The human race nears extinction--is forcing a woman to give birth acceptable?

[Voxicitis]

@Cesario

How are you going to enforce this ignorance? Obviously if them getting pregnant is going to be vital to reviving the human race (a goal you’ve decided to resort to extreme measures to reach), they’ll need to find out how sexual reproduction works. From there, unless you cause a good deal of brain damage or use a staggeringly oppressive program of anti-education, they will figure out that something’s going on. Add in the social programming you’d need to include (high amounts of indoctrination that they have to make babies, and suppressing any thought that they might not want that for themselves) for generations as the population base is rebuilt.

Not to mention, they’ll know how they came to be because it’ll be almost guarenteed to be repeated. Remember, the human race is still facing extinction during these girls’ generation, so we can’t possibly allow them to refuse to make more babies. We already made that decision, so there’s no turning back from it when the situation hasn’t meaningfully changed. You won’t take “no” for an answer. They are designated broodmares, and there will be no reason to bother with niceties like consent. Indeed, consent will be litterally impossible for these girls, since even a “yes” is utterly meaningless when you have no intention of respecting a “no”.

This isn’t a one-shot event we’re discussing here. If you want any hope of rebuilding the species, this is a culture.

Interesting points, but I think I can answer those too.

First, while the Daughters might wonder what’s going on, they have no reason to guess what’s going on with the First Mother. For all they know, the First Mother is in a situation much like theirs.

Now, let’s assume that this civilization, with the technology of 2027, is forward-thinking enough to keep good records of its medical knowledge and builds good facilities for all purposes: protecting the mothers and children, providing good nutrition and medical care, and storing a wide genetic variety of sperm for the next several generations to use.

Let’s say they can get only get a good 10 healthy, fecund children from the First Mother, starting at roughly age 18-21 and keeping on trying until, say, 46. If they can manipulate the sex of the child in utero, and we assume full or near-full cooperation, then this can be done in no time: 10 fecund girls who can each start getting pregnant at, say, 16, and they can each have 11 or 12 children as a result. [ul][li]So within 28 years, she has 10 Daughters, and several of them have daughters of their own. [/li][li]Within 74 years (which even at today’s life expectancy means a number of the “Old Generation” would still be around), the next full generation of about 115 Granddaughters has all been born, and many of them have daughters, and some have granddaughters. [/li][li]Before you even get to the Great-granddaughters’ generation, you can safely stop manipulating the sex of the children so that when you hit 600 you have a roughly even mix of fecund male and female, and you’ve completed a genetically sustainable population (if I recall correctly that 600 is the minimum number).[/ul] If the first couple generations have contact with the Old Generation’s culture for the first 70-85 years (assuming no gain in life expectancy over today), there’s no gap between the old generation dying and a naturally sustainable population of the new generation.[/li]
Using the stored knowledge and preserved infrastructure of the Old Generation, they should be able to get off the ground without any Dark Age. If the information was stored for them, they could recover the remaining culture that the Old Generation left behind, without having to miss or reinvent it all.

I think this could be done fairly easily with social pressure starting with the First Daughters, without having to resort to actual coercion. Something along the lines of impressing upon them that they have a special responsibility and privilege to be the mothers of an entire species would probably not fail 100% of the time in any generation, I would guess. And as long as there are more sperm samples once the Old Generation males are no longer available, there’s no rush: you’re continually injecting genetic diversity into the population until it reaches the self-sustaining number of 600, at least.

Less than a century and a half isn’t very long in the historical scheme of things, much less the evolutionary scheme of things. Rebuilding to 6 billion people, if they cared to do that, would take a bit longer. But setting things back on a course of growth while preserving our knowledge and culture would be doable.

There’s not a real danger of having to “rape” again unless all the females in a given “fecundity window” are also super-misanthropes, as long as the facilities exist to support the non-misanthropic ones’ reproduction.

This is sounding like a nifty sci-fi novel already. Quasi-dystopia sees a window to future salvation through a narrow window of barbarism, followed by somewhat intense survivalist social engineering and then re-emergence. One of the descendants of the New Generation, now re-emerging into the world and studying the old culture, follows a trail of evidence and discovers the shocking horror that her great-grandmother was repeatedly impregnated against her will to save the species. Drama ensues.

[Voxicitis]

@Der_Trihs

Who’s going to tell them “no”? They are going to be the ones who were powerful and ruthless enough to kill or subjugate everyone who opposed them before they began their rape campaign.

I’m saying that a society built by and for the most ruthless vile, evil men isn’t going to bother preserving much that I’d consider of value. They are going to be something out of The Handmaid’s Tale or worse.

They’ll probably be told how, before they are raped themselves, and in between beatings. Again, you assume a level of decency that simply isn’t going to exist. They are going to be the slaves of woman hating monsters.

I’m proposing that after the First Mother is discovered, the rest of humanity doesn’t allow her to just get tossed around between brutes. She’s their last shot at species survival – they contain her, protect her, and try to maximize the number of offspring they get out of her and her descendants. They have the technology of 2027, and in Children of Men, they still have a government… a highly militaristic, authoritarian, and calculating one.

Imagine, if you will, that this could be done by a staff of doctors and caretakers. Artificial insemination, restraining the First Mother so that she doesn’t do anything to endanger the pregnancy, and then taking the infants away to be raised separate from their mother – perhaps by foster mothers who pretend to be their real mothers. And all these children are themselves protected and isolated from danger, and brought up with the teaching that they have a special responsibility and unique honour of getting to be mothers, either through sex or artificial insemination themselves. To them, it might seem decent. They might even dutifully pass it on to their own daughters.

You see, you can have a cold, calculated organization that minimizes the really nasty coercion to just one victim. And the horror of the system, as the First Mother experiences it, has more the character of a scalpel than a club.

[Der_Trihs]

@Voxicitis

I’m proposing that after the First Mother is discovered, the rest of humanity doesn’t allow her to just get tossed around between brutes. She’s their last shot at species survival – they contain her, protect her, and try to maximize the number of offspring they get out of her and her descendants. They have the technology of 2027, and in Children of Men, they still have a government… a highly militaristic, authoritarian, and calculating one.

Imagine, if you will, that this could be done by a staff of doctors and caretakers. Artificial insemination, restraining the First Mother so that she doesn’t do anything to endanger the pregnancy, and then taking the infants away to be raised separate from their mother – perhaps by foster mothers who pretend to be their real mothers. And all these children are themselves protected and isolated from danger, and brought up with the teaching that they have a special responsibility and unique honour of getting to be mothers, either through sex or artificial insemination themselves. To them, it might seem decent. They might even dutifully pass it on to their own daughters.

You see, you can have a cold, calculated organization that minimizes the really nasty coercion to just one victim. And the horror of the system, as the First Mother experiences it, has more the character of a scalpel than a club.

Never happen. Monstrous people behave monstrously; such “cold calculating” organizations that are calmly ruthless without descending into cruelty and control for the fun of it are not real world organizations. Again, like my example of torture; the calm, calculating people who torture only when necessary and with an eye for the truth simply do not exist. An organization that behaves in such a way WILL become heavily misogynistic even in the unlikely situation that it didn’t start the way.

And it would have to be on a far larger scale than one woman. And you couldn’t have all the children female ; you’d need males to indoctrinate as enforcers and rapists. Otherwise at some point the far more numerous and younger women would overwhelm and flee or kill their victimizers when the majority became too old.

Come to think of it, I’m suddenly reminded of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by this scenario.

[Voxicitis]

@Der_Trihs

Never happen. Monstrous people behave monstrously; such “cold calculating” organizations that are calmly ruthless without descending into cruelty and control for the fun of it are not real world organizations. Again, like my example of torture; the calm, calculating people who torture only when necessary and with an eye for the truth simply do not exist. An organization that behaves in such a way WILL become heavily misogynistic even in the unlikely situation that it didn’t start the way.

And it would have to be on a far larger scale than one woman. And you couldn’t have all the children female ; you’d need males to indoctrinate as enforcers and rapists. Otherwise at some point the far more numerous and younger women would overwhelm and flee or kill their victimizers when the majority became too old.

Come to think of it, I’m suddenly reminded of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by this scenario.

Interesting how we both thought of the “Omelas” story… I suppose it makes sense.

I guess I’d sum up our disagreement by saying I hold a stronger belief in the potential banality of evil (or acts that would be considered evil in normal times but widely accepted in desperate times). I don’t think it would be hard to find people who could treat the First Mother with clinical dispassion and swap them out before they got too involved. I don’t think it would be hard to get people to raise a bunch of children, pamper them and successfully indoctrinate them with the belief that they’re special, and therefore have special duties… particularly if they really are special, and revered. I doubt it would be hard to find doctors who would perform the necessary procedures with care and diligence.

[Der_Trihs]

@Voxicitis

I guess I’d sum up our disagreement by saying I hold a stronger belief in the potential banality of evil (or acts that would be considered evil in normal times but widely accepted in desperate times). I don’t think it would be hard to find people who could treat the First Mother with clinical dispassion and swap them out before they got too involved. I don’t think it would be hard to get people to raise a bunch of children, pamper them and successfully indoctrinate them with the belief that they’re special, and therefore have special duties… particularly if they really are special, and revered. I doubt it would be hard to find doctors who would perform the necessary procedures with care and diligence.

On the other hand, I think that would be like expecting the Nazis to treat Jews well if breeding Jews were somehow necessary to their survival.

[Chopper9760]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

This is an interesting point. If people figured out some way to plan for an entire generation to subsist on their savings, as it were–if they could realistically set up self-maintaining power-plants, hospitals etc., and if they could set aside enough food to feed them in their waning years–then my major objection to allowing the end of humanity would be satisfied.

I really have no ethical interest in maintaining our species. Aesthetic, sure, but I don’t confuse aesthetics and ethics. If we can figure out how to prevent mass starvation and disease (and probably worse, as scarcity leads inevitably to conflict in our species), then I would consider forced pregnancies among women (or men, if we had the technology) to be unethical.

Cool, works for me. It was an interesting hypothetical.

[begbert2]

I’m kind of astonished that people are seriously discussing this “first mother” business as a serious hypothetical. I mean, outside of silly sci-fi movies, you cannot possibly salvage civilization from a single mother by having her reproduce. I mean, let’s think about this:

Suppose you get an average of 5 kids out of each fertile woman, and they’re all girls (or if you prefer, 10 kids, half girls). To make the math uber-friendly to the idea of saving the world, we will ‘round down’ the birthing process to say that all 5 girls are born at once, when the fertile woman is 15 years old. Let’s all note that this is absurd - inevitably there will be fewer babies born slower. So:

Generation 1 (year 0): 1 woman.
Generation 2 (year 15): 5 women.
Generation 3 (year 30): 25 women.
Generation 4 (year 45): 125 women.
Generation 5 (year 60): 625 women.
Generation 6 (year 75): 3125 women.
Generation 7 (year 90): 15625 women.

Sounds great, right? Except, everyone else on the planet is now dead. These 15 or 30 thousand new people will not make even the slightest difference in the “There are no kids; civilization will die out horribly” scenario. Realistically, all the old experts of the prior generation died of old age when the new population was in the hundreds.

So, I’m not really seeing how this could possibly be a scenario that justifies a ‘forced birth’ plan. What are you trying to avoid by instituting it, again? The horrific death by attrition of the billions of aging people? Not gonna help. And what else was there that justifies forcing births, again? If it’s just the retention of our information, carve it all into stainless steel plates and leave it for the next species that evolves intelligence to discover - we will eventually be worshipped as gods!

For this scenario to make any sense as something to discuss, it must involve huge numbers of women, and most or all of the fertile women existing must be resisting giving birth - resisting it even in the face of lest drastic (and possibly moral) incentives. Without these conditions the scenario doesn’t justify forcing birth because the benefits of doing so would be insignificant. And with these conditions you cannot pretend that this is just a small little infraction against a couple of individuals. Unless the situation requires the mass restriction (or worse) of massive numbers of women, there simply is no hypothetical at all.

[Freudian_Slit]

Yeah, I think it makes more sense just to assume that women are capable. Or perhaps it’s only a small number who can get pregnant and that it’s hard for them to stay pregnant (a la the Handmaid’s Tale). Or that they’re just not interested in sex for some reason. A number other than one makes more sense than the Children of Men scenario.

ETA: In the scenario where they don’t want sex or children, then all sex pretty much becomes rape by definition.

In the Handmaid’s Tale scenario, you could argue that people should just put extreme pressure on women to procreate. As many have pointed out, though, if we’re at the point where we think outlawing birth control and telling this one generation of women to just suck it up and do it is fine, where do we draw the line?

[Voxicitis]

@Der Trihs

On the other hand, I think that would be like expecting the Nazis to treat Jews well if breeding Jews were somehow necessary to their survival.

No. They don’t have any kind of ideological beef with these girls. They don’t consider them vermin. They consider them their last hope for species survival, and the first woman happens to be uncooperative.

@begbert2

I’m kind of astonished that people are seriously discussing this “first mother” business as a serious hypothetical. I mean, outside of silly sci-fi movies, you cannot possibly salvage civilization from a single mother by having her reproduce.

You can’t immediately repopulate the earth to keep all of the old civilization’s stuff running, but you can save the important parts: a human population and the stored knowledge and culture that allow them to rebuild quickly without having to re-discover and re-invent everything. It would be a serious historical and evolutionary hiccup, but it could be done. And it would beat extinction.

The infrastructure could even be maintained to one degree or another over time; some places would be much harder to preserve than others due to weather or other conditions.

@begbert2

Generation 7 (year 90): 15625 women.

Sounds great, right? Except, everyone else on the planet is now dead. These 15 or 30 thousand new people will not make even the slightest difference in the “There are no kids; civilization will die out horribly” scenario. Realistically, all the old experts of the prior generation died of old age when the new population was in the hundreds.

First, we’re talking about the technology of 2027, and you have 18-year-olds living when the First Mother is discovered. Many people could survive until the population was well into the thousands, even assuming that they can only get 5 fecund girls out of each fecund girl (even with the technology of 2027).

Second, remember that those generations would be living simultaneously. So when Generation 7 is born, most of Generation 2 is still alive, even assuming that life expectancy of these protected women in 2027 is no better than the average British woman today. Using your estimate rather than mine, you have roughly 20,000 people after Gen 7 is born.
Then you have about 95,000 total population during the childhood of Gen 8.
Then you have about 470,000 in Gen 9.
In Generation 10, you have about 2.3 million.
That’s just 150 years after you started, maybe 65 years after the last of the Old Generation dies (going by current life expectancy), and you can have a city-sized population again.

Would most of the world die off? Absolutely. Is that horrible? Yes. But they’re going to die anyway. If that’s going to happen, would it be better to have humanity go on? I’m sure that there would be a lot of people who would say so. Even better, you can leave the Next Generation our knowledge and technology and even a lot of our material wealth.

And hey, that would give the rest of the world something productive to do: leave behind a world ready to be re-started in a relatively short period of time.

@begby2

So, I’m not really seeing how this could possibly be a scenario that justifies a ‘forced birth’ plan. What are you trying to avoid by instituting it, again? The horrific death by attrition of the billions of aging people? Not gonna help. And what else was there that justifies forcing births, again? If it’s just the retention of our information, carve it all into stainless steel plates and leave it for the next species that evolves intelligence to discover - we will eventually be worshipped as gods!

You’re assuming that intelligent life would evolve again, and that those “stainless steel plates” would be preserved for the minimum hundreds of thousands of years that would take, and that we could even fit our knowledge onto stainless steel plates.

I’m talking about instantly restarting the rebuilding. Some individuals might think “what’s the point,” but I don’t see the virtue in just giving up on preserving humanity because it requires a small number of people to suffer. What, we don’t consider our species’ survival to be worth it if one person suffers horribly for 25-30 years?

@Freudian Slit

As many have pointed out, though, if we’re at the point where we think outlawing birth control and telling this one generation of women to just suck it up and do it is fine, where do we draw the line?

At species survival. There’s no slippery slope there.

[begbert2]

@Voxicitis

You can’t immediately repopulate the earth to keep all of the old civilization’s stuff running, but you can save the important parts: a human population and the stored knowledge and culture that allow them to rebuild quickly without having to re-discover and re-invent everything. It would be a serious historical and evolutionary hiccup, but it could be done. And it would beat extinction.

The infrastructure could even be maintained to one degree or another over time; some places would be much harder to preserve than others due to weather or other conditions.

I disagree that a human population is important (and without one, stored knowledge and culture and even infrastructure are similarly useless).

To me, there is one reason to keep humanity going: because we want to avoid an end to it that involves large amounts of suffering. That’s it. That explains why I don’t want a comet to hit and why I don’t like plagues. And it explains why I don’t want the population distribution to shift to a point where there are not enough people young enough to sustain those who are still living in a reasonably good state.

If you found a way to simply make all humans vanish painlessly in an instant with the snap of your fingers, I really would find it difficult to have a problem with that. Yeah, it would be bad if we knew that was coming and spent our final hours or days pining for our lost opportunitues, but if it just happened? Honestly, I don’t see the downside.

So yeah. If your way of “saving” things sentences 99.9999999% of humanity to horrific death and the rest to a pseudo-primitive postapocalytic existence (what, you postulate unending harmony for your little colony? Riiiiiight), then I seriously don’t see the upside. And that’s not factoring in the raping that’s going on.

@Voxicitis

First, we’re talking about the technology of 2027, and you have 18-year-olds living when the First Mother is discovered. Many people could survive until the population was well into the thousands, even assuming that they can only get 5 fecund girls out of each fecund girl (even with the technology of 2027).

Second, remember that those generations would be living simultaneously. So when Generation 7 is born, most of Generation 2 is still alive, even assuming that life expectancy of these protected women in 2027 is no better than the average British woman today. Using your estimate rather than mine, you have roughly 20,000 people after Gen 7 is born.
Then you have about 95,000 total population during the childhood of Gen 8.
Then you have about 470,000 in Gen 9.
In Generation 10, you have about 2.3 million.
That’s just 150 years after you started, maybe 65 years after the last of the Old Generation dies (going by current life expectancy), and you can have a city-sized population again.

Presuming no problems from inbreeding, illness, infighting, crime, terrorism, or war. And that the birthrates can be maintained. And that the food supplies don’t run low. And that the women don’t get sick of being raped. And that whatever malady that sterilized the entire human race doesn’t begin to effect these new children.

Lot of ifs there…

@Voxicitis

Would most of the world die off? Absolutely. Is that horrible? Yes. But they’re going to die anyway. If that’s going to happen, would it be better to have humanity go on? I’m sure that there would be a lot of people who would say so. Even better, you can leave the Next Generation our knowledge and technology and even a lot of our material wealth.

And hey, that would give the rest of the world something productive to do: leave behind a world ready to be re-started in a relatively short period of time.

Fifty bucks says that that “rest of the world” slaughters the colony. Not to say the entire world turns against them - but for every citizen in your burgeouning colony there will be a hundred thousand complete fanatic psychotic lunatics, jealous that others’ genes are being preserved and theirs are not. And many of these lunatics will have guns, or worse.

Not to mention that, depending on what’s making the first woman reluctant to go along willingly with the reproduction thing, there might be one potential rebel terrorist per woman in the colony.

@Voxicitis

You’re assuming that intelligent life would evolve again, and that those “stainless steel plates” would be preserved for the minimum hundreds of thousands of years that would take, and that we could even fit our knowledge onto stainless steel plates.

I’m talking about instantly restarting the rebuilding. Some individuals might think “what’s the point,” but I don’t see the virtue in just giving up on preserving humanity because it requires a small number of people to suffer. What, we don’t consider our species’ survival to be worth it if one person suffers horribly for 25-30 years?

“begby2”? What the hell?

If you can assume that no problems of ANY kind will occur that will impede your colony’s survival and growth during the complate collapse of the rest of the world, I can postulate the invention of a crystalline metal that is indestructible and lasts forever. It seems equally likely.

And I think it’s ridiculously disingenuous to claim that we’re only talking about one person suffering for 25-30 years. We are talking about every woman being forced to reproduce like crazy, whether they like it or not. We’re talking about a complete breakdown of society. We’re very likely talking about extinction of the species, despite your efforts.

And you still haven’t convinced me that our species’ survival is worth anything at all.

[Der_Trihs]

@Voxicitis

No. They don’t have any kind of ideological beef with these girls. They don’t consider them vermin.

Yes, they WOULD think of women that way. Either because they started that way ( because that’s the sort of person who would instigate such a plan ), or in order to justify what they are doing by dehumanizing their victims. Again; you are presuming a level of cold calculating detachment that is simply not human. Men who exploit women are not a rarity in the real world, and contempt or worse for women is the norm among them.

@Voxicitis

And it would beat extinction.

According to you; I’d prefer that an asteroid fall on Rapetopia and destroy it.

@Voxicitis

The infrastructure could even be maintained to one degree or another over time; some places would be much harder to preserve than others due to weather or other conditions.

I think you grossly overestimate what a small group of people could do; especially since most will be pregnant female slaves and male guards.

@Voxicitis

First, we’re talking about the technology of 2027, and you have 18-year-olds living when the First Mother is discovered. Many people could survive until the population was well into the thousands, even assuming that they can only get 5 fecund girls out of each fecund girl (even with the technology of 2027).

The technology in question would rapidly go away as the population did.

@Voxicitis

And hey, that would give the rest of the world something productive to do: leave behind a world ready to be re-started in a relatively short period of time.

Or just nuke Rapetopia. What makes you think they’d want the world inherited by something so vile?

@Voxicitis

What, we don’t consider our species’ survival to be worth it if one person suffers horribly for 25-30 years?

If the only survivors are monsters and their victims, no.

[Voxicitis]

First:

“begby2”? What the hell?

That was unintentional. Don’t know how it happened. My deepest apologies.

I disagree that a human population is important (and without one, stored knowledge and culture and even infrastructure are similarly useless).

Well, what is important, then? Just the mere fact of the universe existing?

So yeah. If your way of “saving” things sentences 99.9999999% of humanity to horrific death and the rest to a pseudo-primitive postapocalytic existence (what, you postulate unending harmony for your little colony? Riiiiiight), then I seriously don’t see the upside. And that’s not factoring in the raping that’s going on.

Look, the rest of humanity is doomed to die based on the scenario in the thread. It is assumed to be unavoidable. The only question is, do we restart humanity by impregnating a woman against her will?

I don’t need to postulate unending harmony for the repopulation plan. I’m just saying it’s (1)quite possible and (2) worth a shot, rather than allowing the species to go extinct.

Presuming no problems from inbreeding, illness, infighting, crime, terrorism, or war. And that the birthrates can be maintained. And that the food supplies don’t run low. And that the women don’t get sick of being raped. And that whatever malady that sterilized the entire human race doesn’t begin to effect these new children.

Lot of ifs there…

Inbreeding I took care of by including sperm samples of a wide genetic variability at least until the population is above 600. After that, I believe genetic errors fall far enough that you have stable enough genes to propagate the species… but there’s no reason to limit it to 600 samples in this scenario… sperm is easy to get and store for long periods, and the Old Generation still has many years left in them.

For illness, I know that in Children of Men they still had medical technology, probably more advanced than our own considering the movie is set in 2027 and other technologies have matured.

As for violence, I assumed that these girls would generally be well-protected by a combination of strong security, secrecy and dispersal (i.e., they’re not all placed in one colony). It’s conceivable that some people might go nuts and try to finish off the species, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to save the species. That’s just one potential obstacle.

Fifty bucks says that that “rest of the world” slaughters the colony. Not to say the entire world turns against them - but for every citizen in your burgeouning colony there will be a hundred thousand complete fanatic psychotic lunatics, jealous that others’ genes are being preserved and theirs are not. And many of these lunatics will have guns, or worse.

Not to mention that, depending on what’s making the first woman reluctant to go along willingly with the reproduction thing, there might be one potential rebel terrorist per woman in the colony.

I think you’re making some far-reaching assumptions about how men in general behave (100,000? Really?), and I think you could use your imagination to plan for that contingency.

I don’t think it’s likely that all the Daughters of a given “fecundity window” would refuse to procreate at all, or that they would all be killed. Through some combination of security, secrecy, and spreading out the New Generation so they can’t all be nuked at once, I think the success of the project could be assured.

If you can assume that no problems of ANY kind will occur that will impede your colony’s survival and growth during the complate collapse of the rest of the world, I can postulate the invention of a crystalline metal that is indestructible and lasts forever. It seems equally likely.

I assume that problems will occur. I just think that a government could plan to avoid those failure modes, and that human nature itself would not pose an insurmountable barrier by any means. The only failure is this: the fecund women fail to give birth to other fecund females who survive to repeat the cycle. The only way you have to resort to “rape” after the First Mother is if none of the fecund women of a given generation consents to give birth to more fecund females.
If they achieve sufficient genetic diversity, I think that within a century humanity is well on its way to re-emerging.

And I think it’s ridiculously disingenuous to claim that we’re only talking about one person suffering for 25-30 years. We are talking about every woman being forced to reproduce like crazy, whether they like it or not. We’re talking about a complete breakdown of society. We’re very likely talking about extinction of the species, despite your efforts.

Again, I don’t think that they would have to be forced. It’s not unprecedented in history for reproduction to be treated as a privilege and duty of “special people” like royalty. I should think that if you have control over how someone is raised, it wouldn’t be hard to convince the vast majority of them that, *Hey! You have a special power that no one else in the world has, and someday your descendants will inherit the Earth! Are you ready to take on this special burden? *
If you can preserve the system long enough, and convince enough of the daughters to go along, to reach a genetically sustainable population of about 600, you can do it.

And you still haven’t convinced me that our species’ survival is worth anything at all.

It’s worth a lot to the vast majority of those people. Are you asking me to show that we have “objective” worth? How exactly would I prove that?

[Voxicitis]

@Der_Trihs

Yes, they WOULD think of women that way. Either because they started that way ( because that’s the sort of person who would instigate such a plan ), or in order to justify what they are doing by dehumanizing their victims. Again; you are presuming a level of cold calculating detachment that is simply not human. Men who exploit women are not a rarity in the real world, and contempt or worse for women is the norm among them.

I don’t think they would have to coerce any of the daughters; the only people who need to be detached are the people who ensure the First Mother remains restrained, and the doctors who supervise the insemination, pregnancy and childbirth. They could be swapped out, they could be closely supervised… tell me you can’t imagine this being a rather banal process.

As for the daughters, I can’t see why they wouldn’t be raised like aristocratic children – protected, yes, and indoctrinated to believe that they had special privileges and duties, but why would brutality ever need to come into play? You don’t think they could be raised and guarded by people who believed in what they were doing? I don’t know why you insist on calling the whole program “Rapetopia.”

I think you grossly overestimate what a small group of people could do; especially since most will be pregnant female slaves and male guards.

Again with the male enforcers. And slaves? Did European aristocrats and the children of Chinese emperors consider themselves “slaves” and go all terrorist on their maidens and bodyguards?
I’m saying that for the remainder of the Old Generation’s lives – several decades – they could harden some important infrastructure. They couldn’t preserve everything, but they could preserve enough to make re-emergence much easier.

The technology in question would rapidly go away as the population did.

Again, the Old Generation has the rest of their lives to advance the technology of 2027 and leave behind technology and records of their knowledge for the re-emerging New Generation.

Or just nuke Rapetopia. What makes you think they’d want the world inherited by something so vile?

Inherited by the offspring of someone who was impregnated against her will? It’s not hard to imagine that with artificial insemination, the men whose sperm was chosen wouldn’t have to be rapists nor would they even necessarily know that their sperm was chosen for the New Generation. They could be chosen for their genetic variability and health and nothing more.

If the only survivors are monsters and their victims, no.

What monsters? The government that protects and indoctrinates these women until they themselves die, leaving a population of the New Generation who are guilty of nothing?

[begbert2]

@Voxicitis

First: That was unintentional. Don’t know how it happened. My deepest apologies.

No problem.

@Voxicitis

Well, what is important, then? Just the mere fact of the universe existing?

What’s important is to minimize suffering. People who don’t exist yet don’t suffer, and won’t suffer if they’re not born. (Admittedly the definition of “suffering” can be shifted around a bit to actually make this false if you push it far enough; in rebuttal to that I can simply say I don’t have that definition.)

So, I don’t care if humanity vanishes. I don’t care if the universe vanishes. But as long as we’re not vanishing, I’d kind of prefer if we’re not suffering. So I’m naturally suspicious of any scheme that proposes deliberately increasing a living person’s suffering for the benefit of…people who don’t exist, and will not suffer the more for not coming into existence? :dubious:

@Voxicitis

Look, the rest of humanity is doomed to die based on the scenario in the thread. It is assumed to be unavoidable. The only question is, do we restart humanity by impregnating a woman against her will?

Heh, have you read this thread? The scenario is all over the map. The arguments address scenarios that are all over the map. Seriously, at this point anything goes. We’re certainly not locked into the scenario of one movie that I, for one, have never even seen. (I should additionally note that the discussion of why birth rates is such a concern has moved around some, with the going reason being “all women suddenly inexplicably hate having kids A LOT.” Ergo you get rapes to make it happen. And since it’s all women: Rapetopia.)
My position is that this thread is uninteresting if you’re talking about raping one woman in the expectation that she is going to be your Eve. The reason it’s uninteresting is because you are arguing from a premise I reject - and without that premise it’s a nonstarter. “Should we rape a woman for no reason?” Heck no. QED. Done.

So, before any discussion about the various steps and good fortunes that might maybe possibly if they’re lucky keep this genetically handicapped society from self-destructing or being destroyed, you first need to sell me on why it’s worth the effort in the first place. Because otherwise you’re trying to hold a debate about what’s the best way to redecorate your suite on the Titanic.

Given that, there’s not much point in going into details, though I still think that this project of yours, in addition to being pointless, would certainly fail. So it would be pointless rape not only from my perspective, but also yours.

@Voxicitis

It’s worth a lot to the vast majority of those people. Are you asking me to show that we have “objective” worth? How exactly would I prove that?

Heck if I know - I don’t think it can be done. But it’s central to your position that it’s worth raping a single woman to perpetuate humanity.

[Voxicitis]

What’s important is to minimize suffering.

Oh, I disagree. We’re capable of great suffering, but we’re also capable of great happiness. Let’s break it down to one individual: if one individual person suffers just a little bit in the middle of an otherwise wonderful, fun, fulfilling day, would it be better that he ceased to exist right before he suffered that little bit? I don’t know that you would agree with that.

That’s why I mention the fact that most people don’t regret being born.

Heh, have you read this thread? The scenario is all over the map. The arguments address scenarios that are all over the map. Seriously, at this point anything goes. We’re certainly not locked into the scenario of one movie that I, for one, have never even seen.

The very title of the thread, which is what clarifies the moral question, is that the human race is nearing extinction. If there is an easy way out to save the species that doesn’t involve forcing a woman to give birth, then there’s no point in the moral question.

[begbert2]

@Voxicitis

Oh, I disagree. We’re capable of great suffering, but we’re also capable of great happiness. Let’s break it down to one individual: if one individual person suffers just a little bit in the middle of an otherwise wonderful, fun, fulfilling day, would it be better that he didn’t exist at all? I don’t know that you would agree with that.

That’s why I mention the fact that most people don’t regret being born.

Like I said, the definition of “suffering” can be shifted around a bit to actually make “What’s important is to minimize suffering. People who don’t exist yet don’t suffer, and won’t suffer if they’re not born,” false if you push it far enough; in rebuttal to that I can simply say I don’t have that definition.

I don’t have the definition of suffering that makes me a horrible person for not having more kids than I had.

Think about it. You are arguing that you are harming a theoretical child by not giving birth to it. But, there are an infinite number of theoretical children! You say you had eleven kids? You killed your twelfth by not having twelve! And you killed your thirteenth kid too! And your hundredth! And your thousandth! And millions and millions more without limit! You’re the most horrible person since Hitler! And the only reason you’re not infinitely more horribler than him is because he killed infinite nonexistent children that he didn’t have too!

This way lies madness; therefore, I reject any definition of suffering that inevitably leads to this conclusion. Which requires me not to mourn for the infinite unborn. Does that make them an exception to the rule of making people happy? Yes. But it’s okay, because they’re not people. Gleams in peoples eyes aren’t people, and so I don’t care about the happiness they will never know.

@Voxicitis

The very title of the thread, which is what clarifies the moral question, is that the human race is nearing extinction. If there is an easy way out to save the species that doesn’t involve forcing a woman to give birth, then there’s no point in the moral question.

Right - but there’s also no point if we’re only talking about one woman (and no real reason to think we are only talking about one woman) - at least not until you’ve objectively proven that humanity desperately needs to be perpetuated.

So far the only* good argument here I’ve noticed is the one that if we let humanity fade out, it will end with a pile of starved senior citizens. That’s a reason so save humanity, but impregnating one women won’t cut it - based on that argument for perpetuating humanity we have to discuss wether it’s worth raping every woman, from now until the end of time, to perpetuate the species. Or, uh, whether it’s worth preventing them all from getting legal abortions to acheive the same end.

• I admit I still hold a certain fondness for the argument that we need to perpetuate the species to grab God by the balls and force him not to ever do the final judgement thing. Good times, good times…

[Voxicitis]

Think about it. You are arguing that you are harming a theoretical child by not giving birth to it.

No, I’m arguing that just as suffering is negative, happiness has a positive value all its own. You’re not harming a theoretical child, you’re simply not allowing it to exist, and if it were to exist, it would likely value its own life (despite suffering) and be valued positively by others.
If you couldn’t bring a child into the world that would bring more happiness than suffering to the world (in the big scheme of things), I’d say don’t bring the child into the world. But I don’t think the human race does or ought to regret its existence.

I can’t argue for any kind of objective “worth,” because I only know of objective physical properties and truths. “Worth” is subjective.

But I know I value the happiness of future generations. It would please me to know that in the future there will be billions or trillions or more people living fulfilling lives, even if I don’t get to be there for it. And I care about that being the authentic truth – I wouldn’t just want to be plugged into a machine that made me believe that that’s the truth when it’s not.

I know that if I didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be around to care, but I do exist, and I do value my life and my happiness. Through a veil of ignorance, I would want there to be maximum fulfilment in the future.

[Der_Trihs]

@Voxicitis

I don’t think they would have to coerce any of the daughters; the only people who need to be detached are the people who ensure the First Mother remains restrained, and the doctors who supervise the insemination, pregnancy and childbirth. They could be swapped out, they could be closely supervised… tell me you can’t imagine this being a rather banal process.

I find it highly unlikely. We are talking about monsters, who will behave in a monstrous fashion. Because no one not a monster would do such a thing.

@Voxicitis

As for the daughters, I can’t see why they wouldn’t be raised like aristocratic children – protected, yes, and indoctrinated to believe that they had special privileges and duties, but why would brutality ever need to come into play? You don’t think they could be raised and guarded by people who believed in what they were doing? I don’t know why you insist on calling the whole program “Rapetopia.”

Because it is a society built on, by and for rapists. And no, the women wouldn’t be treated well because that is not and never has been how societies that look at women as breeding animals treat women. They will be slaves, held in contempt at best and treated as such, period.

@Voxicitis

Again with the male enforcers. And slaves? Did European aristocrats and the children of Chinese emperors consider themselves “slaves” and go all terrorist on their maidens and bodyguards?

The abuse and casual killing of such women was hardly unusual; I recall one sultan had his entire harem drowned so he could pick new women. And the Chinese Emperor and European had quite a few guards.

@Voxicitis

What monsters? The government that protects and indoctrinates these women until they themselves die, leaving a population of the New Generation who are guilty of nothing?

They’d all have been raised to be monsters if male, or victims if female. Either deserving of death, or better off dead.

[StaudtCJ]

@Voxicitis

Again with the male enforcers. And slaves? Did European aristocrats and the children of Chinese emperors consider themselves “slaves” and go all terrorist on their maidens and bodyguards?

Have you ever heard of Harems? Or Purda(s?)? Or done any research into medieval and renaissance treatment of females in Europe? The emperor’s consorts in China? The Women were considered property, and if they were lucky, they were more valuable than the cow. Rape is still considered acceptable in a significant portion of the world, as long as the woman raped is one’s own wife cough property cough. It’s still often considered ridiculous here in the U.S. for a man to be prosecuted for “exercising his marital rights”. So even in our enlightened times, marital rape is just peachy. Why do you think this is suddenly going to change to the egalitarian, woman-worshipping societies, when we haven’t even finished moving away from the past?

While you may convince me that U.S. people or similarly British or Canadian or Australian (or French, or Spanish, ad nauseum) people may be disgusted by the potential of raping all the women and preventing them from getting abortions or starving “To Save Humanity”, etc., you will never convince me that it will fly on a world and species stage. It’ll be a return to the status quo of long ago, when women were brood mares and men were in charge. (I acknowledge that many isolated tribes didn’t do this, but it was prominent in “civilized” society.) The primary difference that I can see is that men would start bragging about how many daughters they produce for the cause, instead of how many sons and heirs that they produce, to prove their virility.

I can see a pregnant woman being “coddled” or “pampered”, in other words treated (almost) decently, sort of coughpatronized, isolated, and guarded cough, while she’s pregnant. Perhaps even while breastfeeding. After all, the consorts, geishas, harems, and mistresses of rich people have always been pampered when doing what they’re told to do. The other side is that I can see a women who can’t get pregnant, or doesn’t get pregnant fast enough, or isn’t pregnant, or is being Uppity or Resistant, being punished, or beaten, or medicated, or whatever it takes. Non-producing women would be less than cattle. What do you do with the cow that doesn’t make milk anymore?

[Voxicitis]

@Der_Trihs

“the only people who need to be detached are the people who ensure the First Mother remains restrained, and the doctors who supervise the insemination, pregnancy and childbirth. They could be swapped out, they could be closely supervised… tell me you can’t imagine this being a rather banal process.”

I find it highly unlikely. We are talking about monsters, who will behave in a monstrous fashion. Because no one not a monster would do such a thing.

Let’s make this explicit: you’re saying that nobody could be involved in this who would not become aggressively brutish.
Here’s what’s involved with the First Mother: [ul][li]Restraining at all times one woman who refuses to allow the whole species to survive - suicide watch, physical restraints.[/li][li]Keeping her alive and keeping her body healthy[/li][li]Artificial insemination (perhaps several dozen times over a 30-year period)[/li][li]Birth (perhaps 15 times over same time period)[/li][/ul] You think that this cannot possibly be done without the people involved becoming aggressively brutish with her? You think this automatically devolves into Rapetopia? You don’t think that, with this woman’s health being the very last hope for the survival of the species, someone could devise a way to do it that kept the woman safe from being brutalized beyond the necessary violence of the program? I mean, an awful lot rides on making sure that the people who interact with this woman don’t endanger her future usefulness.

This could easily be done in a banal fashion. You tell people that what they’re doing is necessary for a great cause like the survival of the species, you supervise them in a very controlled environment, and there’s no reason that the monstrousness is anything but by-the-book. What do you think is going to happen in that environment? They’re going to leave her alone with a sadist? Or are they going to have it closely supervised by Secret Service type folks whose heads will roll if they don’t protect her from any outside-the-parameters harm, and have someone watching the watchers?

It wouldn’t be hard at all to find these people. If you can find people who would take a bullet to protect a politician, you can find people who would go to any length to protect the last hope of species survival. They’d consider professionalism downright heroic.

Because it is a society built on, by and for rapists.

Please justify this statement. You can’t imagine girls being raised to want to have lots of healthy babies? First, I think you have a strange idea of human instinct, and second, I think you have a strange idea of how weak indoctrination can be.

The chips are stacked in favor of avoiding coercion after the First Mother.

And no, the women wouldn’t be treated well because that is not and never has been how societies that look at women as breeding animals treat women. They will be slaves, held in contempt at best and treated as such, period.

You think that a program full of people trying to save the species would look on the last people capable of saving the species with contempt? People who are able to do what no one else in the world can do?

The abuse and casual killing of such women was hardly unusual; I recall one sultan had his entire harem drowned so he could pick new women. And the Chinese Emperor and European had quite a few guards.

Big difference: you kill these women, you kill the species. Casually killing the few people who represent the survival of mankind… seriously? You think that’s, uh, inevitable?

What you’re really implying here is that I am a monster. You’re implying that nobody could hold my beliefs and keep himself from brutalizing and casually murdering girls who he believes are necessary for the future of mankind, which he highly values.

Interesting.

They’d all have been raised to be monsters if male, or victims if female. Either deserving of death, or better off dead.

You really don’t think that someone raised to want to have lots of healthy babies has a life worth living? Not even if those babies are the future of humankind?

StaudtCJ:

While you may convince me that U.S. people or similarly British or Canadian or Australian (or French, or Spanish, ad nauseum) people may be disgusted by the potential of raping all the women and preventing them from getting abortions or starving “To Save Humanity”, etc., you will never convince me that it will fly on a world and species stage. It’ll be a return to the status quo of long ago, when women were brood mares and men were in charge. (I acknowledge that many isolated tribes didn’t do this, but it was prominent in “civilized” society.) The primary difference that I can see is that men would start bragging about how many daughters they produce for the cause, instead of how many sons and heirs that they produce, to prove their virility.

When will this return to status quo happen? I’m talking about a government program that isolates the fecund girls from the rest of society.

With the First Mother, she is kept very safe and her location is kept a totally black secret. I don’t see any reason why this program couldn’t be run entirely by women. In fact, that would probably make the most sense of all.

Her daughters are taken away from her at birth, probably separated from each other so that they couldn’t all be killed at once if someone goes psycho, and still isolated from the rest of society, raised with the teaching that they should want to have lots of healthy babies (after all, the future of the species is in their hands). Their safety and health throughout their fecund years would for obvious reasons be top priorities of the program. Furthermore, they could be taught to raise their own daughters to want the same thing. This would be going with the grain of human instinct, not against it.

The Old Generation would die off, and as the population of the New Generation got high enough, the New Generation men would be part of the population. At that point, the government is all dead. The New Generation has been left records of our knowledge and technology, it has been left resources and hardened infrastructure to make the re-emergence of humanity into the world easier.

I can see a pregnant woman being “coddled” or “pampered”, in other words treated (almost) decently, sort of coughpatronized, isolated, and guarded cough, while she’s pregnant. Perhaps even while breastfeeding. After all, the consorts, geishas, harems, and mistresses of rich people have always been pampered when doing what they’re told to do. The other side is that I can see a women who can’t get pregnant, or doesn’t get pregnant fast enough, or isn’t pregnant, or is being Uppity or Resistant, being punished, or beaten, or medicated, or whatever it takes. Non-producing women would be less than cattle. What do you do with the cow that doesn’t make milk anymore?

Well, there’s a difference between a daughter who resists getting pregnant and one who can’t get pregnant. But I’d stress again that there isn’t a big rush, as long as the infrastructure is in place and you have enough genetically variable sperm… you just need a little bit of cooperation in a given generation to continue the species.

And again, I see no reason to doubt that one could very reliably raise girls to want to have several healthy babies over the course of their lives. We don’t even have a government program for that now, and the future of the species doesn’t hang on a small number of women making that choice… yet plenty of women do hold that value, and happily pass it on to their daughters. How many mothers have you heard pestering their children to give them lots of grandchildren?