Reproductive Rights?

[apriorion]

Anyway, let me repeat that I won't reply to anyone who posts weak-minded personal attacks. If you can't find a problem with what I say, but you find the view offensive, that's your shortcoming, not mine.

Focus on what's wrong with my reasoning. We don't get anywhere by attacking people personally or by beating up on straw man distortions of our opponent's arguments. If you've got a defense of your view, let's hear it.

[apriorion]

Here is the Overall piece I mentioned a few posts ago. I think some of you might find this article interesting and some of you will find it frustrating. Enjoy.

 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/think-before-you-breed/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

[apriorion]

That's not the general consensus that life is a miserable struggle. At best, it's viewed as struggle for "happiness". So you just can't apply your moral strategy to large values. Then there are totally different cultures, where it isn't even a question. So again, you decide for yourself and that's it.

 

I didn't think that it was the consensus, and I agree with you. At best, it's a struggle for "happiness". But who really achieves that? On Aristotle's view, happiness is "flourishing", where that's construed as fulfilling your natural abilities. The thing is, even on that conception of happiness, a very small percentage of people really reach such a high standard. He maintained that the happiest sort of life is the life of reason: intellectual pursuits. But as Mill observed, having a capacity for enjoying intellectual pleasures also renders someone more sensitive to all sorts of suffering and depression. And given the people I have known over the years, that's certainly borne out by experience. So I don't know about the optimistic view. As I've said, I violently shift between "Life is great! Fuck yeah!" and "Damn, there's no hope, is there?" And I'm not saying that I personally endorse every single argument that I'm giving here, either. Rather, I'm entertaining them for the sake of seeing where they lead.

[eugene]

but you haven't really addressed any counterarguments and simply reiterated your beliefs and questions. also, one simply can't ignore such idiotic blurp of teenage misanthropy ("life is largely a miserable struggle") on which you base your whole argument.

as for your newer questions - some people like sticking forks into their penile holes and believe they serve the omnipotent meerkat god by doing that and some believe that having children is a virtue, are you really going to deconstruct those beliefs or are you interested in a more philosophical argument? if it's the latter than you don't really have an argument at all, just some unsubstantiated presumptions. i'm pretty sure that if you ran a big survey among the western children most of them say they're pretty happy.

[Amen Lare]

 

That's not the general consensus that life is a miserable struggle. At best, it's viewed as struggle for "happiness". So you just can't apply your moral strategy to large values. Then there are totally different cultures, where it isn't even a question. So again, you decide for yourself and that's it.

 

I didn't think that it was the consensus, and I agree with you. At best, it's a struggle for "happiness". But who really achieves that? On Aristotle's view, happiness is "flourishing", where that's construed as fulfilling your natural abilities. The thing is, even on that conception of happiness, a very small percentage of people really reach such a high standard. He maintained that the happiest sort of life is the life of reason: intellectual pursuits. But as Mill observed, having a capacity for enjoying intellectual pleasures also renders someone more sensitive to all sorts of suffering and depression. And given the people I have known over the years, that's certainly borne out by experience. So I don't know about the optimistic view. As I've said, I violently shift between "Life is great! Fuck yeah!" and "Damn, there's no hope, is there?" And I'm not saying that I personally endorse every single argument that I'm giving here, either. Rather, I'm entertaining them for the sake of seeing where they lead.

 

 

Then my question is why putting up reproductive rights into question at all? That's far more concrete thing than your references or questions [of philosophical domain] suggest. What i mean by struggle for happiness is a very simple outlook: you struggle to keep your children carefree while they grow, they certainly feel mostly happy and you feel somewhat happy seeing them, too.

 

I think the truth is much more basic, you have "a loved one" and you either want to give a life or not. What is or was your moral stance during all of your life is irrelevant.

[apriorion]

but you haven't really addressed any counterarguments and simply reiterated your beliefs and questions.

 

False. I responded to two of your counterarguments on page 1. Here's a brief recap: you misrepresented the charitable application of the harm principle to this view.

[eugene]

you didn't address the idea that creating life can be equivalent to creating good which was the most important in my post, the other points were minor.

[apriorion]

as for your newer questions - some people like sticking forks into their penile holes and believe they serve the omnipotent meerkat god by doing that and some believe that having children is a virtue, are you really going to deconstruct those beliefs or are you interested in a more philosophical argument? if it's the latter than you don't really have an argument at all, just some unsubstantiated presumptions. i'm pretty sure that if you ran a big survey among the western children most of them say they're pretty happy.

 

Thanks for that image. Whether one says he or she is happy is one thing; whether that person really is happy is something else. For one thing, people often lie about their inner mental states. You ask "How are you doing?" and they'll reactively say "Fine". But even if they think they're fine, there's still a difference between momentary mental experiences of pleasure and a life of happiness on the other.

 

Also, asking children: what do they know? I'm much more interested in where those people end up. Let's think about the typical middle aged person: is that person happy? I think that when we talk about having children, we shouldn't just be focused on whether or not the person is happy as a child, but whether we are introducing a person with a happy life, beyond those few years of childhood.

[eugene]

the "reality" of personal happiness ends with a subjective feeling in our case, i don't think you can get a more objective measure than this. yeah some people may not comprehend the concept of happiness but i'm pretty sure it's a minority.

the typical person in the west is quite happy, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

[apriorion]

 

another thing, what about the opposite of harming, what if reproducing also produces "good" that can potentially outweigh the harm? in such case it would be immoral not to reproduce. of course now you have an even bigger issue - defining that "good".

 

--there are a hell of a lot of people already; overpopulation concerns are relevant here; lack of resources might not be a problem for some areas of the world, but they certainly are for others

 

 

as you are saying, it's not universal and if you take my proposition about creating life as a potential creation of good than it's possible than in some regions of the world reproducing creates "good".

 

 

 

Sorry, eugene. I've had a hell of a busy week. I honestly didn't intend to skirt around your most central points. Hopefully this is the point you're referring to. When you're talking about "good", I think you probably mean something like "producing more experiences of pleasure over suffering". Does that sound like a reasonable interpretation of what you mean here? I wouldn't deny that there is some potential for the good to outweigh the bad. I wonder, though, about the practical probability of this, though. Again, a very big picture concern, where is this all headed? So we all have fun and games now and then. But people are also fucking assholes to each other: even in the most comfortable suburbs I've been to. Is there any way to measure the pleasure vs. pain that occurs in these situations? I don't know. But here's another thing: people tend to focus on the bad, right? I mean, people remember negative things more often than they do positive things. So they dwell on the times someone fucked them over, or made fun of them, or stole from them, etc. So that tendency is another factor to consider here, as well. Could we make the world a better place by producing happier offspring? Sure, that's logically possible. Is it probable, though? I said this in the marriage thread: but if you and your children are going to "fight the good fight" to try to make the world a better place, fine. I think that's really all you can do. Hell, I try to do it, too. But I wonder whether or not we are deluding ourselves about this. In these calmer, more detached moments, I'm just wondering whether it's actually true whether or not we're making the world better off, in this sense. I have my doubts, that's all.

[Guest BasDirks]

Hmm. Someone accuses me of awful philosophizing but says this in the same post: "what is natural doesn't need to be defined in terms of language"?

 

Yes. What is the task of philosophy?

[rixxx]

I would like to redact my statement of it being everyone's "right" and change that to "right to choose". Since we have stepped outside of nature, we have the option of knowing better.

 

 

"You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father." - Keanu Reeves

 

On a more serious note, you are going at the issue the wrong way completely. Overpopulation is caused in a large part by lack of access to contraception and sex education. You should be looking to enforce people's (in this case women's) control and right to regulate their fertility. In countries where this is the case the population tends to fall as a result. To give the state the control to decide who is allowed to reproduce is completely FUBAR. Think about it.

 

PS I do feel people should be encouraged to foster and adopt kids. having spent much of my childhood in care i'm a full supporter.

 

These are basically the main points I feel.

 

A family member has adopted a little boy few years ago, it was a very long and horrible process for them..its really tough trying to adopt these days. Also, with abortions legal, a large proportion of kids that are now for adoption have serious medical problems, which will mean you have to change your life in a big way. Clearly, Im not against adoption, of course we should adopt more children, but honestly, it's not as simple as you say, it takes a certain type of person to be able to do it.

 

 

 

Edit: forgot to add, if you are so bothered about over population, you can always kill yourself. Not meaning to be mean, but it's certainly a good point.

[Guest BasDirks]

 

 

another thing, what about the opposite of harming, what if reproducing also produces "good" that can potentially outweigh the harm? in such case it would be immoral not to reproduce. of course now you have an even bigger issue - defining that "good".

 

--there are a hell of a lot of people already; overpopulation concerns are relevant here; lack of resources might not be a problem for some areas of the world, but they certainly are for others

 

 

as you are saying, it's not universal and if you take my proposition about creating life as a potential creation of good than it's possible than in some regions of the world reproducing creates "good".

 

 

 

Sorry, eugene. I've had a hell of a busy week. I honestly didn't intend to skirt around your most central points. Hopefully this is the point you're referring to. When you're talking about "good", I think you probably mean something like "producing more experiences of pleasure over suffering". Does that sound like a reasonable interpretation of what you mean here? I wouldn't deny that there is some potential for the good to outweigh the bad. I wonder, though, about the practical probability of this, though. Again, a very big picture concern, where is this all headed? So we all have fun and games now and then. But people are also fucking assholes to each other: even in the most comfortable suburbs I've been to. Is there any way to measure the pleasure vs. pain that occurs in these situations? I don't know. But here's another thing: people tend to focus on the bad, right? I mean, people remember negative things more often than they do positive things. So they dwell on the times someone fucked them over, or made fun of them, or stole from them, etc. So that tendency is another factor to consider here, as well. Could we make the world a better place by producing happier offspring? Sure, that's logically possible. Is it probable, though? I said this in the marriage thread: but if you and your children are going to "fight the good fight" to try to make the world a better place, fine. I think that's really all you can do. Hell, I try to do it, too. But I wonder whether or not we are deluding ourselves about this. In these calmer, more detached moments, I'm just wondering whether it's actually true whether or not we're making the world better off, in this sense. I have my doubts, that's all.

 

 

Distrust that dangerous kind of detachment.

[eugene]

assholes can be happy too, lol. i mean they do some harm and cause suffering but as that survey concludes people are still generally happy and a huge majority of them are not thinking about suicide i bet. it kinda looks like you're trying to come up with some grand philosophy which is derived from your unpleasant experiences in life and disappointments with people you've met, well it's kinda silly tbh. i don't really believe in these "people tend to..human nature is.." arguments, there's a ton of different people and cultures and subcultures to claim such things.

[LimpyLoo]

There's that old psychiatric chestnut, that when people talk about humanity they're really talking about themselves.

[Zephyr_Nova]

 

At best, it's a struggle for "happiness". But who really achieves that? On Aristotle's view, happiness is "flourishing", where that's construed as fulfilling your natural abilities. The thing is, even on that conception of happiness, a very small percentage of people really reach such a high standard. He maintained that the happiest sort of life is the life of reason: intellectual pursuits. But as Mill observed, having a capacity for enjoying intellectual pleasures also renders someone more sensitive to all sorts of suffering and depression. And given the people I have known over the years, that's certainly borne out by experience. So I don't know about the optimistic view. As I've said, I violently shift between "Life is great! Fuck yeah!" and "Damn, there's no hope, is there?"

 

 

Life doesn't have to be a struggle for happiness. There is a middle ground between happiness and misery and it seems like a lot of people find that place and stay there most of the time. You don't have to reach your fullest potential to still have a decent life. Of course, if you can explore your talents and passions to the fullest, that will enrich life all the more. Neither the optimistic nor pessimistic view gives the full picture, but both have valid points to consider. Most of my immediate family and relatives seem to be generally content, friendly people who appreciate the lives they have. I live in a first world society where living comfortably tends to be the norm rather than the exception. So if I end up having kids, chances are they'll be glad to have been born. In that sense there is no moral dilemna for me. The bigger concern for me, from an ethical standpoint, is the effect creating more people is going to have on the environment. When you create a person, you're also setting the stage for their offspring, their offspring's offspring, etc. That's one hell of a resonsibility, and one massive carbon footrint to leave behind. Also, if there's a history of severe depression that runs in your family and you don't want to risk putting that burden on a new life, that's reasonable. If you're struggling with poverty in a mostly hostile environment and don't want someone else to be born into that, then yeah it may be more ethical not to reproduce. It really does boil down to an individual case by case thing. I do know at least two people who sincerely believe they would have chosen to never be born had they been given a choice, but it seems most people do not feel the same way. Fact is, you can only predict so much about the future of a life that's yet to be created. By having a kid, you may be introducing Jeffrey Dalmer into the world; by not having a kid, you may be depriving the world of Aphex Twin. It's always a gamble.

 

(I know there's a much tidier way of saying the above, but hopefully that made some sense...)

[apriorion]

There's that old psychiatric chestnut, that when people talk about humanity they're really talking about themselves.

 

That's cute, limpy, but it's also an ad hominem. And I've already admitted my own personal views and attitudinal states about these things, so there. Anyway, I'm just considering the arguments. That's all.

 

Thanks also for your responses, Zephyr: again, truth be told, I vacillate between the pessimistic and optimistic viewpoints. I wondered if there were more Buddhism-inclined peoples around here, but I guess not. Some people appear to assume I'm starting with some of gothy, teen-angsty, self-centered, bleak, humanity-hating perspective. I wonder if those same accusations are appropriately leveled at the Buddha when he observes that life is suffering.

[MadameChaos]

I may be wrong here, but evidence suggests it's not about the right to produce so much as the right to NOT produce.

Check your privilege.

[Guest Barung]

How to end overpopulation and poverty in one step: Let only the people that got the ticket for the syro limited edition reproduce, so that the kids will be born in families whose parents are wealthy enought to spend hundreds of dollars on stupid shit

[Hoodie]

here's an excerpt from peter diamandis's (founder of the x prize) book abundance: the future is better than you think. it explains why overpopulation shouldn't be a huge concern in the face of advancing technology. relevant portions have been bolded for emphasis:

 

The point is this: When seen through the lens of technology, few resources are truly scarce; they’re mainly inaccessible. Yet the threat of scarcity still dominates our worldview.

 

Scarcity has been an issue since life first emerged on this planet, but its contemporary incarnation—what many call the “scarcity model”—dates to the late eighteenth century, when British scholar Thomas Robert Malthus realized that while food production expands linearly, population grows exponentially. [. . .] But it was the downstream result of a small meeting held in 1968 that really alerted the world to the depth of the crisis. That year, Scottish scientist Alexander King and Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei gathered together a multidisciplinary group of top international thinkers at a small villa in Rome. The Club of Rome, as this group was soon known, had come together to discuss the problems of short-term thinking in a long-term world.

In 1972 they published the results of that discussion. The Limits to Growth became an instant classic, selling twelve million copies in thirty languages, and scaring almost everyone who read it. Using a model developed by the founder of system dynamics, Jay Forrester, the club compared worldwide population growth rates to global resource consumption rates. The science behind this model is complicated, the message was not. Quite simply: we are running out of resources, and we are running out of time.

It’s been over four decades since that report came out. While many of their more dire predictions have failed to materialize, for the most part, the years haven’t softened the assessment. Today we are still finding proof of its veracity most places we look. One in four mammals now faces extinction, while 90 percent of the large fish are already gone. Our aquifers are starting to dry up, our soil growing too salty for crop production. We’re running out of oil, running low on uranium. Even phosphorus—one of the principal ingredients in fertilizer—is in short supply. In the time it takes to read this sentence, one child will die of hunger. By the time you’ve made it through this paragraph, another will be dead from thirst (or from drinking dirty water to quench that thirst).

And this, the experts say, is just the warm-up round.

There are now more than seven billion people on the planet. If trends don’t reverse, by 2050, we’ll be closer to ten billion. Scientists who study the carrying capacity of the Earth—the measure of how many people can live here sustainably—have fluctuated massively in their estimations. Wild-eyed optimists believe it’s close to two billion. Dour pessimists think it might be three hundred million. But if you agree with even the most uplifting of these predictions—as Dr. Nina Fedoroff, science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state, recently told reporters—only one conclusion can be drawn: “We need to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet cannot support many more people.”

Some things, though, are easier said than done.

The most infamous example of top-down population control was the Nazis’ eugenics program, but there have been a few other nightmares as well. India performed tubal ligations and vasectomies on thousands of people during the middle 1970s. Some were paid for their sacrifice; others were simply forced into the procedure. The results drove the ruling party out of power and created a controversy that still rages today. China, meanwhile, has spent thirty years under a one-child-per-family policy (while it’s often discussed as a blanket program, this policy actually extends to only about 36 percent of the population). According to the government, the results have been 300 million fewer people. According to Amnesty International, the results have been an increase in bribery, corruption, suicide rates, abortion rates, forced sterilization procedures, and persistent rumors of infanticide. (A male child is preferable, so rumors hold that newborn girls are being murdered.) Either way, as our species has sadly discovered, top-down population control is barbaric, both in theory and in practice.

This seems to leave only one remaining option. If you can’t shed people, you have to stretch the resources those people use. And stretch them dramatically. How to do this has been a matter of much debate, but these days the principles of OPL (One Planet Living) have been put forth as the only viable option. This option bothered me, but not because I wasn’t committed to the idea of greater efficiency. Seriously—use less, gain more—who would be opposed to efficiency? Rather, the source of my concern was that efficiency was being forwarded as the only option available. But everything I was doing with my life told me there were additional paths worth pursuing.

The organization I run, the X PRIZE Foundation, is a nonprofit dedicated to bringing about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity through the design and operation of large incentive-prize competitions. One month before traveling to Masdar, I’d chaired our annual “Visioneering” board meeting, where maverick inventors like Dean Kamen and Craig Venter, brilliant technology entrepreneurs such as Larry Page and Elon Musk, and international business giants like Ratan Tata and Anousheh Ansari were debating how to drive radical breakthroughs in energy, life sciences, education, and global development. These are all people who have created world-changing industries where none had existed before. Most of them accomplished this feat by solving problems that had long been considered unsolvable. Taken together, they are a group whose track record showed that one of the better responses to the threat of scarcity is not to try to slice our pie thinner—rather it’s to figure out how to make more pies.

[. . .]

The Upside of Water

Currently a billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation. As a result, half of the world’s hospitalizations are due to people drinking water contaminated with infectious agents, toxic chemicals and radiological hazards. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), just one of those infectious agents—the bacteria that cause diarrhea—accounts for 4.1 percent of the global disease burden, killing 1.8 million children a year. Right now more folks have access to a cell phone than a toilet. In fact, the ancient Romans had better water quality than half the people alive today.

So what happens if we solve this one problem? According to calculations done by Peter Gleick at the Pacific Institute, an estimated 135 million people will die before 2020 because they lack safe drinking water and proper sanitation. First and foremost, access to clean water means saving these lives. But it also means sub-Saharan Africa no longer loses the 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) that’s currently wasted on the health spending, productivity losses and labor diversions all associated with dirty water. Furthermore, because dehydration also lowers one’s ability to absorb nutrients, providing clean water helps those suffering from hunger and malnutrition. As a bonus, an entire litany of diseases and disease vectors gets wiped off the planet, as do a number of environmental concerns (fewer trees will be chopped down to boil water; fewer fossil fuels will be burned to purify water). And this is merely the beginning.

One of the advantages we now possess in addressing the world’s woes is information. We have a lot of it, especially about population growth and its various drivers and effects. For example, couple what we know about the planet’s carrying capacity with what we know about population growth rates and no surprise that so many feel we are heading for disaster. So dire does this threat appear that one of the frequent criticisms leveled at the concept of abundance is that by solving problems like dirty water, the result, however high-minded in intent, will only serve to boost global population and worsen our situation.

On a certain level, this is absolutely correct. If the 884 million currently facing water shortages suddenly get enough to drink, this will certainly keep a great many of them alive for a good while longer. A population spike will result. But there are sound evolutionary reasons why it won’t last.

Homo sapiens has been on the planet for roughly 150,000 years, yet until 1900, there was only one country in the world with an infant mortality rate below 10 percent. Since children take care of their parents later in life, in places where a lot of children die, by having a large family, parents are ensuring themselves a more comfortable old age. The good news is the inverse is also true. As Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates pointed out in his recent talk on the subject: “The key thing you can do to reduce population growth is actually improve health. … [T]here is a perfect correlation, as you improve health, within half a generation, the population growth rate goes down.”

And the reason Gates knows this is because he’s seen a plethora of population data that has been gathered over the last forty years. Morocco, for example, is now a young nation. Over half the population is under the age of twenty-five; almost one-third is under fifteen. Having this many kids around is a fairly recent historical development, but not for lack of trying. Back in 1971, when child-mortality rates were high and average life-expectancy rates were low, Moroccan women had an average of 7.8 children. But after making great strides in improving water, sanitation, health care, and women’s rights, these days, Morocco’s baby boom is winding down. The average number of births per woman is now 2.7, while the population growth rate has dipped below 1.6 percent—and all because people are living longer, healthier, freer lives.

John Oldfield, managing director of the WASH Advocacy Initiative, which is dedicated to solving global water challenges, explains it this way: “The best way to control population is through increasing child survival, educating girls, and making knowledge about and availability of birth control ubiquitous. By far the most important of these is increasing child survival. In communities where childhood death rates hover near one-third, most parents opt to significantly overshoot their desired family size. They will have replacement births, insurance births, lottery births—and the population soars. It’s counterintuitive, but eradicating smallpox and vaccine-preventable disease and stopping diarrheal diseases and malaria are the best family planning programs yet devised. More disease, especially affecting the poor, will raise infant and child mortality which, in turn, will raise the birth rate. With fewer childhood deaths, you get lower fertility rates—it’s really that straightforward.”

By solving our water worries, we’re also alleviating world hunger, relieving poverty, lowering the global disease burden, slowing rampant population growth, and preserving the biosphere. Children will no longer be yanked out of school to gather water and the firewood needed to boil water, so education levels will begin to rise. Since women also waste hours a day running these same errands, providing clean water also betters everything from quality of family life to quantity of family income (because mom now has time to get a job). But the best news is that water is merely one example of this interdependent phenomenon. The solutions to all of our grand challenges are similarly stacked and toppling any of these dominoes sets off a positive chain reaction—which is yet another reason why abundance for all is closer than many suspect.

 

 

[Zephyr_Nova]

 

 

Thanks also for your responses, Zephyr: again, truth be told, I vacillate between the pessimistic and optimistic viewpoints. I wondered if there were more Buddhism-inclined peoples around here, but I guess not. Some people appear to assume I'm starting with some of gothy, teen-angsty, self-centered, bleak, humanity-hating perspective.

 

Nah, that's just an easy way for people who disagree to downplay your views by comparing them to those of an angsty teenager. i think most people here can tell you're approaching it from the perspective of someone who's genuinely concerned with morality and philosophy. There are some Buddhism-inclined folks around here for sure, but a lot of them would prob prefer not to get involved in what's bound to end in a flame war, heheh. There's been a semi-reasonable mix of serious debate with trolling, typical watmm style.

[MisterE]

it sounds conspiratorial and it technically is, but i think a lot of the concern of overpopulation that average people have, is probably sourced from rich powerful elites who are worried about all of us commoners using up THEIR natural resources, who then used their tentacles in the media to trickle these ideas down so that their dependable believers will do their work for them and fight to secure the security of the rich, at the expense of those believers and everyone they help influence. i have no way of proving this. but behold the al gore jetting across the land telling the plebes they should be riding bicycles to work, and making literally tens of millions on oil deals while saying there is no such thing as ethical oil.

[MisterE]

or matt damon's anti-fracking docu that was funded by UAE. why would UAE have any interest in funding a docu against fracking in the US? hmm....

i mean, at least they were honest and actually mentioned that in the credits, but doesn't that funding kind of null the message to some degree? i'm sure anyone who actually cared about these issues could do their own research and see endless examples of rich, richer, and fucking megarich people, doing everything they can to dictate how those below them live, while living 180 degrees to the contrary. but hey when you have a handsome dude like matt damon in front of that message, who cares right?

[MadameChaos]

The guys from south park ruined Matt Damon for me. Whenever I see him now I just see that dumb puppet going "Matt Damon!" ffs

[doublename]

I'm not denying that it's a bit suspicious, but the Matt Damon film, Promised Land, wasn't a documentary. Also, it was funded by a government owned UAE film production company that also backed Contagion, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Men in Black 3, and Ghost Rider 2 (among others), so not necessarily a propaganda organ.