It's all about the benjamins. Andrew's quote for the day:
There's an argument on the right that gay marriage is a radically Lockean rejection of our obligations to reproductively maintain our communities and to instrumentally view marriage accordingly. I have a both more munificent and nastier argument, which orbits around the question why are our radical Lockeans rejecting gene egotism? There is something creepily socialistic about the inclination of straight and gay celebrities alike to view children as creatures that ought not necessarily have any biological connection to their parents -- or, more specifically, that your 'own flesh and blood' is just one of many kinds of young person with whom one can have a relationship of parentishness. This seems like a trend with legs.
Curiously, the eros lo volt movement oscillates between radical individualism and radical panhumanism -- with each seeming somehow to need to be demonstrated as proof of the other. Naturally the 'unnatural' transactions created by these oscillations are all easily (hungrily) integrated into capital markets. Untold numbers of new profits turned, everybody wins, right?
"First comes love. Then comes marriage. And now it's a milestone every couple in California can celebrate," - a Macy's ad for its gift registry in today's NYT.Our go-to corporations for life's big transactions know what celebration means in America -- $$$. Note it may be useless or moot to claim there's anything wrong with that. But it's revealing nonetheless how monetary celebration has so seamlessly taken the place of that baby in the baby carriage.
There's an argument on the right that gay marriage is a radically Lockean rejection of our obligations to reproductively maintain our communities and to instrumentally view marriage accordingly. I have a both more munificent and nastier argument, which orbits around the question why are our radical Lockeans rejecting gene egotism? There is something creepily socialistic about the inclination of straight and gay celebrities alike to view children as creatures that ought not necessarily have any biological connection to their parents -- or, more specifically, that your 'own flesh and blood' is just one of many kinds of young person with whom one can have a relationship of parentishness. This seems like a trend with legs.
Curiously, the eros lo volt movement oscillates between radical individualism and radical panhumanism -- with each seeming somehow to need to be demonstrated as proof of the other. Naturally the 'unnatural' transactions created by these oscillations are all easily (hungrily) integrated into capital markets. Untold numbers of new profits turned, everybody wins, right?
Smaller brood sizes, more only children, more blended families and more dispersed extended families leaves the idea of identity by geneline feeling thinner and more arbitrary, maybe. As a class and individually, we reproduce memetically.
(I wonder about this sometimes, as an only child - how do you relate to the concept of universal brotherhood having no actual experience of actual brotherhood?)
Posted by: Senescent | May 30, 2008 at 01:33 AM
Hmm, it makes me think about Roman adoption. The Romans (well, I suppose mainly the élite) were continually adopting (as well as marrying) for political reasons. People would adopt others who were only a few years younger than themselves. The position of Emperor was handed down by adoption much more often than by birth.
Posted by: Josh | May 30, 2008 at 06:11 PM