#what is it to be alive? all the questions about the doctor's personhood

[thresholdbb]

With how much Voyager plays with the concepts of reality and illusion, there's an argument that they never actually escaped the Caretaker

"When your only reality is an illusion, then illusion is a reality."

[measlyfurball13]

I know that the Babylon 5 fandom has a love/hate relationship with Dr. Stephen Franklin, but I can’t get one quote that he said out of my head.

It’s at the end of his season 3 arc. Sheridan asks him how he defines himself now.

And Franklin says, “Alive. Everything else is negotiable.”

Franklin’s whole arc for this season, hell, for the entire show, is him trying to find himself. He literally quit his job and went on ‘walkabout’ so that he could meet his true self. Usually, when protagonists go on journeys to find themselves in media, the conclusion of the arc is that they find their ‘real’ selves and reconcile with it. 

But. . . in the episode “Shadow Dancing”, after Franklin gets stabbed and goes into shock, the ‘self’ that he meets is an asshole. It’s a culmination of all his worst traits and self-loathing. It’s all of his resentment towards his friends, his job, his morals, and his upbringing. It’s this rude, ugly thing that criticizes him for being in pain (you know, with the knife wound in his stomach). And Franklin doesn’t ‘reconcile’ with it. In fact, he stays alive and drags himself to safety in spite of what this ‘self’ says. 

Dr. Franklin learns that having a hard-set definition for your personhood isn’t good or important to living a happy and successful life. When it comes down to it, his character has always been about that- he holds himself to these impossible standards of what a doctor should be, of what a son of a military officer should be, of what a good person should be, and as we can see over the course of the seasons, this way of thinking damaged him. 

This is so powerful because a lot of fiction has an obsession with the purity of self. The heroes always are strong and defined, with the villains being the ones with mysterious identity or conflicts of identity. But in real life, most ordinary people don’t have a perfect sense of self. Our identities are always changing but we’re pressured to fit ourselves into little boxes, such as our occupations and hobbies. For Dr. Franklin to be struggling with this exact problem makes him very nuanced, and very human. 

Babylon 5 has always dealt strongly with identity. After all, the questions “Who are you? What do you want?” are driving story elements. This is most evident in “Comes the Inquisitor”, the episode where Delenn is interrogated and tortured by Sebastian to reveal her true character. When he asks her who she is, all of the ‘wrong’ answers she gives are her name, her title, her job, and her relationship to others. This mirrors Dr. Franklin’s struggle with his own sense of self almost exactly. 

Delenn is asked by her inquisitor if she would die alone and without glory to save another, despite her belief in her importance and destiny. Dr. Franklin is asked by his inquisitor the inverse of this- is he important? Would he do any good in the world if he lived on? And ultimately, he decides, the answer is yes; “I want to do it all again,” he says.

And there within lies the core theme that Babylon 5 leaves its viewers with. Identity is fluid, and we should define it by our actions, not by our thoughts and desires. There is a reason that the end of Franklin’s arc coincides with the first major victory over The Shadows by the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. It is the heroic actions of the alliance that came together that wins the day, leaving behind former rivalries and identity politics. 

And all of this, all of this, culminates in that one single line.

“So, what are you?”

“Alive. Everything else is negotiable.”

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

TLDR: Republicans believe themselves to be infallible and cannot be convinced otherwise

Republicans think America is perfect and always has been, while simultaneously believing that America is DOOMED and ON THE EDGE OF COLLAPSE at all times and want to bring us back to the Before Times™ when men were men and women were household appliances and minorities were someone else’s problem.  If you bring up a genuine critique of American culture or history they throw a pissbaby shit fit and start spewing nationalist platitudes, “America: Like It or Leave It!”  All their complaints stem from their perceived self-importance being eroded; they don’t like to realize that other people with differing opinions exist and should have their voices heard.  If a “brown” or a “black” or a “red” or a “yellow” is allowed to speak, that just means there’s one less space for a “white.”  All their complaints come from a slippery slope argument that if we don’t model our society after their specific cherrypicked interpretation of The Bible then we will degenerate into amoral savagery.

They say being gay is an abomination and allowing it will damn our children to hell; what they really think is that it’s gross and they don’t want to see things they think are gross.  There’s literally no good argument against marriage equality besides “I don’t personally like it.”  America is not a theocracy, so the belief system of Christianity should not be construed as the law of the land.  This stems from their belief that the Bible is infallible, “because the Bible says so.”  They don’t know and don’t want to know about the history behind it, nor the very contentious political landscapes at the times the books were written, nor the personal biases of the very human authors.  If the Bible is a literal textbook, then why?  What makes it so special?  By whose authority were its contents collated and designated THE Good Book?  If the Bible is literal, why not the works of Homer, or the Epic of Gilgamesh?  Just because the Bible says the Bible is right doesn’t make it so.  For the record, I am a Christian, and I think the Bible is just an old book.  I’m a Christian in that I follow the teachings of Christ, which can be summed up as “DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE.”  I live by that, and All the ChrINOs (Christians in Name Only) need to learn it.  Jesus would be ashamed of what he saw today.

They say that abortion is baby murder, on par with ritual human sacrifice and Satan worship. They don’t understand biology, they have a Sunday School understanding of philosophy, and live in a world so black and white that they can’t even imagine a reason someone would have an abortion besides that they’re a terrible person; a woman who would have an abortion is unfit to be a mother in their eyes because they see abortion as equivalent to smothering a baby with a pillow because you don’t want to take care of it anymore.  “He or she is alive, he or she has a heart beat!”  Well, at this point is is just a blob of tissue, not a living person; a heart beat alone does not make something alive or dead.  Your life comes from your brain, not your heart.  If someone is alive the moment their heart starts, then they must be dead the moment is stops, so CPR is necromancy.  A person isn’t considered dead until their brain is dead, so if they wanted to argue that life begins at brain activity they would have a stronger argument, though still weak because brain activity is not personhood either.  Patients in permanent vegetative states on life support may have some brain activity, but they are effectively dead.  There is no way a judge, appointed by senators elected by the people of the United States, can prove that not only do souls exist but that they are created the second a sperm fertilizes an egg.  If “souls” exist, they aren’t so much created as built up over time as we gain new experienced and our brains develop.  What we are is electricity in a ball of meat jelly in our skulls, and that comes to being at a point after which abortions are already banned.  Conservatives also just want to control women; Roe v. Wade isn’t explicitly about the right to an abortion, it is about the right to body autonomy.  Do women have the right to control their own bodies, or do they defer that right to their fathers and husbands?  Are women people or property?  Can a man make decisions on a woman’s behalf?  “You must forgive my daughter; as a simple minded woman she’s fallen into a stupor of female hysteria.  We’ll have the family doctor bring out the smelling salts and leaches.”

They say that certain vices are crimes against God, but only when some people do it.  Divorce is a sin because marriage is sacred, except when a conservative does it, then it’s totally justified because of such and such explanation.  Tattoos are the mark of the beast, worn by degenerates and lesbians, except when a conservative does it, then it’s just art and harmless self expression.  Marijuana is a gateway drug and we need to lock away its addicts and throw away the key, unless a conservative does it, then it’s just recreational, no big deal, we don’t want to ruin the [white] boy’s future because of it.  A black person who does cocaine is a criminal, a white person who does cocaine is a public figure (you’d be surprised how many actors and politicians regularly use coke; they have to have high energy 24/7 in case there are any cameras, so they need uppers to keep themselves presentable).  This all springs from the fundamental conservative philosophy of “it’s okay when WE do it, but not when YOU do it.”  That’s the long and short of it.  The in-group is allowed to do things, but the out-group isn’t.  It’s the Us vs Them mentality taken to the logical extreme; WE are people, THEY are monsters.  WE are allowed to have faults, THEY have to stay in line and follow all the rules.  OUR lives matter, THEIR lives are lesser.  When you strip away the showy bits and get down to the core of their beliefs, everything stems from their desire to hurt anyone who isn’t them.  They want power, they want to be special, they want the Good Guys™ to always prevail over the Bad Guys™, and they want to be the ones to decide who is good and who is bad.  Their opinions are the only ones that matter, everyone else is wrong because they’re not them.  Now, it’s not like you could solve every problem by opening up your mind to new opinions; there are some issues that are indeed black and white with objectively right and wrong answers, but they live in a world where they are incapable of being wrong.  They see personal growth as a betrayal of the self, that admitting a fault is terrible, that apologizing and learning from a mistake is traitorous.  No, they have to double down on every single one of their beliefs to re-instill it in their minds.  They can never doubt themselves, because God will punish them forever if they ever have doubt.  They can’t ask questions or look at things from other perspectives because that would be an admission that their perspectives are fallible.  They are afraid of changing their minds so much that they refuse to even listen when someone explains their opinions because they don’t want to have their minds co-opted by Satan’s LIES!  If they hear something convincing, it’s all over, their entire world collapses, everything they believe is a lie, they lose, they go to hell forever, The End.

That is the dichotomy under which Republicans live their lives.  Nothing matters but what they believe.  They don’t believe what they believe for logical reasons, so no amount of logic will ever make them not believe it.  They’re making up their own rules to win.  You’re playing Rock-Paper-Scissors and they throw Nuclear Bomb, which defeats all three, so you lose.  You say that’s not fair, they say tough.  You throw Nuclear Bomb, and they say they have a bomb proof shield, so the bomb doesn’t hurt them but kills you, so you lose.  You can’t even beat them at their own game because they’ve been playing it longer, and they cry foul when you stoop to their level, suddenly saying that you need to be the bigger person, walking right up to the line of admitting that what they do is wrong but not quite getting there, simply reverting to the complaint that you shouldn’t be allowed to do it.  “I can, but YOU can’t.”  That’s why it infuriates me when nobody ever calls out a Republican for their hypocrisy.  They do something, a Democrat does that exact same thing, they cry foul, but nobody ever says “well, you didn’t have a problem when you did it,” they just try to excuse their own actions rather than demand justification for theirs.  Democrats are always on the defensive, they always look like they’re losing even when they’re winning, so the Republicans can use that to build their base and rally together for the occasional victory (Democrats won 7 of the last 8 presidential elections; the last Republican to legitimately win the presidency was George H.W. Bush in 1988).

I don’t know how you’d even begin to fight someone who is this far down the rabbit hole of self denial.

Democrats self-reflect, Republicans self-deflect.

Democrats are progressive, Republicans are regressive.

Now I’m sure there are no Republicans reading this, but if there are they’ll make themselves known and “totally refute” everything I’ve said with some paper thin argument that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but they don’t care because it stands up to them.  They only need to show one example of a Democrat failing to write off the entire party; they only need to show one black Republicans to deny the existence of racism; one gay Republican denies homophobia; one women denies sexism.  They are the party of tokenism.

They will point out the mote of dust in your eye and ignore the plank in their own.

Debate me, I have nothing better to do with my time, I’m a dirty libtard cuckflake soyboy beta with a case full of participation trophies and handouts paid for by other people’s tax dollars (funny, they think handouts are for degenerates, except when they get them.  Inheritance?  Privilege?  Never heard of them!)

[danieyells]

Project Of War

»Warnings: reader insert/second person narration(not as the MC of MLQC), "you" get kidnapped, "you" are lightly threatened, "you" are dehumanized to an extent, implications of past/future torture, implications/mentions of future human experimentation, mentions of sharps and things that may need warning to the hospital-sensitive.

»Notes: I’ve never written for MLQC before(not to mention we see Ares maybe four times in the English release so far) so expect characterization/speech clumsiness. Also i try and be kind of open ended about things like "your" responses and actions and thoughts so it may read somewhat oddly. . .? Mm. I haven’t written in a good while so excuse it being all over the place.

»Description: just scene writing and reader-fic practice i suppose--"you" are taken to what is implicitly Black Swan by Lucien/Ares and "you" don't seem like you're going to be allowed to leave anytime soon. It doesn't go anywhere--originally it was supposed to go very differently and take place further in the future in the same setting but somehow i wound up writing this instead lol. . . . Not shippy or romantic in any nature.  Maybe if I have more ideas for whatever this story verse is.

»Length: 1215 words

You were just an ordinary human.

You knew what an "Evolver" supposedly was. You'd watched Miracle Finder--just about everybody had seen at least one episode, and the recent episodes had been a hit. Perhaps you didn't believe in what they spoke of or showed on the series, but you'd seen or heard enough about it to know what they talked about.

Most disregarded it as the usual magic mumbo jumbo, nonsense, falsified, or things that could be explained some other way. Whether or not you were one of them was apparently not important.

Perhaps you'd been among those who admired some of the producer's recent guests on both Miracle Finder and other series she made. Four in particular stood out to every viewer, be it for their attractiveness or social standing or how close they always seemed to be to the producer whenever they were on screen together.

Perhaps one of them was the one before you.

But it was a little too dark for you to truly confirm that suspicion.

And with his back to you, his hand holding your wrist, pulling you along through halls that looked nothing like they belonged to the TV Tower you'd been pulled into, you only had the brief memory of his face, now somewhat blurry since having had come inside.

Professor Lucien was the name he gave before cameras and to his students.

"Ares" was the name the shadowy figures about you whispered, nerves and respect and fear in their voices, radiating off of them in the halls and making the already oppressive darkness that much unnaturally heavier. Weighted down by nerves and terror and. . .

Was there pity in there as well?

Perhaps you struggled. Perhaps you demanded to be released. If you did, his leading would pause, the air would seem stiffer with the tension of the people who mist have been in the surrounding dark.

"Stop it." He'd demand of you, somehow harsh and unfeeling all the same. "If you don't cooperate, I can make you cooperate. But I'd rather not waste my time--so shut up and behave yourself."

Nothing like the fawned over Professor that you knew of, nothing like the friendly and airy voice that lectured on neuroscience and psychology, in the dark you could even believe this was a different man.

In the light you couldn't be so wishful.

Should you not believe him, not agree to be led, express disbelief in his ability to keep you obedient, he looked over his shoulder at you, eyes dark, empty, icy, then past you.

"Come." He ordered, though not to you, and hesitantly one of those shadows around you stepped forward. And it seemed like the darkness collectively sucked in a breath.

"Ares, Sir." The nervous shadow barely had time to bow in its respects before 'Ares' reached out to it. Snapping fingers in front of its face, the shadow stood at attention--and even in the darkness their fear was evident, wide eyes glancing at you and, were they not full of dimly lit anxiety, perhaps they would have been angry--if you'd simply done as you were told--

Ares pressed two fingers to the forehead of the person he'd called over and all at once their eyes widened further, though it may not have seemed possible.

Even in the unlit hallway you could see the light leave their eyes, from wide with terror to lidded, dull, and empty, their tension seeming to drop away--along with their footing. If not for Ares holding their leaning form up with his fingers, they surely would have fallen.

And they did just that when he pulled away, toppling down as if boneless. In the hall there was a quiet curse, whispers, another shadowy figure approaching the one who'd collapsed at your feet. They were breathing, alive, but. . . .

What exactly had he done to them that a simple touch would. . .?

If you hadn't before, perhaps that was when you'd chosen to allow yourself to be pulled along.

God help you if you said anything he could interpret as "make me."

The dark hall did end. A door stood before you briefly before opening, and as Ares stepped in with you you were blinded by what must have had been motion-activated lights.

By the time you could see and got your bearings back, you were sat in what must have had been an examination chair, the kind you'd find at your doctor's office.

As for escaping, any attempt was met with a short, discouraging sound from the man who'd brought you here, and a strange sound like glass cracking at your waist.

You were not bound by any means, but if you were to slide off of the chair in any direction but perhaps up, what awaited you were sharp, jagged. . .somethings. Suspended around your place like glass frozen in the air. But it didn't look quite like glass--rather, the sharp edged, somewhat transparent threats to your safety seemed more like. . . .

Solid light?

"I need you alive." He clarified whether or not you chose to pursue escape despite the dangers. He turned to you from elsewhere in the room, by counters covered in all manner of sharps and tubes of substances whose labels probably wouldn't have had made sense if you could read them from your distance. Bottles of pills, the labels similarly unreadable, but everything was clean and new. "Alive and as physically unharmed as you came. So don't move around too much."

Somehow you felt more offput by that your surroundings were so sterile and hospital-like. It felt uncanny, like a mask, like the face he wore for the camera or his students. Like it was only clean so it could become dirtied again.

"What are you doing here." He drawled, whether you asked or not, walking towards you. What were once dark eyes were now pale save for their pupils, pale and reflective and iridescent white. And yet somehow they still felt dull and dark and lightless. The few shadows in the well lit room seemed to grow darker, despite no change in any solid objects or lighting. He examined you, the slightest of smirks lifting onto his face.

"I needed a subject. That's all. A guinea pig. For an experiment."

But why you? He reached out to touch your face, tilting your head to look into your eyes. Searching. But not for an answer you knew you had.

"You've met my criteria. Until I inform you otherwise, all you need to know now is that you are my project. Projects do not ask questions. Projects provide answers.

"And don't worry about not being able to." His grin was sharp, the look in his eyes a satisfied one. Pleased with you. He pat your head, the action condescending--he'd already discounted your personhood and disregarded what rights you may have had in the outside world when he declared you a 'project'--not a person but a thing, an experiment to learn from. "You will. And you won't even have to work hard to do it.

"Feel privileged. By the time I'm through with you, you'll have helped change the world for the better. That is the goal of Black Swan--and so that is your new purpose as well."

[esmeinthewoods]

What happened to me during college

I still do not know how to write about my first two years in college. Much of my memories are not solidified – they feel as confusing as when I experienced them first, and I am still a small, weightless object floating above impacts and events that I have no control over. But what really happened, was that I grew in ways I never thought I would. Many has expressed this sentiment over growth before me, but in my life, the texture is different, as similar it is. I have come to accept that innocence is not a virtue, silence is not a sin, and that ultimately, we must all speak for ourselves. In this statement of honesty I began to unravel my memories. 

I wish that there were other ways for me to write this. I cannot write a story of success or epiphanies. I will instead attempt to plainly, clearly, write the truth, and about the growth that was needed to do so.

But to write the truth, I must first write of secrets. There is a secret I keep from my family and close friends. Before it happened, I could keep my integrity without fear or effort. Then several things happened, and I no longer could. 

I was in a relationship with a person who later assaulted me, on November 2017. He did so because he knew I could not talk about it. I was, and still am, deeply in the closet especially to my parents.

In September 2018, I tried to end my own life, not because life seemed futile, but because I couldn’t bear the thought of living as myself. To the doctors I explained nothing. Three weeks later I walked out thinking I was fine.

That September, I met and loved a beautiful boy who also wanted to solve the problem of consciousness. Quickly we bonded through sleepless nights of discussions on philosophy or semantics, depending on which side I was on.

During December 2018, she transitioned into a girl. Then, on March 2019, the devil that almost got me took her, when she hung herself as I was on the phone with her. I wished so much that I had stopped her, but in retrospect I couldn’t convince her what I couldn’t even tell myself. She asked me a question and I could not answer; something broke in both of us that night, and I no longer believed in the passive healing of time. In my regrets I started the repulsive, painful work of confronting, recollecting, my experience. 

Throughout the last two years, I suffered from a loss of words, and it took me every moment of those silence to regain my voice. It was not pathological in nature; I could talk and write eagerly as long as it had nothing to do with my personhood, emotions, memories. I had not lost my language; rather, I had lost a sense of self. To recover, I forced myself to write, for the first time in years, about me. I wrote when I felt empty. I wrote when I felt fake. I erased as much as I wrote, until, one day, the truth started seeping out onto paper. Such is the origin of the honesty you see here. Seeing my fears in tangible, real letters was liberating; I suffer, but in describing this undeniable truth, I became a writer. Today, I desire so badly to live, to live with a bold love of life, and to do so with the bravery only writing allows. 

I have published, anonymously or not, my memoirs and essays on the web. I did so because others who have done so before gave me the vocabulary to write mine; writing starts within, but it never stops there. My loss and torment are those of others and theirs mine in the language we share. I am because they were.

I find that being oneself is a moment, not a continued state of being. But such moments, although sporadic, are consistently necessary for one to be alive, and they come precisely at these two times; when one speaks of one’s mind, and when one lives faithfully to what one has said. We must keep speaking our minds out loud to not run out of things to do. Speaking out is an existential task. Only through openness and vulnerability I found the freedom to take ownership of my life, freedom not in the infantile sense of a lack of limits, but the strength from knowing one's belonging in this world and solidarity with all who could hear my voice, pushing myself, slowly but inevitably, to grow.

Today, I desire to live more than I ever had, to live with a bold love of life, and to do so with integrity. I have spoken of death and woe and deceit. But I find, among these incidents and accidents, a certain beating heart. How may one write of life, from the worst of life, of joys in pulsing veins and morning drizzles, dragonflies on the lake, bushes of green and brown? I can still see toddlers on grass in the park and smile; why is this so? This is the mystery that I wish to capture in my writing, in the discovery of a strand of life that keeps tugging, pulling, at worse and better of times. 

[stemcellmia3-blog]

Advantages And drawbacks Of The Stem mobile treatment

Again, make sure you note that men and women have different hair reduction issues. For males, it starts fairly early as they reach their late twenties. For women, issue arrives a little bit later but the effect in their social working might be greater. If they keep the physique alive with oxygen, but the mind is lifeless, it is possible that you could transplant that experienced of the individual with a dis-working physique on to the new physique. In reality there have been several scientific study papers written, and they believe with stem cell therapy for arthritis, and other strategies that this is now all feasible. In other phrases all of the technology now exists in the biotech sector. This delivers forth an moral question, just simply because we can; does it mean we should? In the United States on your own, there are hundreds of thousands of individualsstruggling from Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, Coronary heart Failure- all of these can be helped (and sometimescured) by utilizing stem cell therapy procedure adult stem cells. This not only would improvenumerouslife, but would conserve billions of dollars in medication and clinicexpenses. Bill Clinton received my vote for one reason, but then once more, one reason got my vote. Think about that for a 2nd, wont you. Controversy is a two way road, but at least you are in the vehicle and driving. Get or shed, you must place up your best fight to win for what you think is right. The physician told her that her own stem cells would act like the physique's own developing block and build new bone around the fracture of her leg. That is precisely what occurred. Loraine's doctor implanted Loraine's personal Adult Stem Cells back again into her leg. In relation to the stem cell knee injections debate, the physicalist camp requires a staunch stand towards embryonic stem mobile knee injections research whilst advocating adult stem cell knee injections research as an alternative. Can every stem mobile knee injections turn out to be a baby? The Vatican grants "full human personhood, dignity and ethical standing to the embryo from the moment of fertilization on."3 The fear of the physicalist camp is that there will be elevated embryo destruction and abortions if all do not hold to this view. According to the Nationwide Right to Lifestyle, there have been much more than 40 million abortions in the United States since Roe v. Wade was handed in 1973. Wouldn't you know it, my preferred tale line hits a brick wall. Landry's father (Jesse Plemons) gets suspicious of how issues are heading down in the Clark home and requires a little trip to see Tyra (Adrianne Palicki). The protecting parental instincts kick in and he bluntly tells Tyra to stay out of Landry's life. Tyra, who is happy of Landry for his sport winning heroics, has to crush our hero with an utterly savage small breakup speech. Hopefully these two will get back again with each other prior to season's end.

[vortaesthetic]

Just Six Things

Having drinks at the bar with Garak and Quark for gossip intelligence gathering

He's awful at sports

Crashing every auction, flea market, thrift store, or giveaway to drag weird shit home 'cos he likes it

Coffee. So dark that you're not sure if It's ground coffee or ash in his cup. Six, you gotta stop man, your hands are shaking.

Games! Tons of games. He loves dabo and tongo. He's straight-up lousy when it comes to physical sports, but give him a board game or a card game and he's a beast.

He makes a little money selling things he finds here and there. Sometimes he gets a table on the promenade and sells things he thinks people would be interested in. It's actually not about making money at all and he usually only does it when Odo's threatening to cite him for fire safety again

Speed typer, he'll set a keyboard on fire, holy shit

Chinese food has so many delightful textures. He loves it. Loaded-up salads are great too. He loves chunky brownie ice-cream. The more textures, the better. Also, raspberries are wonderful and delicious, since they are chemically similar to rippleberries

Have i mentioned that he's terrible at sports?

Going to Odo for advice on life. Poor Odo, he gets this a lot.

Is Never Not At The Doctor

He isn't quite as suave as the others, he's a touch broody and dorkish. Don't let that fool you, he's still a scary-good sweet talker, but the weird only comes out when you get personal

Hangups about authenticity and identity and personhood galore

HEARS EVERYTHING, sometimes this is great, sometimes this is terrible.

Has Garak pick out outfits for him, because he Has No Idea What He Is Doing. Please Garak, help him.

Blind as hell. He's not trying to kiss you, He's trying to see you. Never allowed to fly or shoot anything unless it's the apocalypse and he's the last being alive in the galaxy

Dax is cute and fun and is sorta like him oh dear

Has a fascination with everything. Prepare for lots of questions doing anything, ever.

Nightmares. Lots of them. With frequent insomnia to go with it.

Shy and secretive about romantic feelings because of Hangups, see above

Always in Let's Make a Deal mode

100% gentle cinnamon roll

[jesseturri]

Every Unfertilized Egg In The Body Of A Nun: Sanctity of Life, Abortion, Personhood, Murder, Blessings & Curses

“What is the moral question regarding abortion? Some people say that the fetus is alive and that, therefore, killing it is wrong. Since mosquitoes, bacteria, apes and whales are also alive, the argument is less than clear. Even plants are alive. I am not impressed by the rebuttal, “But plants, mosquitoes, bacteria and whales are not human, and the fetus is.” For the issue now becomes, in what sense is the fetus human? No one denies that its origin is human, as is its possible destiny, but the same is true of every unfertilized egg in the body of a nun.” – Charles Hartshorne

In the wake of multiple US states passing or considering hardline anti-abortion bills, many of which were pushed by high-profile conservative evangelical Christian activist, Janet Porter, I felt compelled to reflect on this issue a bit.

First I should preface by saying that I’ve never been super vocal about abortion as a political issue, mostly because as a man I’ve never felt it was my place to preach to women I don’t know about one of the most important medical decisions they may ever make in their life; it always seemed obvious to me that the decision to have an abortion or not should essentially come down to the woman involved, and perhaps her loved ones and doctor. This position of mine has always put me on the left side of things politically (supporting a women’s right to choose what to do with her body) when it comes to the political issue of abortion.

This being said, I’m still always reticent to offer my opinion on matters like these as if my hot take needs to be heard (it doesn’t, I realize that), BUT a) this is my blog and that’s what personal blogs are for (for writing thoughts down), and b) I’m particularly interested in the theological and philosophical aspects of this debate, particularly the white conservative Christian theological/philosophical justifications for being so vehemently anti-abortion.

Although I’m sure I won’t exhaustively cover all conservative Christian views on this topic, I do feel comfortable in saying that, in general, the conservative Christian’s (Protestants and Catholics alike) take on this topic is pretty straight forward: they believe in the “sanctity of life”; they believe babies are God-given miracles and insist that life begins at conception, therefore ending that life is an act of murder. Conservative Christians view humans as being very special and unique; God’s glorious creations, created a little lower than the angels. We’re precious persons, more precious than other life on Earth, in fact, mostly because humans are made in the very image of God.

So when conservative Christians are out there protesting against abortion, here are the main things they say compel them to take action:

The sanctity of life

Special status of humans

Murder and personhood

Babies as blessings

Let’s go through each one, shall we?

SANCTITY OF LIFE Conservative Christians love life! It is indeed holy! It begins at conception they say, and to kill a blastocyst (let alone an embryo or fetus) is the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another; murder! I personally think loving life and treating it as holy and sanctified is a good position to take; I really do. I’m all for embracing all living things in general (except maybe ticks and mosquitos…); I enjoy life forms of all types! ‘Let life flourish,’ I say! I’m pro-life in this sense. Seriously, I am. I’m not a super big fan of killing things; my personality is such that I tend to be pretty sensitive and do lean toward harmonization, and I’ve publicly expressed my anti-violent views on killing humans as a way to solve problems; it’s a solution I’ve personally taken off the table.

However…

It is undeniably clear (to me at least) that the evolution of complex life on our planet depends in large part on differential death, and that both death and harm play a role in the dynamic of the living. So at some point in our lives, if we are to be mature and honest with ourselves, it seems like we must admit that philosopher Dominique Lestel has a point when he suggests that we should “openly acknowledge that life, even if we cannot place a price on it, is certainly not without its costs.” Life can be defined many ways by many different people, and it can be said to consist of many, many different things, but one thing we can say about life with near certainty (along with Whitehead) is that it is indeed **robbery**. Sadly, the world in which we live seems to require something to die in order for something else to live.

I present this naturalistic perspective on life not out of a sadistic motive to justify or normalize deplorable acts of killing. I bring this perspective up because if life is sanctified and holy this ultimately must mean that death is sanctified as well since both birth and death are natural parts of life. I’ll talk more about this below when I reflect on murder and personhood.

THE SPECIAL STATUS OF HUMANS Now conservative Christians might yell “hold on there, bucko!” and attempt to clarify what they mean by “sanctity of life” at this point by perhaps quoting (predictably so) Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (ESV)

As we can see, it’s not all of life on Earth that’s holy, it’s only human life that’s holy because humans are of course imago dei, image bearers of God. Focus on the Family is very clear on this:

“To be created in the likeness of God means that each human bears His image and with it, a value beyond our unique characteristics or individual attributes. Nothing else in God’s created order has the distinction of reflecting His image; it’s a privileged status reserved only for humankind.”

This is why it’s such a travesty to destroy a human life for conservative Christians because it’s kind of like destroying a little bit of God I suppose… And listen, personally speaking, I don’t disagree. I do think of humans as being imago dei, humans are very special and unique creatures. We are! But looking back at my spiritual trajectory, a big part of why I now call myself a religious naturalist and a Christian panentheist is because of this dangerous and idolatrous anthropocentric view of the natural world, the one that positions humans at the top with dominion over creation. Due in large part to pernicious interpretations of the Genesis verse cited above, it is unmistakably clear to me that the overemphasis on anthropocentrism in Western Christian theology has given humans permission to exploit nature as nature has no reason to exist other than to serve humans.

A helpful voice on this subject for me has been eco-theologian, H. Paul Santmire, and in particular his book The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology, which undertakes a pretty intense survey of the history of the concept of nature in Western Christian thought. Santmire’s book uncovers (to no surprise) very diverse attitudes within the Christian tradition with regard to nature. Some of the key Christian thinkers Santmire examines include Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, Aquainas, Bonaventure, Dante, St. Francis of Assisi, Luther, Calvin, Barth, and Teilhard de Chardin. Santrimire is ultimately able to discern two motifs regarding humans and nature that are evident throughout Christian thought: the “spiritual motif” and the “ecological motif.” The spiritual motif describes the flavor of Christianity that is ambivalent at best to creation and hostile at worst. Santmire writes that the spiritual motif is “predicated on a vision of the human spirit rising above nature in order to ascend to a supramundane communion with God…” Santmire describes some characteristics of this spiritual motif as including a belief that God is a being separate from or transcendent to the world, who chooses to intervene in its affairs at will. Furthermore, this spiritual motif expresses a fundamental theological bias towards only those beings considered rational, spiritual, or moral. This bias thus excludes nonhuman life and the material world from its purview of concern. Santmire quotes a well-known phrase from Augustine’s Soliloquies as a basic expression of this motif: “I desire to have knowledge of God and the soul. Of nothing else? No, of nothing else whatsoever.” Ultimately, nature is affirmed as a “good” only in its ability to embody spirit, which is the final measure and end of all theological inquiry for the spiritual motif.

So back to my personal trajectory. It’s not that I’ve stopped considering humans as being special and unique and imago dei, it’s that I’ve just broadened my scope of concern. By emphasizing not God’s separateness but God’s inextricable entanglement with the world ALL things become holy and unique and special. I’m not downgrading human status here, I’m upgrading everything else! “Everyone gets a car!” as Oprah might say.

MURDER AND PERSONHOOD Let it be known, first and foremost, that I am not a fan of murder. I’ll mention again here that I’m on the record as being a Christian anti-violent resister of evil (a position I’m willing to bet many conservative Christians wouldn’t hold to). Now, to continue, we’ve established that death is a natural part of life but we haven’t bothered to distinguish between various types of death. Murder is a type of death that has very negative historical connotations; most human societies consider murder to be an extremely serious crime (rightly so) and, therefore, believe that the person charged with murder should receive harsh punishment in return.

It’s always nice to be on the same page so let’s talk about what murder is: murder is basically the unlawful, premeditated killing of a human by another human. State of mind is usually also a consideration when distinguishing murder from other types of killing (like manslaughter) and, typically, malice aforethought is associated with acts of murder. My understanding, according to how things are generally defined legally with regard to victims of murder, is that only humans can be murdered; i.e. one cannot murder a corpse, a corporation, a non-human animal or any other non-human organism such as a plant or bacterium. This legal clarification is an important one for our discussion because it really does seem to indicate that the issue of personhood plays a large role in debates about abortion.

So what makes a person a person?

This is a really tricky question for me because I do consider the concept of “nephesh,” or psyche, to be synonymous with “personhood.” And since I’m a special type of panpsychist that posits all things (including protons, neutrons and electrons etc.) have a certain degree of mentality or a psychic component I personally consider all things to be persons. Some philosophers, however, like to ascribe personhood only to those entities/agents who can perform various actions, like complex reasoning or plan formulation, etc… other philosophers, like Charles Taylor for instance, proposes a significance-based view of personhood:

“What is crucial about agents is that things matter to them. We thus cannot simply identify agents by a performance criterion, nor assimilate animals to machines… [likewise] there are matters of significance for human beings which are peculiarly human, and have no analogue with animals.”

For me, personally, distinguishing what makes humans unique from other creatures is a fun topic to think about but, again, because of my spiritual panpsychist commitments, the concept of personhood applies to all things (not just humans) and the discussion of what makes humans unique from other creatures becomes a separate, fun conversation in and of itself for another time.

But just for kicks let’s keep going and work our way to the question (that, as we’ve established, has some dubious assumptions) of when personhood begins.

We’ll start small. Multicellular organisms can loosely be divided into two categories: one type establishes order among cells through their internalized patterns of action and their individual relationships. This type of multi-cellular organism usually doesn’t move much (plants, trees etc…). The other type has the previous type of order, but also has a centralized source of order. A unifying experience emerges out of the experiences of the cells in some part of the organism; this requires a central nervous system and a brain. (Now keep in mind, these categories are loose approximations. There are, of course, always disputable instances to be found).

So when does personhood begin?

As I indicated above, I think it should be made clear that the understanding of “personhood” or “psyche” or “soul” (I’m using these terms interchangeably here, in case you didn’t notice) should not be considered unique to human beings because psyches/souls commonly appear in the animal kingdom. And, on top of that, every living cell has value in and of itself and for God, and therefore, should be respected and valued by humans.

Some conservative Christians (and some Christians who aren’t conservative), I anticipate, might have an issue with how I’m conflating soul and psyche. They may say that it’s actually the everlasting eternal soul that makes humans special and unique. I’ve written about my view of the soul before and don’t want to rehash it here, but just briefly: I simply DO NOT believe in the idea of the soul as some sort of supernatural, ontological reality which is distinct, but yet somehow related to the body in some way, and which is a “substantive substance endowed with reason,” as Augustine says. And I honestly don’t think that when most people talk about the soul in this abstract way that they actually believe this bullshit either. I think that most contemporary people do what I do when they talk about the soul: they conflate the highly developed self-conscious experience found in humans with “the soul.”

All that being said, then, since we’re talking about humans in particular here, from a process-emergent perspective it could be argued that the human psyche/soul doesn’t become uniquely human until it starts doing uniquely symbolic human things, which hardly starts before language develops. This is Charles Hartshorne’s point above, and although I don’t necessarily agree with Hartshorne’s weird rational contributionism with regard to value, personhood, and abortion, his point about the difference between potentiality and actuality is a good one to consider I think. Having potential is an indefinite state, while actuality is identifiable, ascertainable, and functional.

So, if we say that personhood involves the formation of the “psyche/soul,” then, to quote process philosopher, John Cobb, the term “can be applied when there is a succession of unifying occasions each of which derives extensively from its predecessors and contributes extensively to its successors. Of course, each also derives from cellular occasions and contributes to them. The relative importance is always a matter of degree. Hence there is no one point at which the “soul” or “person” comes into being.” It’s for this reason that human beings would better be described as human becomings.

Now, we can go in at least two directions here with regard to murder and personhood and look at the implications:

1) If we accept my spiritual, animistic, panpsychist definition of personhood, where non-human animals, insects, plants, germs, bacteria, etc. have personhood status, it turns out that we are maliciously murdering people all of the freaking time (and make no mistake, we have been consciously murdering our planet for quite a while and, from my perspective, this is no less of a travesty; I mean, we are indeed killing God and ourselves).

or

2) If we accept the more process-emergent understanding of personhood, the one where personhood is still universal but human personhood becomes unique at a certain point, then there is good reason to believe that human persons don’t become uniquely human until they start doing uniquely human things.

Either way, I think both options here helpfully subvert our wicked and myopic anthropocentrism, forcing us to see a larger picture, as well as humble us by directly implicating us and getting our hands dirty (so to speak) in life’s cycles of not only birth but death as well. The truth is that we are constantly killing each other, and although this must be accepted, it is never not sad.

Additionally, with regard to murder and abortion, I’m pretty sure when conservative Christians claim that ending the life of a blastocyst, embryo or fetus is murder (a moral wrong) they’re being hyperbolic. As we’ve established, no reasonable person would debate that some type of killing is going on when a blastocyst, embryo or fetus is terminated, but again, as our definition of murder states, malice aforethought is typically associated with **murder** and helps to distinguish it from other types of killing. Malice aforethought implies that the murderer has hateful, bitter, resentful feelings toward the one who is being murdered. I cannot be convinced that a woman who has an abortion, for whatever reason, can have malice aforethought associated with her state of mind. I simply can’t. In fact I’d be willing to bet that the state of mind most women have during abortions resembles some type of frantic, stressful anguish and/or heartache, not malice aforethought.

With regard to this moral dimension being discussed, I resonate quite a bit with Christian ethicist, Rebecca Todd Peters, when she builds on the reproductive justice ethic of black womanist activists by indicating that “The problem that we face in this country is our failure to trust women to act as rational, capable, responsible moral agents.” Peters rightly (imo) points out that when it comes to abortion in the U.S. we operate in a “justification framework” where women are continually asked to justify their abortions in response to a default assumption that abortion is morally wrong. As I’ve shown throughout this post, it’s hard to consider death as being a moral wrong since it is a natural part of life, and the only way to make abortion a moral wrong is by claiming it is murder. I do, however, think women can be trusted to act as rational, capable, responsible moral agents and make their own choices when it comes to reproduction and the moral status of the blastocyst, embryo or fetus.

Much more to be said here but I’ll move on.

BABIES AND BLESSINGS If someone asked me if my kids were blessings I would say yes without hesitation. Babies can indeed be wonderful gifts and they can bring much joy. Tiny infant baby humans rank pretty high for me as far as creatures on this planet that I would never, ever, ever want to harm (along with kittens); they’re so freaking cute! But here is the thing about blessings and curses: how we understand blessings and curses really does speak to and depend on our understanding of God, doesn’t it? I mean if all babies are blessings from God then what are we to think about couples who are unable to have children? Or what about couples who have children but lose them prematurely? Are they cursed in the same way the Deuteronomist insists Israel will be cursed if they “fail to observe faithfully all the terms of this Teaching” (Deut. 28:58)? Have childless couples offended God in some way? I refuse to believe that this is the case.

The underlying issue here is the problem of evil. The simplistic, parochial way that most conservative Christian’s talk about God’s blessings and curses paints a picture of an all-powerful, capricious God that is inconsistent at best with the blessings and curses God bestows; we all know good things (blessings) happen to bad people and bad things (curses) far too often happen to good people. Nevertheless, in the conservative Christian’s imagination whatever happens is simply God’s will.

I have zero doubt that this was a comforting thought to ancient people who were frightened by the notion of a random universe, with nobody in charge. But with God in control, even the most unspeakable tragedy could be re-branded: nothing that happens is actually bad. A family living in poverty who can barely support their 4 children who unexpectedly become pregnant with number 5 is not cursed, they are blessed, even if it doesn’t appear to be this way at the moment. Likewise, a woman who is raped and becomes pregnant is not cursed, she is blessed with a baby for crying out loud! Look on the bright side! This type of theology only leads to blaming victims for their own fate.

Perhaps not surprisingly, as a process-relational religious naturalist I view blessings and curses in the bible as a) mostly having to do with the human relationship to the natural world and, to a lesser extent b) perhaps something used by God as a lure that prompts someone or a group of someones to pursue a worthy end. Now with regard to the first type of blessings/curses, my understanding of the kind of blessings found in Deuteronomy 26:3, for instance, are as as close as the Torah comes to a vision of sacred social order. Likewise, when the Bible depicts wrongs piled up on top of one another, as in Deut. 28:17-18, this speaks more than anything to the consequences of humans being in discord with nature. To use climate change as good example again, we humans are indeed out of balance with the natural world and God is cursing us; there will be lots of death and punishment and we (along with our children and our children’s children) will suffer the consequences our sins.

Ultimately, as I have already said and will say again, I generally view my kids to be amazing gifts. I really do. They’re beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But beauty is not always good, however, in fact it is really never only good. Steve Odin, in his great book, says that “since all beauty perishes as soon as it becomes, all beauty is tragic beauty.” In our temporal existence as humans we experience both the joy of beauty arising through the creative process and the inevitable destructive loss of that beauty. Parenthood is an adventure that opens the door to such glorious, blissful moments that I seriously cannot describe them with any great justice. At its best, parenthood is as close to Heaven as it gets, in my opinion. In the same breath we must admit that that which makes greater enjoyment possible also makes greater suffering possible. This is true with parenting as well. The risk and subsequent anxiety involved in becoming a parent is (for lack of a better word) staggering. And perhaps this may be one of the issues lying at the root of the abortion debate: the potential symbolized in the new life embodied by the birth of a baby is glorious (it really is!), and when this glorious potential is viewed from the one-sided perspective that sees intense beauty as being not intrinsically bound up with tragedy it makes issues like this appear all too simple.

I guess just to sum up my positions here which I’ve tried to flesh out (although not very well) in this post:

Life is sacred, yes, but because birth and death are both parts of life, death is just as sacred and sanctified as birth

I take an animistic, panexperientialist stance that says all things are persons, so, therefore, while humans are unique, and special, and definitely different than other creatures they’re not necessarily better or more valuable than other life forms (I know as a particular species our tendency is to look out for our own kind but broadening our scope of concern isn’t a bad thing)

While death is indeed sacred and a natural part of life, murder is still murder and it is reprehensible. But murder is different than other forms of killing, it is a moral wrong

We can indeed trust women (more-so than men I would say!) to act as rational, capable, responsible moral agents when it comes to reproduction and the moral status of the blastocyst, embryo or fetus

Saying something is a “blessing” necessary implies that there are consequences which come along with it, i.e. blessings are more complicated and multifaceted than they may appear

Every Unfertilized Egg In The Body Of A Nun: Sanctity of Life, Abortion, Personhood, Murder, Blessings & Curses was originally published on TURRI

[fem-fatalist]

I think the major problem with pro-life argumentation is that they don’t acknowledge certain facts.

In arguing with various pro-life folks, I commonly see certain “facts” trucked out, when those “facts” are actually beliefs or opinions.  Sorry but no matter how strongly you hold an opinion, it doesn’t make it true.  

False fact #1: Abortion is murder. 

Abortion, by legal definition, isn’t murder.  

I love this graphic, so I’ll use it again:

False fact #2: Fetuses are people. 

This is commonly stated in terms of fetuses being human, as they’re relying on one dictionary definition that human = human being. But in terms of medical science, this simply isn’t accurate, and the logic quickly deteriorates when tested.  

So many parts of us are human, but that doesn’t mean they have humanity.  My epithelial cells are uniquely mine, uniquely human.  Those cells are alive.  They are not, however, unique human beings. My cells are not people.  

A human fetus is indeed alive, and indeed human.  No one disputes that. What is disputed is whether that fetus has personhood.  Personhood, mind you, is a concept that has been debated for hundreds of years with very little consensus.  Philosophers and doctors and thinkers of all types have gone around and around as to that threshold of autonomy, self-awareness, sentience, and intellect that makes a person a person.  

It is not a biological question. It is a philosophical one. 

Therefore, if you feel that a fetus has personhood, that is your opinion. It is not an established fact. 

False fact #3: Consent to sex is consent to pregnancy.

This is, simply put, an opinion.  It’s dishonest and disingenuous to suggest that this idea is an established fact by any stretch of the imagination. Period. 

The reasoning for this is due to the obvious counter-arguments. Birth control can fail. Sex isn’t solely for procreation and arguably never has been so. There are others, but that’s frankly not the point here. This statement is opinion and in no way resembles other established, demonstrable facts such as “the earth orbits the sun” or “2 + 2 = 4.″

We can’t have a straightforward, productive conversation about this problem if people refuse to acknowledge these basic things. 

[informative-feminist]

Here are some “pro life” questions posed by Priests for Life. I took it upon myself to answer these, since on their website they got a little sassy and seemed to think that these would be super hard to answer. 

(1)    "Pro-abortionists say that outlawing abortion would restrict a woman’s right to privacy. Is that right absolute? Does somebody’s right to privacy exceed another’s right to live?"

a.     It’s not only about the pregnant person’s privacy. It’s about bodily autonomy, which is a basic human right, and in all other legal matters, it supersedes the right to life.

(2)    "If what you say is true and the issue isn’t really abortion but a woman’s right to control her own body, why doesn’t your agenda include drugs and prostitution? Aren’t laws against those just as restrictive to a woman’s right to choose what she will and will not do with her own body, as laws against abortion are?"

a.     Many pro-choicers do advocate for recreational drugs, because they tend to be liberal in politics. My personal “agenda” does not include hardcore drugs because they are harmful to a person’s body 100% of the time. Drugs incite violence, and they do not allow/help users to contribute to society. Drug users end up costing a lot of money to insurance companies, as they almost always end up hospitalized. Drugs such as opiates have no real benefits to them and countless drawbacks. That’s not a fair comparison. 

b.     I am absolutely in favor of sex work, as long as the sex worker is fully able to consent and not being forced or trafficked. 

(3)    "Why is it that the very people who say the government should stay out of abortion are the same ones who want the government to pay for them?"

a.     Because of the Hyde Amendment, federal tax dollars actually do not go towards abortion. (The fact that Republicans want to defund PP even though the Hyde Amendment is still in place shows that they really want to attack healthcare and people they percieve to be women. The act of repealing PP when tax dollars only pay for health services is an act of indirect violence and complete misdirected misogyny.)

b.     I do believe tax dollars should fund abortion as well, because abortion is a medical procedure, simple as that. We pay for people to have access to all other sorts of healthcare; abortion is no different.

(4)    "Abortion advocates say they are in business to help women. Other than offering to kill their children for them, what are you doing?"

a.     First of all, I’d like to point out that I am not an abortion advocate. I am a choice advocate. I advocate for pregnant people to have complete control over their own bodies and futures. 

b.     I’d also like to point out the misuse of the word “child”. If you are going to engage in a debate, please use the correct medical terminology. A fetus does not become a child until birth. 

c.    Abortion allows for pregnant people who do not wish to be pregnant, to terminate that pregnancy. It really is that simple. 

(5)    "Pro-abortionists say that the unborn child is part of the mother’s body. If that is so, why does it have a completely different genetic code and often a different blood type? How do you explain the fact that it has it’s own immune system? Why is it male about half the time?"

a.     Again, pro-choice, not pro-abortion. The fetus is technically part of the carrying parent (CP)’s body, in that it is physically connected to them and lives inside of them. 

b.     That aside, let’s assume that it is another “person”. The fetus is still using the CP’s body, and it only has the right to do so with the pregnant person’s full, enthusiastic, ongoing consent. This is exactly why a person cannot be forced to donate organs or blood, even if it would prove lifesaving for another person. We as a society recognize that it is not one person’s job to give up their bodily rights to keep another person alive, if they do not consent to do so. 

We don’t even grant said rights to born people. Why grant superhuman rights to a fetus whose personhood is debatable? 

(6)    "If we use the absence of brain waves to determine that a person’s life has ended, why shouldn’t we use the presence of brain waves to determine that someone’s life has begun?"

a.     The fetus is alive, medically speaking, from conception (even unfertilized eggs are “alive”. All live cells are “alive”). A fetus becomes a human life when brain waves are detected, at between 21 and 24 weeks. Even so, its newly earned “human status” in your mind, still does not give it rights to use another person’s body without their consent. 

(7)    "Since you say that your interest is in protecting women, what is your position on these at home, do-it-yourself, abortion kits now being offered by many abortion advocates? Also, do you feel it’s ethical for them to advise women to avoid the gynecologist’s office for not only these procedures, but regular check-ups as well?"

a.     I have never heard of these so-called abortion kits, and I sure hope they don’t exist. If a person is considering an abortion, I would most definitely advise them to visit a certified gynecologist to perform the procedure.

(8)    "We are now seeing the unborn being treated for disease, given blood transfusions and even operated on. When a doctor does one of these procedures, who is the patient?"

a.    In this case, the patients would be both the fetus and the carrying parent. Like I said, the fetus is a life, but it is imposing upon another person’s body, which it can only do with their consent.

(9)    "Pro-abortionists try to justify their actions by saying that, while the unborn may be human, it’s not a ‘person’. Can you give a detailed description of the differences?"

a.     I referred to this above. It cannot think. It cannot live on its own, outside the womb, which is the main difference. It does not have fully developed organs. These are both medical, and mental/emotional/psychological differences.

(10) "Pro-abortionists base a significant part of their argument on the concept of viability. Can you give me a description of what it means for someone to be viable?"

a.     Viable would be capable of living alone outside the womb; essentially, being able to survive with only external care (administering of food and drink, etc). Naturally, a fetus is not viable up until the point of about 24 weeks - long past the time frame in which abortion is legal in most states. 

(11) "Does it bother you that abortion is legal after the point where medical science has evidence that the unborn child feels pain?"

          Researchers and doctors are still very unclear as to when fetal pain begins. Despite the fact that the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act listed the pain marker at 20 weeks, more research is showing that the threshold is likely 29-30 weeks. 

In any case, no, it does not bother me. Abortions past 21 weeks account for 1.1% of all abortions. They are necessary, often sad for the parents, and always the pregnant person’s choice. 

(12) "Why is it that abortion advocates say they want women to have all their options, but they then fight so hard against laws requiring totally informed consent?"

I am all for informed consent. It’s actually the Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) that misinform pregnant people and spout out false statistics. I’m unclear as to where you heard that pro-choicers wanted to misinform pregnant people. 

(13) "What rights do you feel a father should have in an abortion decision?"

Unless he’s the person who is pregnant, absolutely none. Nobody should have any rights regarding the pregnant person’s body, except the pregnant person themselves. 

(14) "Why is it that pro-abortionists fight so viciously to keep parents from having a say in whether their minor daughter has an abortion or not?"

           Again, because it is the pregnant person’s decision, not anybody else’s. It would be completely illegal and unethical to force a minor (or anybody) to remain pregnant OR have an abortion against their will. Minors still have bodily autonomy just like everybody else. 

Does it not disgust you to think of a 14 or 15 year old, practically a child, being forced to keep their pregnancy, trapped in an ever changing body against their will, forced into childbirth by their parents, the people that were supposed to support and protect them? Because it should. It really should. 

(15) "If pro-abortionists are mainly concerned with the health and safety of women, why do they fight so hard against medical standards as legitimate out-patient surgery clinics?”

We are fighting to have abortion clinics meet the same medical standards as any other healthcare clinics, but not more. Anti-choice legislators are putting more stringent requirements on women’s clinics because they want to shut down these clinics, not because they actually care about the health of the people accessing them. 

(16) "Let’s look at a hypothetical situation: two women become pregnant on the same day; six and a half months later woman A has a premature, yet healthy, baby; woman B is still pregnant; a week later each decides she doesn’t want her baby. Why should woman B be allowed to kill hers and not woman A?"

           Because Baby A is already born. At this point, the parent has already gone through the act of childbirth, and if they do not want the baby, they can give it up for adoption. However, Person B might be considering abortion because they doesn’t want to physically be pregnant anymore. Once a baby is born, it can be transferred into the care of other people, but that doesn’t solve the problem of a pregnant person who no longer wants to be pregnant or give birth. 

(17) "If it became absolutely clear to you that the unborn child is a living human being, would you then favor outlawing abortion?"

            Absolutely not. As I’ve said, human or not, it is still imposing on someone else’s body. Abortion is not about wanting to kill the fetus, rather about giving a pregnant person their full human rights (first and foremost, bodily autonomy). 

(18) "Why don’t we each look at the downside of our respective positions? Have you ever thought about what the ramifications are if you are wrong?"

It doesn’t appear that you have done the same. Also, what is there to be “wrong” about in giving someone their human rights?

(19) "When it was first discovered that the brain cells of aborted babies were a potential treatment for Parkinson’s Disease, the ABC NEWS program, NIGHTLINE, carried a story about a woman who’s father suffered with this malady. She wanted to be impregnated with the sperm of her father, for the purpose of creating a child, which would then be aborted, and it’s parts used to treat him. Do you see anything wrong with this?"

I do. However, to think that this is the reason why abortions occur on a daily basis is absurd and laughable.

- Just because you find something morally objectionable does not mean it isn’t or should not be a right. 

- Simply because people abuse their rights (keep in mind that she did want to do it for a good cause, in her eyes) does not mean those rights should be taken away. For example, should we take away first amendment rights due to the rise of internet trolls? 

No, because even what they are doing is morally objectionable, it is still their right and censorship of rights is a very, very dangerous thing. 

(20) "Should a woman be allowed to have an abortion for absolutely any reason, such as sex selection, selective reduction, or job promotion? If not, when not?"

          Absolutely. The circumstance behind an abortion does not matter in the slightest. If it matters to you, then maybe you should consider whether or not you’re anti-choice for the sake of the fetus, or because you want to police people’s sex lives. 

Abortion needs to be safe, legal, affordable, and available on demand with no questions asked. 

(21) "I am going to take the liberty of characterizing your position, and then I want you to tell me where I’m wrong. You want abortion to be legal right up to the moment of birth, in other words for all nine months of pregnancy; for any reason whatsoever, for no reason whatsoever; for a minor girl of any age, without parental consent, without even parental knowledge; and if she can’t pay for it, you think the taxpayer ought to. Is there anything inaccurate about that statement?"

           Yes. Keep in mind that less than 1.1% of abortions occur after 21 weeks, and I can guarantee that the people who are getting those abortions are not doing it for shits and giggles. Those are people who wanted to be parents, and either because of a fetal abnormality or for fear of the life of the pregnant person, had to abort. 

           For the other ones, too - yes, you are correct. Any reason, any age, with or without parental consent or knowledge. And yes, I think taxpayers should pay for abortion. Your tax money is not yours, and you don’t get to direct it away from things you find morally objectionable. Abortion is a healthcare procedure just like any surgery, and should be treated as such. 

[paulyc43-blog1]

*Gender and Rhetoric

In this entry I will examine the critical questions: What gender/sexuality norm is constructed or undone in this artifact, how is it rhetorically done, and/or how does it promote a dominant ideology over a marginalized group or push back against the ideology or gender norms? Is it productive/unproductive (ethical/unethical)? 

To investigate these questions, I am exploring Luke Bryan’s song “Country Girl (Shake it for Me)”. This song and the music video that accompanies it, creates the gender norm that women are to dance for country songs and for men by creating that idea through its lyrics about women and the visuals in the music video that accompany the lyrics depicting women in sexualized ways. Overall, it is unproductive by creating a sexualized gender norm towards women.

This song was released in 2011 and is accompanied by a music video that starts off with monologues from a few women about being country, riding their horses to Burger King, and they also talk about their career as dancers. The video itself shows shots of Luke Bryan and his band performing the song inside a studio setting as well as shots of girls dancing in a dance studio, and then eventually joining the band on the studio stage. There are short quotes from the women throughout the video of their testimonies about coming to Los Angeles to become professional dancers. 

Gender “norms” have been around just around as long as humankind has been, and quite frankly they are all created by us as a society. Some stereotypical gender norm examples include things like women working in the house, taking care of the children, cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, while men are seen as the providers, working outside the home to provide food, safety, shelter, and money to the household. Butler takes a look at undoing these norms by exploring how dependent we all are on these norms saying: “the matter is made more complex by the fact that the viability of our individual personhood is fundamentally dependent on these social norms (Butler 2)”. He basically says that without some sort of norms and recognizability as people, we are unable to live our lives, but we must also work to try and undo some of these norms. Butler himself mentions that his works are “efforts to relate the problematics of gender and sexuality to the tasks of persistence and survival.” Basically, he’s saying that there is a certain element to social norms that help keep us alive and relevant, but there are social norms that are not good and can be toxic to individuals within society.

In Luke Bryant’s song Country Girl (Shake It for Me), it reinforces gender stereotypes and society norms towards women as sexual objects with the lyrics and the visuals in their music video. The first line of the song is “hey girl, go on, you know you’ve got everybody looking” which he says in a fairly seductive tone, like that is all she’s there for, to make everyone look at her to be attractive. The lyrics also say “girl I can't wait to watch you do your thing” like that is all she is supposed to do, “her thing”, for an audience. Although the women in the music video are practicing to be dancers as a career, in which case, dancing would be their “thing” to do, however, for the rest of women, that likely isn’t their only purpose or job in life. Many women will do other careers, such as lawyers, doctors, teachers, farmers, electricians, welders, and so on, and not simply to entertain people, specifically men. Luke sings “Shake it for the young bucks sittin’ in the honky tonks” which means that women should shake it for the young men in the bars, and then keeps listing things for women to shake it to; the birds and bees, catfish swimming down deep in the creek, the crickets, critters, and squirrels, the moon, and then finally, shake it for me. This then brings the question, of are you really a country girl, if you don’t shake it, if you don’t dance? Butler says “If I am someone who cannot be without doing, then the conditions of my doing are, in part, the conditions of my existence”(Butler 3). In other words, unless women who enjoy country music, fit the societal norms that this song set, are they not able to be country girls? When I think of a typical country guy figure, I think of someone that is tough and rough, but if I think of a country girl, and I am supposed to think of someone that is just submissive to the roles of country music, and not see them as also rough and tough?

Visually, these women are also objectified in the music video as well throughout the song. The scene is set as these are women that are trying out to be professional dancers, they want to dance as a career. They show visuals of the women putting their makeup on in the dressing rooms and then have clips of them practicing their dancing throughout the music video. However, the visuals they chose to show include clips of the dancers flipping their hair around, shaking their hips around and they make sure to slow down those clips and add a dimension of sexy to them, where the clips of the band are not slowed down or modified to create any more sort of sex appeal. Would the women even be in the music video if they didn’t conform to the the sex appeal of the song? It feels as if they’re only there to compliment the sex appeal of the song and not to fill any other role in the production.The clips also often are zoomed in on the women’s chests in tops that show some skin, their hips as they dance, and their butt, and this was clearly done intentionally, as the clips are only shots of those. However, the guys in the band are dressed up in t-shirts and jeans and they don’t show any clips of their hips or in anything revealing. It seems to me that the women we’re only incorporated in the visuals to add to sex appeal and used the narrative of want-to-be dancers to accompany the blantant sex appeal that is wanted by the song lyrics for the music video.

Luke Bryan’s song is overall unproductive, however it doesn’t seem unethical. There is so much more value to women than just to be shaking it for men, they have so many options for things to do in life, and quite frankly, women don’t owe men anything. This song was designed to be more of a pop song to get women to get to dance to the song, however, the sexual references and the constant lyrics that women are shaking it for someone or something, rather than themselves is unproductive because it creates a reliance that women need someone or something to shake it to to be able to dance. As for being unethical, I specifically thought of the music video itself, because the women in the video are openly trying out to be professional dancers. They did not include women that did not sign up for this, the women are dancing because they want to. The scenes aren’t from random women in the crowd in the concert, or unidentified, this is something that they are doing on their own free will and that they want to do. With the song lyrics themselves, although they might be frowned upon when critiqued lyrically, they don’t have any blatant attacks against women, or even have any curse words in them, therefore I believe the lyrics as a whole are ethical as well.

Janelle Wilson did a study of country music videos and they suggested that the country music industry did offer a space for contemporary female artists to visually openly challenge the traditional confining gender roles that dominate American and country music culture. Although she looked at both men and women artists, a few lines stuck out to me. She says that songs about love as articulated by women, these themes are apt to be less traditional and less desperate and perhaps more assertive and more realistic (Wilson 301). By saying this Wilson suggests that men in country music depict love and women in negative and unrealistic lights and women artists in country music are finally able to start dismantling these social norms of women in country music by creating a more realistic view of women. Wilson goes on to reinforce this point by saying “It would be overly sanguine to suggest that country music has created the liberated woman, but it does seem fair to suggest that country music is an element of popular culture in which we can see women’s resistance to submissive roles.” In other words, it is not news that women have been oppressed and objectified in country music, but that they are actually resisting these roles, through women artists in the industry. As Butler says “terms by which we are recognized as humans are socially articulated and changeable” which is something that women artists in country music.

Work Cited

Bryan, Luke, director. Luke Bryan - Country Girl (Shake It For Me) (Official Music Video). YouTube, 23 May 2011, youtube.com/watch?v=7HX4SfnVlP4.

Butler, J. (2004). “Introduction: Acting in concert.” In Undoing Gender (pp. 1-4). New York. Routledge. 

Wilson, Janelle. ETC: A Review of General Semantics. Fall2000, Vol. 57 Issue 3, p290. 14p

[godzylla]

I grew up in an extremely rural northern Ohio. As a small child I did not have much experience meeting people who were unlike me in appearance and background.

In other words, white and some variant of "Christian."

There was A black family with kids at my elementary school. There was ONE Hispanic family with a kid in my class. Through my earliest years, cultural diversity meant someone who was Catholic, or even a "holy roller."

People look at me funny when I say that I get my morality from comic books, but I mean it. Certainly not church, which disliked fun songs like "My Ding-a-Ling" by Chuck Berry, TV shows like All In the Family, Maude, and Soap, and was opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment. Superman PSAs, aligning with "the American way," promoted caring for neighbors with different backgrounds, religions, and skin tones. While representation was poor (or stereotypical) in the early '70s stories, there was still more diversity in comics than in my life.

In school there was no doubt about the core basis of the Civil War, and slavery was an evil concept. I remember doodling an idea for "Civil War super-heroes" with the conceit of a white and a black hero working together to upend the tyranny of slavery... good friends with secret identities where they pretended to be master and servant. (Forgive me, I was 13-ish).

I think I was in 4th grade when I told a "Pollack" joke to a friend who turned out to be of Polish decent. He didn't mind (at least he said he like those jokes), but that was the first time I realized that a "Pollack" was a real person and not really a synonym for a generic stupid person. I was embarrassed and I don't think I ever told another "Pollack" joke. I learned and adapted. I became subconsciously aware of the divisions between people as I met more minorities.

I began to learn about life in big cities - such as the lessons were - from Spider-Man and Luke Cage. On TV Dragnet rang false with all of their hippie conspiracies, but in comics I met people, not props. (Sometimes.)

My brother had full-sized American and Confederate flags tacked onto his ceiling. The Confederate flag design was kind of cool I guess, but the flag always made me feel uncomfortable because of its ties to slavery and secession.

I went to a church camp for a week one summer, and as I recall (memory being the mercurial thing it is), black kids stayed apart from white kids. Or we stayed apart from them. I wonder now if it was intentionally segregated.

When I was in high school, we moved to the South and on top of my discomfort of being away from my "home," I was amazed as I encountered attitudes I'd never encountered before. There were some people who acted like the Civil War was still going on (and I was definitely considered a "Yankee"), and there were some who acted like the Confederacy had actually won the war with the way some of the leaders and the soldiers were revered.

Rebel flags were everywhere, letting all and sundry know that the traitorous government of the Confederacy and the slavery it represented was honored.

In spite of friends I made and a large extended family there, I never quite got comfortable living there. I had an uncle once refer to a poor section of town mostly populated by black folk as "N-----town." I never spoke to him again that I recall. Perhaps a greeting or answered question, but I was horrified and so disappointed. He's long since dead now.

It was sometime in high school that I'd first heard of the concept of reparations for slavery. My naivete reared its head again, I'm afraid. With the Civil War having ended ~115 years before, I had the opinion that reparations made no sense when it was unlikely that anyone who had been a slave or owned a slave was still alive.

I remember when some Indian (Asian) doctors and their families moved into the area that some people reacted to them with distrust (and worse).

To put all this into context, we only lived about 20 miles from the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan.

I'm not saying I had better morals than people around me, I'm saying that as I encountered people and attitudes, observed situations, I learned. I adjusted my own naive outlooks.

I remember when I was around 21 or 22, I said something along the lines of not caring if someone we knew was gay as long as he didn't try to hook up with me. I kind of meant it as a joke, but as time went on I realized how awful it was, and examined my attitudes toward gay people.

I've also opined that I don't think I'd even visit another country if I didn't learn at least a little of the language, and while I never meant that to mean "don't come here if you can't speak English" I know that I was speaking from privilege and those thoughts could be inferred that way.

My enthusiasm for learning and for trying to understand science led me to also adjust my perspective on abortion, which was prolonged and probably the most difficult analysis as I struggled through the last vestiges of the religious indoctrination I'd grown up with. As I took the time to learn and understand the process of fetal development, the "personhood" fell away. Over time I also learned and have come to somewhat understand the unnecessary and unfair burdens this places on women, as I also come to understand just how anyone who is not white has been and is treated in this country.

And so we come to our current situation in the US. We have militant police forces and court systems that are intrinsically, institutionally geared toward harassment of persons of color and overly supportive of those who are not.

In my minor encounters with officers of the law, I've never had to fear them. My outlook in the past was to make sure they were at their ease, to see I was no threat - which is, indeed, a good thing. But it only works because I'm a very pale fish indeed. I'm ashamed to say that it was not really too long before the series of events that led to the necessity of Black Lives Matter that I came to sluggishly understand that my few experiences do not match the experiences of others.

So I talk to people. I learn how different locations around the country are. I learn about the different experiences of various minorities and women. If you've ever said or even just thought "I'm so tired of hearing about racism," well, the victims of bigotry don't have the option of tuning it out. Imagine how tired some people are of experiencing racism, or sexism, of having family and friends murdered, or shut out.

The best example I can think of to explain to someone who doesn't understand how society favors cis hetero white men even passively is this: Being white is like playing a video game at the easiest setting, while women and LGBTQ+ and people with darker skins all have to play at various levels of more difficulty. We still have to play the game, even if we aren't good at it, but everyone around us has to be that much better just to match us.

Life is a process. Learning is a process. I would like to leave my part of the world a little better when I leave it, both day to day and at the end of my life.

Sometimes I get unapologetically angry over the injustices we're facing in society and the absolute fascism growing around us. More than sometimes, I'm usually angry about it. I'm not currently a minority except as an atheist, which doesn't affect me much right now; as a white male, you may think I have no part in this. But what happens to our neighbors affects us as well. Not because once they've come for the others they'll come for us (which is the way it goes, of course), but because America's diversity, humanity's diversity, is our strength. Diversity is variety, and variety is the spice of life. Life is better when we celebrate our differences, not when we hate each other because of them. I will defer to others who are targeted by this system, and by the current regime, to tell their stories. We have to listen, because they live it. Then we need to ask how we can help.

This became something quite different from what I'd intended when I began writing. I wandered and it became something stream of consciousness. This wasn't easy to write and it won't be easy to post, but it's something I wanted, needed to say.

[renzanandsinghramananda]

On Jewish Theology and Abortion

(This article is based on a Twitter thread I wrote on May 19, 2019, expanded with more detail)

Religious freedom applies to ALL religions

To begin: Judaism permits abortion

That is a given.  Different rabbis might rule differently as to when it is permitted (usually handled on a case-by-case basis) but all agree that there are circumstances where it is kosher.  In  some cases it might actually be required by Jewish law; cases which, if  abortion is universally outlawed, might infringe on the religious freedom of Jews. The main thesis of this essay is that, because Jewish theology interprets the abortion issue differently from fundamentalist Christian theology, the US government should not be deciding questions about when the soul joins the body.  To do so violates the First Amendment. WARNING: If you plan to hit me with antisemitic crap over this about how "wrong" the Jews are according to your religion, don't bother.  Been there, done that.  But if you are seriously interested in my more mystical take on this regarding body and soul, then read on.

When does human life begin according to the Torah? 

 Genesis 2:7 says that God "formed Adam from the dust of the earth, breathed a breath of life into his nostrils, and he became a living soul" (or a living being: Hebrew nefesh chayah) .  So we have two aspects of humans: body and soul.  The body comes from the material world, the soul from the "breath of God" or spiritual world.  For literally millennia, the first breath was considered the beginning of life as an independent human being. This is still the way that Jewish law views it. (For more details on that, see this excellent article by Danya Ruttenberg "Why are Jews so Pro-Choice?") Anti-abortion Evangelicals quote Psalm 139:13 and Job 31:15, which speak of God saying, "I formed you in the womb." These verses are regarded as poetry by Jews and play no role in Jewish law which, as I said above, we base on Genesis in the Torah.  While Christians see the Bible as a single book, and give equal weight to all material in it, Jews understand that the Bible is really a library, with different categories of material: Torah, Prophets, and Writings.  The Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) forms the basis for Jewish canon law (halachah.)  The other books are considered to be various genres of literature: mostly history, sermons by the prophets, and inspirational writings like Psalms and Proverbs.  These materials are secondary to the Torah and are not cited in legal decisions. I actually had an Evangelical tell me that Job is the oldest book in the Bible - trying to prove that it overrides the idea that life begins with the first breath as in Genesis - but that is wrong. The literary style of Job is like a Greek play (more on that) which puts it way later than the Torah. So lines from Job and Psalms do not count in determining the Jewish stance on abortion.  But for the sake of argument, if we are going to discuss "knew you in the womb" verses, then what about Jeremiah 1:4-5, where God says, "“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you..."? Some Christians also cite this verse to oppose abortion.  But read it again: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you..."  How could God know Jeremiah before he was in the womb?  How can he be synonymous with an embryo that does not even exist yet?  What did God know of Jeremiah BEFORE gestation? His soul.  Which, we can probably assume, was "breathed in" by God at birth. The bottom line is, the question of when the soul joined the body is theology, and gets into First Amendment issues.  Should the govt be deciding a theological question over which various religions disagree? No.

Influence of Roman Catholicism

The Catholic Church was more deeply concerned with the question of ensoulment than were the Jewish scholars.  "Life begins at conception" was not always their official doctrine (read more on that) but they were moving in that direction, and in 1974 it became official.  Pope Paul VI ratified the "Declaration on Procured Abortion," making it required doctrine for all Roman Catholics that abortion is forbidden because the soul joins the body at conception. So why do I, a Jew, care about Roman Catholic theology?  Because, with the Pope's declaration, the political debate heated up. Back in the 1970s and 80s, the anti-abortion protesters were almost always Roman Catholics.  But gradually, their theology jumped denominational lines into fundamentalist Christian groups.  Although Catholics today still oppose abortion, it is the Evangelicals who are leading the charge to legally ban it.  As Cynthia Ozick once put it, we should oppose anyone "who proposes that the church steeple ought to be gin to lean on the town hall roof."  Which is exactly what is happening now.  Hence the reason that Jews are concerned. Today, the Catholic stance that "life begins at conception" has pretty much taken over the "pro-life" movement. As an outsider looking in, I find it ironic that fundamentalist Christians, who have historically been anti-Catholic, are now basing their argument against abortion on a declaration by the Pope. Or are they?

The impact of embryology and DNA studies

Parallel to the Catholic Church's decision on abortion was the science of embryology.  Even in antiquity, people had seen miscarriages at various stages of development, but the process was not well understood.  When Watson and Crick unraveled the double-helix mystery of DNA in 1954, which led to the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, we suddenly had a better understanding of how the human body develops.  We could finally explain, scientifically, exactly what happens when the sperm and egg unite.   And we understood, at least to some extent, how genes carry our hereditary traits. So the Pro-lifers seized on conception as the moment of full personhood, claiming that everything you are going to be is created in the union of sperm and egg through your DNA. Again ironic, because we now have very religious people -- many of whom are anti-science in other areas -- relying on science to argue that the fetus is fully a person either at physical conception, or when there is a heartbeat.  Both of these are purely materialistic arguments. If you believe you are nothing but your physical body, that your DNA is all there is to your human existence, then the heartbeat argument works. An odd stance for a religious person. no?

Body and soul -- again

But what if you believe a human being is not simply a matter of biochemistry? What if you believe there is such a thing as a human soul?  Then we are back in the realm of theology.  When does the soul join the body? And how do you prove that?  You can't, really.  Which is why Jewish law bases "life" on the first breath, which can be observed without the use of theology or mysticism.  Even atheists can agree whether a child is breathing or not. I suspect this is also why Republicans now focus on the heartbeat benchmark, because it, too, can now be measured by ultrasound.  But what about the brain? Nowadays brain activity is a better marker for life. Does a six-week-old embryo with a heartbeat think?  A brain dead person has a heartbeat, but are they still alive?  Is there a difference between an adult kept alive by machines and a no-yet-viable fetus kept alive by a womb? In the case of the brain dead person, family members get to decide, along with their doctors and clergy, whether to terminate life support - even though the patient still has a heartbeat. So why is that not also true of an embryo in the womb? Why is it murder to end the life of an embryo without a thinking brain but not an adult who is brain dead? In fact, Judaism does not consider the death of an unborn child to be murder, based on  Exodus 21:22-25, which the New American Standard Bible (NASB) renders this way: "And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no [further] injury [to her], he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him; and he [the guilty one] shall pay as the judges decide."  Fined, not executed for murder.  "Thou shalt not murder" does not apply here.

In conclusion 

So we are back to the original questions: When does the soul join with the body? When does it leave? Is the body the whole essence of a person, or is it a merely a garment for the soul? These are questions we should leave to the clergy, not the politicians. True, abortion is ultimately a woman's choice, sometimes along with the father of the child or other family members, sometimes not.  Religious women will also take their faith's teachings into consideration.  And they should be free to do so according to their own theologies, not dictated to by fundamentalist Christianity.

* * *

Addenda: Seems I am not the only one thinking in this vein.  A recent New Your Times article discussed whether Jewish and Muslim doctors and women should get religious exemptions in Alabama under their new strict anti-abortion law.  After all, Christians have claimed exemptions from Civil Rights laws (such as refusing to bake cakes for gay couples) based on their faith.  So why shouldn't religions that allow abortions also get similar exemptions? Good question.

from Notes from a Jewish Thoreau http://bit.ly/2HGhXzs via IFTTT from CoscienzaSpirituale.net Associazione "Sole e Luna" via Clicca

[xiexunziblog-blog]

On Jerry Fodor’s Functionalism

The most successful theory trying to resolve the famous mind-body problem as well as trying to provide a fundamental explanation to our concept of consciousness in recent decades is believed by some, like Jerry Fodor, to be the theory of functionalism. As it is briefed to its every important assertions Fodor has provided an excellent evaluation of functionalism and point us to a way facing the paradox of Qualia. Qualia is what many philosophers have believed to constitute the nature of consciousness. It is such a property which embodies the concept of subjectivity, it is what becomes the “irreplaceability” of individuals’ conscious life, or to say individuals’ experiences of this world. These individuals do not merely include humans; animals may qualify for sharing the property of qualia if they are to be believed to possess consciousness ----- in reference to Thomas Nagel’s bat experiment. Fodor stresses that till now functionalism has performed well and well enough but found its way stuck in front of the nature of human consciousness.

Functionalism does so successful because it turns its way from what in nature is consciousness to how consciousness is formed and performed. In my opinion that will be the area which we have to stop. There is nothing we can do about the area beyond ----- the nature of consciousness, the qualia. Functionalism has covered what we are able to know, it is a waste of time or worse, a mistaken notion to hope to extend functionalism or any of our normative theories to include explanation of human consciousness’s nature. It is not necessary or possible for us to know about what on earth is consciousness to a universal level, it is rather important to know how we can make use of it.

Why I am announcing that qualia are not able to be recognize the essence of consciousness? Because the question in itself does not stand as valid statement. Here it is to ask if it is possible that we can use A, a property or an object or anything does not matter, to test for the validity of the existence of consciousness?

Someone may mention about John Searle’s point of view. He simply argues that “doubting your consciousness” does not stand because consciousness is the foundation to doubt. Searle believes that for one he is either conscious about being conscious or being unconscious must, be conscious at the first hand; therefore, to claim he is not conscious is a contradiction. Fine, if there is only one conscious being on this earth who can tell consciousness from unconsciousness then we have to agree that Searle makes it right. But the fact is, your unconsciousness can still be perceived by others who are in their conscious state, and when you go back to conscious state they tell you, “Dude, you just get into a coma!” Now you know you have just lost your consciousness. And from this illustration we must counter-argue Searle’s performance fallacies by pointing out that even if you are not aware at the time, you can still be sure about being in the state of unconsciousness at a time through others’ telling or sometimes your personal recognition (for example, when you awake from your sleep of course you know you just slept). Although it is clearly not plausible to give judgements on consciousness, we can still determine if we are conscious or unconscious indirectly. Searle’s argument does not cover this part.

Then it leads further to our question, what is such a property or whatever thing named A which is believed to determine the presence of the state of consciousness? Now we are to turn our sights to our life, to ask how do we recognize that we are just from asleep; and to ask why we can trust others when they tell us “you were just in a coma”. The very first factor we can ascribe to A turns out to be the level of response we receive. When you are unsure about a person’s state of consciousness, what would you do first? You try to establish communication with the person, by asking him questions or just calling his identities. If he does response, maybe he is not unconscious at all; if he does not response at all, he is absolutely unconscious; if he responses in a disordered, abnormal manner you may confirm that he has lost certain amount of consciousness etc. This quantifiable level of response might be a part of A.

Objections against this first ascription to consciousness may arise. One might just ask if the subject in doubt is a physical disabled in an extreme way: his motor muscles may cease functioning in a way, that his muscle could barely move (just like Stephen Hawking, in a sense, just imagine his fingers have stopped working as well). But inside his body everything is functioning as usual. When you try to determine if this Dr. Hawking is really conscious or not (no response could be observed from now), it is clearly not plausible to claim he is totally lost of consciousness! People can imagine how hopeless Dr. Hawking is, unable to response whereas being crystal clear about what is going on around him. He is surely conscious; however, no responses could be given to anyone. Here, it draws out my second ascription to the state of being conscious. Although Dr. Hawking’s external responses are not possible for us, but his internal responses, as I have mentioned before (his inside remains functioning) could be detected indirectly with devices or what. Doctors nowadays use devices to ensure if the patient’s brains have ceased functioning to call for the death ----- not exactly as the doctors in the past did by checking pulses or any other external responses to stimuli. As I have shown, the internal structural activities could be used to determine if one is in a state of consciousness as well.

People may not stop casting doubts on these two ascriptions either. What if there happens to be a vegetative person (a PVS)? Most of his bodies ceases functioning, some of his brains however, remains active. There is no promising answer to the question if the patient is going to come back with full internal and external activities ------ should we claim him conscious or not? I would like to emphasize that this is no more than a question asking about the level of responses. I will declare the PVS remains such a little amount of consciousness that we should, to a small extent, treat him as being conscious. And the question if he is coming back is not a question ----- a possibility. And it is possible that every man alive dies at every minute, if it is the extent of possibility it should not become an objection to these ascriptions.

Now as I have analyzed above, the only things remained for us to determine others’ and myself’s conscious states are internal and external responses, and they should cover all factors concerning to determine consciousness. Now I will formally reply to those “intentionalists” and qualia-believers. They might argue that beyond responses of consciousness, which we may certainly use to sufficiently confirm the presence of consciousness, those responses should satisfy in providing certain structure, or certain form of consciousness; we certainly need to distinguish conscious responses from mere unconscious responses. Intentionalists would argue first that responses without a clear intention is not to be considered as consciousness. For example, the difference between an image is to be displayed “in” a person’s mind and the difference between an image in to be displayed “on” a mirror is beyond the difference of “the person gives responses internally and externally whereas the mirror doesn’t give”. If the mirror changes its physical properties when a beam of light hits its surface, or even if we give the mirror the design that whenever it “senses” the beam of light it will perform certain and certain actions, does it have formal consciousness? Here it invites the problems concerning robots: if we program a robot identical with us in terms of performing internal and external responses, does intentionality stand and block in the way equaling robots with persons?

People may not feel uneasy to support or deny this statement. We are now forced to take a look at our daily experience, to examine how can we view intentionality alone (in despite of responses, internal or external). “Is it one type of responses being intentional whereas the other type (or the other types) of responses being unintentional?”, one must ask. Some may try to say that responses which are aware by the subject are intentional. But this suggestion will eliminate animals, even kids from our list of beings who are considered as being conscious. Self-awareness is associated with self-consciousness, which the latter shall not become a necessary condition for having consciousness (as we have explored above). The very personal stance I will take, is that the word “response” already brings in “intention”. We say one is intentional, we are indicating that he is in active stage in contrary to a passive stage. The action, or the response, is done by him not upon him. This reference of the starter of the action already exists in responses; no responses, no intentions. Intentions are just part of the actions, having intentions responses could become responses. It serves only as to instruct people about there is one doing the action, as part of the full explanation of action. Therefore, there does not exist such term as “a type of response which does not include intentionality“. Thus, intentionality does not constitute responses or consciousness; it is “in” responses and belongs to responses. And if there are to be agents, whatever mirrors, robots or what, they have intentions.

Now people will argue against me including mirrors and robots to agents and thus, to persons. However, by deriving intentionality to its barest form I am only emphasizing that it does not constitute consciousness at all. It is brought by consciousness. Maybe speaking about personhood or agents, certainly other aspects should be ascribed to agents and persons, whatever that of moral concepts; and the subject here I am speaking about should not be of a moral issue ----- I am not determining for which subject should qualify to subject to morality. I am here, speaking of the probability of consciousness ----- not moral implications or moral/pragmatic capacity to make good use of it. As I have emphasized above, mirrors and robots can be understood as having consciousness ----- and intentions in a moral sense or self-awareness should not become the factors we use to determine the presence of consciousness.

Now we face “the last line stood men and men alone” ----- qualia. I shall call for an illustration of what qualia are in reference to Fodor’s example. As you see an apple, you declare it is “red”. The experience you see the apple as “red” is what makes the experience have the property qualia. If we break down this process, we may find it is simply a process of in-and-out: 1) the beam of light of the apple travels and happens to travel through your eyes; it stimulates chemical and physiological reactions in your eyes and transform the information to your brain; your brain analyzes this piece of information and sends out responses (internal); your body respond (internally and externally). The qualia could only come from the process when the brain is analyzing the information, in this case of seeing an apple and declaring it to be red, one is basically doing abstractions. If it is not the inner-process of abstracting the idea of red out of the perception of the apple which provides the source or shows signals of qualia, if it is the in-and-out processes ----- namely, the internal and external responses which produce qualia ----- then it should be of no problems that we can treat qualia as intentionality. We can understand qualia as the starter of the action, as part of the response. But if we agree that qualia come from the process of abstractions, the process of inner-analysis of the brain, or a processing system, then the problem of qualia becomes the problem of human epistemology. During this process of analyzing information, what is attached, or what is given to the responses coming out of it? In my opinion, it completely becomes the area where functionalism can easily take over ----- different structural analyzing functions may need to different forms of responses, and that differences are common since the different processing systems are present in the world. That, constitutes the common irreplaceability of consciousness. Reply to Nagel’s bat experiment, if we are to change our brains in totality as well as our sensual organs ----- we extend our organs and our brain structure to what bat is believed to uniquely possess ----- of course we can experience what is it like to be a bat. Therefore, qualia, is just the sum-up of the common difference among information processing systems ----- our brains.

In conclusion, intentionalism and qualia-supporters may find their ideas not transcendental, but they can be explained under the regime of functionalism. If we are to emphasize the so-called qualia’s irreplaceability in semantic reference, that methodology of talking everything in philosophy by playing with words and just think from nothing could not be a way out. Rather, we ought to look at the real presence of our cognitions, really take a realistic, actual account of consciousness from our daily experience in this world. And so we can give conclusion to the question concerning the human consciousness.

November, 2016

[destielrose]

A Different Kind of Conversion

I don’t know how to do this. I’ve allowed myself to become so invisible that no one can see me anymore. I’ve battled suicide my whole life and I’m so tired. So very tired of fighting. I’m hitting middle age and all of those things I told myself I would do, would become, would conquer: I haven’t done, haven’t become, and haven’t conquered. And I feel like I’ve run out of time. 

I want to slay my demons and stand on their fiery carcasses and know that I will not need to fight them anymore. But I’ve lived just long enough to see life cycling back on itself; those demons keep coming back. There isn’t anything to stand on and nothing is certain.

 I identified as gay when I was a kid, but was shocked to fall in love with a man. I’ve been married to him for sixteen years and I love him tremendously. There have been a lot of trials and I’ve been sick, too. Mentally and physically. I tried to end my life a lot. One time I came particularly close to succeeding. I lay next to my children and listened to them breathe after I took too many pills, wrote letters to them on their bodies with permanent marker. I think I was trying to make something of myself stay with them. I believed in heaven and was eager to see God. I just didn’t want to be in pain anymore. 

But dying hurts. When things started to get painful and my heart sped up, I stumbled to my husband and asked him to drive me to the emergency room. It wasn’t my first stay in the mental ward, but it was my last. When my mother in-law came  to pick me up, a woman who almost never shows emotion, she was broken. I began to see how my death would affect those around me. I was mentally ill enough at that point that I genuinely believed I would need to be institutionalized long-term and that I would be a burden on my family forever. But I could see that even this burden would be preferable to my death, in the eyes of my family. So I made the decision to survive.

But suicide is an attempt to solve a problem. When i resolved not to die, there was nothing left to do and no end to the pain. I had already tried everything out there: buddhism, special diets, wicca, medications, spiritualism, therapies, addictions, self help techniques, and lots of quackery. Everything. And there was a great void inside me that nothing could touch. I could see my life swirling around me; I even knew it was a good life; I just could not feel it. It was as if I was under water. Everything was out of focus and far away. Distorted. And cold.

In that void, the nasty voices that I’d tried to keep at bay with all those therapies and religions and addictions had no obstacles, and they chattered at me all day long. Like Lucifer in Sam Winchester’s delusions, self-hatred and loneliness were my constant companions. I was nothing. I was worse than nothing.

But slowly another voice broke through. “Come home to me,” it said. “You belong to me.” And somehow I recognized that voice as Jesus. Yeshua, the Savior I had met as a young child. 

“How could you want me?!” I asked. “Don’t you know what I’ve done? I’ve broken every one of your rules. I even tried to murder myself. I’m a whore. A coward. You couldn’t possibly love me.”

But, having nothing else to do, I read the Bible. And I discovered that Jesus has a special affinity for whores and outcasts. And he hates hypocrites and the self-righteous, which is all I knew Christians to be. Slowly, he drew me to himself and one day I decided that I would give myself to him. 

“Please,” I cried. “I can’t do this anymore. Please take my life and do with it what you want to do.”

And everything changed. Life bloomed in technicolor and surround sound. I had an anchor. Truth existed. I knew reality. For a blessed six months, I had no depression. There had been so little of me left inside, it was like the Holy Spirit just moved in and filled me up. 

Please keep reading. This isn’t a typical conversion story.

Knowing nothing else, I joined an Evangelical church. The biggest roadblock to my conversion had been the whole gay issue. I had identified as gay. Many of the people I loved were gay. But I knew the church thought that homosexual sex was a sin, always. I did research, but the more I dug into the Bible, the less I could hold onto my old way of thinking. I would just have to trust God on this issue, as much as I didn’t like it. 

I was not the only one struggling with the gay issue. I don’t have to tell you that it is the singe most hotly debated topic in society today. But I was loyal to my God and my church. I even went to a Christian college and got a degree in theology and English. All of the voices in my echo chamber were saying the same things about sexuality. I knew in my head that my old desires were wrong. 

But it never touched my heart. I LOVE gay men. Oh my goodness, I do. I went through a period of time where I was so steeped in slash (Smallville, in case you are curious) fanfiction that I began to think that I might be transgendered. I wanted to inhabit those stories. They kept me alive in the time between my resolve to live and my conversion to Christ. In fact, it was my discovery of dominance and submission in those stories that created in my heart a longing to submit to someone or something bigger than myself, something true and kind and firm and absolute. People laugh (uncomfortably) when I say that BDSM led me to Christ, but it is true.

I had to abandon those stories when I became a Christian, though. Because I felt they were wrong. They were part of a sexual addiction that had nearly decimated my marriage (and honestly a big part of the desire for suicide, too). Unchecked lust can destroy a person. Not to mention a marriage and a family. 

Six years later, my teenage daughter and I have just finished watching Gilmore Girls for the second time through, culminating the experience with the newly released A Year in the Life. It was such a good experience. I was amazed at how that show had allowed us to bond. We had a language all our own, and the situations Lorelai and Rory found themselves in always gave us openings to talk about the deep things in life that just don’t come up naturally. But twice through is enough. We needed a new show. 

Conveniently, Jared Padalecki had left Gilmore Girls to do another show. It was in the horror genre and I wasn’t quite sure if that would be appropriate for either of us. My girl is pretty young and I’m a big wimp when it comes to the scary stuff. But I was also a huge fan of Doctor Who and I was becoming inured to the gore and the jumpscares in that incredibly safe universe. Also, I’d heard of the SuperWhoLock fandom and knew I was required to at least check out the Supernatural show to keep my fan cred up to date. 

So we watched. 

And I’m not sure how I got here. Seven seasons in and my worldview is in shambles. It isn’t the kooky pseudo-Christian mythology that has me tied up in knots. It’s the way this fandom has wormed its way into areas I thought could only be reserved for the sacred, has challenged issues I thought I had long since put to bed. 

Is it wrong to love a TV show *this much*? What is real? What is virtual? Shouldn’t I be concentrating on real life? Am I just mindlessly consuming? What is worship? Am I worshiping celebrities? What is family love? What is romantic love? Where do the lines exist between them? I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents or brother; is that why I read romantic love into every situation? But the show also seems to be teaching me about the power of family and the depth of love. In fact, it shows me redemption and the face of Christ over and over again. In a show about broken people in a world even more broken than ours.

I have started reading fanfiction again. I even wrote some. And it is slash. And…it. is. so. beautiful. Which makes me question the nature of goodness and of God. I’m reading the other sides of the issue of homosexuality and it turns out that there isn’t a good case on either side. And if that’s true, shouldn’t I default to love and beauty? And shouldn’t I know, of all people, having been on both sides of both issues (homosexuality and Christianity), how much weight either can carry? And if beauty and goodness and true love can be found in homosexual relationships, how can that possibly be a sin?

I have no one I can talk to about these things. I feel like I have come out of the closet in so many different ways in my life and now I feel like there are closets everywhere, fracturing my personhood. Do I walk through the door that leads back to my church? Do I walk through the one that leads to a new (SPN)family? Could they ever, possibly, converge? 

How do I know what is true? And who will help me here? Will I never find a home, a community where I fit?

Please respond if this calls to you at all. I am so conflicted over all of these things that I’m feeling suicidal again.