this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 60 points 5 months ago (5 children)

It's absolutely fine if you don't want to have kids

I don't agree with the Antinatalist idea that having children is immoral. Or that Antinatalism reduces suffering.

If I'm incorrect please elaborate

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[–] [email protected] 135 points 5 months ago (31 children)

No, you're a fool if you truly believe this. Every generation has had some form of this feeling. Imagine considering having children during WW1, or WW2, or during Vietnam or Korea? Then after that we had McCarthyism and the Cold War - all seemingly hopeless days. Yet there is still so much beauty in the world, and there is so much that makes life worth living.

My son will turn 2 in a few months. It's tough being a parent, but it is entirely worth it. You cannot give into myopia - every time I hear him laugh, I am reminded that there is good in the world and it is worth fighting for. He will have his own challenges to face in life, but it is our job as a society to equip him, and all of the next generation, with the tools they need to succeed.

I'm troubled about the future, but you cannot make that stop you from striving for better days. As Marcus Aurelius said, never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

I've been re-reading the Lord of the Rings lately, and there is a lot there on this topic, but I always think back to Sam. We all should be so lucky to have a friend like that, but what he says when all hope seems to be lost is truly striking:

"It's like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."

Tolkien wrote this after his experiences fighting in The Somme. If he could find hope and found the courage to keep striving for better days, then so should we.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't think I would have brought a new person into the world during any of the other time periods you mention either.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 5 months ago (25 children)

That’s fair, and not an unreasonable choice. What I can’t get over is people acting like that’s the only reasonable choice, and that people who have children are idiots.

Just look around in this thread and you’ll see some smug ass attitudes. It kind of reminds me of those 14 year old kids who feel immensely smart because they’re atheist, you know?

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I believed this once, but then I went to therapy. People have thrived under way worse conditions.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm more worried about the reefs thriving

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 44 points 5 months ago (2 children)

especially when I see what kind of people choose to have kids

[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Then you're leaving the future to them.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

They’re not making a choice. They’re anti-choice.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 5 months ago (8 children)

But without infinite growth how can we feed the capitalistic engine with more souls?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago

Just think of all them empty mines, sad and alone, only wanting to be filled with the sound of children coughing themselves to death from black lung.

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