This blog post examines the difference in happiness and self-realization between customized humans and natural humans through the movie ‘Gattaca’.
There’s a common, yet not-so-common, argument parents have about their children. “The kid takes after you, that’s why they’re like this.” When a child brings home a low test score, the mother might say, “You inherited this mom’s smart brain, so you’re intelligent, but you take after your dad and don’t study.” The father might counter, “What are you talking about? The child is smart like me, but lazy like you, that’s why they don’t study.” Each claims they passed on their superior genes to the child, while their spouse passed on inferior genes. When will this seemingly futile, leaky bucket argument ever end?
The movie ‘Gattaca’ introduced a world that resolves such arguments, or rather, a world where such arguments never arise. Advances in genetic engineering and biotechnology made it possible to select only the superior genetic traits of both husband and wife, using artificial insemination to produce genetically perfect children. It became possible to create genetically superior offspring tailored to the parents’ preferences. While current technology makes this seem unlikely in the immediate future, it is not impossible. Suppose an era of mass-producing these attractive, customized humans arrives. If given the choice between a customized human and a natural human, which would we choose to live as? Before making that decision, we should first consider which type of human is likely to live happily.
First, let’s examine what happiness means to humans. Looking up the dictionary definition, happiness refers to the feeling of contentment and joy derived from life, or the state of being in such a condition. The moments when we feel sufficient satisfaction and joy are diverse. We feel happy when basic physiological needs are met, like eating food when extremely hungry or sleeping soundly after several nights of all-night work. This happiness is a low-level form essential for human survival. This is a happiness all animals, not just humans, must feel. However, what distinguishes humans from animals is our capacity to feel and pursue higher-level happiness. We are happy when a long-cherished dream is realized through persistent effort, when we discover our own outstanding abilities we didn’t know we possessed, and when we are loved by others and love others as human beings. From this perspective of higher-level happiness, let us consider the lives of customized humans and natural humans.
Designer humans are unhappy from the very process of their creation. Natural humans are the happy result of the sublime love between a woman and a man. It is the divine blessing gained when a man and a woman confirm their love for each other. In ‘Gattaca’, the protagonist Vincent is a natural human; his parents conceived him while making love in a car. In contrast, Vincent’s brother Anton is a designer human, brought into the world through artificial insemination. His parents did not unite in love to conceive Anton. Instead, they extracted eggs and sperm and fertilized them in a test tube. The child was born not from the sacred union of a man and a woman in their own space, but from an artificial, forced union with cold surgical instruments in a hospital. Which child would parents truly love more?
In the film, Vincent and Anton’s parents gave more love to Anton, who was genetically superior. But if I were the parents in the film, I would have loved and raised Vincent more. Seeing Vincent would bring back memories of the time spent with my partner trying to conceive him, making the child feel like a blessing from God. Seeing Anton, however, would not evoke those tender memories. The only memories would be of going back and forth to the hospital, undergoing artificial insemination, and the conversations with the doctor. For that child, there is only the doctor’s blessing, not God’s. It’s perhaps natural that one doesn’t feel the same attachment to a child conceived through artificial insemination as to one born through natural pregnancy. Just as a painting we poured our passion and effort into as children, though lacking the artistic value or craftsmanship of a master painter’s work, feels more precious and beautiful to us precisely because we created it ourselves.
In a capitalist society, material abundance has become one factor in happiness. Material wealth guarantees a higher probability of survival in this system. Without money, simply put, you cannot eat well or sleep well. Money is merely a means to satisfy basic physiological needs. The happiness derived from material abundance is thus basic happiness, or happiness at a lower level. Consider someone who wins the lottery. They are certainly happy because they have become materially wealthy, but winning the lottery is not self-realization achieved through their own effort or skill development, so it cannot be considered happiness at a higher level.
Throughout life, humans embark on a journey to discover themselves. They find their identity and realize their self through relationships with others in society and through education, feeling happiness and savoring the taste of life. This is precisely the privilege unique to humans and the higher-level happiness only humans can experience. In this sense, a truly human life is a process of ceaseless exploration and effort for self-realization, separate from material abundance. Let’s liken human life to a treasure hunt. Treasure hunting is a process combining two elements: the treasure itself and the act of searching. A treasure hunt consisting solely of treasure, without the act of searching, cannot exist. Likewise, without the object of treasure, the treasure hunt itself cannot exist. The treasure is connected to human self-realization. The search is connected to the process of finding our self.
The natural-type human does not know the location of the treasure. Therefore, they constantly strive and explore to find it. Sometimes they face frustration, taste the bitterness of failure, and struggle. Yet, through the sincere comfort and love of those around them, they rise again, press forward with renewed vigor, and seek the treasure. When they finally find it, that treasure holds an irreplaceable value for the natural-type human. Moreover, the very process of seeking this treasure can be said to hold profound human meaning.
The life of a customized human is like treasure hunting with a treasure map. This map doesn’t reveal the location of every treasure, but it at least points to one. Does the treasure found by following the map truly hold the value of a treasure? Following a treasure map to find treasure holds no meaning as a treasure hunt. It is merely receiving treasure, not hunting for it. That is to say, it lacks meaning as a human life.
Custom humans are like machines churned out of a factory. They are nothing more than machines custom-made to desired specifications using genes. Thus, custom humans know what they are before they can even realize their aptitudes or abilities. In ‘Gattaca’, there is a pianist with six fingers. He plays pieces that can only be performed with six fingers and receives great applause. He is not a being chosen by God to have six fingers; he is a customized human, made that way by his parents’ choice. Does he truly feel happiness while playing the piano? He doesn’t play the piano because he has six fingers; he has six fingers in order to play the piano. And that choice was not his own, but his parents’. Establishing an identity where he is merely a machine that plays the piano well, he can never be truly happy. A custom-made human who cannot experience the joy of discovering and developing their own abilities is no longer a human being, but merely a machine part within society.
Of course, a custom-made human could reject life as a machine part within society and live seeking their own self. But would they readily abandon the treasure they found so easily and set out to seek a new one? Once they know the treasure’s location, they likely won’t bother digging in vain places. This connects to the low willpower of the tailored human to seek their self. They may easily miss the chance to find a treasure more precious than the one they possess. Another reason tailored humans have fewer opportunities to find their true selves than natural humans is that their educational environment is also tailored. The parents of a tailored human custom-made their child according to their own desires, regardless of the child’s will, and consequently, the child’s educational environment is also specifically tailored to that intention. For example, the parents of the six-fingered pianist from the movie would have made their child play the piano from a very young age. His parents did this because they gave birth to a pianist-customized human. Such parental intervention can hinder the child’s journey to discover their own self. While parents of natural-type humans also shape their child’s educational environment to some extent based on their own desires, the degree of intervention is smaller than that of parents of customized humans. Natural-type humans can find a path suited to their aptitudes within a relatively diverse educational environment.
Imagine two individuals with identical abilities: one a natural-type human, the other a tailor-made human. If you could choose, which life would you select? When faced with treasures of equal value, would you live a life guided by a treasure map to claim the treasure? Or would you live a life striving without a map, ultimately finding the treasure and gaining the joy and happiness that comes with it? If we aspire to be truly human, I believe the answer is already clear.
The genuine happiness felt in the life of a natural-type human possesses a depth and meaning that can never be attained in the life of a custom-made human. Natural-type humans grow through their own experiences and efforts, overcoming their limitations and discovering new possibilities. This process itself holds great meaning and value, giving natural humans the true purpose and direction of life. In contrast, tailored humans, constrained by predetermined abilities and aptitudes, struggle to experience life’s diverse possibilities and cannot feel the joy of discovering their own unique self. From this perspective, true human happiness lies in self-realization achieved through one’s own unique experiences and efforts.
Therefore, we should not fear the diverse challenges and difficulties we encounter in life, but rather value growing and developing through that process. Choosing to live as a natural human, rather than a customized one, is the path for us to pursue true humanity, and through this, we can live a better life.
