Gattaca Not-Too-Distant-Future 
Gattaca
Not-Too-Distant-Future
"Consider God's handiwork; who can straighten what He hath made crooked?"
Ecclesiastes 7:13
"I not only think that we will tamper with
Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to."
Willard Gaylen Gattaca deals with the morality involved in technologically engineering human life. As a species, is humanity wise enough (Homo sapiens) to play the role of God? The film begins with two quotes: one from Ecclesiastes and one from Willard Gaylen. Ecclesiastes is writing found in the Old Testament that presents reflections on the nature of man, concluding that man was made right and just and willfully chose to disobey God (original sin). The writings suggest that human vanity may be a property of God transferred to his creation Adam, and embodied in the act of eating fruit from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. In this sense, vanity becomes an inadvertent property of creation that is treated as a deliberate act of God. God is thus constituted as an all-knowing entity, a property (perhaps inadvertently?) passed down to Adam who similarly aspires towards godhood, a position forbidden him. The inference of the quote at the beginning of Gattaca presents a moral and philosophical position against genetic engineering rendered specifically from the Old Testament. Suggesting that man was deliberately made with flaws and weaknesses, and that it becomes his trial on Earth to accept them in accordance with God's will. Hence, too, the emergence of the Christian struggle against further transgressing these divine boundaries, and excepting redemption from this original sin through prayer and God's mercy.
Willard Gaylin (b. 1925) was educated at Harvard University (A.B., 1947), Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) University (M.D., 1951), and Columbia University, where, after earning a certificate in psychoanalytic medicine, he served as a faculty member (1956). A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, he is also
Not-Too-Distant-Future
"Consider God's handiwork; who can straighten what He hath made crooked?"
Ecclesiastes 7:13
"I not only think that we will tamper with
Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to."
Willard Gaylen Gattaca deals with the morality involved in technologically engineering human life. As a species, is humanity wise enough (Homo sapiens) to play the role of God? The film begins with two quotes: one from Ecclesiastes and one from Willard Gaylen. Ecclesiastes is writing found in the Old Testament that presents reflections on the nature of man, concluding that man was made right and just and willfully chose to disobey God (original sin). The writings suggest that human vanity may be a property of God transferred to his creation Adam, and embodied in the act of eating fruit from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. In this sense, vanity becomes an inadvertent property of creation that is treated as a deliberate act of God. God is thus constituted as an all-knowing entity, a property (perhaps inadvertently?) passed down to Adam who similarly aspires towards godhood, a position forbidden him. The inference of the quote at the beginning of Gattaca presents a moral and philosophical position against genetic engineering rendered specifically from the Old Testament. Suggesting that man was deliberately made with flaws and weaknesses, and that it becomes his trial on Earth to accept them in accordance with God's will. Hence, too, the emergence of the Christian struggle against further transgressing these divine boundaries, and excepting redemption from this original sin through prayer and God's mercy.
Willard Gaylin (b. 1925) was educated at Harvard University (A.B., 1947), Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) University (M.D., 1951), and Columbia University, where, after earning a certificate in psychoanalytic medicine, he served as a faculty member (1956). A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, he is also