I try to be. Children would be exhausting to parent in the current era. Humanity’s future is gloom too.
I personally don’t want to, I’m not good with children
Yes. I’d rather be the “eccentric uncle QuentinCallaghan” to my siblings’ kids than a father to any kid in a world like this. I’m so used to having my own independence and freedom, and I’m a hedonist to some extent. Also having kids would require a relationship, and the Yellowstone volcano erupting is more likely than that.
No plans to create my own children. I’ve always felt that it’s far more important to adopt a child that’s been abandoned by an uncaring society then to make another. I don’t have any genes important enough to try to reproduce (and few people do). If you can’t find it in your heart to love a child that doesn’t contain the same genetic material as you, I think you should reconsider being a parent
i don’t want to have kids because i believe it’s unethical for some average joe, or in fact anyone that isn’t an expert in child psychology and child development, to subject a human being to potential lifelong trauma because “babies be cute doe”. also i think the hype is overblown. society feeds you the lie that you need to have kids to feel fulfilled and happy, but in reality there are many other ways to do that and they don’t involve a very high risk of ruining someone’s entire life. surround yourself with people you like, create a daily lifestyle that energizes and refreshes you, and spend time on your passions. one or all three of those things could involve children, but for most people they will not.
i think refraining from raising children because “humanity’s future is gloom” isn’t entirely logical. even absolute climate catastrophe would be better than most of human history because of the technology available to us, and at worst it would be just as bad. humans have been born and lived in the worst possible conditions, they can do it in these ones too. definitely adopt though, creating children is still dumb for other reasons.
i don’t want to have kids because i believe it’s unethical for some average joe, or in fact anyone that isn’t an expert in child psychology and child development, to subject a human being to potential lifelong trauma
Only PhDs in child psychology should reproduce? So, you want humanity to be extinct, that’s a more ethically sound position than “sometimes bad things happen to some people”?
society feeds you the lie that you need to have kids to feel fulfilled and happy,
You’ve got 4 billion years of genetic coding that insists, even demands that this is true. The last few tens of millions of years hardcodes it directly into your meat brain.
Society? If society ever did that, it ceased doing it almost a hundred years ago. Now, you can’t turn your head or hear a dozen words from some random stranger proclaiming the opposite is true and that anyone who says otherwise is a misogynist, masochist, or biblethumper.
There of course are many reasons for that. If you believe transexuals are healthy, important individuals… how could they participate in parenting if they’re mutilating their reproductive organs? So, parenting and reproduction now have to be bad or at least discouraged, to push the other message more fully. Not just them, of course, it’s not fair to single them out when there are so many other degenerate lifestyles that, if you embrace them, you also can’t embrace the idea that parenting is important without being hypocritical.
The end result will be, of course, that these lifestyles die out. The question is, will they take everything else with them.
So, you want humanity to be extinct, that’s a more ethically sound position than “sometimes bad things happen to some people”?
Yes. Suffering should be eradicated at all costs. Humanity doesn’t have an inherent right to exist, it simply does as long as it is perpetuated by both humans themselves and while external conditions allow it.
degenerate lifestyles
I see your beliefs now. Well, no wonder you also disagree with this viewpoint then.
Suffering should be eradicated at all costs
What is suffering? I’ve lumped that word in with all the other religious claptrap like “soul” and “afterlife” and whatnot.
Are you talking about pain (the sensation)? It doesn’t seem that you mean that, but if you did it would be absurd. “Pain should be eradicated” makes no sense. It can’t even be said that pain should be avoided, since discomfort is often associated with worthwhile, and ultimately pleasant, activities.
Define suffering so we can be on the same page.
Humanity doesn’t have an inherent right to exist,
True, as far as it goes. But it’s like “turnips have no inherent right to exist”. Pretty meaningless, and in the context where people actually want to exist (and for others to exist), somewhat misleading.
I see your beliefs now.
Please, read my palm. Tell everyone what my beliefs are.
I adhere to the https://www.vhemt.org/, so yes, that includes being childfree. In fact, that’s the main requirement.
Never had any interest in having children, and the more I’ve learned about the state of the world the happier I am with my choices.
God no. I can’t imagine a more horrific punishment than to be childless.
I wish we had more than the two we have, but my wife and I started late. My daughter (12) sometimes asks how many children she could realistically have… a good sign that she hasn’t been tainted by whatever mental illness it is that the “childfree” people have.
I have had depression for many years and never understood why anyone would want to set children into this terrible world. In hindsight it’s kinda funny, I have since changed my mind.
How is it any more terrible than it’s ever been these last few million years ago? I don’t have to worry about my kids being eaten by some predator anymore, the smilodon problem’s taken care of. Horrible diseases still about, but many that would have crippled or killed them just 100 years ago are now bad cultural memories. They have the comfort kings wouldn’t have known in centuries past.
Only the neurotic would whine about how they can’t bring children into a terrible world. I’m glad you’ve gotten over yours. As you have time, do what you can to dissect that old worldview and figure out how it works so that maybe you can help other people someday.
Insulting people for having a different opinion to yours is not a good look. No matter how much humanity has evolved when compared to previous generations, there are still big enough problems in the world that someone can rationally make that decision.
Insulting people
I’m not aware of having insulted anyone. I’ve come to learn in my life that some people are insulted by reality… that’s sad. Reality doesn’t change just because you feel insulted, it never apologizes, and it definitely doesn’t make amends.
that someone can rationally make that decision.
No. They can only irrationally make that decision. And it’s not difficult to discern that truth… just open your eyes. Trauma, gluttony, there’s always something right there at the surface pressuring that choice.
I’m not aware of having insulted anyone. I’ve come to learn in my life that some people are insulted by reality… that’s sad.
Really? Please say that line to anyone you know and after they’re finished chuckling, as them what they think is so funny and perhaps they’ll explain it better than I can.
You just sound like some guy who watched the "you’re not wrong, Walter-- you’re just an asshole" scene in The Big Lebowski and thought to yourself "Yeah, I’m Walter! He tells it like it is!"
i.e. saying "people who don’t want kids are mentally ill" and then wondering why people would consider that to be an insulting statement.
I feel like you’re probably more in love with yourself than your partner. Reply if you want but I’ll just be blocking you anyway-- people like you creep me out.
i.e. saying “people who don’t want kids are mentally ill” and then wondering why people would consider that to be an insulting statement.
It’s like saying “people who want to force themselves to vomit after every meal are mentally ill” and then wondering why the bulimics consider that to be insulting?
They’re bulimic. It’s a mental illness. They probably do find it insulting, at least when they can work up the nerve to do it… it wasn’t always that way. But wasn’t it Oprah who had a bunch of the crackpots on her show where they were starting to claim eating disorders were a lifestyle choice?
Same thing here. If you get enough mentally ill people together in one place, they can convince themselves that their perceived numbers alone make them not mentally ill.
I can’t tell if you’re playing devil’s advocate or one of the mentally ill, and I don’t care nearly enough to read your comment carefully to try to figure it out.
Reality doesn’t change just because you feel insulted, it never apologizes, and it definitely doesn’t make amends.
In the words of Thanos, “reality can be whatever we want”. I am joking a bit of course, but really, although the laws of physics and the physical world don’t change, society can adapt around them in any way it sees fit. If society chooses, it can embark on a more positive path, with less suffering. In many ways, it has been doing that the past century. The conservative idea that “reality never changes” and that individual people should change because society as a whole won’t is a fallacy and can be proven empirically.
They can only irrationally make that decision.
Who can make that judgement, you? Do you have the qualifications required to produce a judgement on mental health like that?
Trauma, gluttony, there’s always something right there at the surface pressuring that choice.
Trauma seems like a damn good argument for not having kids. It’s not irrational. If I suffered, it’d be immoral on my part to want to subject another human being, who had no say in being born, to potentially suffer the same (especially when some of that suffering may be caused by genetics, which will be passed down to said human being).
society can adapt around them in any way it sees fit
It can’t adapt to this. Society ceases to exist if there are no people, so saying “it can adapt to no one performing the process by which people create their replacements in the world” is dumb.
Fertility is weird in that young children grow up in the same society that is doing these things… they internalize what they see around them as “normal”. So if you teach children that having one or zero children is normal, they’ll grow up to want the same. They can always go lower than 1, but never higher. This means fertility trends in one direction only, it never goes up.
And once it drops below replacement levels, it won’t ever go back up to them (let alone above) ever again.
Your society is dying. It doesn’t realize it yet, and by the time it does nothing will be possible to do about it.
Who can make that judgement, you?
Yes. I do not claim to be the only one capable of making that judgement. Though it seems those like me are rare.
Judgement is nothing more than the measurement of a thing or an event. We are not talking about a legal process… I sentence no one, I convict no one, I condemn no one.
But I’ve measured, and accurately.
Trauma seems like a damn good argument for not having kids.
It may seem that way, but it isn’t. At most, it’s an argument to delay having them.
If you wanted or needed to do something in your life, and you were in a car wreck and broke both your legs… would you think it sane for someone to say “now you should never do that thing again, you’ve experienced trauma!” ?
Why is it any more sane if the injury is psychological? You take the time you need to recover, you work hard to get back to where you should be, and you do that thing. And you do it whether it’s having children or climbing some mountain or whatever. And you’d even agree with me if we hadn’t prefaced the achievement as “having children”, but some other trivial thing.
to subject another human being, who had no say in being born
This is a nonsense statement. Until the person exists, by definition they can have no say in anything because they do not exist. Therefor it is not necessary, and even irrational, to speak or think about whether someone has a say in “being born”.
You’re morally permitted to subject a non-existent non-person to “being born”. Unless you’ve invented some sort of time travel, nothing else makes any sense.
especially when some of that suffering may be caused by genetics, which will be passed down to said human being
This is the first intelligent thing you’ve said. Those who have incurable genetic diseases that cause true misery are rational to not reproduce.
None of the people in this thread, and few of those (1 in 10,000 or even fewer) who are childfree are childless because of that reason. You don’t have the Tay Sachs gene, and your receding hairline’s not comparable.
It can’t adapt to this. Society ceases to exist if there are no people, so saying “it can adapt to no one performing the process by which people create their replacements in the world” is dumb.
And why does society have to exist? Society and humanity have no inherent value. The value they have is the value we, as rational beings, give them. If we collectively determined that they should exist no more, they would cease to exist.
Your society is dying. It doesn’t realize it yet, and by the time it does nothing will be possible to do about it.
I don’t mind it. That alarmism doesn’t scare me. Remember I follow VHEMT, hence that is my end goal (at least, I’m doing my part towards that).
But I’ve measured, and accurately.
That is precisely what my question was targeting. You’ve measured (and you have every right to your measurement as the expression of an opinion), but who’s to say you’ve measured accurately? What qualifications do you have to make such a statement of fact?
If you wanted or needed to do something in your life, and you were in a car wreck and broke both your legs… would you think it sane for someone to say “now you should never do that thing again, you’ve experienced trauma!” ?
I would. That is how I try to act in my daily life: avoiding things that have caused me suffering in the past, as much as possible. That is how I try to achieve a comfortable and happy life, by avoiding what has broken that comfort and happiness in the past.
This is a nonsense statement. Until the person exists, by definition they can have no say in anything because they do not exist. Therefor it is not necessary, and even irrational, to speak or think about whether someone has a say in “being born”.
It may be from a pragmatic point of view, but abstractly/philosophically speaking, it isn’t. When we make a moral choice, we have to think of the future consequences of that choice. From that point of view, we have to consider that the person being born will have no concept of the meaning behind their future suffering and will try to attribute such meaning to the ones who decided for them. People desire, naturally, to be in control and being born is the one action you have zero control over. That is also a reason why people seek religion: to justify and give meaning to their existence.
None of the people in this thread, and few of those (1 in 10,000 or even fewer) who are childfree are childless because of that reason. You don’t have the Tay Sachs gene, and your receding hairline’s not comparable.
How can you make such a blanket statement when you don’t know any of us personally?
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What a progressive take on psychiatry! That guy babbling about demons whispering in his ear as he uses feces to fingerpaint on the hospital walls isn’t mentally ill… he’s just making a choice.
A choice you or I might not make, but it’s no less valid and no less healthy.
Thanks for changing my mind.
