[extropy-chat] Famous author self destructs in public! Film at eleven.

[John-C-Wright at sff.net]

The esteemed Mr. Stross writes:

"Can we maybe agree, as extropians one and all, that in an ideal world 
involuntary and/or unwanted conception wouldn't occur, and that as 
extropians are dedicated to the improvement of the human condition, 
figuring out how to make conception a process under voluntary control 
-- preferably wired into our neurohormonal axis by way of gene-line 
engineering -- would do more to alleviate human suffering than any 
amount of on-going gaseous blathering over whether humanity cuts in 
when the foetus reaches 10^5 cells or 10^8?"

I hope it would not be improper for me to wonder whether, until the technology
is available, I might suggest avoiding unwanted conception can be addressed, at
least in part, by normative and legal considerations. 

In so far as human behavior can be modified to make prudent provision for the
human sexual process, all human societies have adopted, with minor variations,
the same rule: no sex outside of marriage. In the heritage of the West, we have
(until recently) enjoyed a strict version of this rule: no sexual behavior that
defies reproductive purposes. (The reasoning for this rule was to habituate the
society to check the sexual appetite, which, if led unchecked, leads to tragedy.) 

While it may be possible, with contraceptives, to engage in the reproductive act
without purposing reproduction, it is not possible, when following a rule of
chastity, to bear a child without a socially-recognized father. Even these days,
in Anglo-American law it is still a recognized principle (albeit under attack in
some jurisdictions) that a husband cannot call into question the paternity of
his wife’s children. Chastity, hence, has the social effect of protecting women,
in so far as possible, from shouldering the cost and care of childrearing alone. 

Since I was raised during the height of the sexual revolution, the idea that
prudent provision should be made for the human sexual process was an idea so
despised that I never once heard it expressed, not by anyone. 

Mr. Stross also comments: “It then becomes impossible to express an opinion on
the subject of abortion per se without a whole slew of additional philosophical
and social attitudes being attributed to one.”

At the risk of sounding like a Christian, let me say: Amen, brother. 

It is embarrassing to say this, but the majority of reactions to my comments on
this list seem to be based on worries about my sinister (or contemptible)
Christian faith. I have been bored to tears by one too many replies which are ad
Hominem and utterly irrelevant to the argument at hand. Therefore allow me to
allay this worries with a personal aside: I rejected the philosophy of the
sexual revolution not long after I got married. For purely secular and
prudential reasons, I realized what a foolish risk to a man’s happiness is even
the attempt at non-marital sex, and how demeaning to women: it draws her most
profound instincts out of alignment with her prudence, and urges her to love a
man who will not vow his love faithful. I cannot think of a greater insult to
the feminine spirit. The only other option is to coarsen and eventually deaden
that idea that ties love and sex together, the mystery called romance. 

I became an anti-abortion partisan when I became a father, and these events
happened years and decades before my conversion to Christianity. The logic I
used to support the decisions in both cases was entirely secular.

To make the worries of my anti-Christian friends seem all the more unwarranted,
allow me a second personal aside: My adored wife until quite recently was
pro-choice. Her reasoning was this: (1) the question of when human life or
“personhood” begins is a religious rather than a scientific question (2) the
laws of the land should be neutral toward religion insofar as is the need to
maintain public order permits (3) outlawing abortion would be an imposition of a
religious doctrine, and hence would not be neutral. 

My wife was and is a church-going God-fearing woman, born and raised in the faith. 

She also was a proponent of free love: she thought sex was permitted between
couples truly in love, despite any lack of formal celebration of that love, or
any exchange of vows. To join her local church, she had to sign a document
denouncing pre-marital sex, which she could not in good conscience sign. It was
not until her cold-hearted secular husband talked her into seeing the
old-hearted logic of chastity, that she could bring herself to sign.  

I wish someone had been there to witness the irony of a zealous atheist arguing
with his Christian wife that premarital sex was immoral.

John C. Wright