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Vice Presidential Debate between Walt Whitman and Charles Darwin

Moderator:  Hello and welcome back to the  Presidential debate between the Republican candidate, Charles Darwin and the Democratic candidate, Walt Whitman.  Our next topic is death and its societal implications.  As little as 100 years ago, death was simply when you stopped breathing.  Things have changed a lot since then and some very public cases, including Terry Schiavo, have raised the issue of what death is and how we should handle it.  Charles, you’re up first! How would you define death in the modern age?

Darwin: Well, Joanna, in order to understand death, we need to be able to define life.  And as anybody knows, who has read my book, the point of life is to pass on your genes to viable offspring.  If you are no longer able to pass on your genes then you are evolutionary dead whether or not you are still walking around.  

Moderator: How about you Walt?

Whitman: Well, Charles, I would have to disagree.  I would like to ask you a question-What is life?  To me, life is the experiences we have and the people we know.  It is so wonderful to look around us and see the flowers blooming and the sun shining and experience the world.  It does not matter if you have no kids, ten kids or octoplets.  You just need to sit down and have your cup of coffee and mull over life, what it’s all about and that is TRULY being alive.  And well Charles, you are getting on in the years.  Would you not say  that you get joy out of living every day of your life fully because us on Long Island-we live every day to the fullest! Do you suspect death?  If I were to suspect death I should diew now.  Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward anniihilation?  Pleasantly and well-suited I walk. 

Charles: But Walt, it looks to me like you contradict yourself.

Walt: Very well then, I contradict myself.

Charles:  Well Walt, you do raise an interesting point though about the elderly contributions to evolutionary fitness.  While I don’t think running around chasing butterflies has any effect at all on evolutionary fitness, the elderly do have important contributions.  They contribute by passing down their life experiences and cultural knowledge onto their grandchildren.  Grandparents help to produce more worldly and societal well adjusted persons who are better able to succeed in the modern world and experience heightened reproductive success.  

Moderator: Interesting thoughts.  Walt, you have one more chance to speak if you like.  

Walt: Heightened reproductive success? That’s not what I want them saying about me at my funeral!.  To judge life by only what you leave behind when you’re gone does great disservice to the wonder of the world around us. It’s not all about you Charles-It’s about how you interact with the world around you.  

Moderator: Thank you both for your responses.  It’s time to move along and our next topic is gender.  The boundaries between genders are getting more and more blurred and there has been a lot of work done in terms of seeing gender along a spectrum. It has become more accepted for women to take on roles traditionally associated with masculinity and for men to take on roles traditionally associated with femininity.  How do you feel about this decline in the traditional boundaries between the genders?  
   
Walt:  We need to love each other and we need to love ourselves and if your self is not loved and if you can’t love your physical self, then I think you should do what you need to do to be happy.  I need not define myself- I contain multitudes and who is to say which of these components of me deserves the physical reflection of my emotional self?  Do you love yourself, Charles?  

Charles:  Frankly, Walt I’d love to know what you’ve been smoking.   Gender isn’t a societal  imposition.  It is a biological necessity for the exchange of hereditary factors.  This exchange renews the variability that is crucial to our species' continued health and success.  I have no problem with what people choose to identify themselves as, as long as it does not interfere with their ability to effectively reproduce and contribute to the next generation.  

Walt:  Well, you have a point there Charles.  In the age of technology that we live in, one would not need to worry about this interference that you speak of.  We have blurred these boundaries with the use of technology in the creation of life in the test tube.   

Charles Darwin:  Test Tube??…..

Walt: Shut it Charles! As I was saying, we have blurred these boundaries and it is time that we continue to move forward, accept each other and rejoice in our freedom to choose among the multitudes present within us.  Oh gosh, isn’t life so beautiful! That’s why I plan to start a new Vice Presidential Initiative-it will be called FLF-The Free Love Foundation.  

Charles:  Well doesn't that just want to make me hug a tree. I do not know how to respond to this.  I am appalled!  If you choose to remove yourself from the gene pool, that is your own prerogative and I will not stand in your way.  But before we were a society, we were a species and we cannot neglect that.  

Moderator:  Thank you for your interesting contributions.  We have to move on to our next topic.  Technology might be the underlying factor contributing to the  blurring of these boundaries that we have been discussing.  One of the current arguments is that technology is very isolating and has resulted in a disconnect between people.  Where do you see technology going and where is it taking society as a whole? Charles, you’re up!  

Charles:  I see technology as a form of evolution.  The most fit individuals in modern society are those that are best able to exploit technology for their own means. It is now just another factor along with physical strength and mental acuity that determines our evolutionary fitness.  

Walt:  Why bother with technology? We as human beings are spirit and soul. We do not need technology to reaffirm our position in the world or to better our progression through life.I'd say without it, we are better able to experience those things around us.  These things they call computers are not a real replacement for human interaction.  For instance, I recently learned that a young pretty friend of mine on Myspace was a 60 year old man.  Not that one of my multitudes wasn’t okay with that!, but nevertheless, it was unsettling and underlined the disconnect between technology and reality. The way we are interacting with our human beings is artificial and in my opinion, subtracts from the way in which we come to interact and understand each other.  It removes the human element and it is the human element which makes life worth living.       

Darwin: Well Walt,  you are definitely freaking me out a little bit.  I don’t know what you guys are thinking over there across the pond.  I’ve been on some boats for a very long time and you’re still scaring me.  Shockingly though, I do agree with some of what Walt is saying.  Technology has evolved so quickly and become such a pervasive factor in our lives that we really haven’t had the time to see how this will play out in the long run.  As a society, we are so thoroughly invested in technology that any future human evolution will be inseparable from the evolution of technologies.  Do you disagree?  

Walt:I do agree with you Charles and although I think that technology can be detrimental to the future of society as a whole, I do see the positive aspects of it as well.  For example, technology allows us to be our true selves and allows us to represent any of the multitudes within us.  Even though it can be isolating, it can allow you to connect with others all over the world.  This allows you to get a glimpse into the multitudes of others as well as those within yourself.  The internet allows us to explore these inner selves.

Moderator:  And on that note, a quick word from our sponsors.