The Mental Mindfield of Abortion

I love having discussions about controversial issues. Yet more often than not, I tragically find myself deliberately avoiding the mother of all moral debates. Not because anything inherent about the issue, but rather by how difficult it is to get past the deeply entrenched rhetoric of Choice(TM) versus Life(TM).

As far as I can tell, both arguments are engineered to bring out the worst in people. Both frame their arguments in a context where the only salient issue is already decided, then provoke people into passionately re-enforcing what is obvious to them and irrelevant to their opposition. The result is two groups of previously rational people exhausted by frustration with each other.

Here's a mind map to illustrate better...


To summarize, if you believe that the fetus is a person, then abortion is the act of killing that person which is obviously wrong. In that light, any arguments about a right to chose abortion will be about as unpalatable as a similar argument to chose rape.

Similarly, if you believe that a fetus is not a person then the moral implications of abortion become virtually irrelevant. The inability to chose or the threat of being stigmatized as immoral become the greater injustices.

What about the age old question "When does life begin?"

Close, but also wrong.

The notion of your life beginning is inherently misleading. It implies that there was some transition from a time when you existed, but were not alive, to a time when you became living. It obviously maps nicely to the idea that you are created at your birth, but technically the evidence tells a very different story. Soul or not, you are a collection of living cells. Every cell in your body has your DNA and has a lineage that traces back to the first cell that bore your DNA. That living cell originated from two living gametes (sperm and egg), which originated from living cells within your parents, which follow the same pattern of cellular ancestry back to the beginning(s) of human life. And then continue back to the beginning of life itself.

Your life is just a tiny branch of a billion year old history of cellular divisions and recombinations. A life did not begin in you, you began in a life. So when did your life begin? ...Billions of years ago. Happy birthday.

A better question to ask is when did you begin?

How America lost the war on terror.

I can go a lot of directions with this topic. Many mistakes have been made in Bush administration's reign over the past few years. So many that it can be daunting to even make sense of what Bush has been trying to accomplish, let alone if his efforts were worth the consequences. All I can deduce from what I've seen over the past 5 years is that even if you cast his motives in the kindest light and believe every word he says, there is a fundamental concept that he misses over and over again:

Human dignity is everything.

Take away a man's dignity and he will resist you. Whether is hurts him, whether it kills him, dignity takes precedence. It is why a waiter who would gladly bend over backwards to entice a tip from an appreciative patron would also gladly risk his job to serve a bowl of spit to a jerk that takes the same subservience for granted. It is why a Quebecois that enjoys the freedom and political self-determination that is the envy of most of the world will still dream of risking it all to build a new, smaller, weaker, but otherwise nearly identical nation that conforms more to his identity. And it is why an otherwise peaceful young man can be seduced by martyrdom when offered the promise of dignity over a life of chronic humiliation.

For as much as the Bush administration has bullied and intimidated its way into doing just about whatever it wants (Foreign invasions, torture, unchallenged secrecy, just about any abuse of power really.), it's not clear that any of it will leave a positive legacy. None of the initiatives have seemed to inspire the American people so much as quell their fears, pass under the radar or get added to the growing list of things they just don't want to think about (Hi Guantanamo!). Ultimately, without any strong public support, over time most domestic changes that Bush enacted will eventually erode away. But the consequences of Iraq will live on.

How in the world Bush messed up so badly in Iraq is astounding. He seemed to go out of his way to rob the Iraqi people of their dignity at every step. Security issues, cowboy soldiers, and devastated infrastructure aside... Did you know that Iraqi constitution is setup so that you don't vote for a representative in parliament? You actually just vote for a party who decides which candidate gets to represent you. And that person gets to vote on your behalf in the presidential election. So if the party leaders are installed by the CIA, which they are, then so is the entire parliament and the president. ...at every election. It's a turn-key, pre-corrupted Democratic government. Why would any Iraqi sacrifice their dignity to support softer dictatorship? You certainly couldn’t intimidate them by force. They've survived 30 years of Saddam. What vision could America offer that would be more seductive than the insurgents that are fighting for the dignity of the country. I'm afraid the opportunity to create a national identity has long since passed. Trying now would be like proposing to a girl you just raped.

Iraq had a chance to sew a true democracy before the war. It had uprisings that had been quelled by force before, that could have been inspired to rise again. There was after all, plenty of interest in toppling Saddam. America could have followed the plan that it used in Afghanistan, and be the popular resistance's not-so-secret weapon. America could have been the hero of a popular revolution if it won the hearts and minds of the people first and use the threat of force more than force itself. But sadly, this administration doesn't seem to understand dignity.

Welcome to the Scrambled Egghead

Hello World.

Welcome to the Scrambled Egghead.

This is an experimental blog that I conceived around the fact that a) I love to cook and b) I occasionally like to think. So if I'm not too lazy, you should find a series of inspiring recipes intertwined with some random hopefully thought-provoking political/philosophical musings.

Bon appetit!