Child sex trafficking is one of the manifestations of the use of humans via reductive objectification for the pursuit of pleasure.

As contrasted with—connecting with an ensouled human and receiving the pleasurable fruits of being in right relationship with them.

The Epstein Island is the most horrific visible manifestation of this but it feels so horrific precisely because the underlying archetypal behavior—the use of another via reducing them to an object for the pursuit of pleasure—is quite commonplace. Often celebrated. Often sponsored by the State. Sometimes covertly, like the Epstein Island was. Sometimes quite overtly.

When you meet another, you have two choices.

You can either use them or you can connect with them. The former goes hand-in-hand with objectification. In your use of the other, the other becomes an object in relation to you. A common justification your mind carries in such moments is the deserved pursuit of a pleasurable life.

Why did Bill Clinton or Bill Gates or Prince Andrew go to Epstein Island? As someone who is not them, you may say—oh they did it because they were evil! Reducing their humanity to this simple word that others them—evil! So evil!

Humans are good. Their actions can be evil. When we attach the qualifier evil to the identity of a human, we reduce them, other them and thereby become more susceptible to both evil actions ourselves and being blind to evil actions happening in our vicinity.

I offer to you that the Bills or the Andrews went to Epstein Island for the pursuit of pleasure. They lived lives that prioritized the pursuit of pleasure.

It is truthful to differentiate between your perception as an outsider of the intention of these elite child rapists vs. their own inner drive.

Why did my non-elite grandfather rape me? Because he derived pleasure from the act.
Why does anyone rape anyone else? Because they prioritize the pleasure of the act over care for the ensouled being they are connecting with.

We are having a collective trauma response to the release of the Epstein Files. People are numbed out, disconnected, angry or heartbroken—mirroring the freeze, flight, fight and then grief that is evoked as traumatic knots move out of a human body,

A collective societal trauma response unfolds when a horrific, specific manifestation of a widespread phenomenon comes to the surface.

I present to you another widespread phenomenon that seems to carry this same underlying current. Breathe, read, breathe and let me know if I’m off the mark.

The presentation of abortion solely as a woman’s right is another manifestation of the reductive objectification of humans in service of a pleasurable life.

The main difference is in the zoom level at which the horrific act is conducted—although the Epstein episode got pretty close with the murdering of babies. Abortion is most easily justified at the physical scale where it becomes palatable to objectify the tender innocent human life by labeling it a clump of cells.

I write this with empathy for women who have been faced with this terrible choice and yet when a woman or her man glosses over the horror of moving forward with this choice by adopting an intellectual frame that objectifies the ensouled being as a clump of cells until some indeterminate time when it becomes human, often the timing being conveniently chosen to be after the abortive act, are they not succumbing to the same evil tendencies that Epstein did? Prioritizing the pursuit of pleasure over the life of the ensouled being.

What are the common answers we hear to justify abortion?

“I want to travel and enjoy my life.”
”Children are a headache.”
”The poor child would suffer (read: not have pleasure) given my financial circumstances.”

Isn’t the underlying thread that connects these answers the pursuit of a pleasurable life?

I haven’t yet encountered an argument that stands on solid grounds for why life wouldn’t begin at conception.

The best definition that I have found for life is:

The sperm and the egg individually do not move towards the fulfillment of such potential. Once fertilized, that movement begins, unmistakably so.

Thereby even the day-after pill is an act that intentionally halts such potential. It intentionally halts life.

Is that not murder?

I spent a couple of years fantasizing the variety of ways in which I wanted to seek vengeance on one of my perpetrators.

Irrespective of whether I had killed him with a cyanide pill, or a sharpened wooden stick (“natural”) or a knife (“man-made”), all three acts would have been murderous, no? I could have justified the act saying that he deserved it or that it would have brought me great relief. Or that it might have brought great healing to so many adult survivors if I had recorded myself exacting that revenge. And yet, the act would remain murderous. Just like the trait evil, the trait murderous is associated with the action, not the individual.

Without a doubt, I would have halted his potential for further steeping into his agency. Preventing the potential use of such agency to even repent for the horrors he committed when he allowed evil tendencies to hijack his innate sense of wanting to do good.

What is the difference then when you halt the life seeded in a womb the moment sperm fertilizes an egg with the morning-after pill or using natural contraceptives or man-made mechanisms chemical contraceptives or abortive surgeries? Do you see the thread of similarity here or no?

When I hear the justification of abortion by “natural” means, I hear the same underlying current of the pursuit of pleasure in a new dress.

”The natural contraceptive would create less medical complications for my body afterwards compared to the chemical methods so that I can pursue a pleasurable life.”

Do you see that or no?

So then, is the pursuit of pleasure a bad™️ thing?

Notice that even when I labelled the act murderous, I did not explicitly state a good/bad moral evaluation of murder. I have been presently contemplating both the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna exhorts Arjuna to essentially murder his extended family and the line of Scripture in Ecclesiastes 3:3 that says that there is a time to kill. So I don’t know if murder is categorically a bad™️ thing. I don’t even know if the polar categories of good vs. bad are true.

What I am presenting is the thread of similarity that I see when the reductive objectification of another human is the basis of an act that elevates the pursuit of pleasure. I see it in child sex trafficking. I see it in abortion. Do you not?

Epstein Island was built for the communal celebration of acts that reduce humans to objects for the pursuit of pleasure. If you march and dance and chant in support of Planned Parenthood, are you not doing the same?

What is my argument missing? Please comment and let me know what you think.

If you do comment, I ask that you remember there is a human being on the other side of these words. Ad hominem attacks hurt, and I would appreciate not being reduced to my viewpoint. I am sharing this as the beginning of a conversation, and I am genuinely open to revising it in response to thoughtful feedback so that it stays centered in the heart and focuses more on discussing actions rather than judging or attacking humans.