Technology And Morality In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Although fictional, the story Frankenstein makes frightening parallels to modern day science and simultaneously questions the morality of its usage within present society. Mankind’s infamy for desiring power and dominance has seeped into every aspect of civilization. Frankenstein illustrates this phenomenon in an extreme manner: controlling life and death. Playing with incomprehensible faculties creates peril and involves warping valuable morals.
Initially driven by the loss of his mother, Victor Frankenstein looks to bring life to a corpse, made from haphazardly sewn pieces of corpses, in an attempt to find a way to prevent loss. Figuratively, Frankenstein depicts an extended metaphor for power grabbing and control: The God complex. “...Most …show more content…

Cellular devices, artificial intelligence, food, drugs/prescription medicine, and cloning cause population control. Technology enslaves the mind, damaging social skills and the ability to think independently. Artificial intelligence has the potential to become smarter than people and limits human contact within society, even by replacing male and female cashiers, which further diminishes civil communication. Cell phones, A.I., and computer systems remove contact with other people which causes individuals to fear going out in public or picking up the phone to have a conversation with a human voice. The consumption of genetically modified foods leads to obesity, disease, and cancer. “Alexey V. Surov co-authored a paper in Doklady Biological Sciences, recording the incidence of hair growing in recessed pouches in the mouths of hamsters, most prominently in those of third-generation hamsters fed GM soy. ‘This pathology may be exacerbated by elements of the food that are absent in natural food, such as genetically modified (GM) ingredients (GM soybean or maize meal) or contaminants (pesticides, mycotoxins, heavy metals, etc.)’” (Garber). Doctors readily prescribe medicine due to pain intolerance, which has led to the opioid and heroin epidemic: the intention to assist resulted in damage. Frankenstein created Creature as part of a new …show more content…

“To urge against playing God, moreover, is to convey a mistrust of scientists—and to criticize their arrogance in the face of the power and unpredictability of nature” (Venkataraman). It is immoral and unethical to do away with the idea that a Creator exists, wrong to attempt to take His place, and reprehensible to dispose of religion entirely; the choice of which religion will always remain as an individual’s discretion. Mary Shelley, the author, specifically references the anti-Christian concept of Frankenstein’s creation: not only ugly but unnatural, “a demoniacal corpse to which was so miserably given life” (Shelley 56). As a victim of a power-hungry man who disregarded his morals and used his abilities for the wrong reasons, Creature himself was not demonic in

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