Thoughts on Life Before Death

If the world hasn’t changed enough, it surely will. Enough to realize that the traditional ways of dealing with life are not working. One radical idea is, everyone brought into this world has the right to acquire emotional, physical, mental and financial acumen to pursue happiness in ways which do not cause harm to others. That responsibilty (of providing acumens) should be fulfilled by the actors who brought that life into this world. You can add adopting parents to that list too.

The idea seems elementary: that parents should take care of their young ones. But too often we hear politicians or parents invoking the state to take care of their young. Sure, the state as a collective pool into which the parents paid, can be held responsible but this social philospher wants to hold the parents ultimately responsible for trusting, if ever, a bungling and unreliable system. For example, what business is it of two people in the occupied regions of Palestine to bring a life into that region, knowing the situation in their area. Or for that matter, in parts of Africa, or Bangladesh or South Central LA? In a similar context, a case could be made against interracial reproductions in the American South in the 30s and before. Can the breeders in the aforementioned examples guarantee emotional and financial desert for the child that comes along, given that time and that place. Nevermind the basic freedom to reproduce whatever and whenever, are the parents not responsible for the actual organism that crawls off their actions. Note that as long the actors practise abstinence, contraception and/or abortion, there is really no hindrance to falling in love and signing papers to that effect. The real crime is to bring a child into this world just because one has found agreement with another breeder to mate.

Even up till now, very few would dissent. Until one criticizes the misguided notions of humanism. That barring animals (some of whom we breed for consumption and others we keep in cages for entertainment and research) and plants (some of whom we breed for consumption and others we keep in pots/sanctuaries for entertainment and research), all living things are the business of all other humans. If two Swedish mountaineers go off and have a baby in the Himalayas, then notwithstanding their tax pool (Sweden), every human being on the planet should have something to do with seeing that baby grow up to acquire satisfactory emotional, mental, physical and financial capability. This essay seeks to exorcise the reader from any such responsibilty. A responsibility that can only be acquired through a willful exercise of sexual organs or signing a contract to adopt.

What of retarded kids, handicapped babies and old people then? Old people, generally speaking, should have paid into a collective pool which will bring about the end of their lives in a dignified way. The investment of caring for their offsprings (or smartly, for any kid they adopted) should also pan out handsomely in the same care back to them. And this is a critical aspect of why parents would take care of their kids even if the state turns a blind eye towards the relationship between the breeders and the offsprings. There is a balance that gets struck when the quality of parents’ care is reciprocrated in the way the parents get treated when they reach old age. Of course, offsprings can die earlier than the parents or mysteriously grow apathetic towards a good parent. While explaining mysteries is beyond the scope of this essay, it is helpful to realize that individual anguish felt by indivdual deformed baby or retarded kid or old person does not accumulate in a certain ’collective unconscious’ peddled by religions and is no different than the pain felt by a slaughtered goat or an antelope preyed upon by a pride of lions. Having said that, retarded kids and handicaped babies are ultimately the responsibilities of the parents who can generally ask the insurance system that taxed them for help. There is the also possibility of a compensation from an offensive polluting entity which, barring the undesriable genetic permutation, may have caused deformed babies. Other than that no one else is responsible.

Going back to the issue of reciprocrating care that parents give and receive, this arrangement has been honored in traditional societies like in India and Pakistan for centuries. Protecting one and one’s family from the invading marauders, the exploitive landlords and the despotic rulers.. generations have gotten by trusting the family unit which grew into clans, tribes and whole villages. It is only after the promise of democracy and self-rule, have they been pulled out of their cacoon to the titallating ambitions of nationalism and federation.

This has resulted in unreasonable expectations from whole generations of nationalists and people who can be fooled easily. Some have come to expect the state to be the sole solution for all their problems even when they have paid nothing into the system. Some are won over by the tricks of the politicians who have promised them grand results in return for nothing but votes. This sense of entitlement in turn results in confusion and a sense of moral outrage where there is no basis for such outrage. Instead of examining the basic fact of reality (individual’s actions cause offspring), many have turned to religion or any radical idea that comes their way.

In a very real way, the only way to affect a change is for individuals to philosophically accept that barring their individual actions to breed, there is very little that they be responsible for. But after they have brought a life into this world, it is in their own interest (as when they grow old) that they care for the offspring as best as they can. As long as every breeder is encouraged to think this way, everyone’s life will change for the better.