We all live with the presumption we are entitled to certain basics in life, be it shelter, food, education, employment, care, security, privacy or dignity. Should you live in a deprived part of our globe none of these can be taken for granted. That you are alive at this moment and might reasonably assume you will be alive for the next hour or perhaps the rest of the day is as far as you can presume anything. We however take our entitlements to the life we have for granted and are so casual to the point of indifference in seeking out and protecting what we have. After all it is our birthright.
We are entitled to nothing. Everything we do get comes only from the goodwill of society and that it is prepared to fund. It may well be in societies long term best interests to arrange everyone to have dry warm shelter, to have access to good nutritious food, to ensure children are educated. Without these basic steps the scale of consequential problems soar and scupper any societies attempts to hold the line. Does not turn it into a right, just a self-interest to do what is seen to be possible.
What is possible is all in the eye of the beholder, not the supplicants, not the egalitarian evangelist, not the pressure groups, just the one beholder who has the gift of deciding for that moment. Okay not entirely free choice as they too have to bow to media reactions, funding limitations, public opinion, world expectations and their own sense of destiny. How our basic needs are catered for come down to whim and fancy. A far cry from any right and not even an entitlement.
Of course our one core entitlement is our privacy, that is sacrosanct. To have your privacy invaded is equal to being raped. Yet the State takes on itself to enter you anally, take you without notice and lock you up without any contact with the outside world, read all electronic communications, now and in the past, irrespective of subject or address, store your gene record to be read for whatever purpose its see fit and all in the name of some ill-defined Security of the State. Not just the State of course but any number of other bodies, even private commercial firms, are too granted the right to enter your property, with or without your consent, to take information or property it deems necessary. Your right to privacy is pretty shallow based. Just dont show your head above the parapet! Remember these things do happen to just ordinary people, just like you and me, not those evil twisted people, just ordinary guys caught up in some maelstrom they little know about or understand.
Never mind an englishmans home is his castle, so pull up the drawbridge. Not quite. For example, the software you buy does not give you ownership, in many cases it just a licence to use with even restrictions on how you sell it on. Of course your music, video, DVD have restrictions on where or how you use it or make copies of it. Without touching on leases and ground rent, your house, the house that you own, may well have a charge on it. That charge might permit some other body to seize it and evict you from your own home. Extreme maybe but do not blithely assume just because you have bought something it is yours for ever and a day. It all depends on the sinuous threads of attachment other bodies have wrapped around your purchases.
We have no rights, we have no entitlements just many expectations, reasonable and wide spread expectations. The fundamental expectation that the you will be treated fairly and not significantly disadvantageously from any other person in your social milieu. Time for you to look around. In this rapidly increasing unequal society where those with take even more whilst those without, the least able to give anything, have to give up so they can have their more. Fairness and equity have gone out of the window. Your protectors of your rights, the MP's, have abandoned principle and sold out to personal betterment, financial clout or the mindless middle ground of dont rock the boat as we too might still climb aboard. Greed and self-interest abound. You are a drift at the mercy of whim and fancy without an entitlement to your name. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Showing posts with label birthright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthright. Show all posts
Thursday, 27 June 2013
Saturday, 26 May 2012
A baby is for life
Caught a breakfast item the other morning about a girl bemoaning that the NHS will not fund her IVF treatment for the baby she so desperately wants with her new partner. The significance of the two children she successfully had but with a previous partner escape her self preoccupation. Babies are a necessary and an essential status image to show off to the world how successful you are. It is your right to have as and when you choose.
Maybe, just possibly there are other considerations that have got lost along the way and need to be taken down and dusted off. Yes, having a child is the single most important life event for man or woman. Our society needs strong healthy children to sustain its population, provide the labour and wealth generators to keep the social infrastructure rolling on. We need stable, well-rounded and confident children that fit easily into the established social networks and patterns. The few odd-ball adventurers or opportunists can be absorbed. We know that children with a single parent or possibly worse serial parents do not grow up to become stable, well-rounded and confident adults. The parenting skills or wants have a huge impact on how that child matures.
It is not about our self-centred personal whims and fancies. How lovely a baby would be. At its roots, it is only about ensuring a sound society can continue to grow and prosper. In the past sheer bloody economic necessity meant there was no option. You had to make do with the partner you ended up with. Woe betide you if you let your fancy wander to a peacock or a thrilling stud. Your life partner choice was critical. Get the best partner your circumstance gave you access to and your circumstance enabled you to seal against the competition. Choose well, then a well managed house and children with the best food from available resources and a regular income provider not tempted to dally elsewhere. Else you are stuck in all the flip sides. With a high mortality, where with luck three out of twelve children might survive into adulthood, unimpeded fecundity was the order of the day.
Not any more. We have to constrain our birthrate but a single child policy is not the answer either, as China's growing pool of 'Little Emperors' testifies. Our investment in marriage as a concept has to be overhauled. It used to signify family, the core and centre of society. Family, the start of the new generation and the handing on of all the inherited attributes. A big event where two gene lines meet, exchange and forge long term relationships. A hugely important event carrying the whole investment of the past and the hopes for some sort of future. Now sidelined as a show, a public display of current success, ephemeral, the oaths given as meaningless as the bouquet tossed aside. No wonder a gay marriage is on the agenda. A marriage is just a civil right, no more significant than casting a vote.
We have evolved, we have a plethora of weapons, so let us keep civic partnerships for all who want a legal sanction on their union, whether for one year or for life. Marriage needs to be upgraded given a special place. Marriage that is the rock bed of procreation and long relationships. Marriage only for couples willing to commit to stay together and bring up the direct results of their union, their children, no matter what. Not an automatic right for all and sundry but a much sought after and highly regarded right only conferred on those able to demonstrate a long term commitment and likely to produce vigorous progeny. A precious and hard-earned right then achieved only after passing a peer review and assessment on your suitability, your conformity and viable breeding. Your peers deciding whether you have what it takes to produce and hold a family together in your neighbourhood. With that granting, recognition by the State of that special status approved with additional health, housing, pension, tax rebate rights. Encouragement to provide that long term stable care that we all need our society to foster.
Nothing wrong with childbirth, fostering, IHV, adoption, whatever outside of 'marriage' but within a civic partnership, just lacking the state's sanctification and benefits. We must invest heavily into our future but be compassionate for the many that do not measure up.
Maybe, just possibly there are other considerations that have got lost along the way and need to be taken down and dusted off. Yes, having a child is the single most important life event for man or woman. Our society needs strong healthy children to sustain its population, provide the labour and wealth generators to keep the social infrastructure rolling on. We need stable, well-rounded and confident children that fit easily into the established social networks and patterns. The few odd-ball adventurers or opportunists can be absorbed. We know that children with a single parent or possibly worse serial parents do not grow up to become stable, well-rounded and confident adults. The parenting skills or wants have a huge impact on how that child matures.
It is not about our self-centred personal whims and fancies. How lovely a baby would be. At its roots, it is only about ensuring a sound society can continue to grow and prosper. In the past sheer bloody economic necessity meant there was no option. You had to make do with the partner you ended up with. Woe betide you if you let your fancy wander to a peacock or a thrilling stud. Your life partner choice was critical. Get the best partner your circumstance gave you access to and your circumstance enabled you to seal against the competition. Choose well, then a well managed house and children with the best food from available resources and a regular income provider not tempted to dally elsewhere. Else you are stuck in all the flip sides. With a high mortality, where with luck three out of twelve children might survive into adulthood, unimpeded fecundity was the order of the day.
Not any more. We have to constrain our birthrate but a single child policy is not the answer either, as China's growing pool of 'Little Emperors' testifies. Our investment in marriage as a concept has to be overhauled. It used to signify family, the core and centre of society. Family, the start of the new generation and the handing on of all the inherited attributes. A big event where two gene lines meet, exchange and forge long term relationships. A hugely important event carrying the whole investment of the past and the hopes for some sort of future. Now sidelined as a show, a public display of current success, ephemeral, the oaths given as meaningless as the bouquet tossed aside. No wonder a gay marriage is on the agenda. A marriage is just a civil right, no more significant than casting a vote.
We have evolved, we have a plethora of weapons, so let us keep civic partnerships for all who want a legal sanction on their union, whether for one year or for life. Marriage needs to be upgraded given a special place. Marriage that is the rock bed of procreation and long relationships. Marriage only for couples willing to commit to stay together and bring up the direct results of their union, their children, no matter what. Not an automatic right for all and sundry but a much sought after and highly regarded right only conferred on those able to demonstrate a long term commitment and likely to produce vigorous progeny. A precious and hard-earned right then achieved only after passing a peer review and assessment on your suitability, your conformity and viable breeding. Your peers deciding whether you have what it takes to produce and hold a family together in your neighbourhood. With that granting, recognition by the State of that special status approved with additional health, housing, pension, tax rebate rights. Encouragement to provide that long term stable care that we all need our society to foster.
Nothing wrong with childbirth, fostering, IHV, adoption, whatever outside of 'marriage' but within a civic partnership, just lacking the state's sanctification and benefits. We must invest heavily into our future but be compassionate for the many that do not measure up.
Monday, 17 January 2011
Genes to fight for
Nature is ruthless and dispassionate, only the strongest and fittest get to live to breed another day. The weak, the sickly, those not best suited to the environmental conditions of the day, if they are not abandon by their hard pressed parents, will most likely fall by the wayside. Pushed aside by their pier group who are stronger and more suited.
What genes we get to inherit is a lottery, a random cut and shuffle, a bit from her and bit from him and perhaps some oddity due to a mistranslation. That is what you are dealt. Whether or how you survive depends on this initial hand dealt, how you manage to fend off predators, find sufficient to eat and win out on the right to breed.
Then along comes religion and science. Now every born person must be spared and all of our skills and resources are funnelled into saving this soul for as long as humanly possible. No matter the underlying cause or defect that put their life in jeopardy in the first place. In all humanity, it is everyones entitlement, it is their birthright to have a chance to survive, succeed and to reproduce. When societies were ravaged by disease, famine or more often war, it was a imperative that became translated into a moral code, preserve all life at all costs.
Natures way ensured only the carriers of the strongest and fittest gene mix were likely to reproduce and thus pass on their award winning combination of genes to the next lottery drum draw. Our moralistic intervention now ensures all gene combinations, the weak and flawed are preserved together with the strong and resilient, both equally contributing to the next generation. There is no way left to discard those gene combinations that are weak, self-destructive and or reduce our fitness to survive natures changing patterns.
Worse still, through economic success and science our populations now exceed the worlds capacity to sustain an equilibrium. To support all of those now born and grant them a right to breed requires that the worlds resources will diminish below their natural replacement level. We could argue the pros and cons on this, but let us just settle on this one aspect. Current world population, if they only bred at a replacement level, would still be challenged to find sufficient resources to sustain them. But the population currently will increase well beyond mere replacement levels. We just have too many surviving people for the good of the world we inhabit. Unlike any other time in our history we can afford to be relaxed or conservative about the need to procreate.
A weak gene, take for example colour blindness, can propagate through the male population at fast rate. We are beginning to discover a number of such genetically related defects which threaten the longevity of us as a people. The much greater mixing up of the gene pool has many advantages, spreading good strong gene characteristics around. But as we spread the strong we are also spreading the weak and defective gene. There is no weak gene kill off option left within our kingdom. There is a real risk that we will continue to weaken our gene pool putting our long term survival in jeopardy. There is of course no god standard of what constitutes a good strong gene. Woe betides us if we go back over the Aryan dream again. That should not stop us thinking about the issues of the propagation of self-evidently harmful destructive genes. As a first step we should short-list gene traits that are set to spread rapidly and quantify their harmful long term effects. Whilst we might adapt and be content to live with wide-spread colour blindness we would not respond the same way to sickle cell disease.
Our continued success as people ultimately depends on the strength of our gene pool and its vitality to adapt to the extremes that our over-population is already forcing on our environment. We as a people are going to have to devise ways to ensure certain weak genes do not get the chance to propagate, even if that is at the cost that certain individuals do not automatically get the right to reproduce.
What genes we get to inherit is a lottery, a random cut and shuffle, a bit from her and bit from him and perhaps some oddity due to a mistranslation. That is what you are dealt. Whether or how you survive depends on this initial hand dealt, how you manage to fend off predators, find sufficient to eat and win out on the right to breed.
Then along comes religion and science. Now every born person must be spared and all of our skills and resources are funnelled into saving this soul for as long as humanly possible. No matter the underlying cause or defect that put their life in jeopardy in the first place. In all humanity, it is everyones entitlement, it is their birthright to have a chance to survive, succeed and to reproduce. When societies were ravaged by disease, famine or more often war, it was a imperative that became translated into a moral code, preserve all life at all costs.
Natures way ensured only the carriers of the strongest and fittest gene mix were likely to reproduce and thus pass on their award winning combination of genes to the next lottery drum draw. Our moralistic intervention now ensures all gene combinations, the weak and flawed are preserved together with the strong and resilient, both equally contributing to the next generation. There is no way left to discard those gene combinations that are weak, self-destructive and or reduce our fitness to survive natures changing patterns.
Worse still, through economic success and science our populations now exceed the worlds capacity to sustain an equilibrium. To support all of those now born and grant them a right to breed requires that the worlds resources will diminish below their natural replacement level. We could argue the pros and cons on this, but let us just settle on this one aspect. Current world population, if they only bred at a replacement level, would still be challenged to find sufficient resources to sustain them. But the population currently will increase well beyond mere replacement levels. We just have too many surviving people for the good of the world we inhabit. Unlike any other time in our history we can afford to be relaxed or conservative about the need to procreate.
A weak gene, take for example colour blindness, can propagate through the male population at fast rate. We are beginning to discover a number of such genetically related defects which threaten the longevity of us as a people. The much greater mixing up of the gene pool has many advantages, spreading good strong gene characteristics around. But as we spread the strong we are also spreading the weak and defective gene. There is no weak gene kill off option left within our kingdom. There is a real risk that we will continue to weaken our gene pool putting our long term survival in jeopardy. There is of course no god standard of what constitutes a good strong gene. Woe betides us if we go back over the Aryan dream again. That should not stop us thinking about the issues of the propagation of self-evidently harmful destructive genes. As a first step we should short-list gene traits that are set to spread rapidly and quantify their harmful long term effects. Whilst we might adapt and be content to live with wide-spread colour blindness we would not respond the same way to sickle cell disease.
Our continued success as people ultimately depends on the strength of our gene pool and its vitality to adapt to the extremes that our over-population is already forcing on our environment. We as a people are going to have to devise ways to ensure certain weak genes do not get the chance to propagate, even if that is at the cost that certain individuals do not automatically get the right to reproduce.
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