Having Children...yes or no?
- Thread starter Vault101
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Please tell me you're joking? This post right here is why I would not want to have kids. Who the hell made that rule? Why should I give up my freedom and and immaturity for something that poops, cries and spends my money faster than someone who stole my indentity? I'm not religious and I don't really care about carrying on my name once i'm dead. Like we'll know the difference or any of this will matter. Not depressed, just realistic lol.Mezmer said:
I hate how there is a sorta peer pressure to have children nowadays. Like you're looked down upon because you haven't experienced raising a mini you. It seems like people have to have kids in order to complete their lives or bring a sorta reason for existing or it's just what couples do. If you want them then go ahead, but me i'm 27 and still selfish and I want to enjoy my life and travel to non kid friendly places, watch whatever I want on tv and make love to my wife or girlfriend anywhere in the house without having to worry about if the child is okay or if this is good for him. You only get once life so why not put yourself first?
/ end rant, and if a woman doesn't like it, there is the door. Most know ahead of time how I feel before it gets serious so they can't try to guilt trip me lol.
I can't believe it took four pages for someone to point out the last thing we need in this world is population growth. We could improve the quality of life of 75% of the world's population within a year, within mere months, if we killed the other 25%. The moral issues with this course of action are gargantuan; however it is likely a point will come where either the planet does this for us, or a couple of governments do it for "the greater good".Therumancer said:
But I'm just an optimist.
Maybe. I'm going and see how my life plays out first. And if I do, I'm going to wait until I'm older. I have a lot of growing to do.
Children are kind of a love/hate thing with me. I highly value children, but personally, I'm not really mature enough to deal with them well yet. That's what the growing part is for.
Children are kind of a love/hate thing with me. I highly value children, but personally, I'm not really mature enough to deal with them well yet. That's what the growing part is for.
Woah, just take it easy there kemosabe. I didn't know my little post would trigger such a hostile reaction, who hurt you? Was it mommy? Perhaps daddy? Idk, I suppose it's not important. Perhaps I can cool you down with a bit more of an expansion on my idea hmm?Thincrust said:
My view on having children good sir, is purely from a scientific perspective (I can assure you I'm one of the least religious people I know). Species inhabit their environment right? And to continue living in that environment, they need to reproduce or else they will all die out. I'm merely saying, from a biological point of view, you were put on this earth to reproduce. Many animals only live long enough so they can pass on their genes to next generation. We just happen to have the gift of sentience and emotions that seemingly complicate the matter.
I also think, if may be so bold, you have a rather bleak attitude towards having kids in the first place. While its true, from a rational, logical and financial perspective, having a child is a serious burden.
But you seem to be forgetting another aspect of raising children. The life experience of it all. Its an adventure in and of itself. Look at this: you, yes you, created a person that walks among us all on this earth. How amazing is that? Children can bring lots of happiness and love and make you discover things about yourself you didn't know existed.
Am I saying you need to go out and pop out a kid with the first woman you see right at this moment? Hell no. You're fucking 27. The purpose of being young is to experience all the stuff you can experience before you're ready to move onto the maturer...perhaps a bit duller (although not necessarily)portion of your adult life. But just think. When you are 40, you're view on life and your priorities will probably be much different from what they are now.
Does it make a difference to have a family line or not? Probably not. Does anything we do in this life usually make a difference? In the long run? Probably not. I'd say live it up and don't regret something you may have enjoyed by not taking up the opportunity.
There, hopefully you can be a little less angry at me.
(PS what if your rents had decided not to have you? food for thought...even though I'll probably get the same BS every pessimistic person says "Why would I care? I wouldn't exist" I'm willing to bet you enjoy existing.)
Well, actually the moral questions aren't as great as you might think. To be honest the ethics of the US and a lot of the Western World are pretty extreme and arguably not functional in reality despite our best attempts. Our morality driven military doctrine for example has left us "losing" pretty much every military conflict we've been in since World War II. Our military has never been defeated, but we have been consistantly unable to meet the objectives we set for ourselves.Strixandstones said:
If you've taken ethics (which I have) which is an examination of ethnical systems and how they work, and what logic they use (rather than teaching people right from wrong, which is a misconception among those who have never taken it, if anything Ethics kind of teaches you that there is no such thing as right and wrong and that it's all subjective), you'd find that according to the majority of ethical systems culling the population would be the right thing to do, no need for you to put "Greater Good" into quotes. The idea being that whatever benefits the greatest number of people winds up being the right thing to do. Morality by the numbers so to speak.. which is a great thing to argue, though it gets harder and harder to remain consistant with the bigger the numbers get since no matter how many people are saved or benefit deciding to bring an end to say a hundred thousand people or more is never going to be easy (nor should it).
One of the problems I think we are facing right now is that Western nations like the US tend to assume that everyone holds the same basic values "people are the same wherever you go" so to speak. This is why people ignoring speeches by the Chinese which leak through every once and a while (or at least not giving them much press time) are of course disturbing. China has an overpopulation problem and very much wants to deal with it, however their ethics come down to the promotion of their own culture and ethnicity above all others, so they use fairly minimal measures (overall) while preparing their military for the oppertunity to wipe out other nations and colonize their land for living space. We in the US tend to dismiss such things as crazy, but at the same time we're dealing with ethnical points of view that are
not our own. China is pretty much drooling over the time that ICBMs will become obselete and things will revert to conventional force solving problems. Their work on blinding satellites (and interfering with targeting so they can't be used to launch ICBMs) is a big part of their current engagement doctrine (and do a search for the key words, China, Satellites, and lasers... it can be pretty scary).
The point isn't so much that "china is evil" and to spread paranoia. Heck, I could post links to their mobile execution centers again for that, but simply to point out that there are indeed other ethnical systems out there with differant points of view on things, as is what "the greater good" actually entails since in many cases it might just be whatever benefit's one's own race and culture.
In an overall scheme of things when you omit any kind of racist or cultural supremacy/destiny related issue, simple morality by the numbers is that if we wipe out say 50% of the world population right now, no matter how it's done, the benefits this would allow in terms of resources, scientific development, and other things would allow us to spread into space, colonize the ocean floor, or otherwise obtain more living space when we're not focused on simply maintaining the population and dealing with it's problems so much. In the long term more people would wind up benefitting as well as the survivors of the cull, because more people will be born, and more living space means a bigger population with a higher standard of living especially if we're careful to pace ourselves to keep our population in line with what we can support.
It can be argued that by not doing this, we're doing the wrong thing, as we're maintaing a state of perpetual misery for the have-nots who will always be present in large numbers and for whom things will continue to get worse given the current course, with no way of changing things due to their very existance.
Sorry about the length, the bottom line I'm trying to convey is that I think the perceived immorality is largely a matter of our own system of ethics in the majority of The Western World, I think most systems of ethics (though by no means all) would come to the conclusion that our approach is actually wrong and does more harm than good when viewed from an overall, long term perspective.
The reason why the world exists in shades of gray is that nobody wakes up and decides "gee I want to be really evil today" except for perhaps a handfull of sociopathic seriel killers who rarely wield any power (or maybe members of a few small cults). Everybody acts based on what they think is right, and even selfishness tends to be justified within some form of overall perspective, even guys like Hitler and Stalin believed they were doing the right thing, and were able to justify themselves well enough where they were able to rally legions of fanatical followers behind them in what they were doing.
Simply put it's not clear cut.
Never. When faced with this question, I do what an awful lot of people in britain don't seem to be doing. I take a good long look at myself and think whether I'm a suitable parent. And I'm certainly not.
Besides, even if I wanted to, kids requires one of two things; A female, or advanced cloning technology, and I am one of the only people for whom the latter is more attainable. XD
Besides, even if I wanted to, kids requires one of two things; A female, or advanced cloning technology, and I am one of the only people for whom the latter is more attainable. XD
Eventually, I would love to have a family. That's kinda weird coming from me as i'm only 15, nearing 16, but I like the idea.
Probably only 4 children. No more than that.
Probably only 4 children. No more than that.
I'm not making babies, I'm going to do my part in decreasing the rate in which world's population rises.
Don't want 'em, period. Children creep me out. Ditto pregnancy and childbirth. Besides which, I'd make a rotten mother.
If a person can adequately raise a child, not just pawn them off on schools, television, video games, the internet, etc. then I'll support a person's decision to have kids. If not, I'd wholeheartedly support free sterilization for that person as a government-funded program.
Few things screw up a society worse than bad parenting; it's a person's first education, foundation of self-esteem and world-views, and probably a laundry list more in factors worth mentioning.
Few things screw up a society worse than bad parenting; it's a person's first education, foundation of self-esteem and world-views, and probably a laundry list more in factors worth mentioning.