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dream world
In Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner (1982), the genetics designer JF Sebastian plays with toys that take on a strange, dream-crazy and cruel position between child and machine. Real children do not occur; rather, in the world, Tyrell Corp. People have become children who can not distinguish between themselves and their dolls.
Today, it seems familiar to the enlightened citizen of the metropolises that everyone else lies, always and diligently. This is especially true for those people who pursue interests that are not theirs, and also for elites and politicians, journalists and intellectuals. Hard facts dissolve into vague assumptions under the hands, life appears as a human dignity-threatening imposition in the face of the obligation of fate, for happiness beyond death.
The truths are gone since there is no hell left and death is an eve series. The Federal Minister of Health has developed a plan to abolish it, at least in the event that a double objection is not entered in the recycling register. So much eternity should be that at least the Facebook posts and the pancreas survive three generations. By the way, what the world has to offer moves in the form of breaking news treadmills, but remains foggy behind milk glass. It is not coincidence. In the children's worlds of unleashed interest, dreams are taken for granted. For this I want to give two current examples.
Kids world
On September 20, 2019, I read the following sentence in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: "Maybe one day they will talk about their journey across the Atlantic as the beginning of an era." Here was, as you suspect, the speech of a being, in front of which currently Federal Minister Altmaier in the Sunday evening show, Chancellor anyway, and at all to express the utmost respect. It is clear that if the German leading press uses the word "one day" and is completely imbued with its own seriousness, we will witness something really great. A Messiah, a Moses in a basket, a blind seer, a maiden in a stable, has appeared to the world; the luminous stigma of insanity called "mild" on all channels has become the head of the army.
Ben STANSALL / AFP
Greta Thunberg aboard the "Malizia II": emissions-free across the Atlantic
The turn-of-the-mill times story was almost up with the trip aboard a flying carpet. The feeling machine was initially looking for the right sound. The murmur in the return fuel consumption of Mr. Pierre Rainier Casiraghi's Formula One rug was clearly too small, and the photos of the Beatles' first trip to the USA were off the mark. The story of the snow-white child of innocence, set by the wavering abyss of fate on the floor of a new world, was better by classes.
With the question flown directly from Hollywood to Lady Liberty's mouth, "How dare you steal my dreams and my childhood with your empty words?" the ecstasy peak should now be reached; For even more points on the international TV goose-bump scale, threats of collective suicide in lower secondary education would be needed. First German politicians, we read, "went a long way" and let the good old Klaus Töpfer live up. For a little while, and Minister Altmaier, a really great wizard on every birthday party, the caller, who announces the near end of the world, will judge by her own admission, "But not in school, on the other side of the ocean ", no longer on TV call" Mrs. Thunberg ".
Whether that is enjoyable or regrettable, does not matter here. I am not concerned with this particular, but with the human child as such, whose journey across the ocean is to be listed in the top ten times. It is well known that it was not so long ago that another child set foot on a beach, which was also a time of change. The child's name was Alan Kurdi. You will remember, dear readers, that the image of his arrival was also celebrated in the German press as "iconic". In a modified Pop Art version you can look at it at a bridge at the Frankfurt Osthafen. An inter-ministerial working group is working on the then-called turning-point.
DPA
Refugees on the "Alan Kurdi" in the Mediterranean
It seems to me, both children do not deserve this. The time-honors of which we are talking, but in a strange way. Their rise and fall highlight, among other things, the excessive infantilization of the developed cultures of the so-called West. The elites of the richest countries are moving toward the children's message that the world will perish. The climate cabinet negotiates nineteen hours and is really proud. The Chancellor, while her eyes are turning back from tiredness, says: We have heard the wake-up call of the young people. The world press reports that the speech of the child Thunberg before the UN meeting did not meet the expectations. The tax on gasoline, says the constitutional body Climate Cabinet, will be increased by 12 cents in five years. If not, the Indians will already see what they have of it.
Beautiful world
A miraculous presentation of children began at the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA), whose sponsors are: GKV-Spitzenverband, Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung, German Hospital Association and Dentistry. He decided to allow non-invasive molecular genetic tests (NIPT) on three trisomies in so-called risk pregnancies as a benefit of the statutory health insurance. In response to the publication of this decision, the astonishing debate about the ethical evaluation of the test flared up again. His meaning is, for the children's friends among the beloved fellow citizens, presented in such a way that pregnant women and parents who learn of a corresponding genetic defect of an embryo, can "adjust early on". In fact, as everyone knows, it is, of course, the case that early information, if desired, leads to abortion almost regularly. But one should not say that, since the accusation of this truth (confirmed by experiences in other countries) is immediately made the accusation that disabled people (such as those with Down syndrome due to trisomy 21) are denied the right to life. For this reason, a few happy people with Down's syndrome were allowed to say to the cameras on television last week: "We belong to this too".
That is undoubtedly completely correct. It is true, at least in the opinion of most, only for the born. Conversely, one can not infer that it is an individual benefit or desirable if as many disabled children as possible are born. With good reason one can argue that nature, chance, and fate should not be tampered with, and that things (and children) should be accepted as they come. However, if one does not defend this basic position, there is no point in advocating a half-hearted, misrepresented pseudo-ethic that keeps the subject in a generally mood-enhancing feel-good framework.
Tobias Kleinschmidt / DPA
A so-called "Präna test"
What is the purpose of paying NIPT only for "high-risk" pregnant women? The risk that is meant is precisely the disproportionately high frequency of trisomies in certain groups of pregnant women. So you want to pay the DNA test in cases where there is an increased probability of disability. What other reason should this have than the possibility of opting for a (possibly late) abortion? If the point is that 40-year-old pregnant women can take care of organizing life with a handicapped child at an early stage, then the ethic murmur would not be needed. But if it is true that it is really not about life precaution, but about abortion: For what mysterious reason should one refuse then women who have a "normal" risk, the test?
Behind this, of course, are dilemmas: no reasonable person can come up with the idea that born people with Down syndrome should rather not have been born. However, no one can want as many as possible to be born, so that they can "belong" and the healthy ones can rejoice in them and themselves. From the perspective of the individual, concrete person, it is always desirable to be born and to live. Turning it into an abstract task of unavoidability turns that into a false sense of collective responsibility, which in reality is neither recognized nor even perceived.
The considerations and considerations that deal with the trisomy test in high moral but underdeveloped social categories consistently point to the uniqueness, subjectivity, and dignity of the individual and, even before birth, they are striking. At the same time, however, an abortion law is considered to be humane enough to refrain from such consideration almost completely and to regard its public mention and discussion as a cruel attack on "feeling" and freedom from those affected. And, unlike in the case of genetically-defective embryos, it is not the potential children that are considered "affected", but only the pregnant women. In other words, the question of the trisomy test (if appropriate for the purpose of abortion) ethically focuses on the dignity and the person of the unborn child; Both play practically no role in the "general" question of abortion.
This is highly dishonest. It also puts pressure on high-risk pregnant women and women whose embryo has been diagnosed with trisomy, with high moral sacrifices. For non- trisomy-related abortion, you do not have to give or have a good reason. That is the simple truth, even if it is said in a prayer-mill manner that every 110,000 abortions per year in Germany always have a good reason: it does not matter. So why, if a trisomy was found, is the affected woman - who in fact undoubtedly has a reason that could be called "good", at least plausible - under extreme pressure, not like everyone else for or against the "removal of pregnancy tissue", but to have to decide specifically for or against the life of a lovable child who "also wants to belong"?
And further, why do the same groups, individuals, media, sentimental agencies, who see it as an unreasonable oppression, harassment and paternalism, discover pregnant women who are in the balance of or against abortion with morally charged, child- related To urge arguments and images, regularly your heart for lovable, happy, fit people with Down's syndrome, when it comes to the question of the early detection of possible abortion reasons? For then, it seems, the moral misgivings about "human breeding" and the remote from nature become overpowering. When it comes to the wonder world of therapies for your own cancer or dementia, it is not mentioned.
game world
Certainly some will say that the two topics mentioned above do not have much to do with each other. I beg to differ. What is common is that concepts around which attempts at collective identity determination are attempted are remarkably reduced to non-contentual formality and degenerate into attitudes: it involves the identification of words and their assignment to emotional homies. This is as childish a behavior as the literal dissolution of the whole world in commodities. The rationality of the so-called globalization only seems understandable and bearable to its masters in the confused idealization of supposedly primitive childishness.
The pope apologizes to the world because for decades the priests of his church have sexually abused tens of thousands of children. The CEO of Tepco apologizes for the meltdown in the blocks of the Fukushima power plant. The Prime Minister of Canada apologizes to humanity because he disguised himself as a "sheikh" and put on black makeup 18 years ago on a costume party. Federal Minister Altmaier apologizes a bit to the readers of "Bild" and "Focus" that he eats too many dumplings with liverwurst filling. The German Climate Cabinet, the Pension Cabinet, the Interest Cabinet and the War Cabinet all say that everyone can do a lot.
The feeling of doing the right thing, saying or saying, has evaporated into a lack of social ties and the dissolution of structured milieus into playing material. Now that 40- to 70-year-old politicians and editors-in-chief roam the country and earnestly claim to point the way, the children, whom they have just let slip from their feet by the Good-Kita Minister, should make the world even more beautiful can - that testifies to a grotesque joy that already has something. JF Sebastian would probably feel at home spontaneously.