What this also comes down to, and perhaps most significantly, is a crisis in love. Love, rather than mere attraction, is an affirming response to the fundamental good of the other. The lover honours the dignity, identity, and subjectivity of his beloved. But if these moral realities are utterly devalued, the ground of love itself is removed and love becomes an impossibility. In the insubstantial world of images, love defers to mere attraction.
Love is profoundly concerned about the life and death of the other.
But in the preposterous world of technologized disorder, there exists no substratum to serve as the object of anyone's love. As the prospect for cloning is taken with increasing seriousness in our culture, we are confronted with the illusion that love is unnecessary because life cannot be lost. A woman contacted British futurologist Patrick Dixon and queried him about the prospect of cloning her deceased father and possibly carrying the baby to term herself. We need not grieve over those we lose if cloning them can replace them. Those who perpetuate their pets in this way may avoid having to grieve over their loss.