ma and Venessa Mae? Michelle Wie and Tiger Woods? Mos Def and Lauryn Hill? Jessica Alba...and Jessica Alba?

It's similar to the age-old quandry about bi-racial babies - do they always take the best of both genes? I think everyone recognises the potential. Shit, even Bruce Lee, argubly the greatest male Asian icon, was biracial (either that, or Wikipedia is lying to me). But for every perfect fusion of genes, shouldn't there be a mix that doesn't blend into something better?

The optimist in me is telling me to shut up - I hope to have some beautiful and wonderful and inquisitive and magical neices and nephews some day. Imagine for a minute that it took several days to move from seed to seed, and all there was was a mildly irritating sensation the entire time...call me pessimistic, but I'd put some dollars on our population issues being a little less pressing. I guess that's why making babies is such a pleasurable and relatively short-lived experience. If we were rational about human reproduction, as a race we would probably be extinct. Yes, I'm talking to all you pessimists out there. I know, I know, Mr. Me Too.

But you can't keep the human race down. Even human evolution evolved to allow for future evolution. Babies making babies making babies...