to form babby, or not to form babby

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

at some point, they'll plead with us: "just pay somebody to watch Melancholia on Hulu and transcribe it" or "please buy one script and print multiple copies" but we'll say "that would be ethically way off base". so we will keep buying the script from scripts.com, one per Jeerer (rip netherlands euro 2020), to prove how logically untenable it is.

It’s not my position, as should be clear from the posts I made above, section 1c, third clause. I was just trying to tease out the conclusions of silby’s premises. This is making me remember one day, years ago, when I was logged in and posting in this kind of way and silby said “this isn’t the agora of athens treeship my god”

Which was funny i thought

it seemed to me when I watched the movie that Kirsten Dunst's character was not espousing a position so much as she was feeling a hitherto unknown sense of equilibrium as the world outside of her became as apocalyptic as the world inside her, but I didn't pay very close attention so I could be wrong.

classic

xp

Ultimately having a kid or not is an incredibly personal choice and shrouds not be judged by outsiders that one who chooses not to have kids had some ulterior motive like “wants to
party unimpeded by responsibility” or that those who choose to have kids “just wanted mom to shut up about not having grandkids”.

otm

Personally I am inclined to not have kids because it's hard enough as it is, teaching all these brilliant, curious, hopeful middle schoolers and wondering what kind of world they're inheriting, but I also think there's an argument to be made for continuing to do lovely human things like raising kids for as long as it's possible. My cousins in Juneau AK have a bunch of kids who run around fishing and camping and messing about in boats like the Swallows and Amazons, and whatever happens to them in the future, they've undoubtedly had a charmed childhood.

ppl shd be able to have 1 kid, as a treat

my partner and i had dinner at her friends' apartment the other night and they have a kid who like... clearly both had a better childhood and is way smarter than any of us. i get the impulse

t'ship, isn't the Earth dying a big part of why "being alive is bad" (particularly as applied to future beings itt). By saying "being alive is bad so it's good the Earth's dying", you are really bringing "the Earth's dying so it's good the Earth's dying" to the table.

also seems obvious, if the goal is to minimize suffering, that you'd need to rule out any alternative to the Earth dying, which is going to yield much suffering, to see the Earth dying as a net "good".

ppl shd be able to have 1 kid, as a treat

Three tykes and you're out.

if you feel we are on an irrevocable march to Earth death, perhaps you can take a small comfort in the thought. it seems a bit monstrous or pompous to be so certain in one's knowledge of the future to take that comfort, though (even if you end up being correct).

Life on earth will end eventually and the longer you push this date back, the more people will live and suffer in the interim. Better to peacefully extinguish the species, kind of wind it down, by stopping procreation now. This is the anti-natalist argument. It is not my position at all, I want to be a father.

but it seems like you could "wind it down" without extinguishing the species. though, that sounds like an awful idea that could be used to justify a lot of suffering if ever taken beyond simply not having children.

I accept "life on earth will end eventually", but only because it's so vague to be definitely true. one is making a pretty big bet if they use that thought to justify decisions that will play out over the timescale of one human life.

i dont think we shd work to end the human race, i do think we shd end capitalism, i think we will need to have children to grow up and end capitalism, sry kiddo, those means arent gonna seize themselves!!!

i wonder if the character 'forky' was invented by a pixar ilxor with a soft spot for silby. there's even the series of shorts framed around asking "New Questions".

while my heart is with silby (and by extension VHEMNT and various forms of anarcho-primitivist nihilism) in terms of "yup bad idea", my head always remembers the wise words of a fellow enviro-activist: "you can't let the assholes have all the kids"

also, kids rule

u know what gandhi said "breed the change u want 2 see in the world"

no shame if you and yr partner are awesome and want to bring more of that energy into the world

I understand the logic of a single kid but I gotta say having 2 prevents their parents from having too much influence

(with appropriate apologies to the only kids here)

um i am LITERALLY the perfect father so i mean i guess i see how that would affect OTHER parents

if roads and public transport are both closed because they melted, does that have an influence

this thread has gone to some weird places: some edifying, some useless

one thing that has always frustrated me about being on the fence w/this topic is that no one who has & is raising babby will tell you out loud that having babby was a decision that they regret, even though there are babby-formers who must certainly feel that way

huh that's so weird!