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One of Those Posts That Makes You Stop Scrolling
I am no fan of comedienne Amy Schumer for all of the reasons I don’t have to explain to a Ricochet audience. It’s not just a difference of politics; that difference comes with an entirely different worldview. This is the kind of stuff she posts on the regular:
Our reproductive health, our immigrant communities, our planet’s survival all hang in the balance. In 2020 we can take the power back and it starts at #WomensMarch2020. Join me! https://t.co/MAINGc1ojA
— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) January 10, 2020
But it’s been interesting watching Schumer become a mother, however, and witnessing the transformation every woman has gone through is always fascinating to observe, especially when the person is as open as Schumer is. Especially when someone uses humor as she does to diffuse the tension and the struggle. Which is what made this post from her this morning so out of character, and it made me freeze my scrolling thumb.
That still fresh c-section scar. The desperation to reopen it and bring another life into the world.
It reminded me of this column from the recently deceased Elizabeth Wurtzel from several years ago about the point of life.
As a Jew, I am not much concerned with the Pope. It seems to me that he has a difficult job as the head of a corrupt organization run by men who do not have sex and claim to know God personally. But Pope Francis has charm galore. It is quite something. He wants everybody, including people he does not like, to like him, and he has kind words for gay people and murderers—not that they are comparable.
So it is surprising when the Pope comes out with statements suggesting that Catholics ought to, for Christ’s sake, be Catholic: reprimands are so unlike the Francis we have come to know. They’re somehow too Pope-ish. Just the other day Pope Francis said that people who think having a cat or two and a dog is as good as having kids are missing out. All the benefits of child-free life—the vacations and villas, the barefoot dancing, the sex on the kitchen floor—all that will come to naught. “Have you seen it?” Pope Francis asked. “Then, in the end this marriage comes to old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness.”
As it happens, I’m with Francis.
When I see married people who don’t have kids, I wonder what’s wrong. Really. Because something is. Of course it is. I mean, if you aren’t going to have children, why bother with the rest? Why bother with the $30,000 bash and the white crinoline dress? And you can say that about everything. What do you think we are doing here, biding our time on this planet with our misspent years, justifying our days with our ridiculous schemes of leisure? Is anyone’s life so meaningful? Really? Really, really, really? Is yours?
The existential nightmare of the everyday is way more than even those of us with enormous egos who love what we do can possibly cope with. We are on this earth to keep on keeping on. We are here to reproduce. We are here to leave something behind that is more meaningful than a tech startup or a masterpiece of literature. Everybody knows this. The biggest idiot in the world who thinks he knows better—even he deep down knows this.
And I say this not as religious person but as someone who believes in science. I took human behavioral biology with the amazing Irv Devore my freshman year of college, and early on he taught us that human beings serve our genes—we are here only as temporary vessels to pass along their permanence. This made immediate sense to me because it explains everything: the desire to reproduce is so extreme, so innate, that even people who cannot (and some who really should not) have children at all cannot be stopped from doing so. Look at the abracadabra we do to create fertility when it fails.
And that is what Schumer is doing. We were pregnant at the same time, her with her first and me with my fourth; she gave birth a few weeks before me. She suffered from extreme morning sickness, and while I didn’t during my most recent pregnancy, I have in the past. The increasing desperation to give birth as the months progressed came across in her Instagram posts, and the misery of pregnancy transcends all political and ideological divides. In a weird way, I felt bonded to her through our shared pregnancies, because I felt that same desperation and misery.
Our babies are well under a year old, and so I was surprised to see Schumer not just trying to get pregnant again so soon, but already at the stage of using invasive and painful medical intervention to do so. But then I remembered this Wurtzel column that came back across my radar with her death. She wrote later in the column,
I am 46 and I don’t have children, which is a bit of a problem, because I believe everything I am saying. I also was not married, but I recently got engaged, so I will be soon—and I hope to have a child. If I don’t, I will figure that out. I am very good at figuring things out. And science is even better at it. (Maybe the Pope should reconsider the Catholic Church’s stance on IVF, though.)
She died this week never having had that child.
It took bravery for her to put out into the world her deep desire to have a child, knowing that it probably wouldn’t happen. It takes bravery for Schumer to do the same. This is a deep biological need for any woman, and in this age of trying to deny biology, it’s comforting to see a candid admission of that fact.
Published in General
I’m not buying it sorry. If her current difficulties ever give this bimbo enough mental clarity to think maybe unborn children shouldn’t be the butt of bad jokes about abortion, she’ll never admit it publicly. That takes bravery. Showing off her body and whinging on social media isn’t brave, it’s probably just Tuesday.
I have no sympathy for her. She has one child. She should be damn grateful.
I think this is partly misguided. If you think you can persuade me that the way my father felt about knowing that his grandkids looked liked him; that the way they felt when they recognized themselves in old faded pictures from long ago from when he was a kid; that that similarity suggesting sameness & identity isn’t of great importance–I mean, maybe you can say that & not shake your head, but you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din, as the poet said…
Despite all this God stuff, which is pretty great by my lights, but it’s not everything–people love their own children first & foremost, & more so if they are lovable like themselves. Having kids may not be enough without God, but we still want our own kids, despite God being busy about all the other beings in the universe…
I see what you mean, but yeah, I’m not independently wealthy & cannot really indulge these things.
Of course, my recommendation is different, the film of the decade, Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster!
Okay! Hadn’t heard of it… will check it out.
And you know this from having children? I had my first at age 36 after 14 years of marriage. I was definitely thinking about this being the thing I would do with my life (giving up an engineering career to do it). That our children are like us in ways may be a bonus feature — and sometimes not — but it’s not why we have them.
Adulting involves accepting death. Anyone who thinks they’ll be remembered in the 2nd or 3rd generation after their children is fooling themselves. That ain’t no way to achieve immortality.
I dunno. We still talk about my great-great-great grandfather Mavronikilas. He was a pirate when the British were absent from the Eastern Mediterranean, an honest merchant plying his trade between Pireaus, Constantinople, Smyrna and Alexanderia when the British were in the Eastern Med, and transformed himself into a patriot in 1821, when he limited his his depredations to Turkish ships. He is supposed to have died at an advanced age surrounded by a sobbing collection of great-grandchildren, grandchildren, children, wife, and mistresses.
amen
have you read ‘conflict of visions’ by tom sowell?
if not, you should… yesterday
I think your g-g-g-grandfather is exceptional. In more ways than one.
M
I thought this clip was a great tangent to everything we were discussing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8GSlP2yCD8