Jim Anderson at Decorabilia pointed out recently a push for a drug which might turn on/off drunkeness. He thinks it’s ironic that people might fight to keep it away. His straw man argument for why is that “somewhere someone might be enjoying themselves” is the reason why they might fight such a “development”. Just short time later, he points out a blog of note by Peter Wall and look what we find at Res Ipsa Loquitur. Golly, what is this “we hate Aldous Huxley Day?”
In a short span of synchronicity, we find Mr Anderson extolling soma and Mr Wall defending the bokanovsky process? Can nobody remember this short book? Might Mssrs Wall and Anderson think the shallow pneumatic culture of Mr Huxley’s distopia be instead a utopian vision. Might soma (a drug providing bliss sans side effects) have a deleterious effect on human happiness and flourishing? As to Mr Wall, if you don’t find the “bottling”/alpha/beta/gamma “lifestyle” repellent, perhaps you will never understand arguments defending the embryo from holding a status as different from your dinner steak or the guppy in a tank.
You’d have to read quite a bit into my post to think that I’m somehow extolling debauchery (though I grant that my tongue-in-cheek moments are sometimes confused with serious ones).
Personally, I am repelled by drunkards–not because they are having fun, but because they knock things over, talk nonstop, weep, vomit, and otherwise behave loutishly. However, give me an instantly sober drunk over a I-can-drive-just-fine souse any day of the week.
I read Huxley’s “short book” a few years ago and wasn’t convinced.
As well, it’s hardly a valid argument, or even a valid rebuttal, to say that your opponent should just go read the book that convinced you. Why not bring out your own argument, or even appropriate Huxley’s and put it in your own words?
Peter,
I’ll go in more depth anon, and I’ll re-trackback you later, but if Huxley, who is more eloquent than I can’t convince you what may come when we treat the unborn as “stuff” than I’m not sure I might. You had asked for “arguments” for why this should not be done, and Huxley’s book provides that. I’m not sure that it’s “invalid” as you suppose.
I suspect we will find little common ground as you, it seems, find that a fetus has “no value” and I on the other hand find I cannot understand or generate any valid argument to support abortion. However, this might be an interesting exercise. I’ll try to write something in more depth tonight.
Don’t put words in quotation marks and attribute them to me. First, I was talking about embryos, not fetuses. Second, I did not say, nor would I say that either a fetus or an embryo has “no value.”