Brainwashing (excerpt)
Introduction:
Cruelty in Context
I'the last night's storm I such a
fellow saw,
Which made me think a man a worm.
[...]
As flies to wanton boys are we to
the gods,
They kill us for their sport.
(William
Shakespeare, King Lear)
Human
beings are difficult creatures to build. Until the recent promise of
reproductive technology
emerged
to tantalise, and sometimes fulfil, the unhappily childless, new
members joined
the Homo sapiens club through only
one mechanism: sex. And membership was far from guaranteed. Around
three-quarters of women who conceive lose the pregnancy before they
realise
they are pregnant. Around a sixth of recognised pregnancies fail.[1] God may disapprove of abortion, as
some of his followers claim, but nature seems to use it frequently.
Even in the
womb, that symbol of safety, we are fragile creatures, difficult to
sustain,
easily nudged across the border between life and death.[2]
When
it comes to leaving Club
Human the contrast is clear: one entrance, a myriad exits.
Complex entities have more opportunities to malfunction, and as for
your
computer, so for you. Even among those humans who make it to babyhood,
let
alone adulthood, normality is hard to define and perfection impossible
to
achieve. All of us have our blemishes, some physical, some
psychological, some
visible, some less so. Among these knots in the weave are deadly
faults.
Christianity speaks of original sin and the resulting corruption,
passed down
from generation to generation, which brings ageing, pain and death to
humankind. Modern science names our genes as the secular equivalent -
bearers
of an intricate and individual recipe for the bodily dysfunction which
consumes
us sooner or later, depending on how stressed we are, whether we smoke
or drink
alcohol, what we eat and how much exercise we take. Obvious physical
problems
with internal organs - heart or liver failure, cancers and immune
disorders,
genetic conditions, strokes or seizures, neurodegenerative disorders
and blood
clots - account for many of us. Infectious diseases remove many more.
Then
there are the less well understood but often lethal disorders we shove
into the
pigeonhole of 'mental illness': depression, schizophrenia, anorexia and
suchlike. Our bodies may grow according to a standard template, but
they can
fail in an oppressive variety of ways. Human existence is framed by
this
fearful asymmetry between creation and destruction.