Category: Deep Thoughts

Difficult Problem, Horrible Solution

Deep Thoughts

This sad tale is quite thought-provoking:

Internet stars Jesse Ridgway, 33, and Ashley Ridgway, 31, announced that they had made the ‘difficult decision’ to terminate their pregnancy earlier this week, two months after learning their unborn child had Down syndrome. 

“As for us, we made a difficult decision that we believe in the long-run will be beneficial for our family,” Jesse wrote in a series of Instagram Story. “Thankfully, we had a choice. “It will take a little time to move on, but we are excited to try again in the future and hopefully have a better outcome,” he added.

Just a week earlier, the pair had shared a YouTube video showing the results of an amniocentesis test, which screens for birth defects and chromosomal conditions. In the clip, the couple sat on the floor and viewed the test results in real time, which revealed markers consistent with Trisomy 21, medically known as Down syndrome. 

Ashley broke into tears as Jesse explained that the couple had previously discussed terminating the pregnancy if faced with such a scenario, a decision they later confirmed on Wednesday.

Jesse, posted a series of emotional Instagram stories saying the couple had decided to have an abortion, describing the decision as “not made lightly” and “extremely traumatic.” 

I’ll say it is.  I can’t actually think of anything more gut-wrenching than this one, but when all is said and done, given what they were going to face, I can’t say I disagree with what they did.

And before I start getting screamed at, I note the many similarities between this decision and the decision to turn off life support for a terminally-ill relative — the latter of which does not seem to engender much of a response from the All Life Is Precious Brigade.

Remember too that I am a bitter foe of abortion-on-demand, except in cases like this.

I once knew a guy — back in South Africa, where abortion was very much illegal — whose wife had had a Downs Syndrome baby.  The poor little tyke lived until age 10, and then died from the usual issues associated with this unhappy circumstance.  Several years later, I asked him about his feelings on the topic, and his response was blunt and to the point.

“It was hell,” he stated bluntly.  “Absolute bloody hell:  for my wife, for me, and for little Eric.  Ten years of exhausting hell.  As much as we tried to put a cheerful face on it, I think my wife cried herself to sleep every night for five years.  And when Eric finally went into the hospital for the last time — we knew his condition was terminal — we crucified ourselves with our guilt because we were feeling nothing but relief that his, hers and my hell were finally coming to an end.”

Of course, in the case of our unhappy couple in New Jersey, there have been the usual issues from the lunatics:

The news immediately triggered a wave of online backlash. A day later, the pair revealed that their inboxes were being flooded with ‘hate and vitriol’ over their ‘impossible decision.’ 

Jesse, known online as McJuggerNuggets, said that since sharing their abortion, they have been exposed to a “deeply disturbing” side of humanity.  One comment left under their YouTube video read: “Genuinely the most dystopian and disturbing video I’ve seen on YouTube. Truly evil. Four months.”  Another said, “Hitler thought those with disabilities didn’t deserve to live either!!! You should be sterilized.”

All those comments, of course, are coming from people who’ve never had to face anything like the choice — if it can be called that — that these poor kids have had to deal with.

If I can fault the Ridgways with anything, it’s for putting the whole ghastly episode on the Internet.  Had they just had the thing done, then put up a brief, sorrowful post that they had lost the unborn baby, nobody would have been any the wiser and everyone could just have carried on.

But this unhealthy urge to share with strangers the most intimate details of one’s life is total poison — as Jesse and Ashley Ridgway have discovered.  I only hope that he never has to use the gun he keeps next to his bed, because that would just add to the tragedy;  although getting rid of some screeching fanatic would not be that bad an outcome, because they live in Noo Joizee the consequences of ending that asshole’s life would be more punitive than ending the life of their unborn, unhealthy baby.

There are no winners in this horrible story, and the maniacs who insist on piling on are just adding to the tragedy.

Those Genes

Deep Thoughts

…and not those belonging to Sydney Sweeney, either.  This is serious stuff — and before you consign it to the “TL;DR” trope, allow me to draw you to this thought-provoking couple of paragraphs:

The development of farming and then animal herding greatly increased the number of humans—which continued to have evolutionary consequences for our species—and created productive assets (farms and animal herds) worth fighting over. Successful male teams (typically organised as clans) wiped out unsuccessful male teams and took their women as spoils.

Hence, there is a dramatic bottleneck in male lineages but not in female lineages. This pattern stopped with the development of chiefdoms and especially states, though not so much on the Steppes, whose states were more like super-chiefdoms and where intense competition over resources (and women) continued.

The whole article should be required reading for all faculty members in every university in the West.

Followup Thought

Deep Thoughts, Lifestyle, Technology

…to the above QOTD:  I wonder whether this irritation towards the modern world’s increasing (and likely over-) complexity is just a generational thing?

I have no idea as to the age of the commenter in this case, but I know that this disenchantment and hankering after a simpler life seems fairly common among people of my age, for the simple reason that it’s a common factor of life among my friends and, lest we forget, Readers of this here website.

But do the various “Gen” types feel the same way?  I mean, we Olde Pharttes can remember (a bit) how much earlier times were less complicated and simpler.  But in the case of Teh Youngins, are they even aware that life can be simpler, given that all they’ve ever experienced is Smartphones, the Internet, self-drive cars and refrigerators that can tell you when you’re running low on milk?

And considering that most Millennials, let alone the Gen X/Y/Z tribe don’t know how to change a flat tire, cook a meal from scratch and drive a stick shift, would they embrace a simpler world when so much of their daily life is smoothed by technology?

I suspect not, for the same reason that people of my generation would have no idea how to drive a horse-drawn carriage or be able to transmit a telegraph message in Morse code.

So our final few years of life on this planet seem doomed to be techno-centric instead of simple.  What joy awaits us.

A Breath Of Sanity

Communication, Deep Thoughts

I’m pretty sure that I share quite a few Readers with The Divine Sarah (Hoyt), even though we write about totally different things most of the time, and even when we do write about the same thing, each will  often have a totally different (but not opposite) take on the thing under discussion.

And anyway, most of the time she writes about gay pirates or whatever, living on a spaceship or some other planet five hundred years in the future, while I write stuff based on actual historical events.  She’s also sold a jillion novels, and I haven’t.  Clearly the market is more attuned to fantastic (literally) worlds somewhere else than it is to late 19th-century Europe;  so she makes a living from her writing, and I don’t.  Annoyingly, as anyone familiar with her historical novels knows, she writes Regency better than I write Victorian/Edwardian.

C’est la vie.

However, thanks to her upbringing in a tiny rural village in Portugal, the real-life Sarah is — unlike many writers — firmly planted in the here and now, and every so often she writes a post that is full of common sense, pricks many fantastical bubbles along the way, and (in her own sweet way) says, “Stop that bullshit.”  It’s all the better if you’ve heard her speak in person, as I have, because that thick Portuguese accent, with its liquid vowels and strange intonation, is unbearably compelling, exotic and — dare I say? — sexy.

So it’s really wonderful when you imagine her saying something like this:

Guys, let me give you a tiny hint here “Science fiction warned us” really means “Guys and gals who were writing by the rule of cool and trying to make their next month’s rent warned us.” Now, is that scary? Of course not. It’s people writing drama to pay their rent.

Do most of them know what they’re talking about? Well, people like Heinlein did. That’s why he doesn’t have any big insanity like that. But most of my colleagues? Dear Bob (Heinlein). Remember, these are the people who write regencies with exploding carriages and the duchess taking the gig to the supermarket. Stop it, just stop it.

So get over to Sarah’s place and read her take on A.I., if you haven’t already.  You’ll emerge from it refreshed, as I did.

Two Views On Oppression

Deep Thoughts

This article by Gustavo Jalife at TCW opened up a new line of thought for me.  He starts off by quoting Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death:

‘Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.’

Jalife continues:

Over the last two decades the expansion of police society – across both capitalist and non-capitalist systems – has intensified, fueled by online minorities and off-line majorities that cry out for protection and assurances.

…the ghastly Covid restrictions on personal movement and social intercourse being an excellent example.

In the Bad Old Days — inhabited by people like George Orwell — oppression was simply a function of the State, whether post-Revolutionary Jacobin France, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union or the MiniTrue of WWII British Government.  It was, if you like, a brutish system wherein the various police forces arrested, imprisoned, or executed anyone seen as resistant (“counter-revolutionary”), non-compliant or (to use the word beloved by oppressors) deviant, if not “treasonous”.  We can call it the “Orwell” model, and while it lasts, it’s reasonably effective.

Aldous Huxley, on the other hand, took a different view.  Huxley based his thesis on the old Roman panem et circenses (bread & circuses) philosophy, whereby people in general will almost always take the easy and more pleasurable option when it comes to dealing with life.  In that, people are distracted from opposition to the ruling diktat  by drugs (soma), spectacle (Olympic Games) or immersive entertainment like the “feelies”.  What’s mistaken about Huxley’s thesis is thinking that the State would create such diversionary pursuits — in most cases, such technology is beyond the capacity of the State to create — whereas we all know those pursuits could only be created by private corporations, a.k.a. Big Tech.

It would appear that modern Western society is operating more on the Huxley model, whereas the Orwell model is being used by the North Korea / CCP regimes, as well as the religious autocracies like Islam.  But there’s another twist to this.

We all know that the “ruling diktat ” (sometimes called The Narrative) differs between the West and the Rest.

For the Rest, it’s simple:  dogma, whether political (Marxism) or religious (Islam) forms the diktat  and prescribes the actions to be followed.

In the West?  Well, that’s not so simple.  In the absence of a strict political- or religious foundation, there are many other contenders:  political correctness, multiculturalism, environmentalism:  you name it.  People need a flag to follow, and the power-seekers and social controllers are only too pleased to provide them.

And as long as there’s enough soma to go round to deaden the senses, it doesn’t matter how silly, impractical, illogical or even destructive those flag-standards are.  Let’s be honest:  without all the in-home distractions provided by streaming movie services, Zoom calls and the like, the Covid restrictions wouldn’t have lasted longer than a few days.  Even more ironically, when the Covid crackdowns were ignored or actively opposed, the State (in whichever nation) used some very old-school methods to punish or suppress.

Gustavo Jalife poses the question:  “Do we actually like being controlled?”

I would phrase it rather differently.  “Do we actually care about whether we’re being controlled or not?”

“More soma?”

Sure, why not.  Let’s go shopping on Amazon, doomscroll, play a video game, watch some porn or scroll through the options on Netflix for a few hours until bedtime.  Adderall and Xanax are for losers, dude.  We can munch on some “edibles” while we play — it’s not harmful, really:  all the studies point to that.

Goodbye To All That

Deep Thoughts, Travels

Longtime Readers will be very familiar with my penchant for travel, especially to the U.K. and parts of Euroland.

However, as I’ve been paging through my travel pic folders to find landscapes and cityscapes to post on Thursdays, a feeling of gloom and melancholy is starting to make its appearance.

I’m not sure I want to travel internationally again.

There are several reasons I make that statement, but let me deal with the easier one first.

I’m getting old, and while my overall health is pretty good (according to my doctor, not just for my age but for just about any age), I’m not sure how I’d feel about, for example, climbing up the steep cobbled street from the ferry dock at Meersburg to the town itself on top of the hill.

Hell, it was tough when I last did it — in 2004 — so now, over two decades later… you get my drift.  And I loved Meersburg, with a passion.

Also, when strolling around cities like Paris or London, I thought nothing of walking all day — I mean, for those who are familiar with the cities, from Notre Dame to Sacré Coeur and back to our hotel next to the Sorbonne;  or from the V&A Museum to World’s End at the other end of Chelsea, and back.

Either of those little jaunts would take me two days, now.

Which brings me to my second thought.

Even if I could do those walks, I’m not so sure I’d want to because of the crime that seems to have overtaken most of Europe’s cities.  It’s not that I’m afraid of becoming a victim of some Rolex Ripper on Bond Street or Rue Royale;  I’m not a fearful person by nature — but I can be an aggressive person when faced by thuggishness of that kind, and I don’t want to deal with the possibility of having to explain to an unsympathetic bobby or gendarme why some little scrote is lying there screaming with a broken arm or, for that matter, having to deal with the NHS or its French equivalent when said little scrote hacked at me with a machete because I had the effrontery to refuse his attempt at property redistribution.

And we all know how the Filth in Britishland regard the matter of self-defense Over There.  Nothing puts a damper on the travel experience like having to explain to some judge why you didn’t want to just let the little choirboy take your property and shake your head sorrowfully at your loss.  That you applied your walking-stick to the little shit’s cranium (in lieu of having the old 1911 at hand) would no doubt land you in Serious Trouble, just as your attitude to the cops being more or less on the criminal’s side rather than on yours might also result in the cop’s uniform being ruined by the flow of blood (his).

Altogether, not a prospect worth spending thousands of dollars (which I don’t have) just to visit their poxy paradise.

And then there’s this little nugget, from one of my most-favored places on the planet:

Most famous districts in Vienna are in the heart of the city and during summer or at Christmas season they become overcrowded, which can lead to pickpocketing, mugging and even terrorist attacks.  In these areas frequented by tourists, bus and train stations, people around you need to be carefully watched and your possessions should be kept close to you.

WTF?  Now add to that the chance that some “migrant” takes offense that your female companion doesn’t have her head covered to his satisfaction… do you see where I’m going with this?

Fuck that for a tale.

One might think, given all the above, that the places to visit in Europe would be those which haven’t allowed untrammeled African- or Muslim incursions.  We’re talking here of Poland and Hungary, for instance.

But here’s my problem.  I would love — love — to visit those two countries, but I’m completely unfamiliar with both their languages, and honestly, I’m not sure that my old brain can handle learning even a smattering of either with the facility that used to be one of my strengths.

This really sucks.

So it may be that at long last, I’ll have to trim Ye Olde Bucquette Lyste of the travel items therein, sadly and regretfully.

I think I’ll just go to the range, assuming my eyesight is still up to the task of seeing the sights of a gun instead of the sights of a foreign city.

Bah.