Got Blood?
Perhaps Vampirism is both immoral and undesirable due to the unquenchable thirst for blood it causes. If vampirism is akin to addiction, then perhaps we have available a secular interpretation of being “cursed”—especially if a vampire’s thirst causes irresistible compulsions to feed. In the tragic television series finale of Forever Knight, vampire-cop “Nick” loses control of his hunger and drains to death the mortal woman he loves. So distraught is he when he realizes what he has done, that he begs for his maker (“Lacroix”) to stake him out of his misery.
Either vampires can control their feeding, and exercise discretion, or can’t. If they lack the ability to exercise restraint or judgment, wouldn’t we be inclined not to hold them morally responsible for their actions anyway? This doesn’t mean, of course, that we wouldn’t defend ourselves against them—much as we do against dangerous (but deranged) mortals. What’s important, though, is that we don’t hold responsible (morally or legally) those who literally could not help but do as they did—with one important qualification: we often do hold persons responsible if it is their own free choice that leads them to the point of compulsion. As Aristotle claimed long ago, we are responsible for becoming the sorts of persons we are. If someone knows the consequences of certain choices and behavior, they are, in some sense at least, responsible for those consequences even if they lose the power of free choice later on.90 We might have compassion for an alcoholic, but nevertheless hold him responsible for drinking himself to the point of addiction. Accordingly, we might have pity (rather than moral condemnation) for unwilling (“infected”) vampire spawn, but regard with contempt those like me who might actively seek it out.
Alternatively, vampires can control their hunger. Note that it doesn’t matter that their hunger is never fully satiated. Neither is ours! Mere mortals must feed again and again, or else grow increasingly weak and die. So, if vampires can exhibit self-control, despite their hunger, they’re no worse off than mortals are, and the only concern is how they feed.
Vampires, like the rest of us, must feed to survive. It just so happens that (with a few questionable exceptions) the only food that (apparently) serves to sustain them is human blood.
If feeding on the living in order to survive is, in itself, morally unacceptable, then predatory behavior itself is evil, and at least those of us who have a choice with respect to what we eat are in a lot of moral trouble. After all, this is something we all do, with the possible exception of fruitarians (who consume only fruits, nuts, and seeds so as to avoid killing anything whatsoever). If consuming other living things is morally wrong, then vampires have a lot of similarly immoral company, since billions of mortal humans consume other living things every day. What’s more, when we mortals consume a hamburger, that cow is dead, regardless of how little of it we personally consume. On the other hand, typically it’s not necessary for a vampire to drain his or her victim of all blood. Accordingly, feeding only results in death if the vampire chooses to make it result in death. Then it’s just good old fashioned murder, and the fact that the murderer is a vampire has little, if anything, to do with the moral condemnation.
It stands to reason, then, that the typical feeding pattern of mortals is far more destructive and lethal, on average, than that of vampires. If they are in the wrong, how much more so are most of us?
In summary, vampires can either control their feeding habits, or not. If they can’t, we have a reason to find vampirism undesirable, and we might well be culpable if we seek it out anyway. If self-control is possible, however, we’ve not yet arrived at a reason to find vampirism either immoral, or undesirable.
Does It Hurt?
We must acknowledge that it’s entirely possible that mortals and vampires alike are doing something morally wrong when they consume other living things, on the assumption that simply inflicting pain on something capable of experiencing it is morally suspect. A basic (and overly simplified) utilitarian assumption, for example, is that pain and unhappiness are morally bad to inflict, and pleasure and happiness are morally good to “inflict.” If our mental image of a vampire feeding is that of a hungry monster leaping from the shadows to wound and drain a helpless and shrieking victim (as is the case, for example, in the “feeding” scenes of the film The Lost Boys), such activity does appear to be morally wrong, and if vampirism requires such activity, it appears to be morally wrong as well.
At the least, getting bitten by a vampire probably hurts! But, the “pain,” the harm inflicted, is not merely the physical trauma of the bite. Unwilling victims are harmed in a way analogous to being sexually assaulted.
The sexual associations and imagery long associated with vampire lore are apt. The experience of penetration, unwelcome intimacy, and commingling is applicable to the vampire’s “embrace.” We can easily imagine how terrifying it would be to be attacked from the shadows by someone with the power to do with us whatever they desire. Beyond the fear, we can imagine the humiliation as our personhood is violated even as our veins are. It just seems intuitively obvious that, if anything is morally wrong, grabbing someone against their will, wounding them, weakening them through loss of blood (and maybe even killing them in the process), is wrong. However, it should be clear that the moral problems arising here are not unique to vampires. It’s not the fact that a vampire is doing such things that makes them wrong; it’s something about the actions themselves.
Certainly, not all pain-infliction is unjustifiable. We can imagine all sorts of contexts in which even an intentional, premeditated infliction of pain is not regarded as morally wrong. Going to the dentist often hurts, but we recognize that the normally morally-questionable infliction of pain is overridden by the greater good of preventing even more pain due to tooth decay. Moreover, when we’re taking ourselves to the dentist, we introduce another (important) mitigating factor: consent to being “harmed.” Why should we assume that a vampire’s “meal” must be a victim rather than a willing partner? We could easily imagine an entrepreneurial vampire establishing a blood bank and soliciting voluntary donations (presumably for pay). Indeed, the main character of Blade (the series’ namesake, and another conscientious vampire—morally conflicted to the core) relies on stored blood preserved in his refrigerator for sustenance, rather than going out for something more “fresh.”
If vampires sucking up vials of blood isn’t romantic enough, we can instead easily imagine vampires seeking out, and finding, any number of people who would willingly, and perhaps even happily, submit themselves to a non-lethal “embrace.” In the first Blade film, the character Dr. Karen Jenson altruistically offers her blood to Blade in order to restore his depleted vitality. In Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Madeleine offers herself to Louis in hopes of becoming a vampire mother-figure to “Claudia.” Accordingly, while pain might be experienced due to the bite, the infliction of pain might be justifiable—particularly if we consider the stories in which vampire “victims” experience a state of ecstasy akin to orgasm.
Vampire feedings could be violent and unwanted, just as sex can be. But, in neither case is violence or coercion a necessary feature of the act. Once again, we come to a common-sense conclusion. It’s not the fact that a vampire is performing a certain act that renders it morally problematic; it’s the nature of the act itself. Acts of violence against unwilling victims are typically regarded as morally wrong whether it’s Dracula doing the deed, or you, or me. It would seem to follow, then, that if a vampire is morally “bad,” it’s because of his or her choices and actions, and not simply by virtue of being a vampire.
Undeath Sure Beats the Alternative
Perhaps the greatest appeal of vampirism is the immortality it promises. One never grows old, never grows weak, never suffers the inevitable decline of body and mind due to age, and never experiences death (unless slain by another, or too long deprived of blood). David, in The Lost Boys, encourages the newly-embraced vampire Michael, “You’ll never grow old, Michael, and you’ll nev
er die.”
Contrast this with the lives we all know, recognize, and expect for ourselves and our loved ones, and the appeal of vampirism is obvious. Who wouldn’t be tempted to evade becoming infirm or senile, to be spared from cancer, Parkinson’s disease, arthritis, and the fear of what awaits us when our bodies are all worn out? Vampirism promises an escape from all such things, and the time to pursue any project we might imagine, do anything we might wish to do. And at what expense (excluding religious concerns)? Daylight? Garlic? As much as I love garlic, and can appreciate a good nap in a sunbeam (a treat taught me by my cat, Morgana), they seem like small prices to pay for an eternal life of strength, vitality, and precious time.
Are we misguided, though, when we try to prolong our lives and avoid death? The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-271 B.C.E.) famously argues that death is not a bad thing (for anyone, mortal or vampire, we might suppose). Assuming that there is no afterlife, he claims that death is “nothing” to us “since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. Therefore, it is relevant neither to the living nor to the dead, since it does not affect the former, and the latter do not exist.”91 In other words, when we’re alive, we’re not yet dead (and so we don’t experience death). And, when we’re dead, since we don’t exist, we don’t experience anything at all (including death).
Even if we grant Epicurus his assumption that nothing persists that would actually experience what it is like to be dead, we can nevertheless find ourselves losing sleep about the anticipated pain of the dying process. Maybe death is “nothing,” but getting there might hurt a lot! Even if my loved ones cease to exist at death, I’m still around to grieve their passing. Their death is certainly something to me even if it’s “nothing” to them. Before Rice’s Louis is made immortal, he reports: “I had lost my wife in childbirth. She and the infant had been buried less than half a year; I would have been happy to join them. I couldn’t bear the pain of their loss: I longed to be released from it.”92 So deep was his pain from their death, he longed for death himself.
Moreover, some have argued that there are ways in which it makes sense for us to say that even nonexistent people (that is, the dead, if they truly cease to exist) can be “harmed” by their death, even if they aren’t around to actually experience it. Contemporary philosopher David Furley puts it in this way: death is bad for the one who dies because it renders empty and vain the plans, hopes, and desires that a person has during life.93 As an example, imagine that (unbeknownst to you), you have a terminal disease, and have very little time left to live. Of course, you’re unaware of this fact, so you continue to make plans, assuming that you’ll be alive to pursue them. Also unbeknownst to you, your friends and family know of your true condition, and know all too well that you’ll soon be dead. From the perspective of your better-informed friends and family members, your hopes and plans for the future seem (presently, to them) vain, futile—even perhaps pathetic—since your goals are doomed to incompleteness. How sad that you’re planning a vacation that you’ll never take! Moreover, the futility is not removed by removing the knowing spectators. Furley claims that any death that frustrates hopes and plans is bad for the person who dies since it reflects, retrospectively, on that life, and shows that the hopes and projects the person entertained have been, at the very time the person was forming them, empty and meaningless.
Another contemporary philosopher, Martha C. Nussbaum, appreciates this argument because it shows how death reflects back on an actual life, and how our intuitions about the “badness” of death don’t depend on “the irrational fiction of a surviving subject.”94 This has the advantage of sidestepping Epicurus’s claim that death is “nothing” because we don’t exist to experience it. After all, it’s not a non-existing (dead) person who is being harmed by death, but an actual living person (like you or me) that is being threatened right now by the power that death has to ruin all our plans and make us look like fools for assuming we had a future in the first place.
In an impressive (and depressing) move, Nussbaum adds to Furley’s argument by appealing to the apparent fact that the relationships and activities we tend to cherish all take place over some span of time, and by showing how death threatens them by threatening that span. Our relationships have a structure that evolves and deepens over time; they project into the future and involve planning and hoping. Our projects and activities, too, develop over time.
The sorts of “projects” referred to are not necessarily discrete activities, but can also be complex projects involving plans to do something, or certain sorts of things, repeatedly over the course of a complete life. Projects such as having a good marriage, or being a good philosopher, or a wine enthusiast, are subject to frustration by death not because some particular activity is interrupted. That is, the threat doesn’t arise because death interrupts a honeymoon, or the completion of an essay for The Undead and Philosophy, or finishing a glass of Vampire Merlot (not a joke—this wine label really exists!), but because of the interruption of “a pattern of daily acting and interacting, extended over time, in which the temporal extension, including the formation of patterns and habits, is a major source of its value and depth”95 Death threatens to bring to an abrupt halt the project of my marriage, and any sort of project whatsoever. In fact, death interrupts the most basic (but perhaps most profound and important) project of all: living a complete human life.
The appeal of vampirism should now be obvious, if it wasn’t already. Being a vampire allows us to defy death. In so doing, our projects remain open. We always retain hope that our goals can be accomplished, whatever they might happen to be. Thus, the avoidance of death alone makes it a good (desirable) thing to be a vampire. So long as vampires don’t abuse others (for example, by feeding on unwilling victims), that is, so long as they are not bad vampires, then there is nothing bad about being a vampire.
Undeath: Ultimately Uninteresting?
Even if we can agree that being a vampire isn’t itself morally objectionable, it might yet remain undesirable. What on Earth could make a potentially eternal life undesirable? Eternality.
A common theme in vampire stories, especially the contemporary variety, is the ever-present threat of boredom. The idea is this: once you’ve had a few centuries of life, let alone a couple millennia, you’ve “seen and done it all.” Novelist Susan Ertz writes, in Anger in the Sky, “Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
If your life is boring, death eventually becomes an attractive and preferable alternative. Rice’s “Armand” says, “the world changes, we do not, there lies the irony that finally kills us.” One can then imagine vampires, suffering from ennui, intentionally hurling themselves chest-first onto stakes or venturing too far from their coffins to make it back before sunrise.
I suspect that many of you, like myself, have little sympathy for this concern. The solution that presents itself seems obvious enough: don’t let your life be boring!
This criticism of the value of immortality assumes that existence necessarily becomes wearisome, given enough time.96 To combat this line of reasoning we need only believe that there are “repeatable” pleasures—pleasures that are satisfying when experienced, but such that one would desire to repeat the experience in the future (though not necessarily right away). Candidates for such pleasures are the delights of sex and food and drink, experiencing fine art, pleasant conversation, and so on.97
I doubt that I’ll ever get tired of really excellent food. There are so many different types of cuisine and dishes, after all. On the very plausible assumption that there are a great many repeatable pleasures (admittedly relative to each person), does it really seem plausible that vampires would necessarily be overwhelmed by boredom? Why couldn’t “the simple things” continue to entertain them? As “Kraven” from the film Underworld poses (rhetorically): “What’s the point of being immortal if you deny yourself the simple pleasures i
n life?”
Billions of humans (with new ones born every day) offer seemingly limitless potential for interaction. Ever-evolving human creativity and invention means vampires will enjoy new technologies and art forms. Imagine the possibilities opened by cyberspace for an ancient vampire! Is it really plausible that vampires would necessarily be doomed to boredom? I don’t think so. Having “done it all” only seems possible in a static world, but our world changes. Even if I’m wrong, sunlight always remains as a release from the alleged tedium of Undeath.
Although I remain convinced that vampirism is awfully appealing, I will consider one final (though related) concern. Despite arguing that death is, indeed, a “bad thing,” Nussbaum also claims that the intensity and dedication with which we pursue certain of our tasks is necessarily related to the awareness we have of our mortality. We don’t have the luxury of an eternity ahead of us. “In raising a child, in cherishing a lover, in performing a demanding task of work or thought or artistic creation, we are aware, at some level, of the thought that each of these efforts is structured and constrained by finite time.”98
If I had (literally) “forever” ahead of me, would I ever get around to pursuing my goals? Couldn’t I always put them off, knowing that I could always come back to them? It was a recognition that I’m getting older, and that I don’t have too many decades left (at best!), that inspired me recently to return to my martial arts training in preparation for opening my own dojo when I’m ready to retire from academia. Without the limits set by mortality and declining health and vigor, would I have seen any pressing need to resume training?
The answer is a resounding, “I don’t know.” What I do know is that an awareness, even a keen awareness, of mortality, is certainly no guarantee that one will “seize the day.” Thoreau’s words in Walden are beautiful: he “wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . . to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” However romantic it might sound, how many of us actually live like that despite our mortality staring us in our face? Mortal that I am, I know that I value the present moment far less frequently, and far less intensely, than I should. I doubt I’m alone in this. The point is that mortality is no more a guarantee of a life lived to the fullest than immortality is a guarantee of boredom and value lost. The determining factor is our own idiosyncratic contribution to our own lives.
Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy Page 18
