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Yes, but at that point it has almost no use, does it? It's just about what Lionel Shriver and her monocultural mates think about having children, and then how Lionel Shriver wants to present how she thinks about it for a specific audience. So, let's not talk about Lionel Shriver. Let's talk about gerbils. You said:
The picture that comes to me when I do this is similar to the one that comes through in the article; unless it is dominated by a great work of some kind, a life without children seems - apologies for the phenomenology - morose and stunted in some way; it acts simply within the logic of present society - it lacks the transcendental, the feeling for that that will endure, lacks a connection to the world outside our own lives and outside modern society.
The assumption behind this is that having a child has more weight than anything else a gerbil can do. This is because gerbils have no capacity to perform great works. Gerbil reproduction, however, is a simple biological function and presumably wots not of transcendence either.
However. Humans can achieve great works, and can also have children. Your proposition is that one or the other of these is an acceptable use of a human life. This, you appear not to have stated but one might imply, is because not only childrearing but also the creation of great works "operate outside the logic of modern society". What you mean by this is unclear. Possibly that childbirth is a sort of heritage industry, like crofting, and therefore that doing it puts one in touch with one's ancestors and one's successors in the same way that a really good, lasting bit of crofting might. Without one of these pursuits - childrearing or great-work-creating - a human life is "stunted or morose".
Now, this does seem rather to recommend childbirthing/rearing as the best possible option for avoiding a stunted and morose life, as childrearing is a pretty common phenomenon. In fact, I would go so far as to say that embarking on a great work, by your model, is a very bad idea, as one's chances of success are profoundly limited, whereas having kids is very simple. From there we can wander off into some socially dodgy stuff aboout how lucky those earthy people with high birth rates and high infant mortality are to be so connected to the cycles of transcendence.
However, this seems to romanticise something gerbils simply get on with as a matter of course to the point of being equivalent to the creation of a "great work". Of course, we don't know what a great work means to you - for example, is "We Need to Talk About Kevin" a great work? Is working in a maternity ward a great work?
It also seems to suggest that childrearing occupies the same status as a great work - that is, something that consumes and defines one's existence. While this may be the case in the early stages, it seems a bit of a cop-out to assume it in all cases. Bertrand Russell, for example, was a parent, if apparently not a great one. Likewise Bill Clinton. In either case, can we identify their escape from a "morose, stunted" life as a result of their works (if they are judged to be great) or as a result of their status as parents?
We then come to the distinction between childbirth and childrearing. At its most basic, there is one in a standard man-lady coupling who pushes the baby out and one who does not. To assume that these two status provide an equal experience of transcendence might be seen as a bit masculine. Therefore, presumably we located this access to transcendence in the raising of children rather than the simple extrusion of children from the human body. This, however, is pretty distinct from the birthing process. So, question. Is having your own children, in the sense of two impregnate, one squeezes, two raise, equivalent to a greater work (a Clean Air bill rather than an airport novel, say) than raising somebody else's child, or raising a child from the age of 4 rather than from birth? Lionel Shriver, for example, could at the age of 47 probably get herself together and, even if some agencies would hesitate to recommend a 47-year old with a novel out a mother not liking her child for adoption, get herself a kid, possibly from one of those countries which are coonnecting enough with transcendence to create a surplus. Given the choice between this and being stunted and morose, surely she will do so, unless the writing of We Need to Talk About Kevin provides a sufficiently great work-count to innoculate her against the necessity. So, faced with the possibility of having a child, and thus being sure of evading moroseness and achondroplasty, and not having a child, everybody without both commitment to and confidence in their great work is going to go for it. How closely dooes the action have to be to the standard practice to provide this insurance? Vaginal over caesarian? "Natural" over inseminated? Own over adopted? Adopted over fostered? If you are to build those binaries, where do the lines go?
There may be some useful stuff on the intervening three pages of discussion on this, btw. |
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