to form babby, or not to form babby

There is always evidence for hopelessness and despair, but the human mind is such that it will always try to avoid these conclusions. People hope against reason. Having children is an expression of this tendency, for good or ill.

- Bob Marley

Children of the current upper middle class will probably be fine. Grandkids, OTOH…

Maybe he would say that idk.

I think the implication of a lot of the posts on this thread is that having hope in the future is not just delusional but ignorant and selfish. I think I disagree. Even if the melancholic apocalypticism on display here is more reasonable, it’s not realistic to expect the majority to embrace a perspective like that. People want to get up in the morning and have something to work toward and feel like existence is a good thing not a bad thing.

And in more pragmatic terms, would the world actually be improved by people en masse taking an anti-natalist stance, with all it implies? Would that society, and its institutions, be more caring and responsible than ours? I think it is possible. But it is also possible it would be worse. I don’t know.

it’s 1650, and your partner is pregnant. “my dearest love. while you know that a child would bring me the greatest joy a man can know, the treaties of westphalia that have recently concluded are fragile. indeed, mercenary bands of shattered armies roam the provinces. no farmer’s family is safe. would we bring a child into a world that harbors the horrors of magdeburg? where soldiers spit young children on their lances for sport? it would be an immorality. i have spoken to you of this many times and yet you still see fit to carry this seed to its fruition. it is with deep regret that i must go.” the letter left on the rough table built into wall of the croft, the horse gone.

i think i identify as an anti-natalist but largely refuse to tell anyone about this bc i also fundamentally identify with thinking experience, maybe as distinct from "existence," is a super cool thing that i'd love to continue doing and maybe share with someone else who could maybe have an easier time overcoming all the mental illness i've endured in the process, or who maybe wouldn't have to contend with a bunch of fake and shitty ideas that we have for some reason orchestrated society around, though there's not a lot of evidence that that would happen

the number of people willing to deliberately plan their own lives so drastically purely for morality’s sake isn’t zero but i think it’s pretty small.

In 1991, the Australian government scrapped plans to set a zero-emissions target for 1995, just as CO2 concentration topped 350 parts per million, In 2021, the Australian government is refusing to set an emissions target to reduce concentration to 350 ppm by 2050.

I agree that the number of people planning around the projected effects of CO2 concentration above 350 ppm appears to be very small.

also telling anyone you're anti-natalist is pretty much a non-starter for civil conversation ime and i completely understand why xp

Can CRISPR give future generations gills?

Feelin brad on existence

In the wider scheme its all just unfolding universe lads

thank you Tracer Hand
anyway my kids have better ideas and attitudes than me, I’m happy they’ll replace me in the world. Their lives will be very different to mine but none of us can know exactly how.

Definitely sweatier.

I don’t have much to add to this discussion but this is a good book that gets into it without getting too big philosophy brained about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_from_an_Apocalypse

i’ve heard variations of that reasoning over the years and even entertained it myself from time to time. i’m convinced that it’s pretty much always a deflection away from other, real-er reasons.

Tracer otm. People saying this are fronting imo. (NB I have said this and I don't have kids).

Fronting for what?

I wonder what percentage of generations legitimately believed they were living in the end times

something's always ending

Fronting about the real reasons they don't have/want to have kids.

I dont want kids because it would impinge upon my many future holiday plans and meals out

would be truly selfish for you to impinge on those

Every breath is selfish in this doomed life

^^^^ First reasonable thing anyone's said since thread revive

I'll admit that I'm not having kids in the vain attempt to avoid my responsibility and duty to take care of all the children in the world.

I dont want kids because it would impinge upon my many future holiday plans and meals out

― Eschew things thirty two times before swallowing them (darraghmac), Monday, June 28, 2021 5:43 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My man.

It’s 9 am in Seattle and we are going to break the June high temperature record set yesterday, which will be broken again tomorrow. Because I am well off I could drop $700 to get a hotel room and avoid spending this interim in our uninhabitable house. I will probably kill myself circa 2050.

― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Sunday, June 27, 2021 9:14 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

being able to drop $700 on a hotel because it's hot out means that you have the material recourses to proviide any child you had would have one of the most comfortable lives anyone has ever had in the existence of humanity

They’d still have depression and then probably kill themselves

I expect the 2040s or so to closely resemble CHILDREN OF MEN (2006)

silby, I like you and hope you are doing well. You don't seem like you are doing well, at the moment.

Anyway even if it weren’t a sneak peek of the end of the world today it’s not my only reason for not having kids, for example I want to save my money for things like hotel rooms, useless tungsten cubes, and meme stocks

I wonder what percentage of generations legitimately believed they were living in the end times

I don't know if the fears of millenarian English peasants concerned that Aethelred was the Antichrist really impeach the concerns of someone staring down the barrel of climate change/mass extinction and nuclear annihilation.

I was worse yesterday but icymi the earth is dying and I don’t like the look of it xp

I’m not going to “feel better” in any permanent sense

Being alive is bad and I think objectively speaking it’s only getting worse

xp I haven't missed it. I (sometimes) think about it and it's like sticking your hand in a fire.

But you can only do what you yourself can do. You aren't responsible for everything.

Importantly I’m not responsible for bringing a child into this shitty earth and I feel morally superior about it

If “being alive is bad” isn’t it good that the Earth is dying? Not trying to be a jerk—this is a compelling position espoused by Kirsten Dunst’s character in Melancholia.

Idk maybe

If “being alive is bad” isn’t it good that the Earth is dying?

while it is, at a minimum, rather inaccurate to use one's own experience of what it feels like to be alive as a guide by which to measure all other human lives, it is presumptuous beyond belief to assume that all living things experience life or value it as you do personally.

I don't know if the fears of millenarian English peasants concerned that Aethelred was the Antichrist really impeach the concerns of someone staring down the barrel of climate change/mass extinction and nuclear annihilation.

Yes, don't talk to me about your Black Death killing half the world's population, I've got real problems to worry about.

If “being alive is bad” isn’t it good that the Earth is dying?

The Earth is not "dying" — the Earth is simply becoming uninhabitable by humans.

presumptuous beyond belief to assume that all living things experience life or value it as you do personally.

this must be your first time reading silby's posts

Not just humans unperson. We’re living through a mass extinction event.

At least in the 14th century the Black Death was going to have a hell of a time making it to the western hemisphere - the technology to transport diseases to every corner of the globe in days is pretty new in the grand scheme of things.

Just another rerun of "life is good/bad" with everyone doing their bit, nbd

and so travel agents wear the commemorative brooch inscribed "nobody gave the Black Death more hell"

though i did have the distinct feeling, mid commercial, that Trivago guy would one day kill us all

Trivago girl otoh ❤️❤️

To sum up, the position taken by Kirsten Dunst’s character in Melancholia, as paraphrased by treesh and which he maintained is "compelling", is in my view logically untenable and ethically way off base. We should buy copies of the script and jeer at them.

better change your surname to 'von jeer' bc that's what we'll do to the many copies of your script we bought, lars