It got the wife-unit’s seal of approval and it is widely regarded as a modern classic and it has a lovely cover. So Kazuo Ishiguro got himself an audition and I decided to give it a whirl. It’s a very fine book. It’s hard to Zoom it because I don’t want to give it away. If you are not going to read it or are the kind of person (and oh I would never do this!) who reads the last page of the book first, then you can read this amusing, scathing review in the form of satire.
Apropos of nothing at all, the United Kingdom is busy regaining its evil empire crown, pushing back against sensible caution and pushing onwards into the fields of unending speculative research and most importantly PROFITS! by voting to legalise hybro-embryonic research and saviour-siblings on Monday.
Can I ask for a favour? Maybe you can sit me down next time we hang out with a big pad of paper and a thick black marker and explain to me in terms I can understand, like say, comicbook form, how it can be a good idea to try to treat the aberrant biological conditions of disease by designing aberrant biological entities? Why do the flaws in the farming of human flesh not seem apparent to everyone? Why do we trust ourselves to dive right in?
What could possibly motivate a parliament to endorse this?
That is not a rhetorical question. The answer is PROFITS. I’ll stop before this episode of Zoomtard becomes the text equivalent of Radiohead cover art.
Your Correspondent, Going into mass production June ‘09
![The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ [Hardcover]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41bh8oSh1VL._SL160_.jpg)
I found Never Let Me Go just a little too cold and clever. A novel you can admire but not really love. Unlike The Remains of the Day, which really is some kind of masterpiece…
I’ve been noticing that culturally and politically engaged Christians in this part of the world, who are switched on to issues of poverty and justice and the environment, are reluctant to get passionate about issues around abortion and embryology etc. I guess it has to do with being put off by the obsessive focus on these issues, and the blunt and insesnsitive way they’re discussed, in some parts of conservative American evangelicalism. What do you think??
Well I look forward to The Remains Of The Day. My appetite is wheted. I think the Guardian satire piece is probably closer to how you feel about Never Let Me Go than it is to my reading?
Now that I think about it, abortion must be the major ethical issue that I have actually never even alluded to in all the years of Zoomtard. I am quite happy to put my ill-advised rants up here for posterity but I am terrified of blundering through the nightmare that is terminated pregnancy. So in that regards I’d probably fit in perfectly in Vancouver.
Embryonics however is something that I tread into with serious folly because come on, how can I hope to understand the intricacies or weight up the potentialities?! If a slow measured, controlled, phased experimentation was to be the strategy, I’d have to say, “Sure give it a go!” The problem with the British parliament seems to be that their approach is so cocky that the only motivation could be mammon; mammon hidden behind much talk of “Progress”. Us Chesterton readers know how to smell that rat….
It occurred to me that ‘hybrid’ is not far, as a word, from ‘hubris’ (ὕβÃÂιÂ), the Greek for overweening pride, arrogance, aggression, outrage. A quick wikipedia-look (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)#Etymology) makes it look likely that they are indeed related.
What a coincidence! ;o)
Cian
Never let me go is the book that came to mind for me with the debates this week, even if not directly related. I agree with above comment though that it’s not a book you can really love but definitely still thought provoking. glad you’re back blogging by the way!
Oh Cian, you crazy adorable nerd. I\’m filing that away for the next time a big ethics council asks me for my opinion!
Anna, cool to see you blogging. Who would have thunk it? Ya kept that quiet…
Jayber – you’re on to something on the getting involved in justice and environment and not abortion. could a fear of being labelled fundamentalist or extremist, or even a dislike for some of the crazies protesting abortion be obscuring our vision of an important issue?
In fact the more I think of it the greater the need there is for a reasonable christian voice in some of the abortion, embryology and cloning debates