Via Wesley J. Smith come two depressing items. I do not write about them merely to depress but to draw a parallel between them which may be instructive.
The first item is this story about a woman in her 80's who starved and dehydrated herself to death over a period of sixteen days with the help of her friends. Why did she do it? Because, though she had no diagnosed illness, she was increasingly troubled by fatigue and was sad about not being able to continue traveling the world. What was it all about? Control. The news story says it without blinking:
Loss of control was something Conlon feared and sought to circumvent.
If you think that isn't a sufficiently good reason to dehydrate yourself to death, you're right. If you, upon reading the story, think this attitude led Dorothy Conlon to be controlling and selfish in relation to others, inducing her friends to sign promises not to call 911 and to act as a cheering team to take her through to death, putting her friends through a hell of qualms of conscience and horror as they watched her slowly die, you are onto something.
Dorothy's religion appears to have been the hatred of limits. When we absolutely refuse to accept limits for ourselves, there is no limit to the evil we accept into our own hearts and are willing to impose on others.
Which leads me to the second item:
Scientists say they have succeeded in cloning mice, using a Dolly-type technique, by destroying embryos. Here's how it works. You take a two-cell-stage mammal embryo, separate the cells, enucleate them, and replace the nuclei with nuclei from somatic cells, then proceed with cloning signals as in ordinary SCNT. Of course, this destroys the original two-celled embryo. Why do that instead of using eggs? Because eggs are much harder to come by than "extra" embryos. Wesley J. Smith has pointed out that human eggs are probably ounce for ounce the most valuable material on the planet right now, given the drive for reproductive experimentation and embryo experimentation. Even paying young women to risk their later fertility by hyper-ovulation is not satisfying the insatiable demand for eggs from IVF labs and researchers. Hence the desire to find another way to clone. The individual cells of the two-celled embryo evidently retain enough cytoplasm from the original egg to be able to reprogram the somatic nucleus in a cloning technique. (Notice how well this fits with the discussion here in which I summarized Maureen Condic. Egg cytoplasm is essential to embryonic development, which is why only the cells of the extremely early mammalian embryo are able to develop separately as embryos.)
These scientists hope that this technique will advance cloning research in humans by making it easier to make many clones and hone their technique.
UCLA's Byrne said that obtaining human oocytes has always been difficult for practical, legal and ethical reasons. Therefore the ability to use two-celled fertilized embryos would open up large research possibilities."There are huge amounts of material available, in the way there wasn't available with oocytes," Byrne said.
Notice the coldblooded reference to human embryos as "huge amounts of material."
End-of-life issues and beginning-of-life issues are connected. These items are in some ways disparate but what they share is the insistence that there shall be no limits on what we are permitted to do. We shall be as gods. Whether we destroy lives--our own lives or the early lives of embryos--or create lives via technology, we are in control, and no one is going to tell us, "Stop!" Both items, as well, show what happens when we abandon what Smith calls human exceptionalism: Death and destruction. Either every human life is valuable merely in virtue of being human, and both what Conlon did and what researchers will do if they apply this technique to humans are wrong, or not. If not, then what limits are there? Consent? What consent do human embryos give to be destroyed? Consent of those who are mentally competent and able to speak up for themselves? How comforting. Better hope you are never deemed not mentally competent and never unable to speak for yourself. And don't count on even that protection. (Just ask Marjorie Nighbert.)
The cheerful assumption, evident in Dorothy Conlon, that I am (must be, shall be, under all circumstances) the master of my fate and the captain of my soul, is ultimately murderous. It may be murderous only of oneself, but very likely it will also be murderous of others. It certainly results in murdering others when it becomes a slogan in society at large.
No doubt when I encounter limits on my own ability to do the things I like, I will be incredulous, frustrated, difficult, and immature. I make no claim to being a sage or saint, ready to accept age, debility, and limitation with dignity, either for myself or for others. But to speak as to fellow Christians: God calls us to accept limitations when they are placed upon us by the circumstances He providentially allows. And to speak as to fellow humans: Only the acceptance of limitations can keep us truly humane.
Comments (10)
Very true, and excellently argued. This is the endpoint of Western "Enlightenment" and modernism - starting from the desire to master the air, the seas and even space, and continuing in another sphere to the bogus "effort" to eradicate disease and to seek to prolong life to the greatest extent possible. It is why there is the notion that poverty can be "eliminated", and that every person, whatever their "lifestyle", deserves healthcare. We have forgotten Christian history, and the teachings of the Fathers for whom poverty was something to be voluntarily and joyfully embraced. Where sickness created an opportunity to serve unto death, and healing happened as a result of grace, not as an "outcome" of healthcare.
Posted by Dan Zachariah | April 1, 2014 10:29 PM
This is indeed an excellent point.
Posted by Anymouse | April 2, 2014 12:06 AM
I remember in 2007, Wesley J. Smith was a critic of transhumanism.
Posted by Latias | April 2, 2014 4:01 AM
You might enjoy J. Budziszewski's blog http://www.undergroundthomist.org/blog
Posted by Scott W. | April 2, 2014 7:07 AM
Excuse my bad block-quote. It should go all the way to the bottom.
Posted by Scott W. | April 2, 2014 7:09 AM
The canonical statement of Scott's point comes from Abolition of Man:
The best literary explication of the problem that I know of comes from Tolkien, and the Numenoreans' refusal to submit to the decree of the gods which did not permit them to sail Westward toward paradise, at least not so far that their own mortal shores were no longer in view. Their refusal to accept this Ban becomes, in the end, a mad obsession with eternal life and a determination to make war on the gods themselves (you can guess how that works out).
This topic of refusing human limits was not something I had ever heard much about until recent years, for whatever reason, even though it's such an important aspect of the problem of modernism. Larry Auster used to talk about it a lot. Anyway, the only thing I'd add is that lurking behind all the apparent optimism and cheery can-do spirit of "transhumanism" and the like is an abiding fear of death and a deep pessimism that there lies anything beyond the blackness and silence of the visible cosmos.
There is something more purely demonic about this ideal of the self-created man without limits than outright pagan devil-worship, which at least has the dubious virtue of acknowledging that we are not the masters of the universe.
Posted by Sage McLaughlin | April 2, 2014 8:10 AM
Scott, I fixed your block quote but had to squeeze the paragraphs to do it.
The thing about transhumanism is that, in its higher flights, it's obviously a bunch of science fiction nonsense that will never happen. We're never going to be able to make ourselves immortal by uploading our minds to computers, for example. But all the talk softens people up so that they are willing to allow all manner of unethical experimentation pursuant to the less loony-sounding of the suggestions. At the technologically simplest level, simply _throwing out_ unwanted, imperfect embryos or donating them for destructive experimentation is already happening as a direct result of IVF.
It might seem that Dorothy Conlon's pursuit of her own death is at odds with transhumanism's fear of death, but actually the two are joined at the hip, and the common factor is control. We will control the terms of our own lives, deaths, and man-made immortality.
Your reference to Tolkien is apt here, Sage. You will probably remember that, when Denethor is going to commit suicide and take Faramir with him, Gandalf says,
The Dark Power's effect upon the kings of Numenor in Tolkien's mythos was to make them fear death as the ultimate enemy and even perform human sacrifice to try to stave it off. But the effect of the same Dark Power upon the heathen (non-Numenorean) kings was to drive them to suicide/murder combinations. The darkness in both cases is the same.
Denethor, just before he kills himself, says, "In this at least thou shalt not defy my will: to rule my own end."
Posted by Lydia | April 2, 2014 9:29 AM
I hadn't considered that before. It's worth noting that many of the biggest popular boosters of "transhumanism" are your science-fiction-loving libertarian types, for whom the hatred of human limits is intrinsic to their ideology.
Posted by Sage McLaughlin | April 2, 2014 11:26 AM
Actually, Sage, I suspect that they are dealing with a truly unhappy combination of consciously disbelieving there is anything "beyond the blackness" but at the same time a subconscious fear that there really is something beyond it - a fear composed in equal parts fear of the good Lord and fear of the Satan of whom they are unwilling to admit the possibility. Thus they cannot be at rest interiorly at all: there is no inner rightness around which to form an inner peace.
Posted by Tony | April 2, 2014 8:55 PM
"This topic of refusing human limits was not something I had ever heard much about until recent years, for whatever reason, even though it's such an important aspect of the problem of modernism."
The critique of human hubris of this sort is a common theme in the work of Wendell Berry, Walker Percy and Marion Montgomery, among others. All three gentlemen stress the need for human humility before God and the Creation, the necessity of valid and just hierarchy, and thus the acceptance of human limits.
Posted by Nice Marmot | April 4, 2014 6:37 AM