What's Wrong with Benevolence by David Stove

Author:David Stove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2011-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

XIV

“WHAT DO YOU want your child to be?” Parents are often asked this question, or ask it of themselves, when their children are babies, or about to be born. The question is asked less often as the babies grow up, because parents gradually discover that what they want has very little to do with what their children are to be. But while the question still is being asked, the answer which is almost always given to it, nowadays at least, is this: “As long as they’re happy! That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

Well, that is exactly what the Enlightenment had always said, of course; not about individual babies, but about future humanity at large. That, after all, had been the whole point of dismantling religion, democratizing government, equalizing wealth, emancipating women, and all the rest of it. All those things simply were the means to a single end: that people in the future should be happy. “That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

When parents nowadays give the conventional answer, it is almost certain that their doing so is itself an effect of the Enlightenment. It is not the answer which would have first occurred to a Spartan parent in 450 BC, for example, or to a Calvinist parent in 1580 AD. But even if everyone had always said that happiness is the only thing that matters, it would still be a stupid thing to say, either about our babies’ lives or about the future of the human race.

Your baby boy may turn out to be an idiot who is always extremely happy. Would you still say then that happiness is all that matters to you about his life? Or he may grow into a man who can be happy only by raping every woman he can reach and who, favored by fortune, in fact leads a supremely happy life. Would the spectacle of his life make you happy then?

Your daughter, yet unborn, might turn out to be a conjoined twin. If it further turned out that she is a happy conjoined twin, would you still say that her life had everything that matters? Or it may turn out that, though your daughter is physically normal, her sole idea of happiness is permanent invalidism. If her life actually provided her with this source of happiness, would that be all that mattered to you?

This happy though permanently invalid daughter might even be on the right track, at that, and be a pointer to the way ahead for the whole human race. When our medical technology becomes a little more advanced, it might turn out that the way for a human being to be happiest is to be kept permanently in a hospital bottle, with the brain suitably stimulated by chemical or electrical means. All the pleasures of normal life, and none of the pains, might be experienced in this way, even though the “life” being led is entirely hallucinatory. If this option became medically possible, would you still say that your

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