I read a novel yesterday, Pines, by Blake Crouch, that made me wonder about the nature of humanity.
The boundaries of humanity
There has been a long debate held by the "pro-life" and the "pro-abortion" (or pro-freedom or whatever) about the nature of feti (or fetuses). When does a baby start being human?
This debate was previously had by the pro and anti-slavery factions in America (the continent). In the beginning, it was said that black people did not have souls, that they were made for work, that they needed masters, that they did not have the sufficient intellectual capacity to be independent human beings. This argument has been retorted many times now and slavery was de-legalized.
A bit of pretty music: Vivaldi - Amor Sacro (Motets)
Now, even the worst criminals are held under the "Human Rights" because every member of the homo sapiens race, after a few months of existing in their mothers' wombs, is considered to be a "full human being". But reading into all the debates of death sentences for these criminals, together with the racial, sexual and religious discrimination, among other kinds of discrimination, we may begin to wonder why so many people are against certain kinds of human beings, or certain human beings who hold certain beliefs and/or preferences.
I have also read debates about euthanasia for people with certain kinds of disabilities. Be it paralytic or mentally disabled, there are people who consider that these subsets of homo sapiens should not "waste" the resources of welfare that societies set for the less fortunate individuals.
But... where do we put the line?
Some would say that anything above fetus is a human being, but then, what is it that makes a human "human" after the months of being a fetus have passed? Is it a certain amount of intelligence? But then disabled people would not count either. Is it the age? What if they developed faster? (Should we then be able to "abort" children who were born a few months early and have to develop in special conditions?)
Well, then, if not those, then is what makes them human our perception of them? Our perception of the quality of their future could be a major factor. If we think that they are going to enjoy their lives without putting us in peril, we might decide to let them have human rights.
Eating animals
We can then join this debate with the debate about eating or not eating certain animals. In the west, we don't eat dogs but we do eat cows. We frown upon eating felines and canines and, depending on the region, on certain other races, but we promote that other races should be enslaved for our satisfaction and then killed for their flesh. What is it that makes an animal exempt from being eaten? A dog's right to live, for example, may stem from the fact that we spend a lot of time with them and we consider them to be our "friends".
But then again, we do not eat our enemies. Well, some do, but it is not a generalized thing. So it is not a thing of "friendship" and "enmity". Then maybe it is the perceived distance of relation. We have a long historical friendship with dogs, and they are our "pets", same as cats, but we won't eat horses either because they are our rides, another whole kind of slaves.
But anyway, there are people who eat dogs, and also monkeys and apes (source), but there are also those who eat humans, and we call them cannibals because they break the "social contract", but wait a second: do cannibals consider the humans they eat less human? Maybe they consider everyone human but they do not see the relationship between humanity and eating a being.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then we, or I at least, run into a blank. I can't find any argument that makes me any different from anything else. Am I human just because I am homo sapiens? Do all homo sapiens deserve human rights? If some do not, where do we put the line? I suppose that the line will be subjective and relative to our beliefs of who should survive, who should not have a chance at it, who should live in captivity and who should just stop existing.
Where do you think these boundaries are? When does a being start and stop being a human?
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People who advocate a pro-life stance take that any spark of life in the womb means that it already is considered a human being regardless if it has sentience or not yet.
I have seen arguments on both sides of the coin and is hard to really make a hard choice just based on yourself if you take away society dogma's, religious beliefs and the conditioning that you received from birth.
Very interesting post Sharon, I always enjoy reading your thoughts. My answer will be a bit simple, from my existentialist perspective I agree that "existence precedes essence", we are something material, but "what we are" we will define it as a social construction, for some societies we are "human", for others we were gods. What will be in the future?
Exactly, the answer lies in the convention, just like any other social construct. :)
I personally have come to accept that we can't have a unified position on every issue. It's what makes us human, and living such a thril
I think that our inability to reach consensus on certain issues proves a certain futility in the act of trying. Why put so much thought into things that will only end up being based in our opinions?
Because the truth is not accessible to individual humans and the only way to acquire new (better) information is to listen to other perspectives (perspectives different from yours). The only people who shouldn't want to communicate with people who disagree with them are people who believe (100% incorrectly) that they know everything and everything they know is "true." But who knows, I could be wrong :)
Since I cannot verify that any information that is told to me is true, I inevitably distrust, in the lowermost level, everything that is said to me about the nature of reality and existence. I only know that I exist, and the rest, I do like Socrates and say "I only know that I know nothing", because otherwise I feel that I would be cheating myself.
Amen
Recently I was in a health talk about abortion and the head nurse that was in charge of the lecture mentioned that the moment there is fertilization, there is a human hearth beat and I think that is what should be the line, as long as there is no human heart beat, then it is no longer human.
More so there should be no lines between living humans because once a line is drawn the purpose of the existence of each race is destroyed, color, age, territory or wealth should not be a criteria for drawing lines, as a matter of fact there should be no lines in the first place because it is a waste of time to debate on that matter.
I think why blacks were being enslaved back in the days was because of ignorance, unwise judgement and I think the way of life back then was primitive due to culture.
But it is different now as the black race has proven intellectual all around the world.
We will probably be seen as primitive, just as people from any time viewed the people from times before as primitive in certain aspects. I wonder what things will change and what views that now are normal will be condemned by the future humans as the sins of ignorance.
I think one of them would be virtual reality, it would be a trend that might cause the growth of humanity to drop by half in a century and this is due to the fact that it will be more fun and even the lazy ones would achieve a lot in it, people will have virtual families, kids, cars and all.
Trust me when it gets to that, the fate of humanity might be in the hands of androids, because living a normal life would have become difficult already.
a very interesting and thought provoking post that makes one ponder
Interesting thoughts Sharon.
I heard a debate a while back about a woman who was pregnant, but got a clot and was brain dead when she arrived at hospital. The family wanted to switch off the life support but there was some sort of legal battle to keep her 'alive' as an incubator until the unborn baby was viable enough to live. There are legal/ethical arguments to artificially prolonging the life of a woman for the sake of an unborn child.
Anyway, they switched her off and the unborn child died too.
I've also heard it argued that the baby, until it's born, is effectively a parasite in the woman.
I also remember someone illegally using the sperm of her dead husband to get pregnant. Weird :P
Cheers
Edit: Damn! It's not letting me vote on this at the mo. The vote wheel keeps spinning. I'll slap a vote on your next post instead. Sorry I'm late :S
no worries, Anj! Just do as you find convenient. Right now I'm away from home so I'm not able to give my full attention to people either.
Like those anecdotes, I still find a lot of stuff hard, like why would someone else be able to decide the fate of my body because of a little fetus's life? I don't intend to be heartless and I would certainly love the fetus as a mother loves the idea of a future child, but I certainly wouldn't give it priority over my own life.
But some people would rather not kill it than save me. I may be egotistical for my view but I'll hold it and defend my opinion till the end of times for as long as it will have power over people's decision to save or take my life.
I agree with you on that Sharon. People should have autonomy over their own bodies. Many of these anti-abortionists happen to be men who like telling women what they should/shouldn't do with their bodies. Pah!
Most abortions are done when it's just a cluster of cells. It can't feel it. Saying that, I think later abortions should be performed humanely so that the foetus can't feel it, obviously.
Oh, enjoy your trip away from home :D
Why is this a question? Obviously all matter of space dust should be considered potentially human.
Kidding aside, maybe for developing babies we should adopt a percentage human figure and set an arbitrary cutoff that can be wiggled. I suppose this could be applied to other beings too....
Hmmm, and should every other non-hostile intelligent being be held under the Human Rights convention?
Dunno. Yes?
I believe there are no incomplete humans, and it is just a mindset thing where superiority and inferiority play a major factor. That is why some people won't hesitate to take the life of another because they feel superior to that person.
In our world today, majority of abortionists would frown at a murderer and castigate him, but see nothing wrong in their own doings. Why? because they don't see a fetus as a living being.
But in the real sense, there is really no difference between an abortionist and a murderer because both are guilty of preventing a living thing from occupying space on earth.
But there also exist guilty abortionists who carry their guilt for the rest of their lives, and that is why I said, ''it is about the mindset''.
The same applies to animals. We feel sentimental attachments to animals reared in our homes and may not want to kill it for food. But there are others who don't feel that way.
So in essence, we act according to how we think and that play a major role in our dealings with fellow humans.
For me, humans are like other living things, have the right to the necessities of life. When they were babies they were fussy, after senile they would come back fussy, like a normal diagram which uphill then disappear.
A natural cycle of becoming and unbecoming.
In addition https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=jXwwsJUMoQg
Nice documentary. I have not watched but will as soon as I finish reading this book :)
Total headspinner. I personally believe every living creature is equal regardless of how many pedals it walks on or how many cells it is comprised of or what color it appears or whether we give it a name. I know that plants too are sentient beings with thoughts and feelings. Yet I would sooner eat any and all plants than to kill ANY animal. And I would put to death a TRUE violent criminal, while I would dissolve the criminal justice system entirely and have it be localized and community run. At the end of the day, no one really has a right to dictate what is life and which life is more precious. It all exits for a reason, like it or not.
Well, plants are not sentient beings if we consider sentient the act of being capable of conceiving a thought of "self". There are other definitions, but I haven't read one that can have plants in it :P
I believe that plants have "feelings" as much as a calculator can have feelings. They hold states depending on the circumstances that surround them (in calcs, numbers input by a user, and in plants, the position of the sun, the condition of the trunk, leaves, etc.) and act upon them. I may be wrong in that. However, plants do not have brains or complex thought, so I would disregard their rights to be as accountable as humans with the capacity of reason would be.
Kid slaps his grandma in the mall, and this is considered battery and assault of an elderly person, so let's put them to death :333
Everything happens for a reason. This does not mean that the reason is a good one or one that should be respected when making new decisions. Maybe a trap was set there to kill anyone who passed, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take it out to prevent any casualties when we walk by in a big group.
A kid slapping his grandma is not a TRUE crime. It's wrong. Then again, depends why he slapped her.
And yes plants think. They communicate as well.
We don't even fully understand the concept of consciousness, ie: where does "I" start and where does it end. Asking for an scientific definition of when a fetus becomes self-aware, or even if it deserves to be regarded as a living being before that, is an exercise in futility.
Our concept of life, be it our own or that of animals, are tied to our cultural and religios history. Why is it acceptable to eat chicken but not dogs? simply because we have historically bred chicken as livestocks for food, and it all started as a utilitarian decision, it simply is easier to rear large amount of chickens that it is to rear large amount of dogs.
Going back to the question of defining a fetus's identity, it all boils down to our understanding in the science of cellular division and the cultural definitions we have long adopted as a species (In terms of medical science, this would mostly be the western culture we are talking about).
Well, a philosophical one, maybe. "Let's consider it human when it can form thoughts in its brain", for example.
It started when the first cell ate another cell. Killing for nutrient absorption is an old constant in evolution. We are also social, so we form social circles that include humans and every being that we consider part of ours. It is not about friendship but beyond that, a sense of identity.
But as you say, all of this is mostly conventions, traditions and unchanged beliefs carried from the past into a present when, even if we think about it, we won't be able to change the way humanity as a whole sees anything.
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Well, the problem arises when we disconnect the metaphysics of reality from society and suspend our belief in anything sacred for the sake of consistency.
That's the limit of formal logic, forwarded by the categorical imperatives of Kant. We're bound to experience paradoxes we then attribute to social construct.
We will ignore intuitive morality, as it can be subjective and praise the primacy of objectivity.
As as society we have tried to create a self-consistent system, assuming that that's the proper way to live.
I am rambling now. My point is, what do we value more as a society and what we want to achieve?
For example, now we consider war and death as bad things and we value harmony and peace more. But back in 1000 bc, war was a way of living. It was used as a tool to reconcile the material dialectic.
The great existential questions, could be perhaps reframed as questions of intention. The question of abortion: What we will achieve by making this a wide-spread phenomenon or what we will achieve if we make it illegal?
The absolute morality of the matter, should be considered, but shouldn't be a high priority. What are the consequences of abortion in society and the mother? Mostly negative according to statistics.
I don't know if any of what I wrote makes sense, but I didn't have my coffee yet, so that's that...
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