Sperm donation is already safer than ‘traditional reproduction.’

Why would we still take risks?

Dear friends,
I just read it in a newspaper article: sperm donation is already safer than ‘traditional reproduction.’ The headline alone suggests that soon conceiving a child outside a laboratory, through ‘traditional reproduction,’ will be considered a completely irresponsible act—something only ‘anti-government thinkers’ and ‘far-right fascists’ would do.
I understand if you feel tempted to laugh at the idea, but I fear it has a strong chance of becoming reality. Within our mechanistic worldview, there is a firm belief that control down to the core and origin of life is the safest path. The little child-machine must be monitored and corrected from the very beginning, down to the smallest cog — anyone who doesn’t see that is an idiot, or worse, a criminal exposing future generations to unnecessary risks.

Granted, sperm donors sometimes mess up, but in the future, we will solve all of that. We will then compose babies ourselves, flawlessly and without defects, without anti-government or far-right tendencies, one by one perfect biological and psychological conditioned model citizens with no inclination towards ‘traditional reproduction.’ It will be a beautiful, brave new world.

In another newspaper article today, I read about yet another way to increase control over life. Currently, 5,000 people in Belgium are under ‘electronic supervision’ with ankle bracelets. I propose that we immediately give everyone an ankle bracelet. That will only make the world safer. An exception would be the real criminals. They should feel completely free to follow their criminal nature. After all, they scare the others enough to make electronic ankle bracelets acceptable for a safer world.

You might laugh at this too, but I would still advise holding off for a moment. The history of totalitarian systems shows that the endless rules they impose to supposedly eliminate crime eventually result in criminals being almost the only ones who remain safe. Solzhenitsyn vividly describes this in The Gulag Archipelago. The typical dynamics of totalitarianism always lead to the opposite of what it promises and ultimately turn every truth completely upside down.

This is entirely due to the fact that totalitarianism is a manifestation of the narcissistic structure of the Ego. The Ego represents the register of the Illusion. It deceives us into believing that the essence of who we are is shown by our reflection. The reflection, however, reverses left and right and it doesn’t show us the colors the real object of our body contains, but those it reflects. That means: it shows us exactly the opposite colors than those that are inside the object. Transcending totalitarianism, in the end, simply boils down to transcending the Ego.

It once again shows: it is time to look for ways to transcend this mechanistic worldview and reach, with words, for another worldview — one in which freedom is preferred over false security and illusions of control over the uncontrollable, a worldview, perhaps, in which a child is not thought of as a little biological machine, but as a symbolic being anchored in the bodily desire of a man and a woman for each other.

Mattias