Word: selfing
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Modern science already offers ways to enhance your mood, sex drive, athletic performance, concentration levels and overall health. But is such medically driven self-improvement always a good idea? Nick Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, believes it's time to open the ethical debate surrounding human enhancement - a term that is growing to include genetic, pharmaceutical and technological ways to improve our physical and mental abilities and even dramatically extend human life. He recently edited a collection of essays on the subject, Human Enhancement, and in an e-mail exchange explained...
...virtue of “self-discipline” is perhaps most obvious. Without doubt, it takes some degree of control to avoid sneaking a Coconut Congo Bar after 11 hours of not eating. However, the benefits of discipline in this context trickle down to multiple aspects of our lives. Speaking personally, it has helped me overcome the urge to open a new Gchat window every 45 seconds...
...fasting can lead to profound self-reflection as well. Those few hours before the sun sets and one is allowed to eat are precisely the time in which one realizes just how easy it is to succumb to temptation. The idea that all it takes is a candy bar to bring a man to his knees is a supremely humbling idea. This weakness rightly serves to remind us of how fragile we are as individuals...
...same time, fasting also provides a fascinating form of reassurance, if only because our discomfort is self-imposed. As such, we can readily take it away, but yet choose not to. It is this ability to make such a choice that defines who we are as human beings. Indeed, what other creature acts in a manner that initially seems so detrimental to its own well-being, with the sole purpose of achieving a higher, perhaps not readily comprehensible goal...
...later, I learned about the Harvard Self Defense Club. Unofficially started in the fall of 2007 by George D. Eggers '10 and Dan H. Oshima '10, the Harvard Self Defense Club began as the Harvard Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Club, an underground movement for MMA enthusiasts and gym-rats alike. Eggers, who coaches Muay Thai and has competed in Hapkido in South Korea, began training intensely with Oshima, who coaches Judo in his hometown of Somerville, MA and has won two national championships...