February 1, 2009 [LINK / comment]
Recession or not, we still live in an age of wretched excess, and almost everyone accepts the notion that "more is better." When you combine that idea with the craving for public recognition in global competition and the biblical mandate from God to "go forth and multiply," the end results can get out of hand.
The perfect example of this, of course, is the mother who gave birth to octuplets last week. Even though Nadya Suleman, of Whittier, California, already has six children and is evidently unmarried, she managed to prevail upon some physician to provide her with the necessary embryo implantation that resulted in eight babies being born, all premature. The woman's father says he has the means to take care of the babies, but that remains to be seen. The grandmother, Angela Suleman, expressed dismay over her daughter's obsession with having more and more babies. See CNN.com, which mistakenly reported that the mother and father are married; several other news sources contradict this, such as the Chicago Tribune and momlogic.com. (Party girl Cindy Margolis is a spokesperson!)
This is precisely the sort of thing that makes a mockery of parenthood and subverts social order. Scientific advance seems to engender civilizational regression. Can the hellish nightmare of mass-produced babies raised by soulless government bureaucracies as depicted in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World be that far off?