This week I'm working overtime in three dimensions. Self, Family, Job. It's stressful, frustrating, difficult and worth it. Always worth it. And I never question that it is worth it because I know if it wasn't this kind of work, it would be another kind of work that makes me suffer. But at least people whose company I prefer understand and sympathize with my desire to lose weight, help my kids with their homework and life questions and do overtime at work to stay slightly ahead of schedule. That's middle class misery, a self-fulfilling prophesy and self-justifying existence, which I find preferable to the alternatives I have experienced. Like working poverty.
I just talked about Academic Overcompensation, but there is a further step, which is Intellectual Self-Nullification. You can read the whole thing over at Belmont or consider this excerpt.
I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?
Now I can get deep into the wool just like anyone philosophically inclined. But there's a point at which it just gets silly. This cat Singer is asking that old Valley Girl question about getting knocked up. What's the point if I can't shop at the Mall? A Valley Girl's suffering might justify not bringing a baby into the world, and so is anybody's suffering. What do we really know about suffering? Do you recognize your desire to slap the taste out of her mouth? Don't you want to show her real suffering so she could come to her senses? Of course you do. It's the natural human reaction - you help her by showing her the reality of pain. It will give her focus and help her realize. I happen to think that this reaction scales up. When I had that aha moment I wrote:
I understand now. Finally, once and for all, what the purpose of war is. The purpose of war is to destroy myths. The purpose of war is to restore human faith in cause and effect. The purpose of war is remind humankind of its limits. And now I understand how that can be a good thing.
I've never believed in the term 'senseless violence'. The only truly senseless violence is that generated by things without senses like volcanoes & tornadoes. People get violent because they sense a reason, even if that reason is only a belief, as in "I believe you need an ass-whooping today". That is purposeful action, Hurricane Katrina was not.
The problem is that in a real way, you rather abdicate your responsibility to choose for future generations if you don't procreate your own. And this gets directly, from my perspective, to the moral question of legitimate and illegitimate power. Singer is, in essence, calling for altruistic sacrifice to his world of values - a world that he himself cannot sustain because he won't populate it.
Ultimately, the logical consequence of this sort of self-sacrifice is suicide unless it is only self-sacrifice. You can sacrifice your own life and suffering for your own children - this is rather expected. But when you ask others to sacrifice birthing babies, then you are generating a soft genocide, which is the same as eugenics. At some point, one has to be willing to accept the risk of suffering and acknowledge that every human being, as part of being human, must accept the risk of suffering. Whether that is suffering a lack of a Mall to shop of a lack of food, clothing or shelter. The meaning of human happiness and justice is only possible in the presence of suffering. The effort to overcome is the essence of nobility. To avoid playing the entire game is... well I could program a computer to do that logical trick.
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