Birth as the Initiation of Force of Parent Against Child

Michael wrote,

William, do you not need to be thinking before you can choose not to think?

Let's define our terms. The choice to think is the choice to focus one's mind -- to sharpen one's level of awareness -- to raise it from a lower to a higher level. Although you do need to be aware of that choice in order to make it, you needn't already have attained that higher level of awareness in order to choose it. To claim otherwise is be a contradiction.

If the choice to think is a epi-choice, then the birth of a child might be epi-aggression.

I have no idea what an "epi-choice" is supposed to mean. The choice to focus one's mind -- to raise one's level of awareness -- is a real choice. Nor do I know what an "epi-aggression" is. What I do know is that giving birth to a child is not and cannot be an act of aggression! You cannot violate the rights of a person who does not yet exist.

Post 21

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - 11:28am

William, for the sake of argument, contrast the act of conspiracy to commit murder against the act of conspiracy to bear a child. If no harm comes to the potential murder victim against whom the perpetrators conspired because they were stopped for whatever reason, has a crime been committed? I can make my own arguments but want to avoid poisoning the wells for now.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 12/20, 11:29am)

Post 22

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - 1:21pm

Conspiracy to commit murder is conspiracy to violate the right of an individual. Prior to the birth there is no individual, hence no rights. So since there is no individual with rights until AFTER the birth, there is no conspiracy. If I conspire to murder someone who doesn't exist, there can be no murder, so there is no real conspiracy.

Does an overly ambitious fellow, eyeing an attractive woman, while entertaining ideas of seduction, have to be worry about conspiring to engage in possible criminal acts of aiding and abetting in the birth or a child? :-)

Is a young girl who daydreams of one day having a family in fact daydreaming of committing crime? Are her daydreams an act of conspiracy if she talks about them with her boyfriend?

If birth is the source of individual life which is the prerequisite to having rights, then how can providing life be seen as a negative? How does making rights possible equal violating them?

The children who are born to the very worst parents and in the worst of conditions still frequently manage to carve out a great life for themselves. People build their own lives and only those who cling to the negatives involved in their parenting carry those negatives over into their adulthood enough to contaminate it.

If a child in a restaurant starts to choke on a piece of food, should we stop ourselves from doing the heimlich maneuver for fear that we are bringing the child back to a negative existence, and that would violate his rights? Death had him by the throat and we shouldn't force him back into this vale of tears? Give me a break!

You seem to have a very negative view of childhood. I recommend watching several hours of "Little Rascals."

Post 23

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - 3:15pm

I asked the rhetorical question as a prelude to the act of committing spiritual murder of children via conspiracy among the churches, schools, and parents who seek to crush the soul from infancy in order to save it -- a premeditated "living death" to prepare the child for the purported "life after death" that will never happen.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 12/20, 3:35pm)

Post 24

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - 5:38pm

Lol we need a late night objectivist radio talk show for this one.

Post 25

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - 5:58pm

In the middle 90's, Roger Bissell designed a similar theory of "caused helplessness" in an effort to affirm and support the state's role in forcing parents to parent the way the state determines parents should parent. Luke, did you read Roger's article on this? I don't know if its still available. It wasn't published here, as far as I know.

I just remembered why Luke's idea here sounded so familiar.

(Edited by Teresa Summerlee Isanhart on 12/20, 5:59pm)

Post 26

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - 6:34pm

Teresa mentions "caused helplessness" where the state renders the parents helpless as a result of co-opting what should be parental authority.

In psychology, there is a condition/symptom called "Learned Helplessness." It has been written about quite a bit since the 1960's.

Martin Seligman has written alot about learned helplessness, and it's contribution to depression. He, and Branden, were the only psychologists, for decades, that spoke of positive psychology - of approaching psychology with a standard of good health, not just a list of disorders.

Back when they were working on the DSM III-R (an earlier version of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual which is the 'official' list of all mental/emotional disorders) they mentioned "learned helplessness" in conjunction with "Self-Defeating Personality." But it never made it past those early discussions. Self-Defeating Personality was broadened and renamed "Personality Disorders Not Otherwise Specified." And, in the end, it didn't list anything like "learned helplessness."

There is a very specific kind of learned helplessness that is part of using passivity in a passive-aggresive fashion, as a way to parasite off of efforts of others, as a way to avoid normal overt levels of assertiveness, as a way to obtain unearned attention and sympathy, as a way to avoid personal responsibility or conflict. There was a Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder, but that was put aside (and it didn't specifically mention Learned Helpless anyway. I think the next version of the DSM should have this peculular device mentioned (but they don't ask me what I think about these things :-)

Post 27

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - 7:58pm

I've had to deal with passive-aggresive people in the workforce and they can be really annoying destructive little parasites until they are spotted and dealt with.

Post 28

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 1:32am

Luke, you wrote,

William, for the sake of argument, contrast the act of conspiracy to commit murder against the act of conspiracy to bear a child. If no harm comes to the potential murder victim against whom the perpetrators conspired because they were stopped for whatever reason, has a crime been committed?

Yes, because they intended to violate someone's rights, and would have if they had not been stopped. If I intend to shoot you, pull the trigger and miss my target, I have committed a crime, and deserve to be arrested and punished, even though no harm came to you, the intended victim. However, If I intend to bear a child, I do not intend to violate the child's rights, because before it is born, the child does not yet exist. Bringing him into existence is not a violation of his rights, because his rights can only be violated after he is brought into existence.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 12/21, 1:38am)

Post 29

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 4:12am

All right, let me say where this is going. I wanted to explore this topic as a key point in an article I want to write about small town rural America. The collusion of Christian theology, Prussian-Deweyite schooling, altruistic duty, mental passivity, evasion, corporal punishment, and other abuses strive to condition children from birth into becoming sheep and fodder for religious canons and military cannons. Based on this thread, I cannot make an argument saying that parents violate rights by "forcing" children into existence qua existence. However, I can still make the somewhat less powerful argument that parents passively accept these immoral conditions as moral and proper ones into which to bring a child into existence.

Thanks for your participation, folks, as this will help me to write a better article.

Post 30

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 7:38am

Luke:

Good luck. You are arguing on the most important battleground there is, and one on which for well over a century the battle has been one sided, a veritable rout.

For whatever 'cannons' -- education abused as mandrels of purpose, directed via thought, is an assault on freedom in our political context.

(Mandrel: a tool of force, used to hold or shape a material for forming. I borrow its meaning in this context, where the material is a potentially free human mind.)

Mandrels of instruction on some subjects are entirely appropriate and necessary when we are helpless children; there is no basis to 'free-range' mathematics, spelling, history, geography, or language for example.

When that instruction lurches into overtly and covertly political thought, it is totally inconsistent with the principles of freedom. When it is used to inject, by force, answers to the questions "Why am I here, and what am I supposed to be doing now with my life as a result of that?" it is as unholy as anything that Dr. Mengele ever did in those death camps, aimed at a free human mind.

And, our ratcake politics is so not beyond that.

So sincerely-- good luck.

regards,
Fred

Post 31

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 9:24am

Luke: "However, I can still make the somewhat less powerful argument that parents passively accept these immoral conditions as moral and proper ones into which to bring a child into existence."

Rather like "The Comprachicos."

Post 32

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 3:30pm

Luke wrote, "However, I can still make the somewhat less powerful argument that parents passively accept these immoral conditions as moral and proper ones into which to bring a child into existence."

If, by bringing a child into an "immoral" world, parents committed an immoral act against him, then what would be wrong with terminating his life as a newborn once they realize the "mistake" they've made? Rather than allow him to grow up in such an immoral environment, couldn't they, by your logic, justifiably "euthanize" him in order to spare him the immoral conditions that await him as he continues to mature?

Of course, to kill him would be an even greater act of immorality and a profound act of injustice. So an interesting question arises: If it's an act of injustice to kill him once he's born, because you're denying him life, then why isn't it also an act of injustice to prevent him from being born (through an act of contraception or abortion), because by preventing him from being born you're also denying him life? The answer, of course, is that before he is born, he does not yet exist as a rights-bearing person. After he is born, he does.

Furthermore, even if we assume that a potential child has individual rights, you don't know what choice a potential child would make -- whether he would prefer to be born or not to be born. If he would prefer to be born into an immoral world, then by preventing his birth, either through contraception or abortion, you are denying him a life that he would prefer to experience. If he would prefer not to be born into an immoral world, then by giving birth to him, you are exposing him to a life that he would prefer not to experience.

However, you can't know one way or the other which he would choose, because he doesn't yet exist to make that choice. So, it doesn't follow that by bearing a child, you're either benefiting him or harming him. Once a child is old enough to appreciate life's advantages and disadvantages, he can decide for himself whether or not he was happy to have been born and whether or not he considers his life worth living. You are not in a position to make that choice, and you certainly cannot make it for him before he is born.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 12/21, 3:36pm)

Post 33

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 4:01pm

I really have to question the morality of knowingly bringing a child into conditions of suffering, Bill. I am not sure it requires a deeper analysis than that. There is a story in The Death of Right and Wrong by Tammy Bruce about a deaf lesbian couple that deliberately performed in vitro fertilization with a deaf sperm donor so they could bring a deaf child into the world. They "succeeded" in doing so. Bruce properly condemned the knowing conception and birth of a child deliberately damaged to keep the child in its parents' "comfort zone" as immoral. I agree with her assessment on its face.

Post 34

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 4:37pm

Luke,

Here is the argument that you would have to overcome:
1.) All life contains some suffering unless we imagine some utopian existence that doesn't exist.
2.) There are two forms of suffering - those that are external conditions (like being deaf, or poor, or short in stature, or born in a poor country, etc.) The other kind of suffering is internal - psychological.
3.) Happiness is a product of how we choose to experience what the world presents us.

Here is an example of this in practice. A group of psychologists decided to study the psychological effects of a happy person who was suddenly rendered a quadriplegic. They did very in-depth analysis of individuals who had be paralyzed (horse falls, football acidents, skiing accidents, etc.) They only focused on those who had been very happy before their accident. What they found was that nearly 100% of them were even happier about 1 year after the accident then they were before.
------------

And here is another issue: Are those two deaf parents happy? If they are, your argument isn't so strong. And, if we could assign an objective "happiness rating" to the that deaf child, would it fall so low that death would be preferable?
------------

My argument would be that humans have a powerful internal capacity for happiness - and a natural tendency to exercise the mechanisms that let us get past suffering. We have a fair amount of control over how we experience what life presents us with. Your view appears to not account for this. Your view seems to view children as incapable of finding a way to get through bad circumstance to become happy. It is almost as if you are personally pained when considering a child having to experience some negative aspects of life.

Post 35

Thursday, December 22, 2011 - 12:13am

I really have to question the morality of knowingly bringing a child into conditions of suffering, Bill. I am not sure it requires a deeper analysis than that. There is a story in The Death of Right and Wrong by Tammy Bruce about a deaf lesbian couple that deliberately performed in vitro fertilization with a deaf sperm donor so they could bring a deaf child into the world. They "succeeded" in doing so. Bruce properly condemned the knowing conception and birth of a child deliberately damaged to keep the child in its parents' "comfort zone" as immoral. I agree with her assessment on its face.

Well, if the couple had the choice to give birth to a normal child, and chose instead to give birth to a handicapped one, then I can understand why you would find that morally objectionable. But here the alternative isn't between existence and non-existence; it's between a more favorable existence and a less favorable one. Given that choice, of course one chooses the more favorable alternative.

But that wasn't your original choice, which was between bringing a child into existence and not bringing him into existence. In that case, it's not clear at all that bringing him into existence is more objectionable than not bringing him into existence. To be sure, if the level of suffering that his existence would entail were so great that suicide would be preferable, then of course, you don't bring him into existence. But my impression is that that was not your initial consideration. Initially, you were considering the world as it exists today. In that case and for all the reasons I gave in my previous post, I don't think you can argue that having children is immoral.

Post 36

Thursday, December 22, 2011 - 2:28am

I think certain kinds of people having certain kinds of children under certain circumstances is immoral. Lacking the objective "happiness predictor" Steve Wolfer outlined in Post 34, I cannot articulate a clear formula, though. As Bill concluded in Post 35, one cannot make a universal claim that having children in this world as it stands now is always immoral. However, I do know that many costs of having children are currently externalized by parents and born by non-parents, e.g. public schools, welfare, etc. That is a different but related subject and begs questions about how many fewer children (or more) children would be brought into existence without them and how happy those children would be.

I still find the idea of deliberately bearing a deaf child in the face of more capable alternatives personally abhorrent even if the deaf child is "happy" because it knows no better.

There is the side question of how many children to have as well. Some people want "big" families and others just want one child. As usual, the number of variables and the degree of cost externalization introduce a high level of uncertainty, especially in terms of natural personality traits of the children themselves.

The argument over the non-existence of non-conceived "imaginary" children itself becomes somewhat silly for reasons already cited. This is the problem I have with the movie It's a Wonderful Life. George Bailey ultimately needs to live for his own sake, not that of others. Silly man. You did not exist to save others, but to live your own mission. Go forth, become an architect, see the world, and let the town foreclose!

Similarly, The Ultimate Resource II by Julian Simon repeatedly talks about children as a means for parents to assure someone takes care of them in their old age. Silly parents. Children need to live for their own sakes, not that of their parents. His argument varies little in methodology from the "Ponzi scheme" of Social Security and carries similar untenability over the long term.

As a side note, some through the years have argued in favor of a "license to parent." Presumably this would imply a "license to reproduce." I think the arguments here easily counter such a utopian notion as the central planning and politicization of such an intimate and personal issue.

This has been an interesting dialogue. I do not think it will alter my urge to write the article in question heavily criticizing mental passivity. It will alter how I word certain key passages, however.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 12/22, 5:13am)

Post 37

Thursday, December 22, 2011 - 6:04pm