okieinexile
Well-Known Member
Pulling on the heartstrings
By Bobby Neal Winters
Superman died of a bedsore.
This is the phrase I have stuck in my brain. I know it was more complicated than a bedsore, but more importantly, I know he wasn’t really Superman. Christopher Reeve had been a healthy, vital human being, he was an accomplished actor, but he was still only a human being. This we know for sure.
He’d been injured in an accident and rendered paralyzed. This we know for sure too, but because of the Superman movies, in our mind’s eye, folks of my generation identify him strongly with the comic book icon of invulnerability. As a consequence of this, when he was rendered into a state of helplessness, our national mythology in the collective rendered more sympathy to him than perhaps we would have another celebrity so incapacitated, and perhaps much more that we would to one of the many anonymous folks who suffer the same tragedy.
We mourned when he was injured and put him on the shelf reserved for fallen heroes to gather dust. That is, until comparatively recently when we’ve heard quite a bit about him in connection to embryonic stem cell research.
He and Michael J. Fox (who also occupies a special place in our national consciousness, as being forever an overachieving high school student) became symbols for all of the potential benefits that would, we were told, almost certainly be obtained from embryonic stem cell research. They are familiar, human sufferers of the evils such research promises to cure.
Fox is stricken with Parkinson’s disease, which is a condition one normally associates with the aged. This makes the plight of someone who is eternally a teenager in the American heart much more poignant.
Don’t get me wrong. The conditions suffered by these men are tragic regardless of who is stricken with them, but associating these familiar faces with their particular images makes for powerful emotion.
While we can recognize tragedy in the abstract, we have a lot more sympathy when it happens to someone we know, and it is easy to feel as if we knew these men, although most of us do not.
On the other hand, none of us knows the embryos at all. It is difficult to convince a lot of people they are humans, and many of those who admit they are humans will insist on saying they aren’t persons. The latter concept which distinguishes a person, as someone who has a life worth living, from a human, who may or may not, leaves me asking whether there are humans walking around amongst us who aren’t persons, but that is too broad a question for this piece.
The major point here is that embryos don’t have a lot going for them appearance-wise. They are human, but they don’t look human because they are a stage of our development that is normally concealed from our view.
Many people find newborns, infants, and toddlers to be adorable. This is because nature has invested a lot in just that strategy. Anyone who has felt a baby’s soft cheek against his face at three o’clock in the morning might understand just what I mean.
The cruel fact is that if nature hadn’t put in safeguards, many people would kill their offspring outright because they are so much trouble. Historically, even in spite of these natural protections, infanticide has been a fact of life.
As the embryo has been concealed from our view in the womb, it hasn’t needed the protection of being attractive. Consequently, we can look at the embryos of our species among those of others and not be able to tell the difference. Man’s ability to manipulate Nature has gotten to the point She can no longer protect him from himself, even in Her most gentle way.
We have the psychological freedom to do with embryos things which we wouldn’t ever allow to happened to the human in later stages of development. If someone were to hold up an infant and say, “If you allow me to dismember this child, my Parkinson’s will be cured,” we would think they were a monster. On the other hand, saying the same about an embryo doesn’t elicit an equivalent reaction.
Those who hold the view that life begins at conception and that embryos should be treated with the same reverence reserved humans at later developmental stages have been accused of being sentimental, while those who would allow destructive experimentation on embryos are called rational. This is actually the reverse of the truth. It takes a rational mind to understand someone can be different than themselves and still be human.
Man’s alienation from Creation continues, and as it does, our feelings, which are so important in dealing with our fellow humans, can be misplaced. We shouldn’t allow ourselves be tugged off course by someone pulling on our heartstrings.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and speaker. You may contact him at bobby@okieinexile.com or visit his webpage at www.okieinexile.com.)
By Bobby Neal Winters
Superman died of a bedsore.
This is the phrase I have stuck in my brain. I know it was more complicated than a bedsore, but more importantly, I know he wasn’t really Superman. Christopher Reeve had been a healthy, vital human being, he was an accomplished actor, but he was still only a human being. This we know for sure.
He’d been injured in an accident and rendered paralyzed. This we know for sure too, but because of the Superman movies, in our mind’s eye, folks of my generation identify him strongly with the comic book icon of invulnerability. As a consequence of this, when he was rendered into a state of helplessness, our national mythology in the collective rendered more sympathy to him than perhaps we would have another celebrity so incapacitated, and perhaps much more that we would to one of the many anonymous folks who suffer the same tragedy.
We mourned when he was injured and put him on the shelf reserved for fallen heroes to gather dust. That is, until comparatively recently when we’ve heard quite a bit about him in connection to embryonic stem cell research.
He and Michael J. Fox (who also occupies a special place in our national consciousness, as being forever an overachieving high school student) became symbols for all of the potential benefits that would, we were told, almost certainly be obtained from embryonic stem cell research. They are familiar, human sufferers of the evils such research promises to cure.
Fox is stricken with Parkinson’s disease, which is a condition one normally associates with the aged. This makes the plight of someone who is eternally a teenager in the American heart much more poignant.
Don’t get me wrong. The conditions suffered by these men are tragic regardless of who is stricken with them, but associating these familiar faces with their particular images makes for powerful emotion.
While we can recognize tragedy in the abstract, we have a lot more sympathy when it happens to someone we know, and it is easy to feel as if we knew these men, although most of us do not.
On the other hand, none of us knows the embryos at all. It is difficult to convince a lot of people they are humans, and many of those who admit they are humans will insist on saying they aren’t persons. The latter concept which distinguishes a person, as someone who has a life worth living, from a human, who may or may not, leaves me asking whether there are humans walking around amongst us who aren’t persons, but that is too broad a question for this piece.
The major point here is that embryos don’t have a lot going for them appearance-wise. They are human, but they don’t look human because they are a stage of our development that is normally concealed from our view.
Many people find newborns, infants, and toddlers to be adorable. This is because nature has invested a lot in just that strategy. Anyone who has felt a baby’s soft cheek against his face at three o’clock in the morning might understand just what I mean.
The cruel fact is that if nature hadn’t put in safeguards, many people would kill their offspring outright because they are so much trouble. Historically, even in spite of these natural protections, infanticide has been a fact of life.
As the embryo has been concealed from our view in the womb, it hasn’t needed the protection of being attractive. Consequently, we can look at the embryos of our species among those of others and not be able to tell the difference. Man’s ability to manipulate Nature has gotten to the point She can no longer protect him from himself, even in Her most gentle way.
We have the psychological freedom to do with embryos things which we wouldn’t ever allow to happened to the human in later stages of development. If someone were to hold up an infant and say, “If you allow me to dismember this child, my Parkinson’s will be cured,” we would think they were a monster. On the other hand, saying the same about an embryo doesn’t elicit an equivalent reaction.
Those who hold the view that life begins at conception and that embryos should be treated with the same reverence reserved humans at later developmental stages have been accused of being sentimental, while those who would allow destructive experimentation on embryos are called rational. This is actually the reverse of the truth. It takes a rational mind to understand someone can be different than themselves and still be human.
Man’s alienation from Creation continues, and as it does, our feelings, which are so important in dealing with our fellow humans, can be misplaced. We shouldn’t allow ourselves be tugged off course by someone pulling on our heartstrings.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and speaker. You may contact him at bobby@okieinexile.com or visit his webpage at www.okieinexile.com.)
