Engineered Cute

I was thinking again how cute - sorry, there's really no better word - is Isabel, our pup. And she really is.

But she is engineered, the result of generations of breeders breeding generations of Westies in order to sell them to people like me.   She is very intentionally cute.

Isabel doesn't know she's cute, or that she's engineered, but she does know that she's alive and, all day long, she wants to engage.  There's a huge hopeful point in there.

We too are engineered.  My parents did their parental things, and in this nature-nurture thing nurture still counts for something.  Add natural selection, a grand engineer, generations of breeders breeding lines of individual humans, all of whom survived long enough to procreate.  Which mine did, leading to me.

But there is a lot more engineering to come, tons more.  It's clear that we will be able to manipulate our offspring, and ourselves, and integrate a world of knowledge into each individual head.  Our parents (or the state, or the caliphate, or someone) will be able to bioengineer us from conception.  Once out, we can continue to invent ourselves, and not just through will power and resolve.  One wonders if we will still be people.

It doesn't necessarily sound good.  But as with Isabel, whatever the mods and intervention, engineered people should still be happy to be alive and ready to engage.  I don't think that can be engineered out.  I don't know how long it lasts, now or then - as to each of us, it may have a half-life - and maybe it should.  But for a time there will be a will to be human and survive.