Save the World. Donate Sperm
It’s time to build (people).
I bled, pissed, and came for the future of personhood today. What did you do?
I donated sperm. I sent an email, received a reply, booked an appointment, attended 15 minutes early, returned 20 minutes later. All I did was sit in a clinical, liminal cubicle and fill out some paperwork. They didn’t even ask for ID. About 300 steps and 300 million cells and one anonymous family gains a person—a child—and with them the greatest relationship known to meaning. Society as a whole gains a mind, beaming, born into a love decided and sustained over months and years, outstanding a sterile nature unfit to choose a thing. I would call it effective genetic altruism if that were not desolate slander. Facilitating the manufacture of people is the single greatest investment open to men of fertile age. The ROI on human beings is, in principle, unbounded, and the risk equates to train fare. What are you waiting for? Every fecund young futurist should be drafting that email, receiving a reply, booking an appointment—and reaping the rewards of a future literally sown by their own virility. Do it selfishly. Do it so that more people might innovate your successive delights, and, in the process, benefit in light of them. Do it optimistically. Do it because people are the fire in the dark of indifferent nothing. Do it forgetfully. Do it for three months and then return to life knowing nothing more than the fact you have populated it.
Do it—donate sperm—do it now—save the world.
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In France, for each donation, donors must consent to the disclosure of their non-identifying data (e.g. age, physical characteristics) and their identity. These data can only be communicated to the persons born from this donation when they reach the age of majority, if they so wish.
In my opinion, anonymous sperm donation is wrong. People have a right to know the identity of their biological father. I doubt that most people who don't know their biological parents are comfortable with the eternal uncertainty.