"Most people say they want their kids to be their own genetic offspring—but such a desire is in conflict with other evolving values around parenting and family."
This is the stunning opening sub-header of Preferring Biological Children is Immoral by Leo Kim, a "think piece" published under the Ideas section of WIRED Magazine's Next Normal series which covers the "future of morality and how our ethical beliefs may change in the years to come."
The article itself appears to be written from the intention of genuinely and well-meaning high-minded techno-humanist enlightenment, yet fails entirely in being anything of the sort. In actuality, it is a neo-Malthusian, anti-natalist, anti-human, culturally ignorant tour-de-force of logical fallacy, false equivalence, and overwhelming nonsense. Let us count the ways...
Clickbait Outrage-Farming
First, we can point our that the article's title smacks of obvious clickbait and outrage-farming which I am certain the editors knew and wanted that way—fine, I guess, this is just how the internet works. However, I would have expected the editors at a publication such as WIRED to also question whether the premise of the article itself was not objectively stupid and shockingly offensive to all readers (which it is on both counts) instead of allowing this to go to print.
Flawed Appeal to Cultural Relativism
"For most of Western history, it was a given that a parent would want their children to be their direct progeny..." starts the second paragraph—an absurdist opening salvo which dually implies that parental preference towards their biological children (or "biologism, as the author terms it) was ever in question at some point in the Western past (it was not) and/or that non-Western cultures do not exhibit the same bias towards their own biological children (lol, they ALL do...). As such, this framing is beyond silly. However, I believe this is done deliberately in a bid to establish a foundation of culture relativism by axiom, which the reader is simply expected to take for granted.
This is evidenced by the author presenting the case of the Na (more accurately, Nakhi, and perhaps Mosuo) people of China (total population ~325,000)—matrilineal Himalayan tribespeople that due to the acceptance of polyamory (for both women and men) do not, necessarily, have the same concept of biological fatherhood—as a case-in-point against biologism.
For reasons large and small, this is utter nonsense coupled with a heavy dose of distortion, misrepresentation, and cultural mal-appropriation (for instance, Nakhi mothers undoubtedly preference their own biological children). As one other critique of the article aptly points out, drawing such a sweeping conclusion for the Nakhi example is "about as rational as rejecting clocks and calendars because the Amazonian Amondawa tribe has no abstract concept of time."
Flawed Appeal to Scientism
The author cities advances in reproductive science—specifically gestational surrogacy, whereby maximally 3 individuals could claim some biological provenance over a child—as proof that biologism is now "obsolete" proclaiming, "when contextualized amongst our other modern ethical norms, this preference can feel downright ancient—a vestigial remnant of a different epoch, a fossil no longer animated by the same moral intuitions that gave it gravity in the past." Which "modern ethical norms" give credence to the author's ideas here are never explained. Of course, it is also conveniently left out that a typical case of gestational surrogacy would involve a couple with the intention that at least one, if not both partners, contribute their DNA—the very definition of biologism itself.
Flawed Appeal to Parental Unconditional Love
Next, we receive a warped moral argument that "using things like biological similarity to ground a parent-child relationship deconstructs the notion that parents should love their children unconditionally." Huh? It most certainly does not. The only way this argument would make any sense is to suggest that there is a moral conflict between an adult loving their children (either through genetics or adoption) unconditionally and that adult loving all children unconditionally. This is little more than Communistic thought applied to parentage. The argument also completely ignores that adults always face a very real limitation of resources—financial, material, temporal—to commit to the endeavor of child-rearing. We can only assume that in a dimly lit subterranean lair somewhere far, far away Klaus Schwab strokes a Persian cat in silent, brooding agreement...
Flawed Appeal to Social Justice
In an act of faux-moralizing and conflict-farming so naked and brazen that it should be universally offensive to all, the author attempts to equate biologism with homophobia. "Moreover, the argument that this genetic tie has unique intrinsic value because it is “natural” [is] precisely th[e] argument that has been used for decades to discredit same-sex couples as unfit to be parents." While this flawed and reprehensible argument has absolutely been used in this way, that has everything to do with bigotry and all of nothing to do with biologism preference.
But the author is not content to stop here—no, he proceeds to wholly contradict his argument in order to frame up a sexual orientation-based double standard. "That’s not to say that anti-biologism doesn’t come with attendant risks. It too, can be easily misapplied and weaponized against marginalized populations, like same-sex couples who want to pursue assisted reproductive technologies [...] the deeply embedded social practices that sustain and support biologism in different‐sex couples ought to shoulder the brunt of the critique.” The apparent takeaway here is that the moral wrongness of biologism is actually far more dependent on the author's own attitudes and prejudgements regarding one's sexual orientation or membership in groups that the author considers to be marginalized.
Flawed Appeal to Racial Justice
Having attacked biologism from so many other angles, it is the author's attempt to tie biologism to White supremacy—"Genetic provenance has long been used as a tool to construct and uphold white hegemony"—that marks the article's crescendo of absurdity and grotesque offense. Not only is biologism framed as the root of "the biological essentialism built into white supremacy," but we can know this is true because, "sharing genetic traits seems less critical to Black identity than to white identity." Excuse me—BRUH, WHAT???
This line of logic is particularly disgusting and off base. What the author interprets as Black cultural identity placing "less importance" on sharing genetic traits is simply the author's own gross misunderstanding. The communitarian elements of Black American culture that the author twists into a statement against biologism are better understood as a broadly distributed socio-cultural (re: racial) survival mechanism that casts a much wider net for the application of quasi-familial ties and behaviors, centered around the particular shared genetic trait of darker skin and African genetic origin, irrespective of direct blood relation.
In the American context, where Black Americans find themselves judged far more by the bad actions of the few in our group rather than by the good or normative acts of the many, Black Americans understand that to the extent that we can, protecting and raising up black children, even those that are not our own, is protecting our own children. In far too many cases, all black boys will "fit the description" when the police come around be it the valedictorian, the star athlete, or the criminal delinquent—so we take on a collective responsibility for all of them, in the hopes of diminishing the occurrence of the latter.
Biologism is as prevalent in the Black community as it is in any human community. To suggest otherwise or to insinuate the biologism is a tool of White supremacy rather than a pillar of the universal human experience is insulting to all but the dimmest and most identity-politics indoctrinated of readers. What is put forward here is nothing more than the author's over-intellectualized attempt to ride on the back of Black pain and to distort our history to support his ill conceived, nonsense ideas.
Flawed Appeal to Climate Urgency
Beyond one not wanting to be a homophobic, White supremacist who does not adequately love their children, climate change and climate anxiety are presented as additional "pragmatic, utilitarian reasons that we might be opposed to biologism." Rather than lamenting that climate anxiety is increasingly morphing into a regressive, unhealthy, and inert kind of climate defeatism, this is taken as a potential boon for the author's anti-biologism frame. The author cites a young woman who tells researchers, “climate change is the sole factor for me in deciding not to have biological children. I don’t want to birth children into a dying world.” How anyone takes this as a measure on the morality of preferring to have biological children rather than a horrifically sad measure of First World despair is entirely beyond me.
Flawed Appeal to Adoption
In a way that is bizarre but not surprising once one understands the author's worldview, adoption is always treated as antagonistic with or mutually exclusive to biologism, which it obviously is not. The crux of the author's argument is that "the desire for related children undermines the likelihood that someone might adopt—taking potential resources away from an existing child in need. [...] Given this reality, we should avoid anything that actively disincentivizes this mode of parenthood." In his strange mind, the mere existence of children who have not been adopted makes deciding to pursue biological children a universal moral wrong that should be avoided at all costs. The author is not really arguing for more adoption so much as he trying to force-feed the reader on this anti-natalist views with the appearance of moral authority on his side.
Final Thoughts
Preferring Biological Children is NOT Immoral. Anyone suggesting this has completely lost touch with what it means to be human. And, one hopes, that the forcefulness of the rejection they receive when espousing such views, might serve to wake them up to this sad fact.
The stupidity of the author's arguments belie the very real and catastrophic danger that such views pose as they slither into our mainstream of paternalistic pharma-industrial medicine or as they are taken up by members of the arrogant, self-anointed, and often self-appointed globalist managerial class—the type of unelected officials, experts, and bureaucrats that exploded to the fore during Covid and who are surely eagerly waiting in the wings for the next global crisis. But hypotheticals aren't even needed—we need only look to the grand failure of China's One Child Policy to envisage what horrors the author and his ideological ilk might attempt if ever they found the reigns of power in their hands.
Neo-Malthusianism and anti-natalism are two of the most dire ideological threats staring down civilization today. These ideologies propose that our social, political, and environmental problems are beyond solving and therefore we should all just give up and give in to a lethargic, apathetic managed decline until we finally, and mercifully, collapse into the grave. And it is in this apathy—apathy that is always framed as a lofty moral choice or noble sacrifice—that these ideologies become unrestrained in their demand that we relinquish our agency entirely "for the greater good." The terminus of this can only be a whole-cart subversion of the human experience and a complete acquiescence—in what we are allowed to consume, in where and how we are allowed to travel, in what we are allowed to say and think, and ultimately in if and with whom we are allowed to procreate—up to "moral guardians" of this new, dismal society.
Of course, I see a different path—the path that bitcoin suggest exists if we commit to it. A future where we unlock and harness orders of magnitude more energy than we do today. A future where restoration and reverence of Earth's precious ecology is no longer violently at odds with the expansion and flourishing of human civilization. A future where neo-Malthusianism and its attendant anti-natalism are consigned to the dust bin of history, crushed into nothingness under the weight of forward progress.
The choice is yours Anon, which way will you choose?
~Moon