Do you want kids?

[MOBIUS]

We certainly are in Europe!

I think Kid has been getting them drunk...

[ricketyclik]

There are very few times when the mild-mannered and likeable JM annoys me, but this is one of them. He did it before with his views on why he considers workers with kids to be better employees, to the extent of being willing to exercise discrimination in favour of them. Perhaps his view is formed from a religious perspective, perhaps not - perhaps that is not relevant.

Personally, I'm not very good at organising my personal life, and never have been from early childhood. Put simply, I can hardly look after myself, let alone a family. In addition, I don't have the naturally nurturing attitude towards kids that many people do. I'm just not one of the universe's natural parents. This doesn't make me a selfish person, and I'm not selfish to those that I care about, and I'm certainly not selfish in my professional life - often putting the team and my team-mates (as I see my colleagues) before myself. I've often taken up the slack at work, at a personal cost, so that colleagues who are parents can do what they need to do as parents.

Many parents get great joy from kids. This is fantastic, and good luck to them. Some people want whole bundles of kids, who they expect their fellow tax-payers to support in education, health and welfare if necessary and depending on the arrangements of their social system. Nobody need be accusing anyone else of selfishness, even if certain, narrow aspects of the respective scenarios and circumstances can be interpreted that way.

I would finally add that, for the developed world, there has perhaps never been a harder time for embarking on parenthood. The demands and expectations are higher than ever, and the economic circumstances are perhaps the unstable in living memory. Good parents will assess financial realities when making decisions about embarking on family life, and they should be free to do so without being beaten by wielders of moral sticks.

Agree entirely with the logic here, even though I'm an enthusiastic parent.

[Dis]

Nope.

I can help you with that.

I had a few drinks, so I'm allowed to make obnoxious come ons.

[RGBVideo]

Nope, I don't have children. Only people who don't have children can fully appreciate how wonderful an experience it is, knowing that you aren't adding to the burden of humanity and the planet by engaging in genetic experimentation to fulfill your own petty emotional neediness. Parents are among the most selfish people in the world.

Now if only we got stupid people to think like this

[Jon Miller]

Not really a religious perspective, Cort Haus.

More of my logical, utilitarrian, and very pro-state perspective. I held it even when I thought group marriage was a great idea...

JM

[Alinestra Covelia]

Not really a religious perspective, Cort Haus.

More of my logical, utilitarrian, and very pro-state perspective. I held it even when I thought group marriage was a great idea...

JM

Okay, knowing where you come from is a great help. If you're looking at things from the viewpoint of the state, then certainly childbearing is extremely important. China and Japan are two examples of populations with extremely low birth rates (though admittedly for fundamentally different reasons) and both countries are facing workforce and societal issues because of the birth rate deficit.

From a logical, utilitarian, pro-individual perspective, however, kids don't make much sense. I suppose they fulfill the need for companionship that our hormones relentlessly urge us on to fulfill... but the very fact that we need hormones to push us towards it suggests that it's not a particularly rational or generally beneficial step to take.

[Lorizael]

I suppose they fulfill the need for companionship that our hormones relentlessly urge us on to fulfill... but the very fact that we need hormones to push us towards it suggests that it's not a particularly rational or generally beneficial step to take.

I'd agree that the need for hormones suggests a lack of rationality, but that doesn't make it not beneficial. The presence of hormones means that our DNA "believes" reproduction to be so important to survival that the desire to engage in the act must be able to overcome logic and rationality. If you happen to agree with your DNA, then having children to indulge your hormones could certainly be viewed as beneficial.

[Q Classic]

Okay, knowing where you come from is a great help. If you're looking at things from the viewpoint of the state, then certainly childbearing is extremely important. China and Japan are two examples of populations with extremely low birth rates (though admittedly for fundamentally different reasons) and both countries are facing workforce and societal issues because of the birth rate deficit.

Actually, almost all developed nations (excluding the US) are suffering from birth rate deficits. Japan and Korea happen to have some of the worst problems with it, and thanks to their inherent xenophobia, it's why they're turning more to robotics rather than immigrants.

I suppose they fulfill the need for companionship that our hormones relentlessly urge us on to fulfill...

That's why I've adopted 52 cats. I'm well on my way to becoming a crazy cat lady spinster.

[Q Classic]

Parenting is definitely a huge responsibility, but there is such a thing as micro-managing. I reckon if you get the major, basic things right you're 95% there.

Are you telling me that I can't right-click on my children to select the proper command? That they have their own (idiotic) AIs running them?

It's not the micro-managing that worries me. It's the major, basic things. It's quite easily apparent how to deal with the major physical things. But it's all of the social, emotional stuff that I fear. What if in the course of raising them something happens that turns me into an emotionally overbearing, suffocating parent? Or one that makes me mentally distant? How forgiving are the tolerances between the two extremes?

Would they come out needy, demanding, and incapable of doing things on their own? Or would they be cold and distrusting? Or would they come out all right?

[Unimatrix11]

But you want offspring that can produce and solve problems. And who is likely to be able to do that? Offspring that is raised in the first world.

First world countries having fewer kids, and third world countries having more kids, just means that the producers in society have to bear more and more weight. I admit that we producers in the first world countries have mostly fallen short of our duty towards our fellow humans in third world countries though, we really should be trying to educate them and provide the necessities so that they can live happy and productive lives.

JM

JM, You should really get in touch with reality again. I noticed in your posts before this one already that your world view is totally messed up, but here it gets to the point of being totally inacceptable. First off, the world may need a lot, but what it does not need anymore is ´productive members´, because, you may have noticed, we produce way too much anyways. And even when seen within the stupid categories of capitalism (which seem to be the only ones you can apply, since production in your world is a universal value in itself), we need about 1 person to feed 1.000, today. Better make sure the one is your kid, or else he/she might end up producing ring-tones, ripping off the future feeders of its time.

So, ´first world´ = ´producers´ now, uh? I guess we can be glad that you still feel inclined to call all those ´unproductive´ eaters down there ´fellow humans´. These peoples actually used to live a happy live, before the dogma of a ´productive life´ came ´down´ on them. And only after that were they forced to reproduce faster than they could accumulate debt (which is our wealth). Apparently those ´uneducated´ people dont know that THEIR kids are unwanted and bad for the world, since each of THEM just puts ´more weight´ on the burden of the ´productive´ part of humanity. Obviously one has to be educated (or ´brainwashed´) just like you in order to be able to call their kids a profit for mankind (and face it, that´s what you want to say, when you desire ´productive offsprings´). How about having some sort of selection: Only those who will actually have the opportunity to be ´producitve´ (in your categories of course) will be allowed to be born. Now, let´s not get inconsequent...

Thanks for just another great example of the liberal mindset. Bentham and deSade would be proud.

[Unimatrix11]

Some people believe that one should reproduce for the survival of the species. Others believe one should NOT reproduce for the survival of the species.

**** that noise. Make the decision on personal grounds.

-Arrian

Thats what people do. All that noise is just the part that Che meant (i guess), when he said parents were the most selfish of all. Since some do regard their ´achievement´ of creating offsprings as being the be-all-and-end-all of all societal duties and that thus anyone who doesnt have children is obliged to do pretty much everything for them.

Fact is: People get children, because they want them. Simple as that.

[Arrian]

Agreed, which is why the talk of selfishness is so silly.

-Arrian

[Heraclitus]

but the very fact that we need hormones to push us towards it suggests that it's not a particularly rational or generally beneficial step to take.

You do realize that you have just made an excellent argument for never having sex right?

[Heraclitus]

In any case I think that because of self-destructive attitudes about children in western society we are as a civilization doomed. I am therefore strongly in favour of a technological state driven solution.

I belive that it is much easier to simply start cloning kids en masse in goverment controlled artificial wombs than to fix what is wrong with our culture. If this is what will happen then the baby bust will be nothing but the next industrial revolution, the west won't fall it will simply be the first to embrace transhumanism. Imagine a generation of beautifull strong intelligent children raised by the glorius State. Surley this and not a bunch of leftist hippies or backward right-wing fundies is the future of mankind.

My real fear is that luddite forces and religius freaks will slow the west on the path to this long enough for our civ to be overrun. The next civ which comes to face this hurdle probably won't be this foolish.

[Jon Miller]

You are wrong, we produce too little. Or to put it better, we have a lot of people who don't produce much at all. There is no excuse with our level of advancement for not everyone to be materially wealthy.

If we produce too much, why are so many people starving? Why are so many people poor? Why is our environment in shambles? Why don't we succeed as much as we could? How are we ever going to fix our problems when we are short productive people? Things don't fix themselves. And first world people are part of the problem, but are also the only solution (I mean, the only other solution I can think of is robots keeping the world at some hunter/gatherer level. Even agriculture societies and any society left to it's own devices to grow plays havoc with the environment).

And this discussion of solving problems doesn't even begin to look at the issues of needing productive people to produce art, to love and enjoy themselves, to increase knowledge and understanding.

The whole is greater than the parts, humanity is more important than any individual.

It is true, we waste tons of ability and production. But doing so seems to make some people less unhappy, or to think they are less unhappy for a time, or something.

And it is true that first worlders produce far more than the poorer nations. We should be feeding them, educating them, healing them, and helping them to produce, be happy, and be free from pain. But instead we focus on our own selfish pleasure and spend hardly any efforts into solving our fellow human's problems. As long as we can enjoy ourselves, everything is fine according to us. And this even ignores future humanities problems, who we completely screw over when we don't have children ourselves. So instead of wealthy, educated people trying to solve the problems of the world (which we have given them, in part), it will be the children of the poor, with no education and little resources, who will be left to solve these problems.

And poorer nations always ave lots of kids. They always reproduce rapidly. This is because for them, it increases individual wealth, rather than decreasing it. And a lot of those societies appear a lot less selfish because they think on the tribe and family level while we mostly just think on the individual level.

And it isn't about brainwashing or thinking just like me. Obviously most people who go through our education system don't think just like me. Or we would have a lot less capitalists and a lot more Christians. But it is true that you need knowledge, education, skills, and resources to be more productive. There could be potentially millions of Einsteins struggling to feed their families in Africa. And it doesn't matter that they would make brilliant physicists, because they don't have the resources, knowledge, education, and skills to make use of them.

The poor nations struggle to feed themselves. They can't heal themselves or take care of their environment. We were in the same boat in the past, we struggled through and made it to the point where every person we have has the opportunity to produce over a 1000 times more than some subsistence farmer. And we don't help out those who are struggling now. And yeah, someone in Africa having 10 kids does nothing to help the situation overall (of the tribe/etc), but you having 2 kids will do a lot more.

Please note that (except for biological issues) adoption is great, even better than having a kid of your own.

Now personally from a religious perspective, I hope that God comes and solves all our problems. But while I have faith that this will occur, I also recognize that we need to work at it ourselves (as humanity). And looking out just for ourselves will never get us there. In fact, that is what is ruining people's lives and the earth in the first place.

And I probably should have put this in Word and made something coherrent, maybe I will later.

The US is the only first world nation doing OK for 2 reasons. One, we take in a lot more immegrants than other nations. Two, we are more religious than most (all?) other first world nations (more religions, from a pure practical/utilitarrian/logical perspective encourage child raising as it is far more likely to raise a new member than to convert someone raised as a non-member).

JM