William Mangieri's Blogs: Oh. The Humanity. (And a Smashwords Coupon)

One of the interesting things about SCIENCE FICTION is that you can get people to think about concepts by placing them in a setting / situation far removed from “reality”. It helps us to understand what it means to be HUMAN. By distancing the reader from the material, they can see the truth that is normally hidden behind our own personal investment in real situations.

Sometimes it’s horribly heavy-handed, like the original Star Trek episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", where the tragic absurdity of racism is illustrated by two alien antagonists who are both half-black and half-white, but hate each other because it’s on opposite sides of their faces.

I’m currently watching Humans on AMC, which is ostensibly about Androids developing consciousness, but is doing a wonderful job of exploring not only what makes a human, but also death, abuse, slavery, dignity, life, love, understanding, debasement… it’s loaded. It isn’t just about how we might treat our machines, but how we treat our fellows.

The fact that something like this is still considered worthy of exploration is encouraging – the fact that we can be made to feel for other beings. Even those that WE’VE CREATED, shows that empathy has not been removed from our species yet. We are still HUMAN, and can see the humanity in others.

Sometimes we explore the ethical quandaries brought about by social or technological changes that are visible over the horizon. I remember growing up with a lot of stories involving clones, questioning the ethics of how they would be treated, whether they were people or property, and whether they should be created at all.

Soylent Green dealt with the notion of a society that devalued human life and encouraged suicide, as though killing yourself was a more acceptable way to behave than holding on to life (heck, Belgium removed the age restrictions on this last year.) At least that’s the way it was sold to the populace – no one ever bothered them with the profit-based side-effect of having all these bodies to use as a resource.

A frightening, disgusting concept, isn’t it – the notion that we would kill human beings and then use their bodies for profit? We should all be glad that this is only Science Fiction, and that nothing like this could happen in real life.

Except that it has, and it still is.

If you only get your news through the mainstream media, you may have no idea about a series of undercover investigative videos by The Center for Medical Progress, in which they expose a number of practices by Planned Parenthood that run the gamut of callous, disturbing, disgusting, unethical, immoral and illegal, but can be summarized as altering abortion techniques to optimize the harvesting of baby parts for sale.

If you think I’m overstating the human nature of aborted infants, that you are one of those people who believes this is just tissue, after all, I challenge you to watch the videos. Be warned - this is not for the faint of heart – even the portions where all that’s happening is people with no conscience and seeming to be HUMANITY DEFICIENT are discussing harvesting techniques over a glass of wine are a bit much to take, but there are also images of the END PRODUCT they are talking about, so be prepared.

You could not create a work of science fiction that would illustrate the horror and INHUMANITY of this more effectively.

An interesting side issue here is why the videos (six at this writing) have gotten far less coverage on network news shows than the death of Cecil the Lion. Do you suppose it is because how we treat animals is far more important than how we treat the human lives WE’VE CREATED?

It is good that we still care about other living creatures, but it seems that our priorities are a bit skewed.

Just saying…

<<<>>>

My featured work this week is “The Wolves Will Come” (Old warrior Bear refuses to abandon his heart’s home, so instead he waits for his tribe’s enemies to find him - or will age and the wolves get to him first?) - here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/463511?ref=NoTimeToThink

Use coupon code CM25R to save 67% off the list price at check out on smashwords (that’s right – only 99-cents!) The coupon is good through August 24^th. Enjoy!

<<<>>>

William Mangieri’s writing (including his latest ePublication “Reflections”) can be found in many places, including: