Thursday, December 12, 2013

Morality, Wisdom, and The Fly

The movie “The Fly” was entertaining for me on several levels. First, it was surprising that a movie shot in 1958 could be so captivating in its mysterious plot. The movie starts with a murder and it is engaging, as a viewer, to find exactly what the reason is behind the alleged murderer Helen’s obsession with flies and what it had to do with the case. Secondly, it was interesting for me to explore the realms of science that transcend current human comprehension to this very day. It was great to have even the remotest insight into how teleportation, the destruction and reconstruction of atoms, can be performed.

One of Bertrand Russell’s definitions of wisdom concerns comprehension. The comprehensive aspect of wisdom is all about the ability to look into the possible consequences and ramifications of one’s actions in the future. This same principle applies to technology and society as well. Wisdom is different from knowledge as one can be extremely intellectual yet lack the wisdom to make ethical and morally upright decisions with what he has learned. In the movie, we can say that the character Andre, despite being a genius, lacked wisdom because he was so caught up in being on the brink of a bio-molecular breakthrough discovery, that he did not take all the safety precautions to make sure that experimentation would not harm the subject. In effect, an atrocity was made in the lab.


Morality here is an ordinance of wisdom. If scientists are unable to foresee the damage their technologies may bring, then they will be unable to make the correct, moral and ethical decisions with what they know. This message reflects well with science and technology in the 50s as many inventions at the time were being developed that could be dangerous if not properly dealt with. Such inventions involved rocket fuels and hydrogen, atomic and nuclear bombs.

                                                                                               Redentor E. Claudio
                                                                                                   2013-59776

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