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Peter D. Kramer and Andrew Solomon

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from: Peter Kramer

What Parents Want for Their Kids

Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2001, at 1:04 PM ET

Andrew,

You seem to me to put the depressive in a category I might call "exotic." Exotics are attractive, great at parties (well, not all depressives are great at parties), and welcome in the art world, but you don't want your child to be one or marry one. This morning I listened to part of a discussion on NPR about racism, and in particular the treatment of Asians and people of color in Great Britain and the states. About England, the point was made that these outsider groups can succeed in the arts--that despite constrained earning opportunities in most professions, writers of Asian descent are more successful in the UK than the United States. And I thought of course--they're exotics. I remember when I lived in London, in the early '70s, being invited to functions where I found myself to be the Jew, or perhaps the young American Jew, part of a smorgasbord for the true Brits--at least that was my impression of the role.

It does seem to me that most parents would want for their children to be relatively invulnerable to depression, even in the face of substantial trauma. (I do consider depression an illness--and consider deafness a handicap--but I recognize that one would not even have this discussion about most illnesses.) Certainly they would want their children to hear. And yes, I suspect you are right that they would want them to be straight. And they may want them to look attractive, according to the standards of the dominant culture. There may be fads and fashions, of course, but my sense is that genetic engineering, if it becomes practicable, will lead to ever more uniformity. Humans are diverse in enough ways that perhaps we should not worry about these broad categories. As Schopenhauer says, we will find differences--although perhaps the traits he seems to refer to, proneness to violence and paranoia about self and other, will be susceptible to modification, too.

As for a 100-cell blastocyst (made from germ cells donated voluntarily) providing the raw material to prevent incipient Alzheimer's--I don't think the subtleties of medical ethics stand a chance in the face of that potential ... though I do think the odds (always slim) of George W.'s doing the right thing have diminished.

Peter

the breakfast table
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from: Peter Kramer

What Parents Want for Their Kids

Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2001, at 1:04 PM ET
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Peter D. Kramer is a professor of psychiatry at Brown University and author of Listening to Prozac and the new novel Spectacular Happiness. Andrew Solomon is the author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (read a "Book Club" discussion of it here) and also of the recently reissued novel A Stone Boat.
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Reader Comments From The Fray

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[Notes from the Fray Editor... or perhaps we should call them footnotes. There was a recommendation for David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest here, and a splendid line from Tim Button here: "Footnotes are justifiable in philosophy, but philosophy as a whole is very hard to justify." KC is expecting footnotes to these exchanges. The Fray team would like to recommend Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as having the best footnotes ever. We were glad to see that the poster Shark agreed with us: he is looking like the new star of the "Breakfast Table" (eat your hearts out Neill Hamilton and Amber) with his cutting-edge offer of a Kaus-like Star Poster skipping service. Find it here, on the WillV post below, and here.]


You wrote about anarchists who capture the popular imagination? Obviously, you didn't know about the merry band here in the Fray, a group that perfected popular anarchy long ago. Come join us as those from the left, center, and right are terrorized for intellectual pretensions, grammar and punctuation, and bourgeois status symbols. Your sequel could write itself.

--WillV

(To reply, click here.)


It has been suggested that liberals backing down on their opposition to nuclear power is equivalent to conservatives backing down on the rights of children who cannot yet defend themselves against abortions. I'm not going to bother with the actual debates, but I would like to say that liberals and conservatives alike view the nuclear power question as a balance of risk vs savings. Nuclear power is cheap, plentiful, and the electricity is the same either way. The only questions are these: can the plants be run safely, can the waste be disposed of safely. These are practical concerns, and as the need for power increases, the risks seem less ominous. If we were to suddenly find unlimited sources of sulfer free oil, or a way to cheaply produce reliable solar energy, conservatives would find the risk of nuclear power unpalatable. Nobody opposes nuclear power on moral grounds, everybody has practical concerns.

Abortion, infanticide, pornography, etc: These are moral issues, not practical issues. No conservative would say that he opposes abortion because there are too few babies being produced. Moral issues are fundamentally different from practical concerns.

In any case, conservatives and liberals frequently change their positions on practical issues, as things become palatable or circumstances change. When they start giving up moral positions, there had better have been a revelation, because abandonment of a moral position out of expediency is ... immoral

--Ben Kirkup

(To reply, click here.)

 (7/9)

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