How to Be Grotesquely Reductionist and Utilitarian about Human Love and Life

by Will Wilkinson on March 17, 2008

This post by one “Deep Thought” is a brilliant example:

This isn’t rocket science; men with easy access to prostitution or to promiscuous women have little incentive to marry. Suddenly there is nothing to offset their legal and financial obligations as a husband – so why take on the obligation? Women who are promiscuous face disease, pregnancy, and emotional trauma – all of them reduce their ability to be a valuable wife.

This probably helps explain what’s going on with prostitution bans, but is it supposed to be a moral reason to endorse them? Dramatic reconstruction:

Sweetheart… Since I have no easy access to women who sell sex, will you share my life so I can use you for sex? I mean, even if there were a few more easy women around here, I’d have no use for you. Definitely no reason to make a commitment to you. But there aren’t. Oh well. So… I love you? And Oh! Here’s a diamond.

Maybe this tells us something about the great romance of being the mother of Deep Thought’s four children, but for my part, I share my life with Kerry because she is brilliant and exciting and we mesh in so many ways and I love her. As far as I can tell, the existence of Craiglist’s Casual Encounters has no bearing on this, my greatest source of happiness.

It gets even more obsessively biological. This is, sensibly enough I suppose, written by a Catholic guy with a theology degree who attends Latin mass and thinks “the Patriarchy, when controlled by Judeo-Christian morality, is a protector of and advocate for women.” [!!!]:

the future belongs to those who show up. If you don’t have kids, you have no stake in the future. If you have kids, you not only have a stake in the future, you can influence it in ways almost impossible to duplicate without kids.

[...]

bans on prostitution exist not just to avoid the exploitation of sex workers; they are in place not just because the majority of world religions declare them immoral; they were passed not solely to fight the spread of disease; they were written with more than the goal of reducing the numbers of poor, fatherless children. No, they are there to protect the future.

Again, I can see the explanatory power here. But to think that this has justificatory power is simply grotesque. This is to reduce individual human beings to tokens of a biological type, to reduce the purpose of an individual human life to a link in a biological chain there is no moral value in forging. Yes, the future belongs to those who show up. But the present belongs to each individual human being. We have lives because a lineage has been perpetuated. But our lives are not for perpetuating lineages. Our lives are for our living. Our duty is to treat one another as free and equal persons, as ends in themselves, which means we are duty-bound not to use people and their lives for purposes not their own. We treat people with the respect they deserve. Whoever shows up, shows up. If you’re interested in that, then breed away. But do leave the rest of us alone.

  • Hooray for reductionism!
  • "Since I have no easy access to women who sell sex, will you share my life so I can use you for sex?"

    Is that line from the Church-approved edition of The Game?
  • blah
    Will, slinging around the word "grotesque" while calling for the legalization of prostitution is kind of an own goal.
  • josh
    "they were written with more than the goal of reducing the numbers of poor, fatherless children. No, they are there to protect the future."

    For an exploration on the efficacy of anti-prostitution laws on meeting these stated goals see Malthus, Thomas R.
  • You should ask him what he thinks of cloning yourself instead of having children and watch the smoke pour out of his ears.
  • Michael W
    Thanks for describing exactly why I believe Christianity and Islam should be relegated to the past. If you live as the proponents of those religions preach, you exist only to prepare yourself for your life in heaven, the 'hell' with everything in the here and now, thus the justification for our continued willful injustices on the poor and the propagation of war. It all just doesn't matter since we're going to heaven anyway -- as long as we admit we're flawed.
    I, like Will, am making the most of this life everyday and I remember that my actions do have consequences on the quality of my life in the future and the quality of life for others (an instinctively moral concept devoid of religious pretense). Oh, I do have a son, and I teach him to do the same thing.
  • Our lives are for our living. Our duty is to treat one another as free and equal persons, as ends in themselves, which means we are duty-bound not to use people and their lives for purposes not their own.

    Amen, brother Will.
  • Slocum
    "This isn’t rocket science; men with easy access to prostitution or to promiscuous women have little incentive to marry."

    Nonsense. Even considering humans only as 'biological types', this is nonsense. The children of prostitutes, or even the children of promiscuous, single mothers are not notably successful in modern society, nor have they been historically. Men have a strong incentive to marry a high-quality woman and invest in both her and their children. And, BTW, the investment in families is driven by love -- loving spouses and children is something we're 'designed' to do, not something we do in spite of our biology.

    But, of course, that does not necessarily mean monogamy -- in addition to the above, there is also a biological incentive for additional sex on the side. And that is the Eliot Spitzer pattern.
  • Banning prostitution seems like a pretty indirect and inefficient way to use coercion to promote procreation.

    Can't we simplify things and just herd people into reproduction camps?
  • shecky
    It's interesting that the ban on prostitution has made the practice extinct where I live. My future, and ours, is thus protected!

    And certainly, if the ban were lifted, I wouldn't be able to keep myself from buying sexual services from these women. It's important that our society protects me from myself in this way.
  • Still waiting on your defense of browsing the Craigslist "M4T" listings "just for fun."

    Obligatory: 8-)
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