Children or Life?
I read a short story yesterday that is free on Project Gutenburg. In case you don't know about this site, it is a fantastic place where people put the text of books that have gone out of copyright. There are tens of thousands of books there, mostly literature. It's like an on-line free library, and I love libraries, although I mostly read non-fiction.
The short story I read was by Kurt Vonnegut, was written in 1962 and was called '2BR0TB'. I chose it because it was listed as the number one most downloaded ebook from the day before. It's a good story, is well written and only takes about 15 minutes to read. It is set in the future where science has cured all health and ageing problems and people can live forever. But to address the danger of overpopulation, people can only have a child if someone else dies. Since people rarely die (only through accidents) this generally means that you need to find someone else to volunteer to die so that you can have a child. Or you'd have to be the volunteer. That raised the question of how much do you want to have children. I read the story to Mame and we both agreed that choosing life over children is clearly our preferred option. But then we don't want kids anyway so it wasn't a tough choice. But we speculated that someone who did want children would still almost always choose life over having kids.
Today we met up with some friends, who want to have children in due course, and they gave us a tour of some of Brooklyn. Following my request, and due to my fondness of libraries, we visited the Brooklyn Library which has recently had its very impressive entrance renovated. It's a very nice library but we agreed that the one in Manhattan next to Bryant Park is even better.
Comments
Interesting! I have read that Vonnegut story. It was very Frankensteinish. If you saw the This American Life story on Sho called "Reality Check" you could see that real modern-day cloning is so freakish it makes death seem like a relief! Nature never meant for us to play God. It's downright sadistic to "Fool mother nature".
I think that someone's answers philisophically would be completely different than their decision when up against a wall of life or death.
Project Gutenburg is interesting. My boyfriend bought me a book called "The Book of Lost Books" that's pretty neat. I have to confess I have an obsession with books and I hate borrowing - I always want my own copy. I'm a bit nuts like that. If I get it from the library I can't bring it to the beach or to the lake and not worry about getting it muddy. I like reading outdoors.
We just indulged in some books today, "Ghost Sea", "The Voyage Out" and "Social Graces". (Authors are listed on my blog, I may even post on the last one!) Do you know of Anthony Bourdain? He has a show on Travel Channel called "No Reservations". He wrote one of the essays in "Social Graces". That book is non-fiction.
The Brooklyn Library, though, looks absolutely stunning. Look at those gorgeous stencils and columns! I must visit! :)
You must have a huge book collection. Hopefully house prices where you live aren't too high. I have no space for books so I have hardly any and often throw books out. That's part of the reason I prefer ebooks - they don't take up any space. In fact I can carry my entire collection of books around on my phone and read them whenever I life. Unfortunately not many books have come out digitally. Social Graces looks interesting but doesn't seem to be available digitally. I'll have to try the library.