Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Less Human Than Human.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
So obsessed are the environmental extremists that humans are almost like a virus that has infected “Gaia”, that short of genocide of all humans, they want to genetically engineer human beings to better fit into the “green” lifestyle that they declare that humans be forced to live. Such insane proposals include:
- Induce intolerance to red meat (think lactose intolerance), since livestock farming accounts for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions.
- Make humans smaller to reduce the amount of energy we each need to consume. This could be done by selecting smaller embryos through preimplantation genetic diagnosis, a technique already in use to screen for genetic diseases. “Human engineering could therefore give people the choice between having a greater number of smaller children or a smaller number of larger children,” they write.
- Reduce birthrates by making people smarter, since higher cognitive ability appears linked to lower birthrates. This could be achieved through a variety of means, including better schooling, electrical stimulation of the brain and drugs designed to improve cognitive ability, they propose.
- Treat people with hormones, such as oxytocin, to make us more altruistic and empathetic. As a result, people would be more willing to act as a group and more sensitive to the suffering of animals and other people caused by climate change.
Of course, it’s easier to treat people as if they have no rights if one simply trumps any concept of human rights with the rights of “nature“.
“The nature-rights movement is creeping steadily into the mainstream. Recently, the world’s second-most-prestigious science journal, Science, came on board. Now from the other end of the intellectual spectrum, Teen Vogue has published a one-sided story that would persuade impressionable young readers to join the cause. Added bonus: It promotes neo-mystical earth religion and indigenous peoples’ rights! From the story:
“‘While the rights-of-nature movement is a relatively new concept for Western communities, its use by Indigenous peoples can be traced to traditional worldviews and laws that view nature as a living being. Humanity is integrated into this being, not separate from it. For example, the Whanganui community in New Zealand, which advocated for the rights of nature for the Whanganui River, otherwise known as Te Awa Tupua, has a saying to demonstrate its connectedness to the river—Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au: I am the river, the river is me.’
“The story gushes that nature rights will restore ancient indigenous wisdom, meaning it will undermine Western Civilization.”
Of course, icky capitalism gets in the way of re-moulding mankind, and the biggest impediment to such re-moulding is the family itself.
“Arguably the most infamous demand of The Communist Manifesto is the “abolition of the family.” The family, Marx and Engels noted, was where patriarchy and capitalism worked in tandem to produce willing, alienated workers, where women became little more than “instruments of production” for the men who lorded over them. Radical queer politics in the 1960s and ’70s added to their critique of the bourgeois family when activists challenged the heteronormativity of familial relations. That demand, however, has since almost completely vanished from the leftist imaginary.
“Sophie Lewis, a feminist theorist and geographer, takes up this forgotten struggle in her work. Her new book, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (Verso, 2019) specifically links family abolition to a radical reconceptualization of pregnancy itself. The act of carrying a child to term, she insists, is work—labor that has long been exploited and overlooked by the academy—and so is mothering.”
TTFN.
