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Idiom: Put the genie back in the bottle
Right off the bat, let me tell you that if you are trying to put the genie back in the bottle, you are trying to stop a situation from developing further and even go back to the way things were.
The idiom is always used in the negative and indicates the impossibility of the task.
Put the genie back in the bottle means the impossible task of stopping a situation from developing or even reversing it.
Western countries with nuclear weapons have ceaselessly and unsuccessfully tried to prevent other countries from developing them.
Unfortunately, they were trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
India, Pakistan and North Korea have all managed to discover the secrets of nuclear weapons on their own.
It’s the nature of humanity.
Once something has been achieved by one person, others will diligently work to attain the same success.
If you can do it, so can I.
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Another example is human cloning.
Sure Western nations are trying to prevent scientists from using CRISPR technology to clone humans.
I created a lesson a while back about Dr. He from China and how he had already used the technology to clone babies with resistance to HIV.
What’s done is done.
You can never put the genie back in the bottle, and trying to do so will always fail.
One of the reasons why many religious fanatics and misogynists work so hard to prevent women’s education is because once the genie is out of the bottle, they understand they can never put the genie back in the bottle again.
Educated women are empowered women, and empowered women can always see through fanatics and misogynists.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 63.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.