The Movie, "The Source Code" and Issues of Bio-Ethics

This past week-end our son told us we might like the movie, "The Source Code". So, we went to see it Friday. It was a move about how the State used the new "brain science" and "quantum theory" to protect national security. The ethical question was one of where or when life is valued and for what purpose and who owns their brain or minds?! The story left one with unanswered questions about where to define the limits of science, and the State.

The science experiment was done with a knowledge of "parallel universes" in quanturm theory where 8 minutes of overlap make for new information about the past. A local terrorist attack on a Chicago metro had left the military community on "alert" to another terrorist threat in the center of the city, where many lives would be lost, unless they found the culprit of the 'metor explosion".

The soldier who'd lost half his body, but not all his brain was left in an incubator for the purpose of taking advantage of the 8 minutes to investigate who was responsible for the bombing of the metro. The experiment kept putting the soldier back into the same "past reality" so he could investigate more fully or differently to find the terrorist, in hopes that the terrorist would be kept from another attack with larger reprecussions.

The soldier did his duty, but under the controls of the State, until the person in charge of direct command started seeing the soldier as "a person", who had had traumatic experiences and thought it better to let him die in peace, as promised, rather than continue to use his brain for further experiments. Even though "the greater good" would grant using the brain of a disabled person in such a way, the ethical questions were obvious.

It reminded me of the Karen Quinlen (sp?) case where a brain dead girl continued to be hooked up to a respirator. The question in this case,  is "life" defined by "the brain" alone? What makes for human life? Surely, we in the West believe that all aspects of the person, the brain, the body, the mind, the personality, the family, the community, the nation, the WHOLE is responsible for fully functioning Personhood.

Another Movie "Under My Belt"aboutf Human Choice/Parallel Universes

Tonight, my husband and I wanted to escape together, but didn't want to battle the crowds that we supposed would be at the local resurants. So, we watched a movie about "Life".

A dying woman and her memories of a past love had burned her heart with regret. The moive kept going back and forth between the aged woman in bed and her two grown daughters and their present struggles to the woman's past life and its struggles.

In her "past life" she'd met a man named "Harris", who she'd fallen in love with at her best friend's wedding. "Fate" did not look down upon their romance as a life long commitment, but a week of making deep memoires that would haunt her on her dying bed. One daughter was intensely interested to find out about "Harris", as her mother mentioned him often upon waking or going to sleep.

One day, the woman's best friend, whose wedding she'd met "Harris", came to visit. The visit was short but the connection was deep and it settled the "haunting" of the dying woman and the curious questions of her daughter. The best friend's advice to the two women, "There are no mistakes in life".

"There are no mistakes in life" is a life based on an understanding of human choice and fallibility within parallel universes. One cannot be outside of "what is/should be". Parallel universes mean that there are many contingent "worlds" that are just as valuable, as another. Human choice at a particular point in time is not evaluated by "wisdom"s fine-tuned experience, but what was of value at a particular point in time.

Particular points in time cannot be evaluated on historical standards, because human choice is a present reality in a particular individual's human development, not an absolute objective of historicizing of life and all that is.

Human choice is necessary for taking individual responsibility. and taking responsibility is about growing up, owning one's life and not blaming others. But, it is also about forgiving oneself and acknowledging human fallibility and fraility. It is knowing that probably could not make another choice, given certain limitations.

I enjoyed the movie in all respects. The story, the acting (Meryl Strep) and the message all were good Valentines for my husband and for myself.