Can We Settle on a Legal Definition of "Life" in the Post-truth World?

Amendment XIV. §1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the Unites States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction of the equal protection of the laws. 

What I have typed above is the Fourteenth Amendment. This is the amendment from which so many of our civil rights derive from. What I want to focus here is the assertion that no State shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

The Constitutional cases regarding abortion has veered away from solidly proclaiming legally the definition of life. Al the time of Roe v. Wade, the judges focused on the privacy right on the woman as opposed to the defining the basis of their usage of the word "life." Instead of defining it, they went with what their institutions told them was life. 

I thus propose an amendment to define what the hell the Constitution means when it says "life" in Amendment XIV. What better way is there to define what life is than through science? 

Sadly, even the scientific fields have been corrupted by political feelings. They have all the elemental requirements necessary to define what life actually is, but many shy away from defining life in a way that would justify the claim that life begins at conception. Despite a myriad textbooks and professional articles insuring that life begins at conception (fertilization), regardless of the authors' religion, there are still conflicts within the biological community... A sad consequence of politicized science.

I will thus see if life begins at conception.

The following are the elements of life.

1) Metabolic

2) Growing

3) Reproductive

4) Responds to Stimuli

5) Biochemical

6) Genetic

Metabolic

The moment a sperm is fertilized, it begins to siphon nutrients from the mother's body. In the case of reptiles, they siphon nutrients from the egg itself.

Growing

As the fetus, however small, siphons nutrients, it grows and will continue to grow after birth.

Reproductive

Potential to reproduce as being part of a species is the more accurate description. It would be silly to say that an infertile woman is void of life. A human fetus, as being part of the human species, has a high chance of being able to reproduce. Thus it is reproductive.

Responds to Stimuli

The response does not necessarily have to be spontaneous. If an axe strikes a tree and left alone with a scar, the scar will heal over a long period of time. It would be proposterous to say that trees are not alive by the fact that the response to the stimulus of hitting the tree with an axe was not immediate. If a fetus was conceived in a toxic womb, say, a womb of a drug addict, it will likely respond to the environment eventually. Thus a fetus, however young, responds to stimuli. 

Biochemical

A machine can be metabolic and can respond to stimuli. Certain chemical compounds can grow itself also. Thus there necessarily have to be a biochemical requirement to call something as having life. From the moment of conception a fetus is a combination of a sperm cell and an egg. Thus it is biochemical.

Genetic

Certain machines can replicate itself. If a coded computer has a free reign to replicate itself, it can. So we need genes, a biochemical compound that can be passed down. A fetus at conception carries the genes of his father and his mother. Thus it has life. 

Here, we definitively see that life begins at conception. How enlightened are we that our laws do not define life in accordance to immutable scientific laws? We have rulings already dealing with immutable characteristics, do we not?

Fascism and Progressivism: Learning from History

***Note: I do not think that Trump and his supporters are fascists. But there is certainly a danger of true fascism being formed in nigh future.***

When there is an action, there is a reaction. This is true of laws of physics, and this is true of laws governing the human psyche also.

One might counter by saying that the two are not comparable for one cannot predict what reaction, if at all, an individual will produce. True. However, when looked upon at a macro scale, we can certainly predict what kind of reaction a group of people will produce. 

An astute student of economics will see this truth easily. An individual's spending pattern is erratic. However, at a macro scale, the spending patterns of certain demographics become predictable. An astute student of history can see also that growth of political ideologies follow a similar pattern. The current topic looms around fascism, a topic talked of in virtually every Westernized political systems. I thus talk about how we can prevent fascism, presupposing the ideology to be evil, by observing facts of history. I argue that Progressivism is causing reactions that give rise to fascism. 

Here, by "Progressive," I intentionally label it with a capital letter in hopes of distinguishing between "progressive." Progressive approaches change by overthrowing the whole of tradition. The other type, the progressive approach, seeks to change by improving upon the tradition, a position even the most conservative individual can take, e.g. figuring out how capitalism can better benefit the poor.

French Revolution

The French Revolution is unlike the American Revolution in that it was Progressive. Americans were progressive in that they built their society upon their English heritage, keeping the laws and parts of governmental customs. The French, however, sought to abolish the entirety of what was institutionally French. From the French monarchy to the Catholic Church, they sought to abolish all the traditional notion of French identity and start anew. They even went so far as to create a new cult.

After their disastrous failure, an emperor came into power: Napoelon Bonaparte. He was a militaristic nationalist who galvanized his nation into a perpetual strife toward dominance. He inspired the people who were tired of Progressivism by converting them to his nationalistic cause. 

The words "fascism" and "Progressivism" have not been in use in this instance of history, but we can see the just how close revolutionaries and the imperialists were to Progressivism and fascism respectively. 

Early 20th Century

Not many have read Mein Kampf. Reading such a document will surely put a target on one's back and veered at. But peering in to the mind of one of the most evil men existed in 20th century gives much benefit in psychoanalyzing a nation. In his book, Hitler mentions the rise of Communism, the ideology that gave birth to modern Progressivism. He viewed the violent zeal of Communists as being toxic. Sadly, behind the Communist movement in Europe were ethnic Jews (they were not religious Jews). It was Hitler's much flawed logic that, if he could eradicate a race, he can eradicate an ideology. 

Hitler was not the only one being infuriated by Communism. The German people, already exhausted through poverty and defeat, were further agitated by Communist revolutionary activities. Thus Hitler began his own brand of fascism, propelled further by the shared hatred of Communism by the German people. This appeal to hyper-nationalism and ethnocentrism appealed partly to the percieved traditional German character: Imperialistic and warlike. Indeed, Nazis went so far as to be interested in the occult and the Nordic religion. 

Notice the pattern here: Progressivism + Exhausted populous => Fascism

Current Day

In our days, fascism does not exist. Many nations have taken a nationalistic turn, but they are not close to being fascist as liberals would paint them to be. But we cannot deny the potential for true fascism from resurfacing. 

We have Progressivism, a militant one at that. There are brands of Progressiveism who are advancing Communism without calling their movement Communism. There are also brands of Progressivism who are deliberately starting metaphorical fire between party lines, making inflammatory and emotive statements, mostly through social media.

We have an exhausted populous. We may not notice for effects are subtle, but we have been dealing with terrorism and renewed outlook of nuclear hellfire. It is not unforeseeable to see Iran, who have been waging proxy-war with the U.S. throughout their occupation of Iraq by supplying terrorist factions, making closed deals with terrorists with nuclear weaponry. We further have the volatility North Korea. The world may not be perceived as being in a dire situation when looked upon individually. But when looked upon at a maco-scale, the world is in a fragile state. Being sprinkled with bad news on a weekly basis thus creates an exhausted populous. 

It seems that Progressives as we know now are not willing to start a literal fire, and that nationalists we know now are not willing to submit to an authoritarian figure. But if the Progressives were to escalate their militancy, there will be an escalated militancy from nationalists, veering ever closer to true fascism.

There are many examples I can give, the ones that are not so well-known such as Yugoslavian Crisis, early days of South Korean "Republic," etc. But for the sake of length, I omit them.

Solution?

It is a well-known fact that, when a human being is tired, one wants to stay in their niche for a while. However, it is also a well-known fact that human beings should strive to progress their state. The solution, I believe, is to switch our stance from Progressivism to progressivism. Instead of overthrowing the traditional notions and banking left so as to be out of the ballpark, we ought to improve step by step what is wrong with traditional notions. In marrying the desire to progress and the desire to stay the same we will find stability and reasoned populous.

Let's not make this happen again.

The Path to Moral Decay is Paved with Partial Truths

As I begin another new year, I thought that it would be a good idea to remind myself (and whoever would choose to read this amateur post) that the path to moral decay is paved with partial truths. After all, a person ought to strive to become a living saint during one's lifetime.

Consider the following statements individually apart from each other:

1) "I ought to nourish and preserve myself."
2) "I ought to value another human being's life."
3) "I ought to care for the environment."

Considered individually, all three statements are valid moral statements.

As persons, we have a moral duty to ourselves to cherish our own lives. We ought to nourish our bodies with adequate amount of food lest we die of either obesity or malnutrition. We also ought to nourish our minds with both intellectual and recreational activities lest we suffer mental illness.

As communal beings, we have a responsibility to take care of other human beings. When we see a person of lower moral quality, we ought to correct them. When we see a person in a decadent situation, we ought to help in proportion to our own respective abilities. Further, we never ought to expend an innocent's life.

As beings that are quite outside the food chain due to superior rational faculties, we have in our interest, and that of all of the Earth, to take care of the environment. We ought to reduce our waste and refrain from destroying ecosystems.

Valid as they may be individually, common sense morality demands us to take priority in certain precepts. in a descending order, when situation gives no other alternatives. When a situation arises where only one of the two can live, a person with active agency is in a morally excusable position to disfavoring another's life (while maintaining respect for the other).  When a situation arises where a group of people can be saved only by means of war, one would be in a morally excusable position to use explosive weaponry necessary to bring about a swift result, disfavoring the environment.

It can be seen that there are morally excusable instances where one precept can take priority over another. However, immorality often occurs when we use certain precepts to justify our wrongdoings outside the justifiable particularities.

For instance, consider a man hiring a prostitute to please himself. Sex, when done correctly and with pure intent, can qualify as a recreational act where a bond between spouses can grow further. However, it can be abused in countless many ways, and using another human being as a means to an end is among them. The man would say to himself: "I am using this to blow off some steam." He would be using the first precept in this case. However, he is violating the second for a prostitute is in a decadent situation; the very profession is riddled with mental health issues. Here, the man is not in a position where the situation offers him no alternatives. To blow off some steam, he could easily hit the gym. In this case, the man used a partial truth to justify his deed, one which the truth forbids him to do.

A proponent of prostitution might come to the man's rescue and say that the woman is being paid for her "work," and that the mutual exchange makes the act morally neutral. Respect for mutual exchanges, situations where two wills are exercised, is an element of the second precept. But the existence of this element does not mean that the disregard for the prostitute's wellbeing by the man and disregard for her own mental health by the prostitute any less morally culpable. This hypothetical proponent likewise attempted to used partial truth to get around the truth.

I can throw out many hypotheticals showing just how partial truths are used to justify immoral acts. They range from petty things like ordering nonsense from Amazon to great things like instituting Communism. I shall not list them here, for I think I made my case in the above example.

4) "I ought not to justify my wrongdoings with partial truths lest I fall down the slippery slope of moral decay all the way down to the pits of hell."