Mortality Blog

My aversion to murder (in the general “humans killing other humans regardless of context” sense of the word) is pretty familiar to most people who know me - and the other night I decided to try to think through the implications it posed for abortion, embryos, and stem-cell research.

I’m going to have to depart from the average liberal and say I can’t condone abortion or the destruction of embryos, whether research-related or otherwise.

We all know where babies come from - when a man and a women love each other very much, the man wants to be as close to the woman as possible, and the closest he can get is by laying on top of her, and putting his penis inside of her vagina. This feels very good, and eventually his penis releases sperm into the woman’s vagina (this feels really good for both of them) and later, the sperm swim up the woman’s fallopian tubes, in search of an egg to fertilize.

Up until the point that the two gametes merge, there’s no human life present. There are human cells, but they belong to the woman and man, and will eventually die off on their own, to be replaced by more. However, as soon as a sperm squeezes its way into the egg and the two halves of their DNA zip together, it’s a human, totally unique, with a future ahead of it. It doesn’t really look human, and it hasn’t even started to grow yet, but I can’t see it as anything but a person. A very small person. Not even a fetus yet. The longer we’re alive, the more our spectrum of available future paths narrows to a single point - that point is our death, the single event in our future that we cannot avoid. But at the moment of fertilization, that human’s entire life is undetermined. It could die before it even attaches to the wall of the uterus, it could be miscarried, it could die from complications during childbirth, afterwards, in a second, a day, a year, or even a century. It literally has its entire life ahead of it.

And there’s no way I would ever feel comfortable with taking that life away. It’s murder. You’re taking a life that’s just begun, and ensuring that it has no chance of continuing. That’s reprehensible.

Of course, accepting this involves accepting situations which make people incredible uncomfortable: rape is an often-quoted excuse to justify abortion. It’s hard for me to stick to my guns on this one, but I can’t help thinking of it this way: the child growing inside the victim doesn’t know anything about the circumstances of its conception. This tiny human doesn’t deserve death for the sins of its parent(s). Children whose parents are unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibility as a parent (one of the few responsibilities I really think people inherent posses) should be taken care of by the state (in the “general governmental” sense of the word, not in the “geo-political boundary” sense) and given a fair chance at the American dream: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s hard to do all that when you’re dead.

All that said, I’m not sure I have the balls to recommend that my conclusions be made law. I think it’d be reasonable to implement them in a nation that had first developed adequate infrastructure to stand in for biological parents in child-rearing, in a nation where rape and incest were a rare occurance. I think we can do it - but I don’t think we’re there yet, so I’m not really ready to commit to any actual legal stuff about it yet. However, if anyone were ever to ask me about it, I know exactly what I think about it, and why.

I might sound like a broken record here (playing the same thing over and over again, for those of you in the audience who have only heard of what a record is) but stupid shit like this wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have such stupid arbitrary laws concerning how old you have to be before you can consent to sexual activity:

Normally, getting back at your girlfriend by posting naked pictures of her on the internet is one of those mastercard ‘priceless’ moments - but if your girlfriend is 16, just two years younger then the age-of-consent, you are in deep shit, because you’ve ceased to be a jerk ex-boyfriend, and instead you’re a child pornographer who has sexually exploited a kid. What the fuck.

See? The assumption that all photos or videos of nude underage people is a problem, isn’t it? How can they be exploited when they took the photo themselves? I mean, have you seen Chris Crocker naked? He’s got a picture of himself when he was 17 - if you poke around a little in google image search you’ll find it. He took it himself, and chose to distribute it over the internet - but legally, he didn’t have the ability to take the photo, or distribute it. How fucked up is that?

It’s insulting the level of irresponsibility our government assigns to people younger then 18. It’s total bullshit. My imaginary punk rock band ‘bullshit policy’ probably has a song called ‘your body is not your own’ or something. Seriously.

In an average round of Counter-Strike I kill about a dozen people, maybe more if I’m doing well. When I was playing through F.E.A.R I would fill twenty or thirty clone-soldiers full of lead per sitting - similar counts apply for Metal Gear Solid, Half Life, Kill Zone, Black, and a handful of others. In the last six months, I’ve probably killed hundreds if not thousands - I have no idea how many I’ve sent to an early grave over my life time.

But you know what? Guns scare me. I don’t like looking at them, I don’t like holding them, I especially don’t like seeing them pointed at people. It could be that I’m scared of fast-moving projectiles in general - rubber bands stretched tight, bb-guns, airsoft guns, all of that stuff sort of freaks me out. I feel like I’m constantly flinching whenever I’m around things with the capability to shoot me - I’m just waiting for that projectile to hit me. I hate how heavy handguns feel, how little effort it takes to squeeze the trigger with your index finger. I can’t quite get over the suspicion that even with the safety on, I could get it to shoot if I just squeezed hard enough. I hate armed guards in airports and outside of banks, and I hate armed police officers.

Today, while I was waiting for the bus, I saw some cops taking down a guy - one officer had his handgun out and was holding it straight armed diagonally at the man’s feet, and as the man held his hands up and knelt on the sidewalk, another officer shouldered a big shotgun and pointed the muzzle right at him. That wasn’t a good thing for me to watch - I could imagine exactly what would happen if the cop pulled the trigger, if he had some perverse desire just to put a little pressure on it, just to see how hard he could press before it fired… and the guy’s head would explode. I’ve shot enough zombies and seen enough counter-terrorists though sniper scopes that I know what a headshot looks like - a burst of red, and the other guy is dead. Only this would be in real life, and the inside of his head would’ve splattered all over the brick wall and concrete.

I felt conflicted - like I wanted to quickly hide behind something bullet proof, where even a ricochet couldn’t find me, and at the same time I wanted to run over to the officers and yell, “Calm down! Put your guns away! Don’t screw things up!”

He was only a skinny guy, no shirt, just a ragged pair of pants, and you could tell he was scared. Of course he was scared - one finger twitch and his life was over. I hate guns.

I’m thinking about my country and government - especially our current government - and there are some things we disagree on. It’s kind of a weird position. I like our system of government (though I would like to see how things would work if we swung a little closer to a true democracy rather then a republic) because I think it’s more realistic then Marx’ socialism or a totalitarian structure - and I don’t want to deal with survival in anarchy.

That is to say, I really like the United States, but we’ve got a long way to go before we’re perfect.

Lately I’ve been thinking about civil disobedience. I’m sort of chafing under all of the rules and regulations, because there are a bunch of issues that bother me. Off the top of my head: separation of church and state, copyright infringement, illegal substances, xenophobia… and I think that these are social issues, not government issues, but they’ve somehow become (or in some cases, are in the process of becoming) a part of our laws.

So when I see a sign that says “no minors allowed” I ignore it. If I want to listen to music or watch a movie I download it. I don’t have much interest in most illegal substances, although given the chance to do something hallucinogenic I wouldn’t say no. I don’t really care one way or another whether our pledge of allegiance contains the phrase ‘under god’, but then again I feel uncomfortable about lots of ritual activities.

It’s sort of a self perpetuating cycle - each rule I break further confirms my belief that the rule was meaningless.

I’m probably going to get in trouble for this sort of attitude eventually, which is why it’s something that I need to think about. Sometimes when I’m second-guessing my own motives I wonder if my problems are trivial. However, it makes more sense to think of these problems as a symptom of a much bigger social attitude - conservative reasoning. Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on the bus - and where you sit on the bus seems like such a trivial thing to get upset over. She did it because of the reasoning behind it. I want to go get lunch at a bar with my friends at work, but it’s three weeks before my twenty-first birthday - and just waiting a few weeks seems like a trivial thing to get upset over. But I’m doing it because arbitrary age laws are flagrantly discriminatory towards members of a minority group which has almost no course for redress.

I want to have more time - but thanks to mortality, I’ve only got so much to spend on things. I want to live a simple immaterial life, I want to buy every new video game console that comes out, I want to be a social activist, I want to just live on my own little island somewhere and not be bothered - but I don’t have enough time to that, since I’m busy going to class and working part time. I’m excited for the future, which I expect to be lots of fun, but for now I’m stuck with civil disobedience, and a sort of general dissatisfaction with the world around me. How depressing.

Here’s an interesting idea that struck me just now (while sitting here at work playing around with Flash and listening to incredibly fun and catchy The Hidden Cameras’ album ‘Mississauga Goddamn’).

Religious groups ought to believe in freedom of religion, right? As much as I find that kind of irony amusing, I wouldn’t be at all amused at the hypocrisy of one religious group that wanted to deny rights to another.

And what is religion? It’s all about belief in something. Belief about the way that the universe works - explaining the otherwise inexplicable, solving questions of morality that would otherwise be impossible to answer, and providing a sense of purpose for our lives.

I’m not a participant in any organized religions, but it’s fair to say that I still have certain beliefs that meet that criteria above - do I have the right to keep those beliefs and not be persecuted for them?

For instance - I have no scientific proof that homosexuality is morally acceptable. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to ‘prove’ moral issues empirically. However, I believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable, without any proof. I take it on faith.

The ‘Employment Nondiscrimination Act‘ just passed a House vote (after several decades of work), and will prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. Trans-gendered people aren’t included, which sucks, but at least it’s a start. Naturally, conservative religious organizations aren’t happy about this bill, and they’re complaining about it.

They are hypocrites. They believe that sexual preferences other then heterosexuality are wrong, while I believe that all sexual preference is right.- we both have our beliefs, and we have faith that we are right, but they think there’s something wrong with what I believe. It’s may be tough for you to believe this: I actually don’t have a problem with their belief in the immorality of homosexuality,
I only have a problem with that idea put in to practice. It’s fine if they’re repulsed by gay guys - as long as they act polite and don’t let that effect their judgment, which would result in prejudice.

While I’m at it, random question, true or false: “Being permissive by default regarding rights and rules is a superior system to being restrictive by default.”

I say true - I would rather start at the ‘everything goes’ stage and pare things down until it works.

Interesting situation - let’s say you meet this amazingly attractive person. Guy or girl, whatever you prefer. You are in love. You go to get married.

Surprise! It’s your twin brother or sister, seperated at birth! What do you do now?

Obviously, having kids of your own is out of the question. But could you actually still ‘be’ with them? You wouldn’t have any of that weird family / sibling taboo, at least not a history of it - but I’ll bet there would be plenty of cultural pressure. Would you just have secret sex, while joking about how close you came to marrying your own twin brother or sister? Would you be totally sickened about the whole thing and refuse to even see them again? Would you freak out? Would you be cool with it?

I’m curious. I think I would be a little weirded out by it - but if I’d already got to the point where I was going to marry them… I mean, how could you find a more perfect foil for your own self then your own twin?

Ha ha ha, twincest. Okay. Seriously. What would you do?

Given the choice between skantily clad busty girl / firefox and bedroom-eyes bill gates / internet explorer, the ‘right’ choice (for a straight computer nerd) would be girl/firefox, right? I hate to admit it, but… if using IE is the price I have to pay for sleeping with circa-1980s Bill Gates… sorry, hot firefox chick.

This was actually going to be a big long thing, but myspace errored out and lost it. So here it is in brief - I’m pretty sure that it’s wrong to kill. I’m really sure in fact - it makes me sick to think of death, my own or anyone else’s. If there isn’t any heaven or hell to live out the rest of your eternal existence (since God isn’t availble to refute me on this one, I’m going to go ahead and assume I’m right) then this mortal lifetime is all we’ve got - which sucks, I know, but that’s the situation.

And if this life is all we’ve got, just about the worst thing that anyone person could do to another is to take that life away.

There are of course ramifications. Can anyone guess which hot political topics this impacts? Abortion, capital punishment, war, and doctor-assisted suicide. Since all of them involve killing someone, I’m now opposed to them. The only situation in which I would be willing to make an exception is killing in self defense - if it’s your life or theirs, you’ve got every right to pick your own. Survival is our most basic instinct - in fact, I might even argue it’s our highest purpose in - well, life. Reproduction is a close second, with the betterment of our species or something like that coming in third.

But yeah. I had always kind of wondered exactly how I felt about abortion. After thinking it through, I’ve got my answer. Yuck. Killing people is wrong. Killing baby people is really really wrong. And killing them before they even have a chance to become anything more then a helpless little bundle of cells - yeah, that’s pretty much the worst kind of cold-blooded killing. I know, there are so many arguments in favor of allowing abortion - but I can’t even imagine anything (besides that self-defense caveat) that would justify murder. Murder is what you do when you’re crazy.

Which brings us to doctor-assisted suicide. What is suicide? Killing yourself. So that’s obviously not okay. And if a doctor gives a patient who expresses a desire to end their life a lethal does of chemicals, then they’ve committed murder. It doesn’t matter if the other person wanted it, or even if they were asking for it - the simple fact is, up until that point, they were alive, and afterwards they were not alive. Totally absolutely wrong.

And ultimately, why would I think this way about killing? Because I’m completely terrified of my own mortality, and people are crazy - if they start to think that SOME killing is okay, it’s not that big of a leap to decide that MORE killing must be okay. Including killing me, or other people that I like. So let’s avoid that, okay?

Well, you know how I feel about capital punishment - I’m convinced that killing people is absolutely wrong, and should only be considered in the context of weighing one life against another.

Of course it sounds like a good idea - nobody likes those child-rapists, right? Of course they deserve to die! Rather then arguing that no one deserves death, I’m going to point something else out - not everyone defines ‘child’ and ‘rape’ the same way.

How young is a child? Below 18? Maybe 16? 14? 8? 4? Right off you’re going to have to pick an arbitrary number - what if you pick 15 as the magic number, and then some kid who’s 15-and-four-days gets raped? Is that somehow less worthy of death then the kid who’s 14-and-363-days?

And what’s rape? That should be obvious, but it isn’t - you know why ’statutory rape’ is considered rape? Not because there’s neccesarily any coercion involved - but because the ‘victim’ is unable to give legal consent to having sex. So does this mean that we can kill a 19-year-old who has safe. consentual sex with his 17-year-old boyfriend? At 17 he’s still a child, and that’s rape - punishable by death?

Extreme examples? Of course they are - but you know that they’re going to happen, and innocent kids are going to get killed. Our justice system is good, but it’s not perfect - and would you trust an imperfect system to sentance criminals to death? Because I sure wouldn’t. I would feel guilty as hell about it. I do actually feel pretty guilty that we still have the death penalty here in the US, and that people would actually try to expand the territory covered by that act of cold-blooded murder.

Mmmm. Well, that’s all the politics i’ve got energy for tonight.

I read this cnn article about sex offenders living near child car facilities, in homes with children, et cetera -

Sex offenders living at child care facilities, audit says

Am I missing something? Are all sex offenders potential child-rapists? Are they all even potential people-rapists? Let’s say you raped a woman, and you’ve served your time, and now you’re out of jail. Is it okay for you to live next to an elementry school? Let’s say you molested a little boy - is it okay for you to live next to an all-girls school? How about if you just flashed a bunch of people at a bus stop? What about consentual-yet-underage sex? Are we just assuming that a sex offender at any level is potentially a sex offender at every level? And - is that a neccesary assumption to make?