Today's blog was inspired by a post kickball discussion centering on reasons for reproduction. The synopsis of my argument is as follows: The human urge to reproduce is purely a subconscious bow to nature's desires and most other reasons put forward are either illogical, unethical or simply untrue.
There is fervent opposition to my position among humans (Klingons on other hand are in full agreement) because no one wants to believe they are mindless puns in Mother Nature's Survivor Earth reality show. That would be unbecoming of a self proclaimed intelligent civilization therefore we make up more palatable reasons for reproducing.
Before we continue....
Disclaimer: I will like to make it clear that I am not necessarily against reproduction or life in general. Sometimes both can be wonderful gifts of nature. All I am doing here is clarifying the reason (singular) ALL living things reproduce. I am grateful my parents took the plunge if for no other reason so I can blog but that is immaterial to my arguments. I do understand that when religious beliefs and spirituality are mixed in we have a completely different argument. For simplicity I will practice a strict separation of logic and religion. Today lets just do logic. okay?
...Get it? Got it? Good!
Now picture the arrivals gate at the airport of life. Flight 419 is bustling with incubating homo-sapiens; reinforcements for the troops on the front lines. As the hoard of ~6lbs cargo makes it way through customs each is asked to declare any contrabans and have their passports out.
The following is stamped on the passports:
Welcome to Earth population: Not yet enough. By advancing through these gates to the other side you are agreeing to
a) Eat drink and fatten up towards maturity
b) At maturity. I will need the outties to attempt to seed every fertile patch available. As for you innies just pretend to be disinterested. This will keep the outties raging.
c) If you're an outtie but you really feel like an innie or if you're an innie but you packed for an outtie please ignore b) you're only here for population control and may be interior design.
d) When you're done please return to the departure gate. If you stayed too out too long, you'll return in adult diapers.
Sincerely,
M.Nature
There isn't a more important biological or even psychological mission for the coalition of the living than its need to reproduce. You could even argue that reproduction will dominate survival if both are involved in a steel cage MTV celebrity death match. There are after all a number of species who after reproduction one or both parties perish. But don't take my word for it, here's a quick experiment you can conduct at home with your human friends.
SHOPPING LIST
1 Male human
1 Cold dark empty cell
2 Smoking hot large meat lovers pizza pies
1 Smoking hot babe
Stop watch
INSTRUCTIONS.
1) Mix the male human with the cold dark cell and leave to simmer for 36 hours without food. Add water every 6 hours to ensure necessary hormones remain active in solution.
2) After 36 hours present the male human with the smoking hot babe (lets say pre-baby bump Jessica Alba) and the meat lovers pizza pies.
3) Instruct the human subject that he may choose one of the two smoking hot items to spend the next 4 hours of his confinement with.
4) Stop the clock when a decision is made.
It doesn't matter which decision is made, just record the time he takes to reach a decision. This experiment should prove to you that the reproductive mandate trounces even your will to live. Still think you are an intelligent logical animal?
The point here is that nature has ingrained in all living things a tendency to engage in behavior whether consciously or subconsciously that will eventually lead to a steady stream of healthy replacements for our dearly departed. Want to venture a guess why curvateous women spontaneously inflict men with a speech impediment? Its actually simple, you see female curves are attractive mostly because women need a layer of fat to keep themselves and their babies alive during times of famine, and this fat when spread across the body evenly creates rounded curves. Chics...why is Brad Pitt's and Tom Brady's cheek bones so cute? That is simple too. High androgen levels which indicate lack of illness also cause a large smile and prominent
cheekbones. In both cases traits that increase the chances of successful mating and survival of the offspring is the basis of human sexual attraction. I know... what a buzz kill for romance.
When we are not busy subconsciously analyzing pheromones of a potential mate or very not-so-subtly casting a lingering glare at the disappearing shapely backside of a strolling co-worker we are occupied with patting ourselves on the back for defying nature and evolving as the one and only intelligent life form. Well given the previous paragraph, its appears the demise of nature's hold on the species is greatly exaggerated. I have no doubt that at times we can be mindless drones however we are too intelligent to just accept it.
You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals. So let's do it like they do on the discover channel. Do it again now
With lyrics like that who needs this over-sized blog post to explain simple laws of nature.
When I ask this simple question. "Why do you want to have kids?". It is obvious that the department of the brain that responds to this question is clearly not the one attracted to well distributed fat stores in women or high androgen levels in men. You see if humans in general were conscious of that segment of the brain then the areas responsible for logical thinking will quickly put it out of commission. As you will see later, there isn't really a logical reason to reproduce especially if we can agree that reproducing for the free labor is borderline immoral and definitely selfish. Mother Nature doesn't want you to know exactly why you want to reproduce because if you did, its game over for her. Who will eat all the fresh cookies she's baking? Where will she go for a good laugh?
So why reproduce again? Here are the answers you will hear if you asked. (Post a comment if I missed any. I will prove whatever you post to be either false, illogical or embarrassingly self-centered in minutes ...unless of course your reason is d) below.)
a) To grant the gift of life
b) To pass on my genes
c) Ensure the survival of the human race.
No one is honest enough to say "Well I am kinda sick of people my age now" so lets leave that out but I will add this.
d) Because at arrivals I was instructed to.
No intelligent being would ever say d). That is monkey business and this is not Animal Planet. But is it? If you choose to continue this journey with me, I will now annihilate a), b) and c) leaving d) as the only sensible option.
a) To grant the gift of life
First I will assume by "life" they mean "good life" or "better life" certainly not referring to "depressed life" or "hobo life".
Consider this situation: There is a big red box with gold ribbons placed in front of you and you are informed that opening the box will result in either a public beheading or the winning ticket for the Mega Million Lottery pot plus free counselling after your blow it all. Think of blowing it all as certain death. However before you open the box, you are also informed that the likelihood of either outcome is not necessarily 50/50 and the exact spread will not be revealed to you. And finally, you may choose not to open the box and remain stateless (i.e. neither beheaded nor a lottery winner).
Your move my friend?
If you will agree with me here that most will choose to abstain then you have made a case that if a stateless unborn human was given the choice of birth or remaining stateless most if not all will choose to remain stateless. Think about it, they are being presented these two possibilities with unknown odds.
1 - Negative outcome: The beheading outcome. Think of this as being born in war torn Sudan or living in the pre-TiVo era aka "The Commercial Times". I hear there's great paintings from that era... I digress
2- More positive-ish outcome with a no-so-happy-ish ending: A normal happy life (whatever that means to you) that is guaranteed to end negatively. You could tragically die young or waste away in a retirement home asking everyone to "keep it down!" worse still you could spend your last days throwing gutter balls at a local bowling league. Either way we can agree the end will not exactly be a picnic. For a happy ending you can visit a China Town massage parlour while still alive.
Sure I will admit that I have no recollection of statelessness and I really do not know what the after life consists of. That said, I will go ahead and take a GUESS that if we assume statelessness to be a null condition then I THINK nothing will be preferable over the somethings being offered above by the alleged gift of birth and life.
So how certain are you about providing the offspring with an improvement on their current state? Please keep this in mind, it is difficult to make a relative argument and implore such concepts of relativity as "good" or "better" without the slightest understanding of the alternative forgone i.e. continued statelessness.
Hence the idea of granting a good/better life as reason for reproduction is highly questionable given the above logic that suggests that the recepient of the good/better life if given a choice may choose statelessness over your generous gift. So next time you claim to be offering the unborn the gift of life take moment to consider who's really getting the gift.
b) Pass on my genes
Let me make this really clear to you and I really don't care who you are: There is a very good possibility that your genes are less valuable to the human race than a pair of acid wash jeans in the 2009. There are 6 billion or so unique genetic make ups on the planet, the human race
will do quite well without your contribution to the pool thank you. And then you ask .."What if everyone believes this so that at the end of the day no one contributes to the gene pool and human race vanishes?". Well I knew you would ask that.
Nice segue to the next point ...
c) Ensure the survival of the human race.
The above statement implies 2 things:
1) The survival of the human race is a desirable outcome over extinction.
2) The survival of the human race can be ensured by reproduction.
There is really only one certainty after birth and that is death (Taxes? Really how much has Tim Geithner not paid again? Yeah that's certain). Given our agreement on the certainty of death I will take the liberty of concluding that on an individual basis survival is well... a carrot no one will ever taste. Now one can argue that even though each and every one of us will lose the battle for survival the human race can win the war if we continued to reproduce. Okay may be... and who exactly is "the human race"?
Allow me to ask a very basic question. How are you so sure survival is a desired outcome over extinction? Can you list the victims or pitfalls of extinction? I'm guessing the answer is "No" on all counts. However for some reason we have concluded that extinction would be a terrible outcome even though we have never experienced it and are guaranteed not be around to experience it when (not "if" ... more on that later) thy bell tolls for our species. We can recognize good vs. bad, desirable vs. undesirable, north vs. south only because we directly or indirectly have some knowledge of the spectrum within which the polar opposites occupy either end of. Without the knowledge of bad there is no good.
Fact: 99% of all species that have walked the planet are extinct. It will be a reach to conclude that your non-extinct kind is better off than the 99% given that you do not have ability to begin to conceive of or imagine a state of extinction. I know what you're thinking but this is not the same as not having to stick a pen in your eye to know it hurts so please bag it.
Again, Mother Nature has chosen to eliminate virtually every participant in her little Survivor Earth show. Do you realize that most were voted off not because they lost interest in reproduction but because as far as we know life in the Universe is the exception not the rule. If reproduction did not ensure immortality for 99% of all species that ever lived why would you think that it would work for us. All it does is prolong the inevitable. Since no human will be around to experience extinction and we don't know for sure that extinction is undesirable then why continue this futile exercise?
Ah good question... For the answer to that question please refer back to your life passports. See just like the monkeys, birds, snakes, farm animals, even bacteria and the dinosaurs before us, we're all simply following orders from one M.Nature at customs.
Until next time.... Think then lead never follow.
