I really do wonder how, with all we know about the developing fetus' awareness of the noises, flavours, movements, etc., that are part and parcel of the nine-ish months' residency in a living woman's womb, and with what we know about how important stimulation is to a baby's developing brain, anyone can imagine that gestation in a body all quiet and deathly still would result in a healthy baby.
They say we are “only mind” but mind can only come to existence through the infant/mother dyad. Without a sentient mother there is no infant and without an infant there is no mind.
Why does nobody seem to think about the baby? This is what I find so repulsive about surrogacy, too. The baby has a special connection with its biological mother and you rip it away from her because you paid her?? This is so messed up. How do these people explain that to „their“ kids? I really don’t understand this level of narcissism.
Using braindead bodies as „breeders“ - even more disgusting. People should not have biological children at any cost.
I find it really troubling that some women (feminists?) see pregnancy only as some terrible disadvantage women must be freed from…
As far as I know, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish eschatology all embrace belief in the resurrection of the physical body (embodied soul). Having read Mary's article, I shall voice the words of the Creed, "I believe in ... the resurrection of the body", with extra vehemence from now on. The alternatives sound horrible. These ancient religions knew what they were about.
Well said, Mary. People have a hard time seeing transgenderism as a bellweather of transhumanism but the point can't be made too often, obscure as it may be to normies who wish to be suicidally tolerant and accepting of all difference. Some differences are simply incompatible and cannot be reconciled by good will. Political transgenderism, especially, must be rejected. It is one thing to idolitrize neurodivergence (however misguided); that ship of fools will sink before it gets very far. It's another to institutionalize "meat sack mindset" where such a social logic is instrumentalized and potentiated by the governing classes for population control. As you point out, Mary, the logic of bodily autonomy isn't compatible with the logic of disembodiment. Hardly a coincidence, it seems, that so many of sci-fi transhumanist Methuselahs "discovered" their transgenderism in mid-life. A bit of chicken and egg, methinks.
wow. this whole movement is being animated by The Hatred of Humanity.
our obsession with technology to continue the pursuit of making us into Gods, has illuminated how much contempt we have for the limits of nature and of the human body. we cannot grasp the irony that limitations are what make creativity and innovation possible. take away all constrains and one will become paralyzed by infinite choice (sort of like music and content streaming).
This idea is wicked, pure and simple, and must never be allowed. Talk about hell on earth! Robust arguments must be used to dispel any legitimacy for this nihilistic lunacy
I don't mean this comment to be too churchy, I am only recently coming back to my religion after years of borderline Atheism, and I am distinctly aware of the pitfalls in rhetoric that turn people off. However, as an Orthodox Christian, I can add that the "embodiment" of God in the human figure of Jesus is one of the more extensively written about theological details that the importance of which, until recently, I didn't fully understand. Most of that writing happened before, or during the era of the Council of Nicea--so pre-400AD.
That God himself chose to become Human is not unique in mythologies, but the weight that early christianity gave to it, and the centrality of the Virgin Mary in that story, is deeply important in our time to try and understand--maybe not for the Theology of it, but for the effect it had on our culture for so many centuries before this, our era of undoing. God shares man's suffering in totality, as a human. Mary, who we call Theotokos, or Mother of God in the east, gestates God in her body, shares the pain of childbirth, and the connection with her child, and sees him suffer and die--in his body. In the body that makes him Human.
And all of this theological wrangling was in direct confrontation with Gnosticism. Ms. Harrington has previously coined the glorious phrase, Fully Automated Luxury Gnosticism, and reading of this latest horror, all I could think is: everything old is new again.
Having just listened to Ms. Harrington and Louise Perry talk about the possible coming sexual counterrevolution on a Spectator podcast, both women agreed that whatever happens next will not be Christian, and I don't know if I agree or disagree, so much as I wonder what else it might be? If you cannot join the divine, the transcendent, the soul of humanity with our bodies in the ingenious way Christianity did in its four hundred year battle with Gnosticism, if you cannot appeal to the mystery that leads to the religious instinct, how then can "it"--the future ideology that those of us who want to save ourselves and our children will adopt to be saved--take form and shape, be, if you'll pardon the metaphor, embodied in our minds?
If the transhumanist's wish was granted and their mind really was separated from their body, no doubt they would immediately start identifying themselves with the 'higher' half of whatever remained and begin to dream of getting rid of the rest
THIS is PEAK PSYCHOPATHY! Even considering the possibility of the feasibility of such a dystopian practice is to dip one’s toe in the putrid cess pool of INSANITY!...You have been warned!
Yes. And though it’s meant to be an ethics paper there’s no consideration of the ethics from the child’s point of view. How would you answer the child’s question - who was my mother? A corpse is the answer. How would that child feel? The primary human bond, and context of meaning about one’s origin - the person who gave birth to you - is treated as if it’s of no importance to the child. And to reply to the possible objection that some children are born of brain dead mothers I think one could imagine that an answer along the lines of “your poor mother died in a car accident (or whatever) but we were able to save you, and that would have made her very happy”, would be the kind of narrative a child could process, emotionally, about their origins and why they don’t have a living mother.
Though mine aren’t feminist – that dread Y chromo – my fibres too recoiled. Then I followed the link to read Ms Smajdor’s paper, which simply extrapolates from the accomplished facts of organ donation and our sad pathologised way of living. Unfortunately, so does Mary H.
In the body of her piece she says:
“ … using living but brain-dead human bodies for a biological process such as gestation is a difference of degree, not kind.”
and then, in reply to a comment, reinforces with
“… the idea of using braindead bodies in this way just illustrates what becomes thinkable when you pursue that way of thinking”
Differences of degree lead to changes in kind; quantity changes into quality; the unthinkable becomes thinkable. We've known this for thousands of years. The Cogito point is fine, but here the problem is useless English Utilitarianism, which takes one day at a time until it’s too late.
We’ve all done this, the last few years. Following simple and positive logic – gay marriage, changed spellings, flatten the curve, how gallant is war – until the whole world is different, and there’s no way to argue your way out of it.
My intuition is consistent with Mary's - there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with "gestational donation". But I am having difficulty articulating WHAT exactly that wrong is.
Mary seems to arrive at an objection based upon power differentials - with the warning "one that legitimises dismantling the weak." But this objection undermines that opening premise of consent (that is, the weak cannot really give consent but rather are compelled to participate even if only circumstantially).
What if it is the "strong" who participate? What if Paris Hilton (in the news recently regarding her newborn) signs papers that allows her body, should she become brain-dead (most...resist...joke...) to be used as for "gestational donation" for a couple who otherwise could not have a child?
I am continually astounded by the narcissism and simple lack of common sense when these topics come up. Baby is totally connected to mother in utero, including emotionally. Even if a baby could technically survive in a brain-dead woman, it would not be ok psychologically and in terms of brain development. not to mention it would be essentially harvested rather than born with oxytocin and emotional connection. it's chilling to me that ppl have no problem with this.
I really do wonder how, with all we know about the developing fetus' awareness of the noises, flavours, movements, etc., that are part and parcel of the nine-ish months' residency in a living woman's womb, and with what we know about how important stimulation is to a baby's developing brain, anyone can imagine that gestation in a body all quiet and deathly still would result in a healthy baby.
They say we are “only mind” but mind can only come to existence through the infant/mother dyad. Without a sentient mother there is no infant and without an infant there is no mind.
Why does nobody seem to think about the baby? This is what I find so repulsive about surrogacy, too. The baby has a special connection with its biological mother and you rip it away from her because you paid her?? This is so messed up. How do these people explain that to „their“ kids? I really don’t understand this level of narcissism.
Using braindead bodies as „breeders“ - even more disgusting. People should not have biological children at any cost.
I find it really troubling that some women (feminists?) see pregnancy only as some terrible disadvantage women must be freed from…
As far as I know, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish eschatology all embrace belief in the resurrection of the physical body (embodied soul). Having read Mary's article, I shall voice the words of the Creed, "I believe in ... the resurrection of the body", with extra vehemence from now on. The alternatives sound horrible. These ancient religions knew what they were about.
Well said, Mary. People have a hard time seeing transgenderism as a bellweather of transhumanism but the point can't be made too often, obscure as it may be to normies who wish to be suicidally tolerant and accepting of all difference. Some differences are simply incompatible and cannot be reconciled by good will. Political transgenderism, especially, must be rejected. It is one thing to idolitrize neurodivergence (however misguided); that ship of fools will sink before it gets very far. It's another to institutionalize "meat sack mindset" where such a social logic is instrumentalized and potentiated by the governing classes for population control. As you point out, Mary, the logic of bodily autonomy isn't compatible with the logic of disembodiment. Hardly a coincidence, it seems, that so many of sci-fi transhumanist Methuselahs "discovered" their transgenderism in mid-life. A bit of chicken and egg, methinks.
wow. this whole movement is being animated by The Hatred of Humanity.
our obsession with technology to continue the pursuit of making us into Gods, has illuminated how much contempt we have for the limits of nature and of the human body. we cannot grasp the irony that limitations are what make creativity and innovation possible. take away all constrains and one will become paralyzed by infinite choice (sort of like music and content streaming).
dear God...
This idea is wicked, pure and simple, and must never be allowed. Talk about hell on earth! Robust arguments must be used to dispel any legitimacy for this nihilistic lunacy
I don't mean this comment to be too churchy, I am only recently coming back to my religion after years of borderline Atheism, and I am distinctly aware of the pitfalls in rhetoric that turn people off. However, as an Orthodox Christian, I can add that the "embodiment" of God in the human figure of Jesus is one of the more extensively written about theological details that the importance of which, until recently, I didn't fully understand. Most of that writing happened before, or during the era of the Council of Nicea--so pre-400AD.
That God himself chose to become Human is not unique in mythologies, but the weight that early christianity gave to it, and the centrality of the Virgin Mary in that story, is deeply important in our time to try and understand--maybe not for the Theology of it, but for the effect it had on our culture for so many centuries before this, our era of undoing. God shares man's suffering in totality, as a human. Mary, who we call Theotokos, or Mother of God in the east, gestates God in her body, shares the pain of childbirth, and the connection with her child, and sees him suffer and die--in his body. In the body that makes him Human.
And all of this theological wrangling was in direct confrontation with Gnosticism. Ms. Harrington has previously coined the glorious phrase, Fully Automated Luxury Gnosticism, and reading of this latest horror, all I could think is: everything old is new again.
Having just listened to Ms. Harrington and Louise Perry talk about the possible coming sexual counterrevolution on a Spectator podcast, both women agreed that whatever happens next will not be Christian, and I don't know if I agree or disagree, so much as I wonder what else it might be? If you cannot join the divine, the transcendent, the soul of humanity with our bodies in the ingenious way Christianity did in its four hundred year battle with Gnosticism, if you cannot appeal to the mystery that leads to the religious instinct, how then can "it"--the future ideology that those of us who want to save ourselves and our children will adopt to be saved--take form and shape, be, if you'll pardon the metaphor, embodied in our minds?
If the transhumanist's wish was granted and their mind really was separated from their body, no doubt they would immediately start identifying themselves with the 'higher' half of whatever remained and begin to dream of getting rid of the rest
THIS is PEAK PSYCHOPATHY! Even considering the possibility of the feasibility of such a dystopian practice is to dip one’s toe in the putrid cess pool of INSANITY!...You have been warned!
Yes. And though it’s meant to be an ethics paper there’s no consideration of the ethics from the child’s point of view. How would you answer the child’s question - who was my mother? A corpse is the answer. How would that child feel? The primary human bond, and context of meaning about one’s origin - the person who gave birth to you - is treated as if it’s of no importance to the child. And to reply to the possible objection that some children are born of brain dead mothers I think one could imagine that an answer along the lines of “your poor mother died in a car accident (or whatever) but we were able to save you, and that would have made her very happy”, would be the kind of narrative a child could process, emotionally, about their origins and why they don’t have a living mother.
Though mine aren’t feminist – that dread Y chromo – my fibres too recoiled. Then I followed the link to read Ms Smajdor’s paper, which simply extrapolates from the accomplished facts of organ donation and our sad pathologised way of living. Unfortunately, so does Mary H.
In the body of her piece she says:
“ … using living but brain-dead human bodies for a biological process such as gestation is a difference of degree, not kind.”
and then, in reply to a comment, reinforces with
“… the idea of using braindead bodies in this way just illustrates what becomes thinkable when you pursue that way of thinking”
Differences of degree lead to changes in kind; quantity changes into quality; the unthinkable becomes thinkable. We've known this for thousands of years. The Cogito point is fine, but here the problem is useless English Utilitarianism, which takes one day at a time until it’s too late.
We’ve all done this, the last few years. Following simple and positive logic – gay marriage, changed spellings, flatten the curve, how gallant is war – until the whole world is different, and there’s no way to argue your way out of it.
And let’s not forget the children born from such surrogacy- I would pity them
My intuition is consistent with Mary's - there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with "gestational donation". But I am having difficulty articulating WHAT exactly that wrong is.
Mary seems to arrive at an objection based upon power differentials - with the warning "one that legitimises dismantling the weak." But this objection undermines that opening premise of consent (that is, the weak cannot really give consent but rather are compelled to participate even if only circumstantially).
What if it is the "strong" who participate? What if Paris Hilton (in the news recently regarding her newborn) signs papers that allows her body, should she become brain-dead (most...resist...joke...) to be used as for "gestational donation" for a couple who otherwise could not have a child?
I am continually astounded by the narcissism and simple lack of common sense when these topics come up. Baby is totally connected to mother in utero, including emotionally. Even if a baby could technically survive in a brain-dead woman, it would not be ok psychologically and in terms of brain development. not to mention it would be essentially harvested rather than born with oxytocin and emotional connection. it's chilling to me that ppl have no problem with this.
Yes Johnny, you were born in a brain-dead meatsack. We love you anyways.