Reading to Understand Ourselves

July 19, 2007

In our visual age, saturated with videos, movies, and their pretense of reality, Christina Bieber Lake would have us dust off the tomes on our shelves and sit down to read. Dr. Bieber Lake spoke on 13 July 2007, at the CBHD Bioethics Nexus conference. Replete with authors and titles, her talk centered about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark.”

The character of Alymer in the story makes his mark in the scientific world and then takes to himself a beautiful wife. That is, she is beautiful until Alymer decides that the small mark on her cheek reveals her imperfection, and therefore, the mark must be eliminated. Bieber Lake explained, “Alymer has a scientific view of the world, and science can overcome his wife’s defect. . . Alymer’s moral imagination is the problem: this affects Georgiana, who shudders under his gaze, and the birthmark becomes even more pronounced.”

Bieber Lake held that Alymer cannot act ethically toward his wife because he does not love her. Making the application to our own time, she stated, “We solve our own problems by fixing others; Alymer is a moral infant in this regard. Making a potion is easy compared to learning to love his wife or others.” Bieber Lake concluded, “The primary problem in enhancement is failed love.”

Is this true? I need some time to think. Then I plan to take a book off the shelf, and read it to my children, imperfect as they are. After all, they resemble me in a number of ways.