Month: February 2019

I should preface this by noting the numerous differences between the deliberation I attended and the one that I helped facilitate. Due to the fact that my own deliberation only had one attendee, it drastically limited what we could do. This also affected the flow of the conversation itself, as many of the aguments and proposals were ones that we had already thought of when brainstorming approaches.

This was not true for the deliberation I just attended. The topic was designer babies, and they had around twenty people show up by my estimation. This made for a completely different dynamic where those facilitating where not really active members in the discussion at all. Overall I would say that the facilitators handled the large number of participants very well. There was also an evolutionary biologist present which was certainly interesting (especially for me, being a biology major myself). From the very beginning they made the participants feel at home by greeting us and offering us free food (the surest way to a college studnts heart). They started off with a few broad questions during the opening that were posed to the entire group. After maybe 10 minutes or so of more general discussion they moved on to the approaches. The first approach was also discussed by the group as a whole, before we were split into two smaller groups to discuss the second two approaches. While it was a good idea to split such a large group, it seemed weird to me that they didn’t do it for all three approaches.

Another thing that I should mention, their approaches didn’t actually seem to e approaches. Instead they were questions long the lines of, “Is research into genetic enhancement worth the ethicals risks and financial investment?” Broadly speaking their approaches seemed to be about whether we should genetically enhance children, only genetically edit them to prevent diseases, or eskew genetic enhancement entirely. However, this was not communicated clearly until after we were already into the discussion about the approach.

Regarding their use of facilitation techniques, generally speaking they were very good at sparking conversation using thought-provoking questions. The place where I felt that they fell short was when a small group was dominating the conversation. There was one point where two people seemed to be on the verge of yelling at each other. Even though the facilitators did prevent that from really breaking out, the escalation to that point was gradual enough that it should never have been allowed to happen. In the same vein, the group seemed to go off on large forays at times that only tangentially related to the actual topic. At one point there was a five minute conversation about the carrying capacity of the earth and how close our population is to exceeding that capacity.

Overall I would say that they did a very good job. Especially given how many people there were it could easily have gotten out of control, at which point they would have a lot of trouble reining it back in. Despite this, there were a few points at which the deliberation would have benefited from a little bit of a firmer hand, which wasn’t always there.

This I Believe

Varun Rajan

 

As I have visited India over the years I have become increasingly aware of the extreme poverty that is widely evident there which is less visible in the U.S. It is tangible in the tailor who sets up his little collapsable stall in the broiling heat out front of my grandparent’s house every day, and the “untouchables” who sit at the sides of the streets like unwanted chaff. It is apparent in simpler manifestations as well. The sun-baked skin of the residents or even the lack of height brought on by malnutrition.

Once, when my family was visiting my grandmother I learned that we were going to be visiting an orphanage for handicapped children. It turns out that we funded a sort of special meal for the kids of the orphanage that day, something a little fancier than their normal dhal and rice. We were visiting the orphanage to serve the meal to the kids and interact with them. I am ashamed to say that ten-year-old me was not the most empathetic of individuals. I imagined a boring visit to some people I didn’t even know and who I didn’t share a language with and immediately pulled my mother aside and told her I didn’t want to go. However, my mother did not give in to my pleas and soon we were off to the orphanage.

After we arrived we watched the kids trickle in for lunch, and my attitude changed somewhat. As they arrived at their cafeteria I saw first-hand what they had to overcome every day. A little girl whom the others carried around because her legs were incapable of moving herself. A young boy missing an entire arm. Immediately my outlook changed from boredom to guilt. What gave me the right to stand there, with all that life has afforded me, and act like this was a chore?

As my sister and I walked around and served the kids I noticed how similar the dynamic between them was to that of my own friends. These were children whose parents abandoned them at birth because of how they looked. Who overcome life-changing disabilities every day, yet are still able to laugh and smile like my peers back home.

In the U.S we hear about these things but rarely experience them and take them to heart. This is not because we are apathetic, but because we only learn of this in the abstract, which makes it difficult to care. To truly understand something you must experience it, and poverty is something that many of us, thankfully, have little experience with. While I may have never lived in abject poverty, I have interacted with those who have. This has broadened my world view, and because of my experiences in India I live my life that much different. I am much more likely to tip a busker by the side of the street or give a man a dollar on a Philly subway.

I believe in the power of experience.