David Beresford
Another Country
There is what might be described as a pre-Copernican instinct in most people that proceeds from a sense of self-importance to an assumption about the centrality of their lives to human existence and their times to history.
When the impulse came to declare mankind at a turning point, or crossroads, it was as well, perhaps, to question the coincidence.
An example of that tendency is the current global indecision over which road to take in experiments with human embryos the House of Lords endorsement, last week, of the House of Commons decision to carry on with such research in Britain and anticipation that George W Bush will try to roll back on Bill Clinton’s go-ahead in the United States.
Although I stand to benefit personally from this line of research (medical scientists seeming to believe that among the first applications would be the effective treatment of Parkinson’s, a degenerative disorder I have) at times I share some qualms about its desirability.
This uncertainty is not founded in concerns about the sanctity of human life, a concept that arguably harbours artificial and dangerous distinctions. It stems from the reasonable perception that mankind has its collective foot somehow jammed on the accelerator of a vehicle that is gaining speed at an exponential rate, leading to the anticipation of an inevitable crash and likely self-destruction.
The apprehension is nothing particularly new. It probably has its origins in the realisation of the atom’s destructive power and our ability to destroy the planet. But the creative tends to be more powerful than the destructive and in retrospect fear of the nuclear bomb could be classified as primitive when stood in comparison with 21st century realities. It is a time when primates are being reprogrammed with jellyfish genes to make them glow in the dark and primates’ brains are being hooked up in experiments to control machines situated hundreds of kilometres away.
Even those unhappy images off the island of Dr Moreau pale in the new dawn that seems to be fast approaching when damaged brain cells will be replaced, old people have their memories restored and severed spines be reknitted. Happy days! But, if repair is possible, why not redesign? What if … what if …?
In the face of a degenerative and seemingly incurable disease like Parkinson’s one comes to appreciate that almost as much of a peril as the illness itself are the “what ifs” and the destructive uncertainties they evoke. “What if” one is fired as incapable; “what if” one’s spouse stops loving; “what if” one frightens the neighbourhood children …
But then “what ifs” can be seen to haunt every sector of life, from the child anxiously asking himself “what if there is a lion under my bed” to such as the would-be rock climber who has to face the “what ifs” of vertigo, or the actor dealing with the “what ifs” of stage fright.
“What if?” lies so much at the centre of Parkinson’s that it could almost be described as the “what if?” disease. The very paradox of its symptoms shaking combined with rigidity and momentary paralysis could be said to be identical with the emotions and condition evoked by the “what if” question: the shaking of nervous agitation and the paralysis of fear.
Is it a coincidence, one is tempted to ask on occasion, that Parkinson’s is associated with old age, not only epidemiologically, but symptomatically? Is it primarily found among the old, because when one is old one has usually learned the secret hidden from the young: shit happens and, of course, death comes?
Mankind as a whole is ageing and every year seems to bring a fresh appreciation of the fragility of human existence. Geology is teaching that, far from it being terra firma, the Earth is still shaping itself with the help of terrifying forces. The odds on a cataclysmic meteor strike unknown until a few decades ago appear to be against man’s long-term survival.
Every unseasonable rainstorm brings with it fears of an ice age. An oriental chicken coop, we have learned, could precipitate global destruction. Those are just so-called natural threats to survival. The most benevolent of experiments threatens to summon viral plague; the homely refrigerator and aerosol spray to rip apart the heavenly parasol; the comfortably bovine figure of a cow to spawn an epidemic liquefying man’s brains …
What about the perils as yet unrecognised by science? Three species die out every hour, we are told. It seems self-evident we are in the queue to pass the turnstiles to extinction.
“What if there is a lion there?” demands the boy, in useless pleading for a zookeeper to root out the beast lurking in his mind. The habit of nightly survival lulls the adolescent into indifference over what lies under the bed. It carries them into the carefree years in which youthful ignorance pretends to the understanding that to live one must at times be reckless of life.
In adulthood, the “what ifs” born of painful experience rather than childish innocence begin crowding in, causing the rock climber to look at the drop below, the actor to hesitate against the momentum of gesture and words.
“Turn back, turn back,” cries the panicked mind. “Too late!” shouts reason. And in the repeated contradiction is to be found only shaking paralysis.