lets all please line up nicely and yell at each other now :)
Having kids is morally unjustifiable, that is unless you're in a rocky relationship and you think it might help
All other comments that aren't this (and mine responding to it, obviously) should be deleted because this is the only correct answer.
All
othercommentsthat aren’t this (and mine responding to it, obviously)should be deletedbecause this is the only correct answer.
I believe having children is a moral imperative, after all I can't find any adults small enough to work my diamond mines.
Antinatalism is hipster AnPrim.
It's anti materialist, anti dialectical, radlib bullshit that instantly loses to anyone just willing to say "nah" and follow a basic biological instinct.
Leftism is dead in the water if it's about moral haranguing. You have to actually fix the fucking world, not yell at people for being Humans in it doing the best they can.
Plus, it has shit memes.
Unforgivable.
It’s anti materialist
Good.
anti dialectical
Great, keep em coming
radlib bullshit
No
It works like this.
You have no kids.
I have ten.
You die with nothing.
My lineage multiples exponentially.
Dialectics ain't just a mouthful, it's basic fucking cause and effect reasoning.
You lose. Therefore it is a pointless, self defeating position based in lib logic about what's "morally right" in an evil universe you haven't bothered to fucking fix.
It's like shooting yourself in the head instead of doing your chores.
Now the house is dirtier and you're dead. Good job.
People forgetting kids are their own people and aren't your fucking toys to pour your thoughts into and that you can also adopt kids. Peak shit is unironically calling biological kids lineage.
The rest I agree with, don't kill yourself etc – but children are not yourself. Children are other people you brought into the world for fucks sake.
That's not what I'm saying. That can't be inferred from my refutation.
The point is that antinatalism is not a thing. It doesn't make sense no matter how you look at it, it's dumb in every direction and all the way down.
That is not then a prescription to create a cult out of your children, it's not even a prescription for you as an individual to have children or not. That's all based on circumstance and maturity and parenting skills etc etc.
Do what you feel is right and what works for you, but antinatalism still dumb af.
(And, if we're being honest, it's more than a little adjacent to Malthusian notions of population control and eugenics, which is definitely reactionary.)
Then we have no beef. I agree with the logic that anti natalists are too far up their ass with moral haranguing. Humans gotta human. I just feel very very strongly about children being respected and having rights and not being viewed as some kind of forever property of their parents. Thence, I take issue with the framing of denying anti natalism because otherwise we won't be able to outbreed chuds and libs.
It's leftism, we radicalise people, we don't start reactionary fertility programs for leftist couples.
I think you're not paying attention to the extreme extent to which ideology follows familial patterns. People, in the vast majority, are basically what their parents raise them to be, with very few exceptions.
I think this is a generalization that is losing valence with modernity, and was largely caused by people gaining most of their life experiences or "wisdom" through their familial relations. With information more readily accessible than ever before, it's become effortless to get your hands on whatever information you want (whether it's reliable or not.) It's been easier to amass experiences completely distinct from your parents than ever before.
I think it is and isn’t. I think people are mostly educated into being who they will be by the time they’re five, like psychology indicates.
Political beliefs are largely just emergent properties of our basic peronsalities coming to terms with the political realities as we get old and exposed. But, for most people, who they ‘are’ is largely defined by how they were raised in their youngest years.
Look at Rigt-wing Authoritarianism, for example. There will always be outliers/rebels, etc., but I think the trend holds.
Lib shit. I'd love to see something replicable that actually indicates that this is not evopsych bullshit or 'right wingers hate trying out new foods' pop sci which is like phrenology but for leftists.
Ok now that we're at 'lib shit' levels of discourse: have you ever read anything about political psychology? If not, you should.
It’s an entire field of psychology, so I recommend starting with a birds-eye view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_psychology
But also, a really important place to start if we’re ever going to talk about ‘reeducation’ or ‘convincing libs’ is to understand the basic principles of chud psychology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
A lot of it makes sense on an intuitive level, because we all know chuds, but it’s important to be science based when we’re talking about this stuff
A lot of political belief is personality, which is psychology
I've read these a while back. What I meant was like, what are your replicable go to, high quality experiments or like bodies of research. The aforementioned replication* crisis hit scores of political psychology studies in implicit bias and stuff.
Edit: For context, in the early 2010s, psychology was hit with a replication crisis – popular papers findings could not be reproduced, especially in social psychology (ie, personality and behavioural stuff).
A report by the Open Science Collaboration in August 2015 that was coordinated by Brian Nosek estimated the reproducibility of 100 studies in psychological science from three high-ranking psychology journals. Overall, 36% of the replications yielded significant findings (p value below 0.05) compared to 97% of the original studies that had significant effects. The mean effect size in the replications was approximately half the magnitude of the effects reported in the original studies.
tl;dr 61% of the research in top journals could not be reproduced, of the ones that did, half of those were not as strong effects as thought. Most of psychology is in serious crisis. People's lives work is turning out non replicable.
It's a mix of bad methodology, lazy work, genuine mistakes and straight up fraud. A system that rewards only original research and does not fund replication has let the problem fester.
Oh, I don’t have any answers for the replicability crisis. I honestly try to stick to core findings that have held up over the decades like ‘people largely are who they were when they were young’. Even outside of political psychology, political analyses show that people don’t change much in their voting patterns over the course of their life. That’s a pretty solid, old, replicated finding that I frankly don’t expect will change much with the internet. I don’t really believe the internet is that revolutionizing, tbh. 95% of retweets come from the same old media corporations that made 95% of newspapers before the internet, etc.
So that, and personality psychology, which is really broad and seems to be holding up. At least, the newer schools of personality psych like the Big Five model, which seems pretty solid tbh. And then things like Right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, which are in line with Big Five stuff today, and to a lesser exent system justification theory. Admittedly, I don’t know much about leftists/what makes a leftist, besides some of the basic personality tendencies. I should learn more about the psychology of becoming leftist later in life, really, that’s like the whole point here. Too busy trying to wrap my head around those multigenerational chud cults that currently dominate america
I’ve read a little about, like, ex white nationalists who go about helping other white nationalists ‘come over’, but never really studied their techniques.
Also, does CBT count? Haha I like to consider circumstances known to help people change their minds when I’m trying to do that but... it’s just really hard to change ppls minds
I think people are mostly educated into being who they will be by the time they’re five, like psychology indicates.
Oh I'm not trying to refute that, I'm saying maybe those formative years are getting less... formative? Maybe people as a whole are just getting more cynical IDK, I understand I don't have a background in pediatric psychology so I probably shouldn't be speaking w/ too much confidence here.
I also don’t have that background, but I’ve been looking at politics from a psychological perspective for a little while in the hopes of learning something hahaha personality is really big in political beliefs, because the vast majority haven’t thought about it that hard tbh
But I agree with you that we’re a lot more free on the internet now. But a lot of people use that freedom to just explore more of who they are. Sociologists talk about people becoming siloed because of interests, and society fragmented as we move online. There are available tunnels to, like, any ideology you want, and a lot of people choose to change!
But! I would wager that the vast majority of chapos have leftist or left-leaning parents. Maybe some of us have moved to the left of our families, and the ones who have moved to the right... are on a different site haha
Like, as I grow and heal and try to become a better person, I resent that I started off where I did haha I can see my political journey, and I’m always more who I want to be, but I wish I just started off there. I don’t really plan on having kids, but I can see the historical importance of providing that better place for the next generation to start off
o7 comrade haha reminds me of Emerican Johnson, who does the breadtube NonCompete. He came up fash as well. I've heard that people who start off extreme on one end, and who decide to switch, also end up extreme on the other. It's like how converts to catholicism are always the most hardcore hahaha
Glad to have you :af-heart:
And yet Kamala and Pete are related to Marxist academics. Everyone in this sub is likely to be far lefter than their parents.
We radicalise people through theory and education and popular movements that change their material conditions. We don't rely on breeding programs.
‘Breeding programs’ isn’t exactly a generous reading of ‘it’s ok to have children, folks; people won’t hate you, or I won’t, and you might actually just create more leftists’.
There are always exceptions, but as socialists it’s important to look at the evidence. And the evidence shows that political beliefs are highly heritable. It’s just how people are.
Kamala and Pete are in the dem party. They’re on the left side of shitty american politics, because their parents were left. And they’re extremely invovled in politics, likely because their family are marxists.
These trends aren’t definitive, they don’t set people’s lives in stone. But the beliefs one’s parents hold are extremely influential on their children, and I think it’s kinda silly to pretend otherwise. It’s just what the science says
Okay, look, yes it's possible to say that's an unfair reading. But from my perspective whenever we lean hard into the ideas children are legacy and we win at life by having more of them... We end up at breeding programs and cults that control children. Because that's what implementing natalism for those reasons looks like. If that's the goal you want to optimise for, and not humans should have kids because it's human and we love kids, you will get bad outcomes.
God ew that sounds horrible. In my experience with Indigenous peoples, chilren are super important, and considered the future and taken seriously as individuals. And also, everyone is a part of the community/family but... it’s not breeding programs haha that’s not why we’re still here, 2 million years later. What I mean to say is that I agree with you, totally, people should just have kids if they want to do that part of the human experience, and for no other reason.
I get what you’re saying, because I made the unfair comparison between antinatalists and the Quiverfull movement. I didn’ mean to say we should have as many kids as we can, like ‘you need to do your part’ old-school communist propaganda about having more kids haha no way. And I totally understand getting weirded out by that. Like, Quebec did that shit and it was suuuuper gross.
I just mean to say that we shouldn’t make ‘not having kids’ an important part of the leftist program, because that’s a recipe to lose against CHUDs who actually do do that cult shit, and have been for decades. Like I’m not saying we try to outbreed them hahaha I’m just saying... don’t give up. We’ll make it through, and having children is actually kind of an important part of that
I deal with a lot of rad-lib antinatalists who don’t want to give up capitalism, they just want to be vegan and fly less and it’s like... no, antinatalism is not important, and counter-productive imo. I have a lot of pent-up feelings about the whole thing haha imagine telling people... not to have kids, it’s kinda messed up imo
Prolly much for the same reason one would get disgusted if I went around trying to convince people to have kids hahaha. Just, do it if you want it, like we always have
Then that's not antinatalism? Someone just had ten kids. Like maybe you're not understanding what it is.
It's not saying, "I don't want to have kids because XYZ..."
It's saying, "having kids is wrong and no one should do it because (literally no good universal prescriptive reasons.)"
Again, I said this in my previous response.
What you choose to do, as an individual, is up to you. It's context dependent.
Saying no one should have kids is fucking stupid. Full stop. No exceptions.
Dialectics ain’t just a mouthful, it’s basic fucking cause and effect reasoning.
Dialectics is whatever you want it to be.
I aint one of them "Dialektiks" but 5 dollars is 5 dollars, ya feel me?
I'm dumb and I shit my pants.
Dunno why you'd tell us this but ok.
I'm dumb as hell, but that doesn't make your position any less incoherent.
"It's anti-dialectical and anti-materialist" I shout, acting like those are meaningful value judgements.
I dumbed it down as much as I could dude, I dunno what to tell you.
I don't understand Einstein Field Equations. I don't pretend like they're dumb because I don't know how to do math in non Euclidean space.
I don't think you understand the position you're arguing for or the position you're arguing against. Or your arguments for, or your arguments against.
I think you've got an all-purpose vocabulary you can use and that's great.
Material dialectics is just a Marxist concept that basically means "a chain reaction of cause and effect."
If something is not dialectical, it means it's only thought one step ahead. Like playing a chess game without realizing what the next steps are guaranteed to be.
If you don't like that, you can actually make an argument.
Or you can pretend like people who put effort into understanding something are dumb, actually.
Your choice.
Material dialectics is just a Marxist concept that basically means “a chain reaction of cause and effect.”
That is not what material dialectics is. You can analytically treat "chain reactions of cause and effect" without any reference to the components of a dialcetical process, and I do this constantly in mathematical modelling.
If something is not dialectical, it means it’s only thought one step ahead. Like playing a chess game without realizing what the next steps are guaranteed to be.
No, that is not what "not dialectical" means. You're thinking "myopic". You can be dialectical and myopic as well as being non-dialectical and non-myopic.
put effort into understanding
As I say to my students, the effort is great, but it's only half the battle!
"We can't beat capitalism and life has no value if you can live in 1st world luxury, so we should all die."
Cool, ok.
I'm glad the people who lived through the Mongol invasions, the Bronze Age collapse, and the period of time when there were less than ten thousand of us left on the planet, didn't follow this fucking advice.
The worst climate predictions are not as bad as what regular life used to be like on this planet. And it isn't the first time there's been a climate collapse either.
Blaming population size or inferring someone can't have a meaningful life because industrial society is in crisis is fucking reactionary.
Get a grip.
Your empathetic position is telling people in the third world not to have kids even though you know it's Malthusian horseshit?
antinatalism is a bourgeois co-option of hermit seclusion send post
The antinatalist: After much thought I've assembled a list of reasons why I won't have kids.
The hermit: I live alone in the woods. Who would I even have children with?
I don't want kids, so i don't have a strong take. But i do remember when some white lady yelled at my family at the grocery store for "overpopulating the earth" and called my mom "selfish" because she had 4 kids and 3 were brown. I never had an experience like that while chilling with my mormon friends who have like 11 siblings but then, they were all white so
Oh btw this white lady that yelled at my family? Had 3 kids with her. So she had literally just 1 less kid than my mom, but we were the ones overpopulating the earth lol
Any expulsion of sexual fluids is prohibited under volcel law, making reproduction a banned act
This is why we will use a needle to withdraw semen directly from the testes of only the most advanced socialists.
No expulsion required!
WRITING HOME
by Thomas Ligotti
Dear Mom and Dad,
I always wanted to ask:
when you went through the motions
that brought me to this dubious world,
did you ever pause to think
that I might rather you didn’t?
Were you so possessed
you could not pause to consider
the full repercussions of making it?
Of course, it behooves me
to extend the benefit of the doubt,
to attribute to you some vague notion
that you acted in my interest, saving
me from my peregrinations in nonexistence,
a stranger to being, bumbling in darkness
for the light of life on this earth.
Such is a common rationalization,
and so I must allow its hold upon you.
Yet I must also posit that all you wanted
was to be in with the crowd, the ancient mob
that cheered you on with mad eyes, flared nostrils,
and spittle-dripping chins—those ones
whose approval you secretly sought.
All of these are plausible explanations
for what you did in a chamber cut off
from cool reflection in favor of the primal rite.
Whatever your reasons, the fact remains
of my emergence from that dilated aperture.
Whatever your excuses, I must confess
I’ve always lamented the day you met.
All that aside, I just wanted to take some time,
having reached the moment in which
I’ll make an end to what you began,
to say that I forgive you.
Well son, the condom broke and abortion was to expensive. Now be a good boy while daddy drinks his happy juice
i have absolutely felt this way and if i was into poetry, may have even wrote a poem about it. however, i can't imagine publishing it to make sure people knew just how pathetic i felt.
It's tough in the US. If your adopted kids have living parents, they can cause legal hell for you later. That's a big part of why so many people chose to adopt from overseas.
If the climate issue doesn't get resolved real fucking quick, I feel it's wrong to have kids and raise them on literally a dying planet, where they will suffer the consequences the hardest in their lifetimes, when it's too late to reverse the effects of the catastrophe.
I think there's a good argument embedded in your post: That trying times are not necessarily an argument against having kids of your own. But something that those previous hardships/disasters/etc, that you mention is that they were temporary. There exists a really good chance that the impending climate crisis is one that humanity, or at least "civilized" humanity, might not recovery, or even survive. I'm not sure where I personally stand on natalism, but to diminish the struggles of future generations to overcome the damage to the climate ours and previous generations have done to "might be difficult... in 50 years" seems shortsighted.
