What is your opinion on the morality of bringing a child into this world?
20d 15h ago by lemmy.world/u/DependentFeature3028 in GenerationZ
If you’re concerned about this, but still want to be a parent, consider fostering. That way, you’re not bringing a child into the world, just taking care of one that’s already here
Not that over population is really a thing but we have so many children not in a loving adult's care we really need to focus on them.
It’s extremely difficult where I live, and such organisations who manage it are basically all Christian so there’s a lot of discrimination.
It sure is something that they wormed their way into distributing so many children into conservative religious homes.
Overpopulation is really a thing though
Fucking more of a goddamn concentration of wealth and land in a few oligarchs, those fucking oligarchs trying to control the millions of people and including how they reproduce.
We have enough resources to support the current global population and then some. To call the failure of our chosen economic system to distribute those resources rather than burn them or let them rot in warehouses "overpopulation" is misdirection.
It's kind of like this: I have two sandwiches, I only need one, and you come up to me because you're hungry. I tell you "Ah I see your problem. There's too many of you! If you were fewer people, you wouldn't need a sandwich."
No, I get that the resources could be distributed better, but there is no environment wherein the current population is going to be supportable by the current biome esp considering climate change.
It's wild to think otherwise, frankly.
it's a malthusian myth
And adopt older kids too, just because they carry some baggage with them doesn't mean they aren't deserving of a home too. When I was 16, only one family in my entire district took age 14+ kids, otherwise they had to wait in group homes for placement, oftentimes aging out instead.
Fuck no lol. My personal opinion obviously. Those half adults will have zero attachment to you, and will gladly pass you cyanid when being asked for water
Again, personnally, no way i am letting an immature, unstable person in my house
Speaks more about your beliefs than reality
All the smart and empathetic people deciding to stop having children on ethical/logical grounds was a major premise of the film Idiocracy.
The film demonstrated it to be a very bad strategy.
Too late! We're already there.
The opening of that film is one of the best pieces of satire ever created and I'll die on that hill.
I'M GONNA FUCK ALL Y'ALL
America in a sweaty, horny nutshell
I'd rather have the bad strategy then to put a child into this world that is going downhill fast.
Because the bad strategy means my kid doesn't have to suffer through it, I already consider 90% of my days a suffering and it hasn't gotten better in the past 40 years. No amount of hard work, studying, gaining knowledge, doing the right thing has improved it.
And yet all it took was a few decades of indoctrination and disinvestment in education to get there in real life. Almost like we have more pressing things to worry about than the speed at which this effect - if real - could turn into an actual problem.
"The film demonstrated it to be a very bad strategy."
You're using that movie as support for having kids?
I didn't say that. Why you trying to stoke some argument? 🤷
Go 'way. Batin'
idiocracy is eugenics propaganda, not a prophetic vision of the future
Whu?
There is literally no eugenics in Idiocracy.
Eugenics = forced attempts to modify the genome since at least the times of ancient Greece via infanticide, murdering or sterilizing 'low quality' groups, paying desired groups to have more children, to modern literal selective breeding via government body mandates in Nazi eugenics etc.
New eugenics / 'liberal eugenics' = informed choice via technology eg scanning for downs syndrome in embryos and allowing parents the informed choice of termination, genome editing, etc. Which we are clearly not talking about within context, but also is not present or suggested in Idiocracy.
What doesn't fit into any definition of eugenics is telling people "hey if only the dumb people keep breeding, that will not end well".
The belief that intelligence is a heritable trait is a core tenet of eugenics, and is the very basis of the setting of Idiocracy. In the film, corporate capture and the gutting of the US government via bread and circus tactics didn't create a "stupid" society; stupid people overbreeding caused a societal drop in intelligence, which then created the issues. The film gets cause and effect backwards, if only to adhere to the eugenicist pretext.
I think it’s less about stupid people breeding stupid people and more about the stupid people not teaching their children anything which then makes them also stupid.
Things don't need to be genetic to be inheritable. Behaviors, morals, lessons, traditions etc are also inheritable.
Stupidity is not genetic, but that doesn't mean it can't be passed down. Hence why the movie still works.
I think the moral thing to do is decide for yourself and don't demonize people who decide differently.
I dunno. The environment sucks and there are loads of kids in foster care. Sometimes personal freedom isn't everything like Americans think. Would we think it's moral for every person to have a car in 1900 if we knew what it would do to the environment in 100 years? Maybe then we would want to invest more in public transportation to avoid climate change. Wouldn't the best thing for everyone be to stop having so many kids and instead support adoption and immigration? Just because Sally really really wants a child with her own DNA does not make her decision moral. Dont demonize me for thinking differently. Lol
I don't think stopping having kids is the best solution to any of our problems, and I'm glad people are working on better solutions that focus on the various problems themselves.
edit: People who buy into various campaigns not to have kids tend to be more intelligent people who care about the good of the world - but intelligent people having fewer kids is really the opposite of where we want the gene pool to go.
"Stop having so many kids " != "don't have any"
"Strongly consider adoption" != "never have your own kids"
I don't think that's how gene pools work.
Seems more of a cultural thing.
Could just be a sign of the times to come. Some people don't want the added burden.
Honestly, it takes all kinds.
The problem is not the car. The problem is we let it go to excess, become the only transportation option,and we didn’t follow through when it became a problem. The problem is humans taking it to an extreme then refusing to change
Humans are not good at climate timescales. We’re pretty much out of time for preventing the worst affects but those affects are delayed and slow. For example, what if we hit the AMOC collapse tipping point? That will have disastrous results for northeast US and Europe but will take more than an entire human life to manifest. Not a problem for that specific human
Similar with kids. Kids are a choice for your situation in your locale. Despite all the doom and gloom, especially “the circumstances”, civilization will muddle on and it dotes need people. If we recover, it will be thanks to people. If we don’t , there’s still opportunity to live a good life.
Despite it being championed by the nazis, there’s a good argument that we’ve already locked in excessive population loss. Overall population hasn’t peaked yet but as each generation has fewer kids, the peak is in a few decades and the dropoff may be fast enough to be catastrophic. This is similar to climate change in that it operates at timescales humans have difficulty understanding, but it is a problem and now is the time to try to turn that around. And assuming you care about human rights, the shortcuts proposed by Nazis are not ok, and this is going to be a real challenge
Technically if you only have 1 kid you're still decreasing the population.
2 is still decreasing the population as kids die too
You're still bringing a child into the world knowing they will suffer from climate change.
As if climate change will have a chance.
I'm sure they can fuck up the planet much quicker in many ways.
Not all of us live in the American hellscape.
Climate change is not exclusive to north america
Yeah but the environment it creates and the government you have is exclusive to the USA. In Finland, it's not going to be as bad as India. And yet, we do way more to mitigate it than the USA does.
If you're actually dead serious that bringing a child into the world is suffering, then go and actually be dead serious in stopping climate change. Go blow up a pipeline or be player 2 in Mario bros with some oil baron.
Oh, you won't? Then fuck off with your eco fascist bullshit. My family already lives as plastic free as possible, don't consume beef, uses only solar, wind, and nuclear energy, and only use electric public transportation or bikes. If you want to preach to me what I can and can't do and what is moral or isn't while you allow corrupt politicians, oligarchs, and polluting industries to do 1000x worse unscathed, then you can find your closest plastic Vaseline jar and shove it.
You eco fascist "I'm 15 and this is deep" dumbasses sound no different than the forced birthers who say abortion is murder but then don't actually act like it is when faced with the dilemma of actually stopping it physically or choosing to save a kid in a burning building over 1000 frozen embryos. Same damn illogical energy.
Just because you can't handle kids, can't find a partner to deal with your holier-than-thou attitude, or are too poor to have them doesn't make it my family's problem. You fix the issues your country does, instead of shifting the blame to poorer people or people who won't be as affected by it. Deal with your own stinking rot.
Blowing up pipelines won't fix the problem. Having 0 kids and supporting renewables are about all we can do that will at least delay climate change.
Got any realistic other ideas?
But all the countries are on the same planet? Greenhouse gasses don't need to clear customs to cross borders. If your neighbor is smoking cigarettes, you will smell it in your yard.
In this case, Americans are the ones with 20 cigs in their mouth telling the neighbors not to vape. The neighbors also live in a neighborhood that's upwind from the smoke as well.
Deal with the real problem.
That's not how climate works.
Even 2.1
Not everyone sees adopted kids the same as their own. Can't be good for the adopted child to be forced on someone who wouldn't want them or treat them as family.
That’s not really how morals work though. If you think it’s morally wrong that your friend hits their wife you either say something about it or you don’t actually think that it’s wrong.
...or you're afraid to say something for any number of reasons, or you're not sure about your evidence, or... yada yada. Morality is more complicated than a clickable menu.
wow, are you suggesting that other people being different than you, is a normal and good thing? and you shoud pursue your own life choices, and let them pursue theirs?
bold.
This world is ambivalent. There are both horrible and wonderful things, but I'm quite happy to be there.
Oh look someone who isn't suffering
My life is far from perfect, I had and have my share of suffering. But I also, at the same time, feel joy and awe. I choose to concentrate on the good.
No one can blame you for choosing to go through life that way, but unfortunately it's the very reason so many people are suffering.
"I've got enough good to focus on so I can disregard the bad" is basically the exactly desired result of "bread and circuses". Personally it's great. Societally? Awful.
I disagree. As I'm not despaired I can actually act to lessen the suffering around me, which I do by being socially engaged. Doomerism and concentration on the negative parts of life is what prevent us to act and in fact is the very reason why so many people are suffering.
Exactly. Work to leave the world better than when you entered it through your words and actions. Even if it's just one person that you positively impact. Sometimes shit fucking sucks and it's a personal decision if you choose to wallow in it.
I mean I'm in the same boat as you but many people are either incapable or unwilling to learn how to be happy despite their circumstances, and basic things humans need to be happy/fulfilled like connections and time in nature are both far worse than when I was born. I recognize many people have objectively far worse situations than I do and are doing much worse mentally, and I feel like the causes of that are only getting worse day by day.
Well I'm not really talking about despair am I? You said you choose to concentrate on the good. I'm saying that if everyone in society just concentrated on the good the bad would never be solved.
You say you can "act to lessen the suffering around you". Doesn't that imply that you're actually concentrating on the bad, at least a bit? How do you disregard the bad and act against it at the same time? You obviously, self-admittedly care about the bad at least enough to do something about it.
You kind of changed your story and then held it against my argument.... and ended it with an argument that the people who despair are to blame for the world's problems, which is a bold and egregiously wrong thing to say.
Concentrating on the good doesn't mean denying the existence of the bad. It means to put the good at the center, in this case of my life, finding in my family, my faith and my hobbies the strength to look calmly at the bad, which are at the periphery of my life but still exist and are always present in my consciousness.
an argument that the people who despair are to blame for the world's problems
That's not what I said. But the people in power want us despaired, because they want us docile.
(Doomerism and concentrating on the negative) is the very reason why so many people are suffering.
If you're not referring to people in despair, what are you referring to?
I think we're both not trying to talk about the fringes of this issue. But I take personal offense when "doomerism" is attacked like it's some kind of illness. I spent almost two decades not being a doomer. And watched as complacency due to ignorance got replaced by complacency due to political indoctrination which is being replaced by complacency due to overwhelm.
You can't fault a guy for arguing that maybe we should start acting like doom is impending. Or do you not think that it is? Cause if you understand the scientific method, have at least an average IQ and don't have any significant mental disabilities, it's pretty clear that we are, objectively, doomed on our current trajectory.
The keyword here is: “on our current trajectory”. Doomerism is not the idea that our current trajectory is catastrophic; it's the idea that's our trajectory is already decided. It's not.
I am sorry if at this point is kind of an interruption of your conversation, but I believe I disagree only with a little detail my fellow human said, and I think it is important. There is a way to be a "doomer" or whatever name we get nowadays without believing in a trajectory. I do not believe we have a fixed path. I believe there are a lot of options, but all within a range of possibilities (we won't develop wings tomorrow and sparkle and be angels all of a sudden). And the thing is I believe that realm of possibilities is mostly negative from our point of view. That many possible paths are okay, even some kind of good, but many many others are bad or frankly terrible. So, in that way, I believe I am a "doomer" without thinking that it will all go downhill. No, sometimes history gets a good chapter, a good period of time, here and there; still, overall, I'd argue existence is mostly or predominantly negative/ugly/sad/not-likable.
And I agree with my fellow lemming that the only thing left when you view things like this is to try to make things better, thus, "doomerism" shouldn't be apathy or defeat or whatever, it is a very urgent call to reduce the suffering we 'diagnose' and to make the world a better place.
I wouldn't call it "doomerism", I'd call it philosophical pessimism (because it's more technical and Wikipediable, lol).
Yes, our trajectory is already decided in the sense that we're locked into catastrophe. It's about degrees of catastrophe now. "But if we work hard" you say?
Here's an imperfect but approachable analogy: If you're trapped in a bathtub and it's pleasantly warm, and you pour boiling water in until it's concerningly hot, you can't just stop pouring the water to resolve your problem. You're now in mortal danger since you can't get out, even though no more hot water is being added to the system. It'll take too long for the water to naturally cool to save you. The water is the climate system. The boiling water is the extra energy trapped by greenhouse gases. You are human civilization as we know it.
It's concerningly hot now. You don't currently have any access to cold water (carbon sequestration and/or mitigation). Nothing more than a few drops a minute anyway. That's not going to help. Even the very most optimistic of scenarios says that we might be able to bring that up to a very slow stream of cold water. Certainly won't work fast enough.
Now here's reality: the hot water is not stopping, it's speeding up. Your body might be able to manage the hot water for a little bit, but pretty soon things are going to stop working properly as you overheat. You might get lucky if the hot water stops RIGHT NOW, but that's if you're lucky. Even if you somehow make it, you're going to be severely fucked.
But. The. Water. Is. Still. Speeding. Up.
Edit: Ah yes, the downvote. Hero, would you care to critique anything? I really could use some hope, I'm serious. I would love reason for optimism, and I'm totally open minded to it. All you need to do is speak up?
I hope the silent downvotes make y'all feel better.... anything except confront the issue I guess.
If your fear for the future prevents you to live your present life, you don't need more arguments with strangers on the net. You need professional help and I hope you have it. Doomerism may not be an illness, but depression is, and like all illnesses it's better to fight it with a doctor. Believe someone who suffered it, and married to someone for whom it's chronic. There is a way out of depression too, or at least a way to mitigate its effects. Just like climate change.
It's a sad state of affairs when a statement of fact is disregarded as depression lol.
Don't you worry, I live my life just fine. Believe it or not it's possible to be clear eyed about the world's problems while also living your life.....
Haha Creampie go splat.
By only letting the psychos have kids we surrender the planet to the ones turning the earth to hell. We need to keep fighting.
Looks like rawdogging is back on the menu!
I do not have this thinly veiled superiority complex. I believe the environment they grow up in shapes a person more than their genes, so adopting would have double the impact as breeding since you not only give one more person a good environment, you also subtract one from a potentially bad environment.
And genetically related dark triad traits being passed down and dominating the planet gets prevented by...?
The Great Filter
At best, a necessary thing. Without people, civilization would simply not exist.
That said, civilization should be obligated to fully care for children and adults alike: Shelter, food, education, healthcare, entertainment, third spaces, transport, all should be fully provided for. If we are going to force people to exist, we should at least make sure their stay on the mortal coil is a pleasant one.
You throw that word "civilized" around like we stupid humans have grace or something. /s
Without people, civilization would simply not exist.
Don't worry, ai bros are working on removing the people requirement.
nobody is 'forcing you' to exist. suicide is always an option.
Some people should not have children
who gets to decide that? you?
what else do you believe you should decide for other people? where they should live, what their job is? etc?
Why is it that you think you know better than them, what they should do with their lives?
do you feel someone else should tell you, how to live your life? or would you find that very upsetting?
It wasn't a moral judgement, just a statement.
Bullshit. It's literally impossible to say "some people should not have children" without making it a moral judgment. You're just gaslighting everyone by pretending your morality is objective. You're literally pulling an Ayn Rand.
Pick the worst case you can think of, the kind of person who is unlikely to be able to support children. Imagine a profoundly disabled person, themselves a ward of the state. You would like to pretend that objectively, they shouldn't have kids. But a hell of a lot of disability advocates would disagree with you. They would argue that anyone who wants should to should be able to have kids. And if they can't support them, well that is why we have welfare programs.
"Should" is by necessity a moral statement. You're literally saying how you think the world should be and how people should act. That's the literal fucking definition of morality!
I mean this is 1/2 pedantry 1/2 not, I'm sure there is a situation that almost anyone in existance would agree a person shouldn't have kids, but that doesn't make it a fact that they shouldn't have kids. Almost anyone would agree having a kid in a family that is constantly screaming and toxic that leaves the child a depressed anxious adult is immoral. That's about as close to "objective" as you can get with morality, even if it is still subjective.
it is a moral judgement. you just won't define who it is you think shouldn't have children, because you know it would make you look bad.
so you hide behind it as if it were a fact, without articulating who it is you think is unworthy, and who you think it is worthy.
If someone told me the way I lived my life would lead to immense suffering, yes I would not only listen I would hope more than anything that they would tell me so I could not do something I find incredibly immoral.
That is quite sound advice! You should follow it.
it's not advice. it's a statement of fact.
and you clearly feel the facts of the world are so upsetting, you have the right to wish death on others.
do you feel they have the right to wish that on you?
I mean TBH I don't really give a shit what you wish. Have at it, but you were the one suggesting suicide to someone, and oddly enough you don't seem to enjoy being told the same. I will tell you my wish for you, though, I wish for you to have exactly the day you have invited. ✌️
this dude is a jackass incel, best not to engage him
Noted
Suffering is subjective experience.
Despite how bad you think the world is, its still in the top 1% compared to past history.
We are still doing very well on average compared to 200, 500, 1000, 2000... etc years ago.
Human lifespan used to be like 20-30, everyone used to be at war all the time, and simply getting drinkable water used to take hours of effort everywhere.
As easy as it is to say we have it shitty now, we do have countless comforts we take for granted.
Toilets? Showers? Tap water? Netflix?
Even those in our society who have it the absolute worst, homeless minorities with disabilities, are still substantially better off than what they would have endured in the same situation 1000 years ago.
1000 years ago they would not have had access to antibiotics, would likely not live past 10, would probably contract leprosy early or pox and start losing limbs at best, die otherwise.
They would not have any access to hospitals at all, because they didnt exist. Public transit did not exist at all. Mail didnt exist. And they'd be very likely just killed when a ramdom skirmish broke out if they didnt get killed by their city being raided and sacked.
The fact we arent constantly in fear of bands of raiders showing up and literally burning our entire city down nowadays should put in perspective how far we have come.
Yeah, its bad. CEOs control 99% of wealth.
But, tbh, thats actually humanities personal best...
Because how much wealth do you think was aggregated at the top in the days of actual kings, lol... you think our wealth aggregation is bad now?
Dawg you are allowed to own things, back then huge swathes of the population were slaves/serfs and couldnt even own the clothes on their own back
At least now the working class gets paid.... at all
Could it be better? Fuck yes, for sure.
But is this the worst if times?
Not even a little bit. Its not the best either, we pissed away the big economic booms in the 80s/90s
But we are still soooo far ahead of our ancestors.
Dude we have fucking vaccines, do you not get how big that is?
Imagine for a moment what your ancestors 1000 years ago would have been willing to do for vaccines, antibiotics, etc.
A lotta shit we take for granted now would have been considered an incredible luxury by kings in the BC years.
Our chairs have cushions dawg.... thats the type shit a king would have paid big money for... and now we throw that away if it gets old...
Things being shitty isnt about the cushioned chairs or AC or Antibiotics that separates us from the metaphorical jealous kings of yore. Its the isolation from power and the denial of a seat at the table. It's the fact that we do have all these comforts and that they're disposable, and we still have people that can't afford these comforts because the capitalists at the top don't want to let any of us anywhere near them. We make enough food globally to feed everyone and we'll just dump perfectly edible food because having too much product on the market will lower prices too much. The kings of yore didnt have the luxury of being so isolated from the rest of their society that they were untouchable, peasant revolts were extremely effective throughout much of human history. If the peasants under a king's watch were starving, well that king typically wasn't long for the world, but we now we get to have news about the ass ugly Abercrombie and Fitch CEO boasting that they burn excess clothes instead of donating it or even just throwing them in the trash because he doesnt want ugly poors painting the brand with their ugly poorness and its met with... nothing... nothing of subatance anyway. Just handwringing articles about how immoral and shallow it is and then articles complaining about how that's just capitalism bay-bee cope harder.
peasant revolts were extremely effective throughout much of human history
They still are.
The only separation between now and then is perceived isolation from power.
If even a fraction of the working class people rose up and wanted to, I dunno, kill trump (theoretically) in the US, right now, there is zero goddamn way the US gov could stop them. Theyd be outnumbered 10,000 to 1, easily.
The only thing stopping everyone from doing it is the notion that they cant do it.
Lord knows we've seen in other countries plenty of younger generations take down their governments with ease, so the capability is 100% still present.
My honest opinion is its just a case of Bystander Effect. As your population density goes up, the Bystander Effect spreads out beyond just immediate vicinity and to the entire city/state/country.
No individual state wants to be the one to stand up and fight directly, so everyone just stands by and watches.
No individual group of people wants to be "that" group in the US, so everyone just stands by.
If even a fraction of the working class people rose up and wanted to, I dunno, kill trump (theoretically) in the US, right now, there is zero goddamn way the US gov could stop them. Theyd be outnumbered 10,000 to 1, easily.
You realize this is the reason so many wealthy fucks are investing in heavily armedmegayacts and heavily reinforced bunkers and nuclear powered private jets like Air Force 1 that will run out of food long before it runs out of fuel. Yes we do outnumber them 10,000 to 1, how in the logistical nightmare do you gain access to the billionaire class when they're behind several feet of reinforced steel or several miles above earth or isolated in the middle of the ocean away from all the problems tbey caused. Yes peasant revolts have been effective and the wealthy know this and thus have done everything they could to physically isolate themselves from us. I'm not saying it is impossible but its not like the oligarchs of todau live in stone castles that don't move and can be starved out in a siege.
They've had a decades long head start on isolating themselves from us. That advantage isnt going away because a small portion of us have class consciousness and a significant number of people are lapping up what the oligarchs pump out on the airwaves and will defend the oligarcha to the death because one day, they might be rich too.
how in the logistical nightmare do you gain access to the billionaire class when they’re behind several feet of reinforced steel or several miles above earth or isolated in the middle of the ocean
Dude they fucking go to starbucks and shit.
They walk around in public everyday.
Getting at them is not the hard part, thats trivial
Its the next severalinutes after that usually result in you getting shot to death or arrested that is what stops people.
Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos all are in public all the damn time
The thing is, a person is 100% be on a suicide mission even attempting anything.
That is why people dont attempt anything.
Right now they do those things, while also surrounded by armed guards, but they've been building their bunkers and arming their megayachts and getting ready to bug out when things get too spicy for them. Peter "Saruman" Thiel is already fleeing to Argentina, probably because he's starting to realize that his billions might not actually be enough to protect his "openly gay while raising a child" ass from getting thrown into the gulags with the rest of the underclass that he had a hand in creating and surveiling by the very political party he's been aligned with and empowering.
You contradict (or at least leave in a hard place) your first line saying suffering is subjective and then explaining why our current state of affairs means we are better off now. How can we be better off, I assume living happier lives with less suffering, if suffering is subjective?
If it is subjective, then maybe a 19th century woman (without many rights, without technology and in a monotonous life) felt more fulfilled and more joyful and more curious of her own life and less unfortunate than a woman today with all her rights, technology, free time, etc. And apply that to all individuals and you might find that maybe 18th century England was happier than 21st century England. Add religion to the equation, which gave them faith and hope even facing hardships; add the way they didn't know all we do now (like the Epstein Files, the way colonization and imperialism work, etc.); add that they didn't live overstimulated as often (e g., not so many opportunities to get addictions) or isolated (community was stronger then). Then maybe the happier 18th century is real. Then maybe you are right about suffering being subjective. And, if so, "progress" (about this) is a myth and new technology or food or money does not equal happiness.
But if you believe we should be happier and, if studies about this could be done, you believe that we should indeed find that we are happier today because "objective" or measurable benefits and privileges should equal more happiness and less suffering, then suffering is not that subjective, it has an obvious relation to these things you mentioned (long lifespans, shelter, healthcare, luxuries, etc.).
Greatest source of guilt I have. I didn't realize how shitty things were until after I'd had them. I also passed down neurodivergence and diabetes, I shouldn't have done it. My kids are my only source of joy in the world and that's not a good reason to have kids, it's selfish. I hope they forgive me.
I’m glad you recognize this. I am shocked to find how many people say “I don’t know what I’d do if I never had kids” or something along those lines. It alludes to people having kids as a next step to adulthood or to avoid boredom. Or the ole “who would take care of me when I’m old if I didn’t have kids” - the most selfish one.
We’re not having kids and that is almost always the first thing people say, who will take care of you? What a selfish thing to thrust onto another human.
"Who will take care of me" should be the community you engage in and get invested in your life. I don't know how humanity seems to have forgotten this is how things worked for most of human existance.
I’m snipped
Whiny incel propaganda.
"My fifteen year old read something online and now he wishes he wasn't born" is far bleaker than that.
Fifteen is a heady time for anyone. You think and do a lot of things that an older, more mature person would avoid.
I might add on top of that, the goal of the modern billionaire class is eugenics. You don't "win" by not having kids. You certainly don't "win" by killing yourself.
He's not wrong completely. People have no say in getting born, and for many of them they have a sad difficult life and the people being born now will see the ecosystem truly collapsing. We will survive as a species but it's going to be a challenging time to be alive.
People have no say in getting born
That cuts two ways.
they have a sad difficult life and the people being born now will see the ecosystem truly collapsing
This is all just hollow doomerism. And it has been going on for centuries.
"No one should be born if they might have a marginally less comfortable life than their parents" is just warmed over eugenics for liberals.
You're stripping subsequent generations of any agency and denying them a chance to improve on a planet you keep insisting your generation ruined.
It is the ultimate "pulling up the ladder behind you" mentality.
We will survive as a species but it’s going to be a challenging time
A challenging time filled with bright new opportunities. Challenges and opportunities you seem to think nobody after you is entitled to tackle.
The world is the local, regional area in which you live. Everything else that is hemispheric and global is just noise, but it can consume you and make you think the world is a dark place. Having a kid is traditionally biological. Choosing to have a kid is a whole other kettle of wax. Can you raise someone to be good in a world full of bad examples?
That works up until the "just noise" comes to find you. I had to flee my home and move a thousand miles away from where I lived. I also couldn't return to the land I was born in. I became an internally displaced refugee inside the US, in order to flee state persecution. I was born here and have a family history in this country so far back I had an ancestor on the Mayflower. It's all just noise until it comes for you.
I know people in the US that are part of different minority groups that feel like ICE is just noise. It’s noise until they change which minority groups they are ripping from communities. It’s not anyone’s problem until it’s specifically their problem. Awful country mentality.
That’s the problem with the fear the outcast rhetoric, eventually you’re the outcast. First it’s lgbt, then it’s immigrants, next it’ll be something more broad.
More often it's fear the outcast until their favorite Mexican friend gets deported and they say "no you're not supposed to deport the good ones!!"
The noise just dropped a drone on a building next door in Europe btw, random block of flats evacuated and kn fire, with fatalities. In an European country iT's JuSt NoIsE
It's been 33 degrees with high humidity in England for a week. In May
I should've stayed in the balls
My uncle said "yeah we can argue about politics but in the end it's not really going to affect you or me" and my brother was like "actually my other brother will never visit us in the US because the customs and immigration is so screwed up from Trump that he's afraid his Chinese girlfriend will be detained or denied entry/exit so..." Politics is just politics until it actually affects you.
Ibn al Maari a famous 11th century philosopher/poet had the same view and wrote as his epitaph: "This is my father's crime against me, which I myself committed against none."
he's 15 and has the world wisdom of a pet rock. he regurgitated something edgy he heard from somewhere else and has decided on making it a part of his identity.
source: was 15, was edgy, was a dumbass teen.
Hes also growing up in a time where the world gets worse every day with little to no hope for the future.
Just because you were young once doesnt mean you can understand exactly what it is like to grow up today. The world is a different pace today than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.
If i was 15 today, i would probably say the same thing. No hope to ever own a home. All the jobs / careers to be replaced with AI. Corruption at the highest levels of goverment. The world being destoyed by climate change. Little to no freedom to experiment and make stupid mistakes without them being forever documented on the internet. A dating system where only the top 10% of men get all of the attention.
I thank whatever diety every day i grew in the 90's.
so tell me. when you were 15, do you think you could grasp the nuances of socioeconomic divide along with the impacts of a global economic downturn? Add to that a worldwide push to a fascist government from a previously unknown pedophiliac cabal of world leaders that want to enslave you?
I doubt it. in-fact, I doubt this guy's 15 year old ever even said anything at all. 15 year olds don't talk like that unless they've been coached.
no, this is just another idiot influencer with a soapbox, vomiting out lies to gain further clout from the masses that are too stupid to recognize when they're being manipulated.
Exactly, and the dude went to twitter posting it like a great revelation of a great mind
Do you know how much you have to fuck over and stress a mammal to the point that they refuse to fuck and procreate? Humans are fucked
Seems like it varies from mammal to mammal. Apparently getting pandas to boink in captivity is very difficult, but then something like rats are gonna keep fucking even after a nuclear apocalypse.
Animals don't have access to birth control
The issue isn't humans failing to fuck. It's that humans who fuck are regularly using contraception
That's before you get into the destigmatization of oral and anal sex.
Animals don't have access to birth control
The issue isn't humans failing to fuck. It's that humans who fuck are regularly using contraception
16 years ago there was still hope for a better future. The world wasn't nearly this bad. Its shocking how quickly it changed.
If someone can tell me one way that kids are better off now than in my generation (mid 90s) then please let me know. The only way I can say that is pretty good is being more accepting in general, but in every other important way it's worse. Climate change causing worse weather means it's harder to start a garden, more time spent indoors, less enjoyable calm weather, and that's just the readily noticeable effects.
Algorithms with websites are constantly trying to push people to be adhd and addicted, ai garbage. Don't get me wrong I'm still happy to be alive in this day and age, but I am truly afraid of how I would feel/ who I would be growing up in the tiktok algorithm ai zombie era, and I don't want to expose anyone to that, let alone kids that I would care about more than anything.
I mean despite that humanity is still ironically at one of the points with the most life quality. I mean I would prefer to be born today than the 300s so the time you're talking about is generally really short.
Still rn if people decided to not have kids not much would happen, it would probably be better even if that sounds a bit harsh. Before it would kinda just make humanity go extinct depending on the time and all.
One argument for anti-natalism too, which is what this is, is that adoption is better since you not only not bring anyone to the world, which may not be wanted for well, diverse reasons, you also help someone.
Yes 100% agree with adoption. I agree it is a short time span, and might get better in the next 400 years (assuming people start looking long term after the climate disaster, which I doubt they will), but the time in between that my kids and theirs would have to suffer through still is very real.
I genuinely don't know if you would be less happy living in the 300s compared to if you're not wealthy living through freak weather heatwaves and massive shortages + algorithm addiction growing up 100 years from now.
tell me one way that kids are better off now than in my generation (mid 90s)
You could rattle off a bunch of childhood and young adult diseases we've eliminated, for starters. We don't talk about the AIDS epidemic anymore, because it's a treatable condition rather than a death sentence.
Aids was treatable in the late 80s, and we are getting other untreatable illnesses now like long covid, with america having just dumped 40+ years of research for being too woke. We are also seeing a return of measles because again the algorithm + media addiction pushing people to become antivax. idk it's just like every conceivable way things are just getting more cooked.
Aids was treatable in the late 80s
Zidovudine could extend life expectancy marginally. But patients regularly built up a resistance to the drug and eventually succumbed to the illness.
HAART was only introduced in the late 90s and did not become commercially available until the 00s. It was also a cocktail of drugs with a YMMV performance. So you needed to regularly administer treatment and constantly follow up.
PrEP and the long lasting injectables didn't arrive until the '20s.
We are also seeing a return of measles because again the algorithm + media addiction pushing people to become antivax.
We had antivax movements for as long as we've had vaccinations. This problem goes back over a century. You just don't learn about the Anti-Vaccination League of America or the the UK National Anti-Vaccination League, so we treat modern vaccine hysteria as novel.
I can't really argue that aids treatment isn't better, but by around the 2000s it was a single pill, and Aids is also something we learned how it spreads and could massively reduce the risk of, which is not true for any of the new problems.
We have never had the head of the fda being antivax and actively cutting vaccine programs. About 20% of Republicans are antivax, and the majority of Republicans do not think vaccinations are important. And yes, that's sort of what I mean, we're going back to 1880s levels(if not worse) of "vaccines are unsafe," despite 140 more years of research showing that they are unbelievably safe. That level of anti-science isn't unprecedented, but it's far far worse than when I was growing up. This is not contained to just the US either, but the US is the most extreme case.
Aids is also something we learned how it spreads and could massively reduce the risk of, which is not true for any of the new problems.
What?
We have never had the head of the fda being antivax and actively cutting vaccine programs.
We have had a number of administrations, following the official creation of the modern FDA, abuse the roles and advanced industry profits over human health and safety. Reagan very famously made light of the AIDS crisis specifically, accusing reporters and advocates of sodomy whenever the issue was raised. Bush restricted the sale of Plan B abortion drugs, restricted public school education on contraception, and banned embrionic stem cell research to pander to Christian fascists in his party. You can just Google the various scandals around the FDA. No shortage of corrupt and incompetent leaders, nevermind instances when a president would leave the office vacant indefinitely to obstruct its functions.
Aids was preventable with condoms or staying with people who didn't have aids, the effects of climate change can't be avoided (besides maybe being rich and moving).
Pretty much every bad thing you've mentioned is happening right now, but all at once. Abortion/ abortion drugs are banned in many states, Trump and ~70 million republicans made light of covid which caused far more deaths than aids and encouraged people to spread it, we have the most insane levels of corruption (j6ers got pardoned and paid 2b, Trump coin, literal insider trading by the president, supreme court saying something would be "inconvenient" in order to give unconstitutional readings). And the people supporting this are not some small whackjob minority, it's 70 million people seeing an American on the ground not moving getting shot by ICE and saying "he was asking for it."
Aids was preventable with condoms
Condoms also weren't made widely available until the 00s.
Pretty much every bad thing you’ve mentioned is happening right now
I haven't seen that to be the case.
It will never get better if only assholes are having kids, then the world will just have more assholes.
I can assure you that people are capable of not being like their parents, for good or ill.
If you hate the world, just say so
I hate the world.
Why?
remember kids, if the only thing that matters in life is having rich parents, than your parents have failed you every day since your birth
I have 3 kids. They all seem happy to exist and we are having a wonderful time.
Sure the world isn't going the way I prefer but it's still chugging along and we have what we need. We even get to do fun stuff together. You all are missing out. Our kids are not doomed to some horrible apocalypse.
Same. Depends on your outlook IMHO and your capacity to learn and adapt.
There is no problem that can't be fixed and no problem that won't be fixed without youth on board. I'd have more kids and it would be a blessing if I do one day.
There's a great saying though which I say a lot and applies to having kids. Having kids you will never be ready you just need to do it. After you rip off the bandaid it becomes "in for a penny, in for a pound" which is to say you're fucked anyways might as well go for broke.
My theory on dropping birthrates stems a lot to the fucked up philosophies of Ayn Rand. People are way too full of themselves now and social media is a lot to blame.
I'd blame falling birthrates on the fact that everyone is poor and too busy working jobs to actually have a life. Dating is awful right now, and people can't even afford living in a house. On top of that global warming threatens to plunge the world into chaos in the next 50 years and our government is falling into fascism at an alarming rate.
" There is no problem that can't be fixed and no problem that won't be fixed without youth on board"
There are absolutely problems that can't be fixed; Even with youth on board. When those problems have already started before you were born and their ramifications will be felt for centuries, and you see earlier generations who caused it doing next to nothing to stop it, a lot of people lose hope for the future.
There are absolutely problems that can't be fixed; Even with youth on board.
This makes me sad because it's unequivocally false but for someone to believe this in their core is such a societal failure.
What if you were to say that to Nelson Mandela? Che Guevara? Stephen Hawking? Winston Churchill?
Humans are insanely ingenious and have it in their capacity to solve any problem. Your unwillingness to engage in that is individual and equally frustrating. Luckily I will argue people like you are in the vast minority and outside of The Internet discourse many of us are in the real world striving to make it a better place.
The problems we are facing are a magnitude larger than the issues any of those people faced. And I say that not to diminish what they have accomplished but to emphasize how big of an issue climate change is going to be. In the next 50 years we are going to see an unprecedented amount of suffering, as large populated areas start becoming unliveable. And this is already in motion. Even if we found a solution to these issues today the momentum of climate change means it is already too late to mitigate the disaster we are facing. I'm sure we will solve many issues to help us diminish the damage, but I still fully expect billions of people will be suffering from famine and climate related expulsion.
People like you who blindly say "oh we'll get through this we can solve any problem!" ignore how big of a mess the prior generations have caused for our children. If I was becoming aware of the world I was born into in 10 years, I sure as hell would be really pissed that my parents are handing me an unsolvable crisis that their parents and then they ignored.
This makes me sad because it's unequivocally false but for someone to believe this in their core is such a societal failure.
You're right, our society DID FAIL US! And that is the core of the issue. If our society had actually given a damn about future generations 40 years ago we wouldn't be in this mess.
Listen, and please listen. I'm 48. I grew up from birth listening to David Suzuki and Bob MacDonald on CBC. Since a small child I have known we are killing the planet. Oceans are acidifying and warming up. Coral reefs are dying. Species are in mass extinction. This has been 40 years my generation has personally experienced.
We are jaded as fuck. We are the smaller crunch generation. We had and have limited political power. We are stuck as the first generation to have to raise and support kids who can't leave home and parents who are living longer and poor. I will repeat we are jaded as fuck.
But you know what? Life goes on because only a pussy gives up and the wheels are going to grind you down regardless so you may as well fight.
You will, in many ways rightly, highlight "well this is different!" and in many ways it is. Which is why I will repeat, are you a bitch who gives up or will you fight? Fight locally by supporting local businesses. Fight locally by working on influencing your friends and family to change their views. Vote for those who will change things for the better while being pragmatic that positive change takes time. Acknowledge what you can change and what you can't and accept that.
I know it's hard and it's hackneyed but at lot of the youth and people in general need to get off their phones and talk to the people in their community. This online world is toxic and does not reflect reality. The world is going to survive with or without you.
Oh I'm not giving up for a second. But that's not what this conversation is about. I just consider bringing a kid into this world that is already running into issues with a population running out of control as a move completely counter to what we need. I don't think no one should ever have kids again, but I do think people should be far more choosy about how many children they are having. And society needs to shift to a model where having a declining population doesn't completely ruin the economy.
Good luck with your future then. I appreciate your optimism but realistically the whole world needs to change and IMHO we are nowhere near that synergy yet.
My Gen Z friends have no hope for the future. I don't either, but we could at least pretend that it might get better back in my day. Fucking sucks.
Millennial here, no kids because (1) we have enough people on this earth, and (2) my partner and I are not interested in raising children.
On a personal level, I'd have kids if I met the right person and we were in a financial position and were both comfortable to have kids, but only if all those conditions were met.
On a more general level, I don't gel with the idea that having kids is inherently immoral at all. Children are the future, whether people like it or not, and the developed world's in a nasty position where the potential best parents are the least likely ones to have kids. This is partially due to them being more conscious of their limited time, energy and money, and partially due to mindsets like in the image. Either way, the effect is that the least morally obliged among us are ones having kids and raising more people like themselves, screwing over the next generation before they're even born. I want to see that trend totally reversed.
You can have one kid for two people and still be net-negative. This seems like a reasonable compromise for those couples that really feel the need to have a kid. Two kids is net neutral.
Every modern child brings a huge amount of non-biodegradable waste and energy usage. It strains all the infrastructure resources and ultimately the planet. It’s not that we can’t sustainably support 8.5 billion people, it’s that we don’t. And won’t anytime in our lifetimes.
India or China have oceans of people in areas and understand serious overpopulation, if anyone needs to see it to believe it. Just in general we haven’t done well enough at taking care of the world to justify having a bunch of kids.
not mad for having him. mad that youre fucking up the world hes having to live in
Yeah op why did you fuck up the world. It's all your fault!
OP's fault?
I always get told by people online that its my fault.
Needs more cropping
"I wish we would have known that while Nebraska was still accepting orphaned minors at fire departments."
Fun fact: Nebraska law temporarily allowed parents to give up their kids, even teenagers (under 18) at fire departments and they'd become wards of the state.
Simply offset your children by killing fascists
I'm a millennial and I'm on the fence, leaning towards no kids. I have a pretty bleak outlook of the future. I also don't want to have to worry about jeopardizing my potential future children if I need to join the uprising. I also selfishly want to keep my time and money to myself. If I find a certain partner and am able to carve out a certain little corner of the world for myself then I might be inspired to want children. Wanting to want to raise a family sounds nice, but I'm not feeling it.
I very recently ended a long-term relationship over this.
I ended a 5.5 year relationship because she wanted kids and I didn't, we never got married because of this topic. Little over 3 years later I met my wife, I knew right away she was who I wanted to marry. Only problem was she def wanted kids I have 2 now and love it.
That was a rollercoaster
I agree. I also believe creating new sentient beings is unethical (weird phrasing because I'd feel the same if they were clones or if they were werewolves).
The only realistic way to fight those billionaire overlords is to refuse to have kids. Their power and wealth means nothing when there are no people left they can subjugate.
There fixing that by using you as training data
There are a lot of babies and children in the world already without parents. Adopt one or two. Despite what weird people like Musk say, we aren't facing a crisis because we're not having enough children. If that were the case the world would have been on the brink of collapse several billion people ago. We have too many people now. We have plenty of resources, but we're not going to use them to help the people who need help because we're - as a species - pretty evil.
Depends on how good a person is at being a parent.
Humans in general should not have children. Each one of us is selfishly willing to destroy the world for our own comfort, which is moderately okay if there are a small number of us and absolutely catastrophic for life generally when there are 8 billion of us. The temperatures are going to make human life increasingly untenable, and humans aren’t even capable of wearing a mask to deal with disease so I have no confidence that we will deal with our global issues. If you have more than two kids and aren’t living a life of subsistence farming with them, I think you are actively immoral for increasing the wealthy population. Thank the childfree movement for existing, signed a childless xennial.
Hello GenZ. I'm an old dude. If you are interested in reading more about this topic, I'd suggest looking up "antinatalism" and the philosopher David Benatar.
Oh, that's one of my favourites
good job son, i was worried by the time you're 15 you'd have aspirations.
I'm 28 now , remember telling my parents that when I was 8 !
I don't think you get to decide for the next generation of humans whether their existence is worthwhile.
I don't think the next generation gets to decide if you are going to be a parent.
They kinda have though for the past 3 billion years
It sounds like you believe that humans don't have free will
Whether or not you believe in free will, humans are the first species that decided whether or not to reproduce. The idea of not reproducing is antithetical to the way life has looked since the first autocatalytic reactions began in the Archean. People in this thread are treating it like a personal decision and it's much more than that.
For a species to survive they need to reproduce. The human race has gotten to the point where creating more people is not going to increase the chances of our species surviving. We have enough people. We need to put more effort into not destroying ourselves and making things better for the life that already exists here.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this. People who want kids should have a reasonable number of kids. If someone doesn't want kids then let them make that choice. People who don't want kids should not have them.
The thing is a lot of countries actually face a population crisis because there aren't enough children to replace their ageing populations. Ideally the solution would be migration from places that are overpopulated, but this is politically frought. And most people (I think) who decide not to have kids are doing so because they can't afford to in their increasingly unequal societies. So I'm fine to agree to disagree but my point was always that this is a societal issue more than a freedom of choice thing.
I mean as parents we kinda do when we birth them. It's your personal prerogative if you then want to an hero and dip.
We as parents are failing the youth and I wish more people my age understood this.
Is 51 trimesters too late for an abortion?
Not if you sleep your way up the political chain, a la Leanne Cartman.
This is not even a remotely controversial opinion. Anyone who wants more children in this hellscape is to be treated with suspicion as it’s likely just Elon wearing a mask.
This is not even a remotely controversial opinion - people with few real world social interactions, who spend most of their time circlejerking on these forums see the world as a hellscape far far often compared to those who have a social life outside of Lemmy
The world is sort-of fine. But economically, it doesn't make sense to have kids when it's highly likely that they will be barely able to survive as wage slaves.
The current devaluation of labor is a direct effect of an overabundance of labor. If you can't afford to have kids and provide them with some generational wealth, you shouldn't have kids.
Tonnes of CO2e, averages:
1.60 a roundtrip transatlantic flight
2.40 one year of car use
58.60 one year's emissions caused by 1 child (in rich countries this averages even higher)
Shown in possibly the most important chart in human history, because human overpopulation is the biggest (and root) cause of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
It's also the biggest and root cause of factory farming, industrial fishing, unsustainable pollution, biosphere degradation, mass extinction, ...
Can we get some billionaire's jets and yachts added to this chart?
I know which I would rather give up...
Yup. This is just another tactic to have poor people give up even more so the rich can live an even worse lifestyle. And people buy it hook line and sinker.
Nah, rich people were having a tizzy a few years back because of population growth slowing. They wanted more people so they could keep growing the economy forever. That was the impetus behind the roe vs wade decision in the US, to force more women to have children against their will.
Currently I don't think they give a shit because they're in the midst of a manic episode with AI, but I wouldn't be surprised if they went back to that after the high wears off.
The 4th line has "in rich countries this averages even higher". The linked paper has more details: some poor countries averaging 23.7 tonnes of CO2e, vs. 117.7 tonnes of CO2e per child per year for rich countries like the USA.
Thanks!
I think the chart is unconvincing without a line considering Taylor Swift's impact. Averages are meaningless when billionaires exist.
If we gave up on having Taylor Swift jet around in a personal jet, how many more kids could the planet support?
There's different conversations to be had if it is 5 more kids or if it is 50 million more kids.
I'm interested in real data, and I am tired of being told I could help out by biking to work while Jeff Bezos rides a private jet and doesn't pay his fair share of taxes.
Maybe Jeff's taxes won't fix it, but Jeff's entire impact is so much larger that mine, I think we have to at least talk about it, if we want to have a serious discussion.
this is some nazi ass ecofascist eugenics bullshit
I don't understand. Isn't killing millions of people the Nazi way? If we reduce our fertility rate to about 0.04 for a few decades, we'll have a chance of preventing the Anthropocene extinction event from becoming a mass extinction event, which would kill billions of people and quadrillions of animals when the climate tipping-points cause a cascade. If we don't prevent the mass extinction by tackling the biggest and root cause, we'll be worse than the Nazis by many orders of magnitude.
Isn't eugenics about the nonsense of "improving" humanity's genes thru forced sterilization? The people who want to prevent making the biosphere uninhabitable, are opposing the fascists who want to genocide people they don't like.
That's a really shitty framing job.
Depending on how people choose to live the planet could support less than a billion or over 10 billion people "sustainably."
I can't stop people from voting for psychopathic capitalists, and I can't stop people from having a fertility rate of more than 0.04 for a few daces; but I can choose to not contribute to the cause that's bigger than all other causes put together.
I either vote Green or spoil my vote if Greens aren't on the ballot, I've never bought a car and don't have a driving license, I flew on a round-trip once decades ago but haven't since learning how harmful it is; but all of that pales compared to the fact that I'm childfree because I don't want to be complicit in killing billions of people due to the climate cascade or cause more than 50% of genera and more than 70% of species to go extinct. If you think genocides and wars are bad (killing millions of people), well consider that a mass extinction event will kill billions of people and quadrillions of animals.
Luckily, son, the cure is very simple and very humane. First, please place your neck on this wooden board.
You'd have to be completely devoid of morals and empathy to bring another human into this world.
By that logic, you'd have to be completely devoid of morals and empathy not to kill yourself tonight. Whatever strain on the planet or human suffering we can prevent by never having children, you could prevent equally by suicide. It's poor logic. You shouldn't kill yourself, and mammals are allowed to give into their impulse to continue their species.
Someone regrets their crotch goblins
Do you mean me? It couldn't be further from the truth. I looked into my child's eyes earlier today and literally had the thought, "this is the meaning of everything." My chest swelled with love i couldn't have known possible and I thought, " Right here in front of me is the entire purpose of the universe. "
I'm not being facetious, that literally happened this morning. I had the thought at a separate time this morning that marriage and children is the whole and only point of life. You fall so deeply in love and finally understand all love songs. They become literal to you instead of metaphorical. And then you have a child, and the meaning of every love song deepens ten fold. Suddenly, "I have loved you for a thousand years, and I'll love you for a thousand more" seems somehow literal. Like everyone in my lineage fought and lived and reproduced to get to this little toddler in front of me, and I will live and die for them, happily, and with any luck, that will get passed down for a thousand years beyond me. My familial connections are strong among my parents, my siblings, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my nieces and nephews.
People who aren't lucky or privileged enough to experience this kind of deep, biological, animal love.. I genuinely feel sorry for them. I don't judge anyone's choices, and if you think children aren't for you, they probably aren't. They're a fuck ton of work. But I guess I believe that I'm just a mammal. And giving into my instinct to have a child is the most natural thing and my mammal brain rewards my giving into this instinct greatly.
That's nice. Oxytocin is a powerful thing and all. But... no, that doesn't mean procreating is a good or a bad thing. The answer lies beyond your lived experience and your anecdotes. It is an ethical question.
Anyway, I was commenting not because of that but because of the suicide comment you made. It's not only a bit distasteful, it's wrong because almost always you do not prevent suffering by committing suicide but cause it (e.g., survivors of suicidal relatives).
Also, the arguments for saying procreating is unethical are not always about reducing suffering (many are, but not all); some, for example, are about not gambling with others lives or with others wishes, respecting others future autonomy, etc.
So, in short, that suicide comment was not only a little bit distasteful, maybe even rude, it was wrong or at least incomplete or inaccurate.
This exactly. Nothing more needs to be said.
In terms of having children, this opinion given was actually disgusting.
You need to homeschool your child (if it's lawful to), and on top of that, they need to be taught how to harness 97% of their DNA which is dormant. There's no reason a child should have to go to any sort of public detention center known as a public school, for that's an indoctrination camp.
Children are the gift we were given from Source, no cap.
Homeschooled against my will; do not recommend. Even the most well meaning parent is not equipped to properly educate a child, and school also teaches critical social and cooperation skills necessary to functioning as an adult in society.
I was lucky/unlucky enough to go to college to make up for some of that but it’s absolutely still a huge disadvantage. And no, bringing kids to a couple clubs a week is not enough to make up for that lack of socializing.
Do not isolate any non-extreme-edge-case-needs kid in pursuit of some ideology if you actually fucking love them!
I think homeschooling for primary ages is the limit. My parents purchased a curriculum with workbooks for mainly math/reading. When I went to elementary school I was several years ahead of my peers in both areas cuz I was able to learn at my own pace.
Really it was the individualized learning not the homeschooling though.
Learning basic arithmetic, reading, and writing should be taught by professionals. Parents should be able to teach kids history, true history (not the scripted, Jesuit-controlled bullspit). That I'm all for.
You can do that in addition to kids going to school. Bring them to museums, local cultural events, and show an interest in history yourself that will be picked up by them. That’s not an issue and will give them a continued love of learning which is also a good thing.
Affirmatively agreed.
Hey, your foil hat is on crooked. You should fix that, it makes you look silly. And put down the meth pipe while you're at it.
Right? I know we've got at least a handful of cons on here, and then there's the tankies and all that, but this is the first batshit wingnut account I've seen on the fediverse.
Listen to The Theory of Everything by Ash G. (it's on YouTube). That's where I got the 97% number from.
As for public schools, and homeschooling instead, more and more people are doing it, because our fascist system won't allow children to actually learn how to be proper homo sapiens, and mind you, those school also don't allow our children to learn how to harness their latent DNA.
Oh, a YouTuber, that’s GOT to be authoritative.
Bro, I was homeschooled. Let me tell ya that ain't it. I'm going to reiterate the other commenter. You're falling into conspiracy theories and misunderstanding science.
It's cool, there's still hope. You're rightfully mad at the government (and not some secret shadow government like some get mad at, so thank you). You're rightfully aware that the education system in America is highly flawed. You're searching out the truth. You want to learn and understand. These are all good things. But you're being misled by others.
Our education system is flawed because it has been massively defunded by Republicans for years. It has been constantly attacked and twisted because an educated public is harder to control. The real solution is to follow other nations and fund teachers, not wars.
That 97% dna things dates back to a 1972 paper by medical geneticist David Coming where he discussed non-coding DNA. People point at that paper and say that he stated all non-coding dna is dormant and junk. This isn't actually what he stated at all but rather a twisting of his words.
It should also be stated that what we thought was "junk" DNA leftover from evolutionary history might actually still serve a purpose in regulating RNA growth. We really have no idea. It's still a very actively researched area. There's also research such as a 2017 paper showing that if more of our DNA was active and coding we would develop cancer at an alarming rate. Not develop as better humans.
One thing that's really helpful to ask yourself is "Who is the person telling me this thing." Who is Ash G? What are their credentials? Do they have a larger body of work? What is their motive? Me personally, I can't find them anywhere, they don't seem to be an accredited scientist, they don't seem to have a real presence. They have the one book is all I could find. Not a source I would put a lot of faith in.
Teaching a child to be a decent human being is not (and never HAS BEEN) the school's responsibility. That's up to the family, and it always has been.
Stay in school kids. If you don't, you'll sound like this fuckwit.
...you don't harness your DNA. It does it's job regardless.
Most of the human genome is space-filler. They're called noncoding segments.
Buddy........ You should seek some mental health treatment.
You're saying I'm missing Vitamin B1. I've been fixing that.
Where were you schooled?
I'm also interested, so I can make measures to close the place down
I was going to suggest asking for a refund, but yeah
I harnessed the dormant 97% of my DNA and it told me to tell you to ask a trusted person for help explaining this to a doctor.
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