Throughout school and life itself, I would consider that my general knowledge has increased tremendously, and also, how much I think I know. My school, my classes, my clubs and my grades have all being indicators and motives for me to belief that I’m “smart”, which is in part true, but not entirely. You see, I have recently had the privilege of being part of the 2015 iGEM competition, which is organised by MIT and takes place once a year in Boston. It is a world wide synthetic biology competition that has the purpose of finding solutions to global issues by using synthetic biology as the solution. After watching incredible presentations of universities like Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Brown and others, it wouldn't be enough for me to say that I have learned a lot and that my entire sense of what I think I know about the world has changed. The best way that I could describe it, is through the words that a wise man once said: “I only know that I know nothing”- Socrates.
From projects that have engineered E.coli bacteria in order to cure cancer, to bioplastics that are sensitive to heat and humidity and fold in their presence in order to occupy less space in outer space explorations, all these projects take the world of biology, chemistry and physics to a level where there is no limit. The world is going to change, and it is going to change sooner than what we might think. There are so many things to explore, learn and discover that it begs the question: “Would it be possible to know everything there is to know”, “could there be a point so far into the future where one might have nothing else to discover?”. NO. I think that, although it’s the year 2015 and we have about 7 billion people, it will never be a concluding/ feasible goal. This is for two main reasons, the first is that time and the amount of knowledge we have right now is way too little in comparison to what the universe has to offer, as I clearly saw at iGEM. The second reason is that we would start to deal with much more ethical issues by which we might not all agree. In fact, there are already millions of people that are in disagreement with our projects in synthetic biology right now! People start to question things like: “Are they playing “god” by engineering living organisms?” “Is it morally correct to modify the human genome in order to prevent diseases?” I can’t give a direct answer because it’ll be biased, and I hope these thoughts don’t come from pure ignorance either. It is all very confusing, but there are two things that are clear to me. One, If the universe were a 10 story building library, we couldn't even fill the first shelf with books of what we know about it, and two, everybody is entitled to contributing to that library.
2 Comments
When I was a young child, I used to be very dependant of others, especially of my maid and my mother. I wanted things fast and tried to avoid heavy work on my shoulders at all costs, therefore, most of the time I got away with it by somehow making other people do my work. I was the opposite of autonomous and mostly didn't seek for solutions of my own, until one day I was invited to a friend's beach house in Arequipa, which is a state in the south of Peru. My dad granted me permission of going to such far place, but only with one condition, that I went alone in the whole trip, including the airplane, the airport and the 3 hour taxi trip. It was a suicide mission for me; how in the world would I be able to manage such responsibility? After thinking it through, I decided that I wanted to have an adventure, therefore I accepted. During the trip I felt a bit nervous, but remembered all the steps I had to follow and the procedures I had to take. I was starting to use a critical and observant mindset, and in time I realised that everything was much easier than I thought. After successfully making it go and back, I realised that letting others do my work for all this time, was a poison that I was slowly injecting myself.
As we grow and mature we also become more autonomous, and I think this is precisely the moment when we truly start to develop our brains, our values, our sense of judgement and awareness. Once we are pressured to seek our own solutions (like I was in the trip to Arequipa), we start to use what it is know as our system two thinking, which is a system where our minds go in depth and analyse situations instead to finding fast and easy solutions that avoid thinking. This is why I believe that as a child I was damaging my own development, because I was trying not to use my system two thinking and I was missing out on everything that I could have learned until then. This is also one of the reasons why I like the Innovation Academy, because it promotes autonomy in students, which makes them seek for solutions on their own and activates the use of a system two thinking. Lately I have been very proactive on trying to find solutions to problems that I face. One of the things that even inspired me to write about this topic is my IA project, because I am building a model rocket on my own and it is not an easy task for several reasons. First of all, there are few almost no model rocket clubs and stores in Lima where I can find a professional to help me, so in other words, I am working almost entirely autonomously, but I think it's better because it means more critical thinking for me. Second, I am basing my design and formulas from American sources, and they use materials that in Lima I don't have access to, so I have to find a way to use other materials and adapt my rocket to those materials. I have really had to use an engineer's mindset in order to solve these problems by myself and not let any problem to be too big for me. I have, and still am, learning how to stop being dependent on others and be autonomous. I also realised that this means to me much more responsible and mature, which has also forced me to manage my time wisely and have my duties organised. I believe that once we are able to engage our system two thinking effectively, solutions are always possible. |
Archives
May 2016
Categories |