Children and clones: satisfaction and difference (Baudrillard, 96-97)
Cloning has become a hot button topic. Beyond the phobic sci-fi fears, the reflection of clones may undermine the power of parenting.
Whether it be human nature or generational lore, there is a deep interest in parenting. People like having children. It may be subconscious or externally imposed but the freedom of enjoyment upon many is to procreate. People take great joy in raising their children. While there are insufferable years and regret along the way, there is a deep linkage to providing for offspring. Procreation is a creature thing. Birds, fish and cows all procreate. There is a part of darwinism that ensures the species lives on. Yet with great intellect, the human mind unique in its unnaturalised creation differs heavily. Its evolutionary superiority questions the very basis of nature. It no longer wishes to live amongst the animals. Deserting to its own area defending against wild beasts. It classifies itself in its own world. Along the way in its bubble it cultivates its own culture and theories. These theories eventually become human centric They question the very essence of being. The very essence of nature. Inspiring a breech from the normative.
The anti-natalist program desists in this regard. It provided an eerie perspective of reality. Life is suffering. Being born against one’s wishes is awful. Pain is horrible. The human mind collects pain like no creature in the world. No other animal processes pain like the human mind does. More than physical pain is emotional pain. Animals feel pain but it is less graphic than the human trepidation. The human is bred for an isolated box. It cannot revel in the simplicity of the natural world. It has exceeded the nature of humanity. No wonder the philosophers reigned supreme. They were the pinnacle of knowledge. In the modern age of information, it is the geeks who are singled out for high paying jobs. Revenge of the Nerds is corporate America. The smartest people are the richest people. This intelligence has created so much. Brought incredible technology and flourishing to human life but at the same time made man more complex. The more complex the more thought. The more thought the more pondering. The more pondering the more questioning. The more questioning the more second guessing. The more second guessing the more anxiety. The more anxiety the more depression. The human mind is a roll coaster to the abyss of pain.
For all the greatness of the modern age it has also made people emotionally dependable. It is not about the IQ points but comprehension skills. People are more emotionally intelligent than ever. People are more in touch with their emotions. This is lauded as a good thing. People ought to be smarter and they ought to be more sensitive. For all this progress it also derails people. Stubbornness and desensitised feelings keep the mind in place. To us it comes off as cold hearted and devilish. How could a parent never say “I love you” to his child? How could he never hug him? To some degree there is a positive behind this. Being in touch with your emotions just means that one is open to feeling them not confronting them. To open the floodgates of the emotional hazard is to place oil next to a flammable object. To juggle electric rods in a pool. Ideally, the hope is to be balanced but that is not simple. People are overly induced by their emotions. Allowing their emotions to guide them through their journey. Their intelligence while profound is coloured by mental suggestions. To think is to care and to care is to feel. Such active intellectual engagement hurries the neurosis front and centre.
People obviously felt in the past. They weren’t CIPA patients. They worked real hard and died often from illnesses. We today are fortunate that medicine has come so far only possible with the intellectual drive. It has been a double edged sword. Providing physical relief but not mental relief. Anguish is prominently of the emotional hard drive rather than physical exhaustion. Past people were depressed frequently due to the same horrifying situations that many today find themselves in. Yet despite the great ease of life and the wealth people are depressed. Unlike their ancestors they aren’t working for a king nor are they working in a factory. Their lives are easier but not always simpler. While some may characterise the simplicity as going to school going to work and so forth it isn’t that simple. That was the way of old. You followed a more or less fated regimen. The possibility of pluralism off endless opportunity strikes the young as confusing and difficult. It may sound odd to older folk but their hard line of projected life was seamless. It was direct and narrow. No deviation no questions. Mustering through pain and guilt but no more. Now it is all to be heard and all to be analysed.
For Benatar to write about anti-natalism is to be a saint today but a fool decades ago. There is an element of religious dissuasion but there is also a go big go home archetype. One lives by the wits pulling themselves up from the bootstraps. To live was to struggle. While not necessarily promoted it was inferred that life was a challenge. An obstacle but one worthwhile to live through. The existentialist program decided to reevaluate the model of old. In hindsight of losing religious momentum, existentialists prioritised the self. The cynicism of Schopenhauer and the aspiration of Kierkegaard. The nihilism of Nietzsche and the absurdism of Camus. Sartre’s interpretation of existence precedes essence captured this feeling so well. The person himself needed reevaluation. Existence saw its own reflection with immense analysis. The person was to be deduced in light of the individualistic persona. A mirror of the individual’s own life impacted his own perspective and pathology. With human existence on the drawing board the perils of existence came to the forefront.
Benatar’s argumentation comes on the heals of pessimists. While some of the existentialists sought clarity and peace in the troubling life. Acknowledging the difficulty yet seeking to overcome the challenge. To either exist within the troublesome atmosphere or somehow overpower its will. Others took pessimism to a different degree. Schopenhauer found the will—will of life—as a self preservation instinct for unsatisfiable satisfaction. Cioran aligned with the former’s asceticism though potentially even more extreme. Cioran challenged his own life whether it was worthwhile in the first place. Much satire and immense torment is complacent in his aphorisms. Pessimism slowly gained traction as existence gained more concentration. The more existence was refracted under the microscope the more scrutiny it would demand. Suffering has become a mainstay and mental health is shooting through the roof. Intellectual interpretations of suffering led to realising it beyond the self among animals and nature. Yet it also bounced back on the human experience.
Human torment has devoted its time to unravelling the model of serenity. Pessimists have squarely projected a horrid picture. In keeping with moral initiative suffering was no longer a given. Less religious influence allowed taboos to become more earnest. While pro-choice advocates focus on bodily autonomy, Benatar focuses on pain. Advocates could argue against taking to term due to pain but their overarching argument is the supremacy of the pregnant body over the fetes’ viability. Benatar takes a step further and redirects the pain to the foetus who will be forced to live insufferably for the rest of his life. The decision to cause pain to others is sanctimonious and undesirable. Religion may obligate or promote procreation but parenting is not a right. Since such a right would supersede causing lifelong damnation. Wish to have pleasure enjoy sex but don’t raise children for your own selfish goals. Do not burden a child with the horrors of the world. It would be interesting if we were only a few hundred strong but since we are seven billion, the moral side can win out in the technologically advanced world. Humanity today will live with such unfavourable odds but that doesn’t given permission to do that onto others knowing the consequences.
Not too shockingly, Benatar also opposes cloning. Cloning is self indulgence and narcissistic. Yet this case of altruism seems to miss the point brought against tormenting the next generation. The clone if human will experience the same or somewhat of a similar experience of torment. If the clone has his own autonomy and intellect, he will endeavour to suffer through the trials and tribulations of the world. Just because he is a carbon copy does not make his existence in any way inferior to one’s own. If he is independent of the original and can experience freely he will suffer immensely. The argument against children is also against clones. Clones are by virtue either slaves to the self or subjugated to the whims of the desperate reality. Torment works on both sides of the aisle. To care for the moral potential other is for children who didn’t ask to be born and for clones who didn’t ask to be made. For Benatar if life is hell than any intellectual being is forbidden. Benatar is thus uniquely pro death instead of pro-choice as he favours not bodily autonomy but existential torture. He cares more for the foetus to not live for its own sake than for a woman to rid for her sake.
Benatar does draw a parallel between the two. Neither is worse than the other, though it can argued a clone is better since your mental torment is subdued by experience over a non-living unknown. Though on the other hand giving a clone the mental torture you suffer from is deeply evil. It is knowingly giving another a disease whether selflessly or selfishly. If the time were to come whether to procreate or clone, the unknown may be a better moral option than giving the disadvantage to a reflection. The net-harm is worse to a mirrored ghost, knowing the outcome than to the unknown who may live better. The claim existence is a net-harm is not an objective truth but an opinion. Existence can be insufferable to everyone and yet be tolerated differently by each. It is more a spectrum. Those suffering find existence gnawing at their core while others shake it off quite easily. If a child may live better weather from adaptability, new life or a new environment it may be a better option than the clone who will reflect the tiresome reality of old. The stubbornness and neglect. Though the opposite can be true if the cloner is cheerful. Still as a rule the unknown and its jolly youth may have a higher probability.
Fighting Benatar’s asymmetry argument the jolly youthful wonder will find more pleasure than a rusty old clone. The clone may be new model and independent but he shares DNA and personality for the most part. The child contains only half the DNA and the splurge of a young visionary to take the world before the horror sets in. For many children at least in today’s day, pleasure is the most common feat of adolescence. It is only when growing up does pain enter the fray rather harshly and quickly. It is not always true but adolescent brains are underdeveloped and do not process the mental torture in the same way adults do. It is Neverland until responsibility tackles the aspiring youth. Pleasure is always sought in different forms by all even chronic sufferers. For many the pleasure many fail in comparison to the pain which leads to suicide but there is nearly always some pleasure. Suffering lends to depressive thoughts that cloud pleasurable judgement. Tolerance assists in balancing the pleasure-pain scale. If the pessimist is that pain ought not to exist then there also no point to pleasure. Nature is pain but everyone does it. Whether humans or animals.
It will be interesting to see how the pro-choice group answers the pro-death group if the latter’s numbers grow. The latter group cares little for bodily autonomy. One’s desire to be a mother means little if the pain outweighs the desire. If one wishes to get the new iPhone but in order to get the last one he needs to push through everyone, he may not do it because the harm and jail time would not be worthwhile. The dominance of the self in the way of modernity has been questioned by the existentialists. The individual is not only to answer for himself but for others. It is not about what is good for me but what I do to others. The return of communitarian aspects whether in the social or religious fields warrants response to these individualistic claims. Currently there is a lot of individuals moving freely in an acceptable bubble but that bubble will be popped if the harm to others is significant. Many libertarians are happy for people to do as they wish as long as they do not impose on others. Benatar seems to insist that procreation while not imposing on the rest of the nation is imposing on a defenceless child.
Bodily autonomy retorts fall in line with the contemporary solutions. Yet how that fits with the efficacy of one’s own lineage is a different question. Is a child separate from one’s own? Would a clone be separate? The confines of one’s house does not discriminate. In a sense, beating a child is active harm while procreation is equal and at worst passive harm. Yet it may be the motherhood answer that takes the cake in pleasurable possibilities. A clone is the replica and needs no instruction maybe not even education. They are ready for the world and will suffer. Yet the child is protected provided care and pleasure. The natural order promotes procreation. It is the enlightenment that causes friction and self reflection to question its efficacy. It is an ability unabashed and undeniable. It is embedded in the human creation. The world is scary and difficult but the child prepared by parents devoted to the cause salvages the painful years. Nature endorses procreation not cloning. It is the readiness for solace. Tolerating the bad and internalising the good. Life is difficult but that doesn’t upend having children. The difference of child and clone is the difference between a maybe tortured life and tortured life. The clone has so much more to deal with existentially than the normal child.
Bringing a clone is an existential horror show. If independent they will try to begin their own lives. Yet their lives are a reflection of the cloner. They are but a replica and second rate fake. It only causes the clone more apprehension and stress. He is a fraud, recognised as a double but never amounting to the original. The child is a product. A unique gem in the universe. There may be some expectation but it isn’t at the core of their being. It is their own identity that flourishes past their parents’ successes and failures. It is working on those pitfalls that gives the child the best option. He learns from his parental team. What did they do correctly and what did they do incorrectly. As he grows older he facilitates that education to his child. The child has his share of troubles which he learns from and is stronger from. The pain he learns in his youth is firepower for his life. Pain in the next sequence won’t be too bad given this or because pleasure has been this great. Education is gradual and generational. The clone doesn’t have that ordeal, it doesn’t have that novelty nor agenda. It remains a stranger in an identity based world.
While selfish to some regard, the adult also needs some pleasure. Beyond self pleasure from exercise and sex, there is giving to others. Nothing more pleasurable than raising a child. Difficult but the mission and value in imparting wisdom to the next age. Responsible and entitled to do so. It is hard but in a world of pain it can be a place of pleasure. In the moment tiresome but reflecting how amazing. Some years will be extra tough but more often than night happy to enjoy the children’s presence. Watching them grow and develop. The child also enjoys his childhood and parental gifts. At times annoyed at their rules and his errors but overall happy with who he is. There is bullying and other ramifications but having friends playing in the backyard is a pleasurable thing that if he wasn’t alive he wouldn’t get. Non-existence to the ill may be a fair option. An understandable position. They have lived and enjoyed the pleasure but now it is too much and they’d rather be somewhere else. Anyone can take themselves offline. While it is greatly discouraged maybe that may be an option. If you wish to die that is your decision but at least have the enjoyment of the world. Bad things will happen but compared to the good it may be worthwhile until a point.
The pro-death option while morally sound faces many criticisms. Procreation and parenting is natural. Nature may not be the nicest of friends but it is the reality of this world. Children not clones are given the chance to do so. If such anti-natalist would modify their opinion offer tablets that instantly kill painlessly and decide who can’t parent then maybe procreation isn’t so bad. For now these options don’t exist and maybe they never should. Overall the nature of existence while brute and unyielding has its gems. It isn’t all bad neither is it all good. Sometimes fate deals you a bad hand. Pain is everywhere and so is pleasure. It is a mindset insofar as experience doesn’t trample. To reckon with the pleasure of assisting another and seeing the plausible good is a risk but an educated risk that acknowledges the horror in store.
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