Common answers included eating poorly; being overweight or diabetic; smoking or drinking during pregnancy;

This is not just moral imperialism; it's stealth moral imperialism

to say something is an adaptation just says something about how it came about, nothing about its present value. That holds for cultural adaptations as well as biological one

mm 58 Better than Human "communist man" won't work, no matter how vigorous the indoc-trination program is. A culturally produced characteristic could sat-isfy all four criteria if it was inculcated early enough in the individual's development and was strongly supported by peer pressure and social practices. So traits that are the product of nurture, if they satisfy (l)-(4), could be considered part of human nature. Given how important culture has become for defining who we are and how we differ from other animals, this makes good sense. Using a notion of human nature that makes room for cultural traits is useful for evaluating worries about biomedical enhancements changing or destroying human nature. Sometimes, those who have these worries are concerned about biological changes per se, but some-times they worry about biological changes destroying cultural traits that they think are very valuable. For example, as we'll see later, Bush's Council on Bioethics and its chairman, the physician-bioethicist Leon Kass, think of human nature as including certain very specific relationships between men and women and between children and parents. They worry that if biomedical enhancements become wide-spread, these valuable relationships will be damaged. We needn't read them as saying that these relationships are purely biological; they may be culturally evolved relationships, though they're based in biology. Bush's Council apparendy thinks these relationships are so vital to a good human life that they are in effect part of our nature or what's natural for us. They worry that biomedical enhancements, especially genetic enhancements, will destroy these relationships and replace them with relationships that are unnatural, not really human. The Moral Imperialist Bait and Switch There's something fishy about the way the Council proceeds. Why do they think the way to stress that something's highly valuable is CHANGING HUMAN NATURE? 59 I Co say that it's part of human nature or natural human relations? ' That would only make sense if human nature or natural human I relations are always good. If human nature and natural human rela-tions are simply what we are like because of our evolutionary his-• tory, then there's no reason to believe they're good. In fact, what we ; learned about evolution in chapter 2 should make us think that at \ least some of nature, including the part of nature we call human I nature, isn't good. Why should we think it's any different with cultural traits? Anthropologists provide plenty of evidence that some deeply entrenched social practices are not only morally disgusting, but downright destructive. Here's one example among many. Among the Ilahita Arapesh, a tribe in New Guinea, there's a deeply entrenched I social practice requiring men to gorge themselves even when this means that their wives and children are chronically hungry and mal-I nqurished. This behavior is very stressful for the men, who sometimes I become physically sick as a result. But the social taboo on sharing food equitably with your wife and children is so strong that men con-tinue to act in a way that literally makes them ill and condemns their families to misery. Whether this practice was ever valuable seems dubious, but it certainly isn't now. It's an abomination. Female genital mutilation (female genital cutting, for the politically correct) may be easier to explain as an adaptation. Perhaps the first women to undergo this ghastiy procedure achieved a gain in reproductive fitness through the mechanism of sexual selection. In evolutionary terms, the excision of the clitoris served as a signal to the male that this woman was not likely to spread other guys' genes (mainly because she wouldn't enjoy sex enough to fool around). But once the practice became universal, it obviously couldn't play this role in sexual selection: If all women have it, it can't signal that any particular woman is special. Yet a woman who refrains from the practice would be at a reproductive disadvantage, because no one

jlll •'! I • Mi JjiliL 54 Better than Human I suggested that this must mean that he's really worried, not about changing human nature per se, but about tossing out the baby with the bathwater. He's merely assuming (not arguing) that the good and bad in human nature are extremely interconnected. The next chapter probes the Extreme Connectedness Assumption, by asking a simple question: Does what we know about evolution support it? The answer turns out to be "no." Competing Concepts of Human Nature Before we can tackle the problem of whether the good and bad parts of human nature are so extremely connected that it would be foolish to try to improve it, we need to be clear about what we mean by human nature. We also need to determine what, if anything, human nature can tell us about what we ought or ought not to do. That's what this chapter does. There are two very good reasons why we ought to take the time to figure out what we mean by human nature when we're thinking about enhancement, or anything else, for that matter. The first is that lots of intelligent people throughout history have been deeply mistaken about what is and isn't human nature. They've confused nature with nurture and made the mistake of thinking that how people are nurtured—or as we say now, acculturated—in their society is the way people are everywhere. The concept of human nature is still controversial today. In fact, it's more controversial than ever, because science is increas-ingly challenging our commonsense ideas about what is and what isn't human nature. There's no excuse for any reasonably educated person in the twenty-first century to rely naively on this pro-blematic concept. Yet as we'll see, prominent participants in the CHANGING HUMAN NATURE? 55 debate about biomedical enhancement do just that with depressing regularity. The second reason we need to clarify what we mean by human nature is that there's a long, shameful record of people using talk about human nature and the natural to demean and oppress people who are different. For example, homosexuals have been branded as committing crimes against nature, engaging in unnatural acts. We have to be wary of people imposing their subjective values on others under the cloak of seemingly objective statements about what's natural and what isn't. This is precisely what's going on when some Christian funda-mentalists say that by its very nature marriage is a union between a man and a woman. It may be true that the word "marriage" has been defined that way in dictionaries and functions that way in common usage. That's hardly surprising, because until recently marriage as a social practice has been limited to males being married to females. But that doesn't mean that same-sex marriage is unnatural in any sense, much less that it's bad because it is unnatural. Recall Boswell's statement: Marriage, by which he meant marriage between a man and a woman, is unnatural. Boswell was probably too uncritical about his ability to distinguish between nature and nurture, but at least he didn't make the mistake of thinking that branding something as unnatural shows it's bad. Criticizing something by saying it's unnatural or contrary to human nature is cheating. More precisely, it's what's known in the retail trade as bait and switch: You start out supposedly talking about how things are (what our nature is, what's natural) and then slip in your own values about the way things shouldht. It's a kind of stealth moral imperialism. Given the danger that talk about human nature and the natural can be co-opted in this way, it's useful to begin with a quick survey of different understandings of human nature

nature

“humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.

Monks and nuns feel a growing sense of unease in an environment that increasingly devalues their existence.

As one Ethiopian Orthodox TäwaḥədoChurch priest said to me privately, the Gəˁəz title for hagiographies is the word for “struggle” (gädl)—which can only mean the struggle against temptation ... and Wälättä Pẹṭros herself struggled with desire (2016, p. 34)

necessary to read the anecdote with skill but also the distance to read it openly

greatest concern was in “keeping” the souls in her flock for God. As a result, she did everything she could to enforce the strict rules of the monastery. For her followers to deviate from this path was to forsaken the heavenly city of Jerusalem, the holy bride of the Lamb, and become adulterous like the children of Babylon.

Kalkidan

“what if they fly away from me and return to the world? What if they get broken?” She feared the loss of a single soul.

Her hagiography states thatshe was determined to be a hermit, but God came to her and gave her a new mission of going out to the world and saving souls for Him. Woletta Petros refused his request. She said she was incapable, made of mud and soil:

asking God to reconcile with the Devil. God agrees but when the Devil refuses, God grants Kristos Samra the right to bring souls out from hell and deliver them to heaven(Filpos 1992 et.c)

They will not stop until they receive ቃልኪዳን, Kalkidan, acovenant that God will fulfil their wishes.

Fitsumancommunicate with angels, the Virgin Mary and God. They can make miracles happen and their prayer is dedicated towards the salvation of the monastery, the country and the world. Fitsumanbesiege God to forgive all people in the world

Bahtawi are ascetic persons totally detached from the world, living in caves, woods, or deserts. Dressed in sheepskins they can occasionally turn up in a town or a court or even the king’s palace, to utter some angry or pungent social and prophetic message without political fears,

Without being distanced from the world, without abandoning talking with people, without becoming a loner, constant prayer cannot be made

er faith was not a strategy or a means of resistance. It was a way of life.

submit to the salvation of the people, not to the cruel demands of the powerful.

While Catholicism regarded her faith as a heresy punishable by death, Ethiopian monasticism gave her the power to overcome death

Her method of fighting back was to live the strictest form of spirituality.

when she reached the last stage of monastic life, God asked her to return to the world to save souls for His Kingdom.

She was sent to her family, but she was undeterred.

demands to leave him.

expelled the Jesuits in 1632, and made alliances with neighboringcostal forces to prevent European entryto his empire. Europeans were not welcome in the country for many years to come

he Jesuits insisted on harsh treatment against those who resisted. The ongoing violence forced Susenyos to realizethat his people would never fully accept European Christianity. He rescinded his edict and handed his throne to his son Fasiledes (1632-1667)

hen Walatta-Petros took the things—the garments and the gold that Takla-Maryam had brought—and gave some to the Black man every day, giving away her gifts in this way

However, when God wanted to reveal the power of our holy Mother Walatta-Petros, he ordered the serpent to hiss and crawl about. For if the serpent had kept quiet, that disciple would not have noticed it. And if the dis-ciple had not noticed it, who would have told us, and how would we have written down this miracle

“Most people, when oppressed, exiled, and separated from their family, cry and grieve. That woman, though, who used to live with Walatta-Petros, cries and wails when we tell her, ‘Live with your family in your own land.’

But when he entered the hut where our holy and chosen Mother Walatta-Petros lived, he saw her standing in prayer, with her face resplendent like the sun. With her, by her side, stood an angel of God, holding a drawn sword in his hand near her ear.Instantly, the Black man was shocked and scared. He retreated, falling on his back. From that day onward, he was chastened and did not make advances toward Walatta-Petros again. Rather, he treated her with respect and was afraid of her. Satan, too, was humiliated and defeated. How could that Black

How can I, a Christian woman, eat food that you have pre-pared? How can I drink water from a cup that you drink from, you, an impure heathen who does not share my faith? You don’t have any sacred prohibitions: you eat mice and serpents and all the impure animals that the Law has forbidden people to touch and eat. So bring me raw food, an unused pot for cooking, and an un-used gourd for drawing water!

Suddenly, however, God opened Walatta-Petros’s ears andshe understood his language.

When the Black man saw her abstaining, he said to her in his language, “What’s the matter with you? What is this you’re doing, that you don’t eat and drink? How will you stay alive?”

She spent three days without eating or drinking be-cause the Black man was an impure heathen who had nothing in common with her, be it in way of life or in faith. She did not un-derstand his words when he spoke with her, whether they were kind or cruel

drove the mule from behind, poking at its anus with a stick so that it would become angry and throw her down, and she would die. He did not feel any compassion for her at all because Satan had rendered him hard-hearted. Acting thus, he took her down a rough and rugged road and beat that mule so hard that it fell and tumbled down a precipice. Immediately, though, an angel caught our holy Mother Walatta-Petros, laying her down on good land in soft grass so that she stood up alive and unharmed.

Our holy Mother Walatta-Petros replied to him, “Here I am, in your hands. Do as the king has ordered.”At this time, Walatta-Kristos became afraid and fled, carrying a water container and wearing the clothes of a maidservant, like one who is going to draw water. Eheta-Kristos, on the other hand, re-mained behind at that place, Azezo. So our holy Mother Walatta-Petros went away alone, just as our Lord Jesus Christ had gone to Calvary alone, carrying his cross; she was like him. As Paul says, “Let us follow Christ’s example in order to proceed from glory to glory.

o the king ordered that she be taken to the lowland region of Zhebey and handed over to the Black man living there, the king’s subaltern, so that she would live there as a captive

As the Gospel says, “Therefore, you all should not call your-selves teachers on this earth because your teacher is one, Christ.” Also, the Apostle John in his letter says, “Our brothers, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirit, whether it is from God, because many false prophets have come into the world” who do not believe in Jesus Christ, that he has come in the flesh. “By this you will know the Spirit of God: each spirit that believes in Jesus Christ, that he came in the flesh of a man, is from God, but each spirit that does not believe in Jesus Christ, that he came in the flesh, is not from God. Rather, it is from the false messiah of whom you have heard that he would come.” John further says, “Anyone who wavers and does not remain in the teaching of Christ is not with God. But he who remains in the teaching of Christ is in the Father and the Son. He who comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not let him enter your houses and do not even greet him because he who greets him has fellowship with him in his evil deeds.” This is why our holy Mother Walatta-Petros treated these European false teachers with contempt and repudiated them.

hree renowned European false teachers came to her and de-bated with her about their filthy faith, which says, “Christ still has two natures after the ineffable union of his humanity and divinity.

Behold, I am in your hands. Do with me as the king has ordered. I am ready for it and prepared to die. I’m not afraid of anything.”

y. Those who saw that blood on the way said to one another, “This blood is from Walatta-Petros.”

After this, King Susinyos began to make changes and established the filthy faith of the Europeans, Catholicism, which says: Christ has two natures, even after he, in his divine and human natures, became one and he became the perfect human being. Thereby, Susinyos repudiated the holy faith of Alexandria, which says as follows: Christ became the perfect human being; he is not split or divided in anything he does; he is one Son. In him there is only one aspect, one essence, and one divine nature, namely, that of God the Logos

Having considered this, they repented of their past be-havior, emulated our holy Mother Walatta-Petros, and began to work like her.

Three days later, Walatta-Petros and Eheta-Kristos climbed aboard that same boat and went to Robeet, where our holy Mother Walatta-Petros had lived before, and there lived together in mutual love, like soul and body. From that day onward, the two did not separate, neither in times of tribulation and persecution nor in those of tranquility, but only in death

As soon as our holy Mother Walatta-Petros and Eheta-Kristos saw each other from afar, love was infused into both their hearts, love for each other, and, approaching, they exchanged the kiss of greeting.

She had already premeditated this decision with her teacher. He had devised this ruse craftily so that they would not feel betrayed by or hostile toward him. Thus, our holy Mother Walatta-Petrosstayed behind, together with her maidservants.

“For how long will you live with me like this? Go where you please: I will not hinder you.”She replied, “Swear to me that you will not go back on your word.”So he swore to her. He also asked her likewise. So she swore to him.The next day she said to him, “Dispatch me according to your word.”He replied, “Very well,” and ordered his soldiers to saddle a mule, make her mount it, and accompany her.

there arrived envoys who had been sent by Father Fatla-Sillasé and Lady Walatta-Giyorgis. Theseenvoys said to Malkiya-Kristos, “How could you lie to us, deceive us, and secretly, unknown to us, go and seize her on the road like a thief and bandit? You made a childish judgment! This decision of yours is not going to be a good one. Now we are telling you to come here, to our home at Woynayat, and she shall come too, so that we can effect a reconciliation between you. If, however, you refuse to come, being contemptuous of us and not heeding our word, we will consider ourselves wronged by you, and together with us God will have been wronged.”When Malkiya-Kristos heard this message, he became afraid,

At that time, the soldiers began to implore Walatta-Petros with gentle words, saying, “Our merciful and compassionate lady, have mercy on us and be kind to us, as is your custom! For if you resist us and we are unable to carry you therefore, our lord will get angry with us and will kill us. Comply with us and show us com-passion.” When she heard their words, she had mercy on them and stood up so they could put her on a mule

He knocked her nun’s cap off her head, prodded her from be-hind with his feet, and said to her, “Get going!”Upon that, our holy Mother Walatta-Petros immediately let herself fall on the ground and acted as if dead. She kept silent and obstinately stopped moving

As the Gospel says, “The Lord Jesus said to them, ‘Who are you looking for?’ and they re-plied, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ He responded, ‘I am he. If you want me, let these disciples go.’ ” Our holy Mother Walatta-Petros did like-wise and said, “God’s will be done! He can save me; to him nothing is impossible. He who saved Sarah from the hands of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and from the hands of Abimelech, king of Gerara, he will also save me. He who saved Susanna from the hands of the old men, he will also save me. He who saved my abducted country-woman Egzi-Harayaa from the hands of the evil king Motalami, he will also save me.”

I will obey your word, my father and teacher.

since the people of the town of Robeet wept because of the devastation they suffered, God is displeased with you

Immediately, he fell at their feet and replied, “I entrust myself to you; pass judgment on me and bring about peace between me and my wife. If I have done anything wrong against her in the past, she shall have her compensation. From now on, though, I will not commit any wrongdoing again. Even if she tells me, ‘Quit being a soldier of the king!,’ I will quit it for her sake, as she has chosen.” While he spoke these things, he cried and spilled tears.

“Build a lookout in a treetop at the lakeshore, climb up it, observe the boats that come and go in each direction, and if you discover Walatta-Petros, arrest her.”

the town of Robeet and ordered his regiment Siltaan Marid to de-stroy it, plunder the inhabitants’ possessions, eat up their provi-sions without restraint, and have no mercy.

They had been sent by Father Fatla-Sillasé to bring her stealthily out of her husband’s home and take her with them to the Zagé peninsula, in southwest Lake Tana.

Yet she did not want to stay with him because she now bore in mind the transience of the world.

She then, like Martha, prayed to God, using these words: “If this unborn child that is inside my womb shall be born and please you, may it live; but if not, may it quickly die.

march in front of the king. He would sing her name and say to her, “I will die for you, I, your father, blessed child whom God has chosen,

Just as the Lord gave Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, so he likewise gave to Walatta-Petros that those who fol-low her will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. And as the Lord said three times to Peter, “Tend my sheep,” so to her likewise he conferred the tending of his sheep in the pasture of meritorious spiritual struggle

daughter who will shine like the sun to the ends of the world will be born to you.

f a distinguished family and noble lineag

Similarly, I also hunt in the holy books for the story of the life and holiness of our chosen and beatified Mother Walatta-Petros.

Similarly, I also carry a chosen vessel and spiritual food: the struggles and virtues of our blessed Mother Walatta-Petros

Similarly, I am cruel in my deeds, stinging people with my tongue and causing much pain.

Even though I am not worthy to mention Walatta-Petros’s name with my impure mouth or to write her story with my polluted hand,

Thus as with other types of habit a moral habit is a practical disposition that emanates from past behavior; however, unlike other sorts of habits:a) the habituated action is done for motivating reasons;b) the action is normatively valued as positive, such that there is a (defeasible) expectation that I should perform it in the relevant situation(s);c) the action pattern shapes, and continues to shape, my cognitive and emotional states in a manner conducive to the broader practice of moral self-cultivation

According to all three traditions, the maturation and refinement of each element of moral self-cultivation continually informs and enriches the others.

As we saw in chapter 1, moral self-cultivation is understood by virtue ethi-cists as a developmental practice that, if pursued properly and under favorable social and environmental conditions, will lead a person to a virtuous and good life.

one moral practice that is claimed as central by most, perhaps all, classical virtue traditions, however di-verse these may be in their moral worldviews. This is the practice of moral self- cultivation itself.

As we will see, living well in the 21st century may in fact require the reactivation of some classical habits and virtues that have suffered from modern neglect. Paradoxically, while humanity today faces challenges of a wholly unprecedented sort, a close look at how premodern traditions understood moral cultivation might in fact be our best preparation for what lies ahead

They are technomoral choices, for they depend on the evolving af-fordances of the technological systems that we rely upon to support and mediate our lives in ways and to degrees never before witnessed

Ethics and technolog y are connected because technologies invite or affordspecific patterns of thought, behavior, and valuing ; they open up new possibili-ties for human action and foreclose or obscure others.

In reality, human social practices, including our moral practices, have always been intertwined with our technologies.3 Technological practices—everything from agriculture and masonry to markets and writing—have shaped the social, political, economic, and educational histories of human beings. Today, we depend upon global systems of electronic communication, digital computation, transpor-tation, mass manufacturing, banking, agricultural production, and health care so heavily that most of us barely notice the extent to which our daily lives are tech-nologically conditioned. Yet even our earliest ancestors used technolog y, from handaxes and spears to hammers and needles, and their tools shaped how they dealt with one another—how they divided their labor, shared their resources and living spaces, and managed their conflicts. Among our primate cousins, female chimpanzees have been observed to stop fights among males through technologi-cal disarmament—repeatedly confiscating stones from an aggressor’s hand.

ethics is about what the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates called the “good life”:

we need to cultivate in ourselves, collectively, a special kind of moral character, one that expresses what I will call the technomoral virtues

Most of the text pro-ceeds without any supernatural miracles

Thirty years after Walatta-Petros died, the young monk Galawde-wos wrote a beautiful book about her life, based on the commu-nity’s oral histories.

She performed many miracles and saved her community from repeated threats, sometimes with drastic measures (Walatta-Petros is not a “nice” saint), but only growing in reputation.

Walatta-Petroswas elevated by her people as a heroine who had helped enable the return of the true church. She spent the remaining twelve years of her life traveling and setting up religious communities in new towns

Eventually, struck by the force of her convic-tions, he became a devotee.

where she was kept in chains among the “pagans.”

king made up his mind to kill her, but yet again her husband saved her life by suggesting another compro-mise: exile.

Every week the king would ask the European head of the Roman Catholics whether he had succeeded, and every week he had to report that he had not.

Petros’s followers had to move constantly to new towns and re-gions to stay ahead of the king’s spies and the European soldiers who wanted to kill them.

the king or-dered that she appear before the entire court—all its princes, gov-ernors, officials, and scholars—a sign of what a threat she wasconsidered

emphatically Orthodox, and therefore decidedly anti-Catholic,

nun

nun

Many Habasha men of the court converted for reasons of state, but their mothers, wives, and daughters mostly did not.