Stop being so damn emotional about children. Try to look at things from a larger perspective. Suppose you were an anthropologist from another galaxy that was tasked with studying human beings impassively. Suppose you were an extraterrestrial that was investigating human beings dispassionately.
If you could see one particular child’s entire life objectively, you would witness that the selfsame brat is never going to accomplish anything. If you could watch his entire life from birth to death, you couldn’t help but observe that he would never achieve anything. Never amount to anything no matter how much he is fed. If you could scrutinize the entire span of a child’s life, you would see that he will be just another failure like everyone else.
What difference does it make if your kid doesn’t get an education? Not like the kid is going to learn anything in government school. Not like your offspring would have the brains to understand anything anyway. By society’s own standards, a given child is not likely to make any relevant contribution whatsoever. By any objective measure, one kid is hardly likely to advance civilization in any manner.
What difference does it make if your child should go without? Not like anything is going to come out of your fat-ass kid but shit anyway. Life is a disgusting nightmare: the sooner children realize this horror, the better. Once your brat knows the terror of existence, he won’t want to do anything with his days anyway.
In the great span of human history, your offspring is of no importance whatsoever. And should be treated as such. Instead of trying to nurture another generation, you should have first tried to enhance yourself.
I'm one of those "never amounters". But by fucking God, I would never be here if not for my my parents. I notice you let breeders off the hook here, Mr. Mean. Correct me if I'm wrong. I honestly don't see the logic (to say nothing of decency) of bringing a child into this shithole and then blaming THEM because the spawners have breeder's remorse... I look forward to a reply.
ReplyDeleteI got news for you, my unknown reader: I am just as worthless as you are. The great secret of life is that all human beings are without value.
DeleteBelieve me, I would certainly like to put breeders on the hook – only, there isn’t any hook (metaphorical or otherwise). Much as I would like to see all parents impaled on skewers (for all the suffering they have brought upon the world), those meat hooks are not going to exist in my lifetime.
And I am only concerned about events in my lifetime. No matter how perfect things might become in some future age, I care only about my span of years.
And because I have reached any age where most of my contemporaries have kids, I must consider the best way to exist in a planet already squirming with offspring. You, my anonymous reader, might not have any children – and I, the author of this blog post, might not have any children – but the majority of my readers have already up and bred. Most people your age already have children. That is an unfortunate detail, but an unfortunate determination that must be accepted.
So what is the best course of action for a person who already has kids? Abandon them. Cut your losses. Children must be considering as a “sunk cost” in accounting – and cast aside just as you would a losing investment.
We have already established that all human beings are worthless, so don’t waste any further assets on raising such a useless creature as a child.
Unknown, please send me an e-mail, how are you man!
DeleteThe best utilitarian argument I can think for ensuring a child does not starve is that the poorer and more wretched a person is the more likely they are to breed.
ReplyDeleteI am somewhat more fatalistic than the sociologists. A person who makes bad career choices is also likely to make bad decisions about breeding – they are both expressions of the exact same character flaw. Giving that particular person better economic opportunity (or giving that child better nutrition) will not change that bad judgment process one bit. The personality defect is there from the start.
Delete"Not like your spawn is going to make any contribution to society." Ahem, ahem. To the what?
ReplyDeleteYou are right, that is rather awkward phrasing; I will correct verbal clumsiness in the original blog post.
DeleteBy any objective standard, the chance of one child actually benefiting human cultural evolution is pretty remote indeed.
Thanks for elaborating, Mr. Mean. Still, I think children have a MUCH stronger case for screwing over and abandoning their parents than vice versa. My parents, especially my mother, are entering the "end of life phase". This has greatly aggravated my chronic anxiety (inherited from Mom, natch). Philisophical antinatalism aside, for the first time in my life I have truly come to resent them for breeding me.
ReplyDeleteI’ve been through that phase with my own father. The decline and death of a parent does not cause any change in one’s pessimistic worldview – the demise results in something more like an exhausted deepening of the original negative ethos. A weary Weltanschauung, as it were.
DeleteBring back the work houses for the little wretches, and let the breeders become social outcasts.
ReplyDelete