The crisis of our times is economic, geopolitical, and aesthetic; but, foremost, it is ethical.
In these lean times, the battle lines are drawn not just over who's right or wrong, good or bad, but over the very essence of what it means to be alive.
The rubber of reality screeched against the asphalt of ethics once again when Alabama's justices handed down a ruling: in vitro fertilization (IVF) embryos are, unequivocally, children.
This finding opened a rift in the right, pitting libertarians against conservatives on a battlefield few saw coming.
To conservatives, these "unborn children" are "babies" even before their first cry.
They see an embryo for what it is — a stage in human life we all have been through, an organism with a unique DNA.
To libertarians, calling embryos "unborn children" is a sentimental act since embryos are just a collection of cells in a petri dish — too distant to be loved, too abstract to be human.
"You can't cuddle an embryo," their placards say, as if that settles it.
- It isn’t human.
- It’s an object, a thing.
- At best, a commodity belonging to an unspecified species.
But this debate isn't just about semantics.
It is a matter of life and death.
We all know that.
So libertarians twist and shout, claiming "science" has been reduced to personal beliefs by the Alabama ruling, which they see as the imposition of a private, religious ethic on everyone.
They accuse conservatives of wishing it's 1955 again, yet they're the ones turning back the clock on two millennia on Western Civilization while elevating their own brand of Scientism to the gospel truth.
The irony is thick, really.
This ruling isn't a win for religious thought over reason.
It's a reminder that the scientific and philosophical principles that underpin our understanding of the world cannot be dismissed as mere "private ethics" by virtue of claiming the mantle of science.
Enter the Human Life Protection Act enacted in 2022, Alabama's bold response to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), enshrining the sanctity of unborn life, including unborn life existing outside the womb, rooting its laws in the ancient wisdom of the Hippocratic Oath.
This isn't about private ethics; it's about recognizing the universal truths of natural law, truths that libertarians, in their hubris, continuously dismiss at their peril.
In the ensuing chaos, woke Marxists see their chance.
With libertarians veering left on IVF, it's time for a new alliance.
So here's a thought: Why not reach out to the old guard Marxists? Why not form a coalition against the commodification of life itself? Call it "People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans."
It's time to bridge the divide, to unite against the market forces turning life into just another product. Because let's face it, the shift of blue-collar hearts to the populist right is the real game-changer of our time.
Marx criticized capitalist "commodity fetishism," where relationships of production and exchange between things take precedence over human relationships. IVF is the poster child of commodity fetishism.
Surrogates are the new, faceless "reserve army of labor," a mass of unemployed workers who are always on standby — ready to be thrown into the economic battlefront whenever capital demands it. Invisible yet vital, turning the miracle of birth into just another transaction.
The flesh-and-blood warehouses for the dreams of those who can afford them.
Through a Marxist lens, the IVF industry is a stark example of capitalism's alienation, turning humans into cogs in a vast reproductive machine.
It’s a cold, hard snapshot of our times, where the market commodifies everything, including the creation and destruction of life, and we're left forgetting the humanity behind the process.
It begs the question: what does it mean to be truly human when even the creation of life has its price tag?
This scenario is not merely an economic anomaly but a reflection of our surrendering to historical materialism, where every societal evolution is a direct outcome of the material conditions of its time.
In this light, our secular ethics become just a natural offspring of our era's technological advancements.
Much like the early pages of Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World," we're drawn into a vision where the banalization of good — the mass production of in vitro babies, and the programmed entertainment as part of civil discipline — slowly reconstruct the image of a world stripped of purpose, resting comfortably in hypnotic submission to a hermetic state order.
It's here, in this wet market of modern ethical bartering, that we must pause and question not just the path we're on but the destination it leads to.
Is the commodification of life itself, the transformation of the sacred into the saleable, really the legacy we wish to leave behind?
The relentless march of history, as Huxley perceived, condenses into a narrative that is less about the future and more about an immediate understanding of the present.
As we contemplate the Alabama high court ruling on IVF, we can't help but see it as another piece in the puzzle, another step towards a future where globalism, genetic control, behavioral training, and collective intoxication are not loose concepts for dystopian construction but integral, inseparable organs of the same system.
Where one appears, the others will follow, heralding not just a change in policy or law but a shift in the very fabric of our society.
Cauf Skiviers writes about philosophy, economics, politics, and things that lie between the inconceivable and the undesirable. His reports also appear at: https://cauf.substack.com. Read more of Cauf Skiviers' reports here.
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