Censoring Life

In the Martian visitor eye view conceit of historian Armesto of Millennium, a telling feature of our civilization will be its linguistic inaccuracy. The best example of this is stories about death, be they Aids in Africa, Monsoons in Asia, pregnancies terminated in the industrial world, or resource wars in Iraq. I would go so far as to say that this error was fatal to our race, and yet is easily corrected. There is a tortured censorship that is unique and maddening in these reports. The Martians’ eye view will register a single feature to the exclusion of all the rest: The unchecked rise in population of a world underclass. So every news story that excludes this information is contributing to our destruction. A story that reads, “terrorists killed 3000 people on 911”, but does not say, “the population of New York then only increased by 15,000 in Sept 2001”, has left out the most historically significant fact. A story which says, “50 million will die of Aids in Africa”, but excludes the story, “therefore the increase in the number of poor Africans will be only 100 million”, is no editorial conceit. Rather it is as toxic to the life of a species as radioactive waste.

Other Martian observations would include the simple truths obvious to any culture but ours that an individual or species does not exist autonomously from either the biosphere or society, and that “life and death” is a single phenomenon, not two separate ones. The slogan, “Right to Life” embodies both these errors with ignorance and deception that will ultimately be lethal. Such a statement is a great enough threat that it should be banned, and its adherents gagged. The correct wording should read, “Right to quantity of life and death of one species at the expense of all others.” Of course, “Right to Choose” is an equally dishonest misuse of language. It would be changed to something like, “the right to choose to become pregnant/not use contraception, and then change one’s choice to the opposite of what one originally chose”. In the either instance, Martians would say, giving individuals absent any qualification the choice of whether or not society should support a child is found in no other species or culture—for good reason!