Positive Liberty

“Do you know the meaning of life?” There was a moment’s pause. “Because I do.”

The Devil’s Advocate grinned, then licked his fangs maliciously.

“The meaning of life is in your genes. You are a success if you pass them on. You are a failure if you do not.”

A miasma of sulphuric vapor wafted in from the far recesses of the cave.

I don’t like the Devil’s Advocate. The fact is, I’m terrified of him. And today I was especially glad to have my Inner Ethical Council nearby.

“Welcome to the new religion, my friend. Genetics. It’s the religion that everyone carries inside them, but that no one dares to acknowledge as such. Call it the hate that dare not speak its name. And tonight, I’m going to lay it all out on the table.

“Let’s start with the first principles: Each individual’s life is meager and finite. In the end, all of us are frustrated; all of us fail. Everything we do melts into muck and ruin. A couple hundred years from now, no one will remember or even care that you have been.

“But the species, the species can live forever. The species can succeed. The species can find its own fulfillment. O meager human, there is only one way that you can take part in that eternal life: Reproduce. Nothing could be simpler. If you pass on your genes, then a part of you lives to fight again–no matter what your failings in this life may be.”

“Meet the new boss,” the Cynic said dismally.

“Indeed!” replied the Devil’s Advocate. “God may well be dead–I mean, who really knows–but these days, DNA holds up the Great Chain of Being. Where mankind once found continuity in the stories of Heaven and Hell, now he’s not so sure anymore. But whatever you believe on that score, the Gene lets you know that you’re a part of something bigger than your own little life. And for small, worthless creatures like yourselves, that can be profoundly comforting.”

Then he looked me directly in the eye, and I found myself feeling, well, small and worthless.

“Sadly for you, my friend, homosexuals are dead ends. Inexplicably, you chose to give up your share in the great human family. You turned your back on humanity’s success. Want to know why you’re hated? Look no further: You don’t believe in the Gene, which brings salvation.”

“No, I don’t believe,” I replied. But I felt like somehow I ought to.

“Think on it! The Gene is the answer to everything. Do you want to know why they call it ‘family values’? It’s got nothing to do with Christianity–nothing at all. It’s much simpler than that. See, every mother in the world is terrified that her child will turn out to be gay–because if he does, then the family will fail to reproduce. And that means that she has failed, because her genes will not live on.

“And then it’s goodbye, Great Chain of Being, hello Dustbin of History. Take that coat of arms right off the mantlepiece and haul it out to the curb. The work of the millennia has been wasted, and you have disappointed the thousands of generations that came before you, all of which reproduced successfully.

“Out there in real America, the moms and the dads all believe in family values, because families give the continuity that makes up for all their failures. Great, small, or in between, everyone fails. But so what if you’re in a dead-end job; so what if your greatest joy in life is a bottle of cheap gin. So long as you pass on your genes, at least something has gone in your favor.

“And gays destroy that continuity. They rip it to shreds. They wreck the family, not through bad example, but through genetics. By opting out of the Great Chain of Being, they remind us all of the real consequences of our failures. They show us an awful possibility: You are what you are, no more and no less. If gays win out, then there go your hopes for the future.”

“I knew this was a bad idea. Let’s get out of here,” said the Epicurean.

“So soon? I’m just getting warmed up.”

“Hear him out,” I said. But my mouth was dry.

“I shouldn’t have to put up with this nonsense for a moment,” replied the Epicurean. “The chill of the grave won’t feel one bit different for me–not one bit different from the man with a hundred sons. The only difference is that maybe he’s had… a bit more pleasure along the way. And even that’s a matter of debate. There are many kinds of pleasure after all. And death is merely a sleep.”

“Oh, but you’re cheating,” replied the Devil’s Advocate. “You’re using an obscure philosophy to reconcile yourself to The End. It’s a philosophy that most Americans can’t even spell properly. Even if they know the word, they probably think it’s got something to do with food.”

“A vulgar deformation,” he replied.

“But far more common than its ancestor. In any event, most Americans aren’t Epicureans. At heart, they’re social Darwinists, because they’re all counting on their genes to rescue them from death.”

“But I am not counting on any such thing,” replied the Epicurean. “Because I know that in the end, there is nothing can rescue anyone from death. Not ever. It’s just a pity more people don’t realize it.”

And he walked out. My heart leapt to see him go. The Devil’s Advocate, though, wasn’t finished.

“Hell, even the gays are Darwinists. See how they try to be normal, with their so-called kids and their so-called marriages? It’s pathetic, really.”

“It’s empowering,” said the Stoic. “It’s strength in adversity.”

“It’s a sham, and everyone knows it,” said the Devil’s Advocate. “How it must eat them up, to know that they are cut off from the rest of us!”

“If that’s your lot in life, then so be it. The proper question is not ‘What is my misfortune?’ but ‘How do I bear it most nobly?’” replied the Stoic. Then he too marched out of the cave.

“What about the fundamentalists?” asked the Skeptic. “Surely they don’t seem to care for Darwin. You’re saying that a bastardized Darwinism is the root of homophobia? Bosh. The fundies have nothing to do with the Darwinists.”

“The fundamentalists are the worst Darwinists of all!” he exclaimed.

I raised my eyebrows.

“They’re the ones who think that being gay is a choice. And if it is a choice, then it has to be depraved–but only because it undoes the work of the Gene!

“Sure, the fundies point at their Bibles, and blather on about the Lord not liking fellatio. It’s funny, though, how selective they are about what the Lord doesn’t like. In my Bible, the Lord hates divorce, and meat with blood in it, and he even hates interest-bearing securities, depending of course on your race and on which Testament you prefer. But have you seen any fundies railing against those things lately? Nope. They only rail against the gays, and I submit to you that the real reason, the unspoken reason, is the power of the Gene.”

“Well,” sniffed the Skeptic, “I’m certainly not going to hang out with that crowd.”

And he left.

“Just a moment, my good man,” said the Malthusian. “You mean to tell me that success is defined by the number of descendants a man leaves behind?”

“Absolutely.”

“Suppose that the world can only hold so many human beings. Did you ever think about that?”

“Well yes, of course. It’s survival of the fittest. The fittest–because he’s clubbed down all his rivals–must surely be the best and the most moral as well.”

“And the most hungry, the most illiterate, the most pestilential, and the most brutish, and…”

Before he’d finished his litany, the Malthusian had walked out of the cave.

“Maybe I could get past all that,” said the Humanitarian. “Because misery happens all the time. But what if this man–this paragon of success–happens to have all of his children by rape? Genetically, he is a success. Morally, he is a monster. And don’t even get me started about the man who doesn’t support his progeny.” Then he too walked out.

My confidence was recovering, at least until the Capitalist began to speak.

“Hold on a minute here. I’m not going to write off our Devil’s Advocate so easily,” he said. “The Humanitarian is after a red herring, like always. Of course our genetic superiority is premised on the ability to have all these children through generally moral means. It’s probably in our long-term self-interest anyway, so I’m willing to dismiss his examples.”

“He always does,” called a fading voice from the mouth of the cave.

“More to the point, the Malthusian is wrong, too.”

“How’s that?” asked the Devil’s Advocate.

“Simple. Malthusian population collapse only happens in a highly regulated economy. In an unregulated economy, two remarkable things take place. First, people barter to alleviate scarcity. Second, they make substitutes and technological innovations all the time. And when they do, they quite often manage to escape most hunger and disease. Malthusianism describes humanity’s past, not its future. Look at Europe from the plague to Agricultural Revolution. Most of the people spent most of their money–on bread. They had to, merely to survive. Famines and plagues were common, as were the population craters that accompany them. But we’re nowhere near that level anymore. In a time of plenty, the genetic imperative almost makes sense.”

“Ah,” said the Devil’s Advocate, “Are you with me then?”

“That depends,” replied the Capitalist. “Let me ask you a question, for I am an afficionado of statistics. Suppose I have no children, but I have a brother. And my brother is the proverbial man with a hundred children. Now, he shares an awful lot of genes with me. What if I spend my life taking care of his kids? Have I or have I not passed on my genes much better than most? Mathematically, after all, the chances are that I’ve passed on more of my uniqueness than the man who has just a single child of his own.”

“Well… Um…”

“No, wait. I’ve got another one. Suppose I do have kids. Suppose I have a child, who has a child, who has a child… down to the tenth generation. By your account, I should be supremely happy, in my grave or wherever I am.

“But I look at this child, and by the tenth generation, I can’t even recognize him. The chances are good that he doesn’t care so much about me, either. And why should he? That child is less than one-tenth of one percent related to me.”

“Yes, but think on it!” replied the Devil’s Advocate. “In the meantime, his children have had children, who have had children….”

“You mean that the meaning of life is to throw myself back in the gene pool?”

“Precisely!”

“And dilute myself forever?”

“Isn’t it grand?”

“No! And here is why. Go back to my brother, the one with a hundred kids. I’m raising them, and the chances are good that they will some lasting mark in the world. Just where do you think they will get the things they leave behind?”

“Why, from their genes. Nothing else endures.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong. I could encourage those kids to be good, and wise, and thoughtful. Or I could raise them to be thieves and arsonists.”

“I don’t follow.”

“In all of recorded history, the human genome has changed almost not at all. It shuffles around all the time, but it’s almost entirely interchangeable. Little plusses here and there, little minuses here and there–The whole thing is a wash. And here’s why.

“Take a living human being back in time to ancient Egypt, and they could easily reproduce. Come to think of it, take them back fifty thousand years, and the offspring of a mixed marriage would still be fertile. We’re the same species we’ve always been. But what separates us from the primitives? It isn’t in the genes. The real difference is all up here.”

He tapped his prefrontal lobe, turned on the toe of his wingtip shoe, and strode confidently out of the cave.

I followed in his footsteps. Our departure left only the Cynic, who was kicking dust upon the rapidly dematerializing Devil’s Advocate. The latter was already on his way back to the Underworld as our shadows lengthened across the cave.

Trackback URI |