So today I came across an argument that pro-choice abortion positions and pro-free market positions bear a familial resemblance in the rhetoric they marshal and, to the degree this is true, they share a premise constellated around the sanctity of individual choice over and against other considerations. As someone who at this point is a might bit skeptical of modernity, this resemblance gave me pause, not because it’s spot on (a uterus is not a commodity, though Richard Posner, I believe, was the proponent of the idea that rich fallow people should pay young uncertain women to carry the pregnancy to term) but because it’s been awhile since I’ve taken the time/made the effort to parse out the vicissitudes of “choice” as such. This is not new ground – the apposite Gaddis quote “there has never been the opportunity to do so many things not worth doing” – but new ground may not be all it is cracked up to be.

Obviously, on the flip side, one can begin a critique of a discourse ostensibly directed at defending “a culture of life” by noting how exclusive that culture is. If you’re poor and starving, but not in the womb, then it’s tough luck for you chump – you got of that womb, that’s all that you can ask for. Or if you are in a civilian in a country we are pre-emptively liberating from its backward ass desire to maintain “sovereignty,” tough shit: culture-of-life does not extend to you or the culture out of which you and yours have emerged. Ironically, as far as foreign policy goes (how far?), an exclusive culture-of-life mentality is the closure of “choice,” an overly determined this-is-how-it’s-going-to-be-because-this-is-how-it-has-to-be ethos disdainful of surprise and the unexpected. Our hand is dealt, and we don't really want to be part of the "We" that signifies strafing runs and close-quarter searches, but - at this point - there is no other option. Resign yourself to something you adamantly oppose, and then - how brave or courageous or hungry are you? - read another headline, day by day, and add up the significant abberation that mortality asks of you.

But foreign policy is only one contradiction-in-waiting. You want to turn away, and so do I, because we don't understand the insurgency and if we did it would be a series of sleepless nights - the economy can't countenance THAT. So look at something else, something we can bring into focus, something that makes a me and you out of "we." Individualism allows for – in fact demands – that consumption be a primary means of how we become who we are. A further irony is that there is no respect for the idea that the becoming is significantly intertwined with the being – that how you get rich, how you become successful, how you become esteemed, is hand in glove with being rich, being successful, being esteemed.

I guess I am saying: Be cautious about having what you want, and be satisfied with wanting what you have. We will die before simplicity comes back into favor out of necessity, but it is not too early too scorn what you cannot have. Anyway. Good night or good morning, wherever I find you: holy happiness don't be false.