Manmade Horrors

A True Story.

JMJ

The following happened in Minnesota.

The story below is basically true, although some details have been altered to further protect the identity of the people involved.

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A woman I know’s daughter got a fever. Let’s call her Lady A.

101.

Nothing terrible. Children have a higher metabolism than adults and run a little hotter anyways. Lady A gave her Motrin. Cold rag on her forehead and sent her to bed. A little after midnight she went to check on her and found it worse. 104. Worried, she woke the little girl up and got her dressed and they headed off together to the late night urgent care.

“Flu,” said the physician so deep in medical school debt that she was having to work the doc-in-the-box graveyard shift. Not much to do for it but rest. More Motrin. Pick up some Tamiflu in the morning.

Morning came. Child unresponsive. Fever worse. Lady A rushed her to the hospital. Sepsis. Organ failure. The doctors tell her there’s nothing they can do. Wasn’t flu actually. Was bacterial meningitis. Twelve hours later the child is dead. Five years old. From perfectly healthy and laughing to deceased in under twenty-four hours.

This already awful story unfortunately gets worse.

Some years earlier Lady A had had her uterus removed. Taken out at thirty-three. She’d been plagued by endometriosis for years and had a family history of a rare type of cancer so she wasn’t too upset at the prospect of being infertile. She’d said that the idea of her kid inheriting that gene, the one that had gotten her sister… well, she just couldn’t handle it. She’d adopt. She and her husband simply decided to adopt.

So it goes.

Lady A and I had gone to highschool together but I confess I never knew her very well. Her friend group and mine were only tangentially related and our circles didn’t overlap very much except around the edges. We did have one mutual friend however, Lady B, who, unrelatedly, ended up having fertility issues of her own. Rather severe ones. After we’d grown up and gotten out of college, I followed her pregnancy woes via her posts on Facebook. Years of that. Hope. Frustration. Hope again. Broken hearts. Finally they did it. Lady B and her husband conceived with the help of IVF.

Miracle that. In vitro fertilization.

If you’re unfamiliar, “in vitro” is Latin for “in glass” and refers to the process of fertilizing the woman’s egg outside the body, in a lab, in a petri dish. “Test tube” babies, as it were. Doctors use hormonal injections to stimulation ovulation and then retrieve a woman’s eggs via a needle in the ovaries. Her partner then, somewhere else, masturbates into a collection cup and his sperm is taken to the lab and placed in the dish beside the eggs where technicians encourage the two to mingle in various ways. If successful, the newly fertilized eggs are now considered embryos and, after some days of monitoring their development, are transferred back into the woman’s uterus where everyone waits and hopes for implantation. Not an overly romantic process, no, but, as I say, it’s a miracle of modern medicine and many couples who would not otherwise have ever gotten pregnant have been able to become parents with this technology.

It is, however, not without its downsides.

By any logically consistent standard, anyone that believes 1) that life begins at conception and 2) that abortion is murder, must come to the conclusion that IVF kills a heck of a lot more babies than it makes. Mind you, I’m not saying you have to believe this. You can believe whatever you like. I’m saying that if you believe 1 and 2 and want to be logically consistent, then you have to believe it. You might however not believe 1 or 2. Or perhaps you might not care about being consistent. Such is your right, go with God. The simple fact however is that most IVF procedures produce more viable human embryos than are used or wanted by the would-be parents and these, after a period of cold-storage, are usually discarded. The late stage processes of IVF ends, objectively, with the termination of individual human life.

Is it “ensouled” life? Is it “a person”?

That’s a philosophical matter. A theological one. On a purely biological level however the facts are quite clear. The embryos are individual organisms possessing their own unique human DNA and IVF disposes of such in large quantities, regarding them as medical waste.

Some people this bothers.

Others it doesn’t.

Lady B was the sort of person who thought it didn’t bother her but who then, after she’d gone through the process and was pregnant and had the extra embryos sitting in storage, realized she felt differently. They were her eggs after all. Fertilized by her husband and one of them, chosen quite randomly, was now growing into a thing that she could feel kicking inside her belly, something she had Named. From that position… well, she couldn’t help but feel that calling the others still sitting in the freezer “medical waste” was somehow wrong.

It kept her up at night.

A little worry, always running in the background of her mind like a hamster on a squeaky wheel. The embryos just sitting there. Frozen. Cold.

The thought haunted her, even years after while she was playing with her toddler, or taking her to her first day of preschool.

They paid the storage fee. Hadn’t thought they would but ended up doing so. She couldn’t bring herself to let the embryos be destroyed. They couldn’t reasonably afford another child at the moment but, they thought, maybe One Day they could and, if so, then they’d have another child ready to go, all queued up. A baby just waiting for somebody to come along and press start.

One Day never came.

Money kept being tight and their beautiful IVF daughter was now eight years old. Golden hair. She liked playing jump rope and making chocolate muffins and had a cheeky, irreverent sense of humor. Her name was Isla and everybody loved her.

And everyone would love the others too… Lady B continued to think, absolutely in spite of herself.

But…

It wasn’t just the money. Lady B’s issues with childbearing had not been limited to fertility. It just seemed like she hadn’t been made for it. All that trouble even getting pregnant and then, come to find out, she had hips much too narrow to have chosen a husband with such a big head. Extremely difficult pregnancy topped off with a C-section and an arduous recovery. Could she even carry another baby to term? She didn’t know. Her head was filled with uncertainty and indecision.

One night, over drinks, Lady B was discussing her woes with Lady A and they realized that together they had a near perfect solution. Lady A couldn’t have children and wanted some and Lady B had some frozen kids to spare. The only problem, as mentioned, was that Lady B was worried her uterus wasn’t up to the task and Lady A no longer had a uterus at all.

Enter Lady C.

Lady C was a surrogate. Another woman both A and B knew whom they convinced to carry Lady B’s baby to term, birth it, and then give it in adoption to Lady A. As you might have noticed, all this was beginning to get rather complicated, as now we have three women and one man involved in the reproductive process, with another two men playing not-insignificant supporting roles, one being the husband of Lady C and the other the husband of Lady A who would be the new child’s adoptive father. This is of course a very new kind of situation. At no other point in history could such a scheme have even been dreamt of, much less carried out, and all the conflicting emotions of the various parties involved were, to put it lightly, more than any of them had really bargained for. By hook or by crook though, the thing happened. The deed was done and, nine months later, Ladies A, B, and C gathered round the hospital bed for a photo with the new child. The gays had only ever succeeded in giving a kid two moms. The straights had now figured out a way to give one three.

She was seven pounds, two ounces, had all ten fingers and ten toes, and five years later would die from meningitis.

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The funeral was terrible. All funerals for children are. The court is still out on whether or not having three women there who all, sort of, had claim to motherhood made it worse or made it better. One the one they all took it about as hard as any mother would, seeming to make the grief three times worse. On the other they all carried the load together so, perhaps that made the misery a little lighter. What the court has firmly decided however is that the appearance of Isla, the child who was, genetically, the fraternal twin of the one in the casket but about nine years older, produced a train wreck.

Complete and total emotional devastation.

Lady A, who’d been holding it together well enough, came totally apart when her daughter, the version which hadn’t died and had continued to grow up, the very spitting image of what she would have become, walked through the door.

It was like something out of the Twilight Zone.

Of course, the separated sisters were not identical twins, but they had damn sure looked it, and comparing photos of Isla to the girl in the casket at similar ages had been a popular pastime. Now one was here and the other wasn’t. Everyone in attendance staring at the living, breathing embodiment of what should have been.

Lady A sprinted from the chapel. Sprinted. Burst through the doors and hid herself away somewhere in the backrooms where only the staff were supposed to go.

“I killed her!”

Her screams could be heard wailing through the walls.

“They trusted me with their baby and I killed her! She died on my watch!”

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Manmade horrors.

Things the psyche wasn’t made for.

Arguably the result of Mankind playing God.

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I am not immune to modern maladies.

I get on here and tell people to be grateful for Modernity, and Capitalism, and Technology, and all the rest, and because of my positivity regarding such things many assume I must be blind to all the terror and suffering they produce.

I’m not.

Like you, I’ve seen all the terrors first hand.

The loneliness. The atomization. The forceful push to turn everyone into fungible economic units fed on pesticides and wrapped in plastics. Fundamental human relationships broken down by the hypnotic suggestion of The Screen.

I get it, and all of you who are against such things aren’t wrong.

My continued refrain to be grateful is not to downplay the problems we are facing but rather to remind you that every coin has two sides. I’m asking you to stop and count the cost. Do a tally. See if, really, you’re actually serious when you talk about wanting change.

It’s okay if you’re not by the way.

As I point out, there are a lot of advantages and things to love about the modern world. It’s fine if you want to stay there. No judgment.

But… if you do want change… do you?

Do you really?

It’s a serious question because sharing articles, reading books, and downloading screentime apps to limit your phone usage are actually not examples of being “Against the Machine.” Ha. If only The Machine were beaten so easily! The people in my story, Ladies A thru C and their husbands, would probably all classify themselves as “conservative Christians.” Normies. People who don’t hate gays and even have gay friends but who, at the same time, really do think marriage ought only be between a man and a woman. Man and Man or Woman and Woman just isn’t natural and is against God but then…

… ah.

Then the siren’s call.

The temptation to engage in that same sort of unnaturality that modernity provides such easy access to.

Just…

Look. Can there be any consistent, logical argument against homosexuality when straight people are making babies in tubes? Truly. Do you see what I mean? The Rubicon of Unnaturality has already been crossed. Crossed a long, long time ago.

In a similar vein, what consistent argument is there against transsexualism when men are out there using steroids and women hormonal birth control? Afterall, what is a weightlifter on testosterone if not a male to alpha-male transexual? Why is it okay for women to take estrogen pills (birth control) to facility their sexuality, but not okay for transpeople to?

And… listen… for all that, if you really want to get in the weeds, the most common form of human trafficking in existence today is heterosexual white couples adopting foreign children. Sure, yeah, it’s done for a good purpose and no shade but still, objectively you’re paying money, often many thousands, to procure a child from a third world country and ferry them across international lines. It’s human trafficking. Black couples don’t do this. Asians don’t either. That behavior is almost exclusively a white Christian thing.

Do you see?

My point is that Modernity is a hell of a drug and I’m frankly just not sure you’re ready to come off it.

Make no mistake, being actually “Against the Machine” isn’t something you’ll ever pull off by doing it half-assed. If you’re serious, actually serious, you’re going to have to become a Zealot. A legit, anti-modernity extremist. A person that either flees to a cabin in the woods, cutting off all contact with the outside world, or else some form of eco-terrorist going around bombing A.I. data centers. Maybe both. You’ll have to become a disciple of Uncle Kaczynski with marked-up copies of “Industrial Society and Its Future” covering your desk. Nothing else will accomplish anything. All else is performative. Going to Latin Mass isn’t going to budge the needle. Having a homestead where you take cute Instagram pictures of your goats isn’t going to affect change. Tolkien was more Trad and more against the Locomotive than anyone, and yet on the Locomotive came. Barreled right through is little shire-like town. In like manner, A.I. will not be stopped by half-measures. The transhumanism project will continue apace. Everything you are currently counting as your “resistance” to these forces amounts to so much straw.

My friend, the battle with The Machine is already over.

You lost.

I’m only trying to get you to come to terms with that.

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And, here’s the thing. The future is only going to get weirder. Truly, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Why?

Because we really, actually did steal fire from the gods. It’s not a myth anymore. It happened.

As far as we can tell, in Physics there are four fundamental forces of nature. Gravity. Electromagnetism. The weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force. These are the four fundamental things that cause the motion of every wave, particle, and atom in existence.

And we mastered one.

We have, more or less, completely mastered 25% of Reality. Electromagnetism is our slave. We can shape magnetic fields however we like. We can make electrons dance. Zeus used to have the thunderbolts but we took them, and we can make them do whatever we want.

Maxwell’s Equations. Together they provide a more or less complete understanding of electromagnetism and allow us to manipulate electric and magnetic fields anyway we desire.

That genie ain’t easily put back into its bottle.

The four equations above are Modernity. Modernity isn’t some social policy, nor economic stance, nor even a moral failing… it’s… it’s this. Modernity is this specific knowledge and none of the weirdness of our time is possible without it. If Gauss and Faraday and Maxwell had never come along and given us these equations, we’d all still be living in picturesque little cottages with smoking chimneys and going to church every Sunday with our family by horse and buggy.

And you know… dear God help us if we ever figure out more.

If, one day, some new genius comes along and writes down equivalent equations for gravity or one of the nuclear forces… all bets are solidly off. 25% of Reality is too hard to comprehend already. If we achieve 50, or 75 percent… we’ll be indistinguishable from gods. As He worried about at the Tower of Babel… nothing we desire to do will be impossible for us. Machines capable of rearranging matter on a whim. High resolution manipulation of all chemical processes. Rewriting DNA on the fly. Perhaps, maybe, even a full mastery over Time.

Believe me, I understand the desire to reckon with Modernity.

You just aren’t going far enough.

You’re completely underestimating your opponent. As you are now, not only can you not stop it, it’s doubtful that you can even comprehend it. You’re not protesting a piece of public policy, or liturgical choices, or sexual ethics, or faceless corporations…

You’re living in an actual myth.

A world where Mankind has taken Mount Olympus by force.

That’s why nobody believes anymore. Not because the gods aren’t real, but because they’ve all been dethroned.

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I’m not trying to blame anyone. I never am. This post has been difficult to write because it involves such pain and is a prime example of why I’ve always operated pseudo-anonymously. How could I write this if people knew who I was and could connect my story to real, living people? If the identities of Lady’s A, B, or C could be so easily discovered? Upon a read-through, it occurs to me that some of what I’ve said thus far might be taken as implying that what happened to them was a result of their choices, that, somehow, I’m trying to say that God was taking vengeance on them for conceiving their child in such an unnatural way. I’m certainly not trying to imply this. This piece is only a personal story that I’m trying to create space for so I can understand it, as witness to something new that could not have happened before at any other time in history, and the psychological horrors that can result from such if it goes wrong. A woman without a womb and another with babies in a freezer, teaming up with a third to grow a child.

Wild.

Really, truly wild, when you think about.

Could any of the former goddesses of fertility have ever done that?

No. No of course they couldn’t have.

Also, shockingly market-like when you think about it, isn’t it? Consumerist. Kid on-demand and rent-a-womb. You see, Capitalism isn’t just one system amongst others. It actually doesn’t have any peers. In a very real way Capitalism is Modernity. It is the logical consequence of Maxwell’s equations, the end result of the collective choices we’ve all made with our newfound power. It’s intrinsic. People want it. There was no conspiracy here. No fat, balding men in smoking chambers getting together to work out how to screw you. No. It was instead the result of the totally valid, loving, and nurturing desires of three wonderful women, combining to produce the most Capitalistic thing imaginable… the buying and selling of human parts.

…

And yet…

The child was beautiful

That’s the thing.

Oh, God… if only the world made sense.

She was funny and smart and had a lust for life and so too do the thousands upon thousands of others likewise conceived. Who among us will then say that she shouldn’t have existed? That it was wrong to make her, and that the processes which did so ought be condemned? If they had it to do over again, I believe all three women would, judging that five years, although far too few, were better to have with such a remarkable person than none at all. That the pain was worth it.

Modernity, in all its inhumanity, produced a human who was worth it.

…

… …

And will you rage against that machine?

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I don’t know what the answer is. I see, as you do, that Modernity, Technology, and all that goes with them have distinct, measurable downsides. That they drive us into new and unnatural social configurations, blur the lines of our identities, atomize us, inflame our passions, drive us to extremes, and remove barriers to many of our unholy desires.

But, one… we can’t turn back the clock. The genie is out. I appreciate your desire to shut the gate but the horse already bolted. And, two… more importantly… I’m not even sure that if we could we’d really want to.

Men and women we… we always want the impossible. The Good without any of The Bad. We want someone to have a relationship with us, yes, but only the way we want it. We get upset when they’re their own people. When they make demands of us or have different goals. When they don’t see eye-to-eye with us on finance or want to have sex more or less than we’d like to have it. We’re constantly imagining hypothetical scenarios where we get all the pleasure we want in life without any of the attendant pains. Zero calories, same great taste. A job that pays well but is never stressful. Friends who are always available to hang out but who never ask us to help move. “Give me high-budget movies with engrossing stories!” we shout. But, also, make sure screens aren’t that addictive. A religion that provides Peace and Comfort but, if you please, make sure it doesn’t ask us to change very much. Dogs are great but gosh wouldn’t it be better if they never had to be walked.

Not possible. Parable of the weeds.

The thing you want, namely, Modernity without the negatives… isn’t possible. Every coin has two sides. The good comes with the bad. What you want comes with what you’d rather not have. Steroids are amazing. Life saving. They can reduce chronic inflammation in a matter of minutes and help people with debilitating diseases maintain strength and muscle mass. Estrogen likewise. Manage menopause. Help with osteoporosis. All kinds of things. Miracles.

But, if those exist for purpose A then they will also exist for purpose B. People are going to use them to become hyper-alpha roid heads. People are going to use them to try to change gender.

Just how it is.

Please. This isn’t a moral argument. Despite being a blog mostly concerned with religious matters, I try not to make those. Doing so is an utterly fruitless pursuit. No one is ever convinced by moral arguments. I’m only trying to lay out clearly what is happening. To see the situation without filters. If you can make a baby in a tube then why can’t a couple of guys? Do you see? The same technology that allows you to video chat with your aged grandma from halfway around the world, an objective good, can also be used to reanimate her image after she’s dead, turning her into an A.I. that will hang around creepily at birthday parties. The Market is Evil. Yes. The Market is also the only thing anyone’s ever come up with which is capable of producing such an excess of food that Famine is no longer a threat.

It all comes as a piece.

You can’t have one side without the other and yet that seems to be what everyone is asking for.

Modernity makes Trad Life impossible and introduces a whole host of new wrinkles into an already stressed and misunderstood social fabric. Absolutely. But… it also gives us a lot of positives and I don’t think you’ve really wrestled with the fact that you can’t destroy it without also destroying a lot of things you love.

Things like little five year old girls with golden hair.

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’” — Matthew 13: 24-30

Just be careful in your crusade. That’s all.

A lot of the weeds you want to pull up have their roots tangled around some very beautiful flowers.