Problem-posing education does not and cannot serve the interests of the oppressor. No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?
Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them”; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.
Implicit in the banking concept [of education] is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others…In this view, the person is not a conscious being (corpo consciente); he or she is rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty “mind” passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside.
https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf
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I would say in the current world not “it’s selfish to have children” but “it’s cruel to your future children to bring them into this world”
Idk if you’ve noticed this but the planet’s on fire and the people capable of fixing that are instead trying their hardest to ensure nothing is ever done about it.
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How do we reconcile in the West especially the incredible amount of waste and carbon emissions each person puts out, especially compared with the global south.
I am not trying to debate bro, but having a kid in the imperial core is almost the definition of selfish given that relationship to the degradation of our world where Westerner emits 10x to 30x the carbon and consumes products that lead to global exploitation
I'm not making an argument to sterilize the west or to shame anyone who does have kids, but I think it is an important fact to recon when considering having a child in the west.
of course it's selfish. being alive under capitalism is selfish. it's not a useful moral observation unless you are willing to go ahead and accept the Puritan premise that feeling nice things is bad. The observation that having kids is selfish is going to always lead to reactionary and individualized prescription for inaction unless you can couple it to a feeling that kids are a dialectal synthesis of human being, something that is both the self and greater than the self. me being alive rn creates the same amount of carbon etc. and by that logic, i should kill myself and everyone around me.
It definitely leads to a lot of reactionary emotions if left unchecked and ultimately the root of existentialism as you bring up in the question "why shouldn't I kill myself"
To me I see it as a decision that hasn't already been made (having a kid) vs one that has (already existing as a person), but ultimately if I see carrying capacity and overpopulation arguments as bunk then even Western population growth should be viewed through the same lense. It's a problem created via capitalism that individuals are then punished for or expected to respond to via individual action.
My biggest difficulty is understanding internally where the delineation between the hyperbolic metaphor of driving a big truck vs biking is from an environmental perspective with regards to kids and other ostensibly "bad" for the environment activities
By advocating for solutions that the global south adopts out of necessity. Or moving to places where they are mitigated to some degree. Mass transit, drastically reduced disposables, denser living, extended family homes, and localized agriculture all go a long way towards shrinking per-capita waste.
The highlights of Western living are rarely the biggest carbon contributors. Air travel is miserable. Coal power is archaic. Our homes are overflowing with junk mail and funko pops in a way that creates no real satisfaction. Our beaches have become waste dumps. Our forests have been decimated by logging and shriveled up by our irrigation policies.
None of these have anything to do with your personal decision to have kids. Your child will not factor into the volume of carbon we put into the atmosphere, because your child isn't the one setting the policies that favor fossil fuels over renewables or air travel over HSR.
I think its just another edition of "Individual Solutions for Systemic Problems". No better than a pledge to do more recycling or to swear off eating red meat. This simply doesn't impact industrial forces.
Definitely agree it's an individual solution for a structural problem line if reasoning and something I'm conflicted about when mulling this over. Where I encounter difficulty is the ability to prevent the additional emissions and waste of another human in the West by not having kids rather than individual responsibility items like recycling plastic bottles that are already existing in the world and consumers are supposed to be responsible for that. I guess that same argument can be applied to having kids in so far as individuals are not responsible for the state of the environment today. Certainly something I am still thinking through and not an area where I pass judgement on others who think different
Think of it this way. The federal government spends an enormous amount of money propping up failing industries. We've got tons of agricultural subsidy going to (ostensibly) highly profitable businesses that still end up destroying something like 40% of their industrial output. You get back to the old Grapes Of Wrath parable:
that puts the lie to the notion of human demand driving industrial productivity and waste.
We have a systematic problem, one in which people in power have devised a mechanism of control over the body public that relies on artificially inducing rising profits through engineered lower wages and higher prices. The waste we generate as a consequence of this planned economic model is incidental to its number of participants. If the population of the US were to shrink by half tomorrow, the social engineers at the top of the political food chain would scramble to maintain the rate of profit first and foremost. That would still create unsustainable amounts of waste, because waste - in the neoliberal growth model - still remains "free". Arguably more free now that there are fewer people to contest natural resources.
Nothing puts paid to this more than bitcoin and AI schemes in the tech sector. Turning highly efficient and effective calculation engines into ever-escalating busy-boxes that gobble up natural resources at an enormous pace. All to feed the illusion of productivity into the finance sector model and to justify the Big Line Goes Up mythology of American economic growth.
Population size isn't driving consumption of bitcoins. It isn't driving the consumption of air travel. It isn't driving the consumption of waygu beef or skyscrapper steel. This are decisions entirely beyond your control, and your decision to procreate has nothing to do with them.
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I understand where you’re coming from. A material analysis of the west in term of immediate environmental impact certainly does suggest that children are a net negative. And if that’s the analysis you’re going with to advocate for an antinatalist life, then you are justified.
I’m sitting in the imperial core right now with a baby in my arms, bottle feedibg and shitposting in my heated home. Why? Because I’m a mediocre parent at best. But I didn’t have children without the knowledge of their impact on the world. Their mere existence will contribute to climate change as mine does. But despite the immensity of climate change and ever other challenge my children will face I chose to being life into this world to experience it in their own way. And hopefully prepare and help them face, surmount, and solve those challenges. And to care on my legacy of shitposting of course.
Don't get me wrong either, I think we need people like you who reject or move forward while still knowing these facts.
A bunch of childless leftists attempting to or helping centrist and right wingers' children learn about leftism won't end well, and while children raised 'red' like Pete and Kamala exist, many more like Christian Parenti do too.
I can also see how having children could push others to the left purely because they now must consider the future of our world but it's a coin flip if they end up as a chud there
Very reasonable. Personally I agree that focusing educating children about leftism will only help so much. I say that as an elementary teacher who tries to incorporate as much transgressive, empathic, and class-conscious content into my pedagogy as possible.
But please reject the notion that a child’s disposition is dictated by chance. I’m my opinion that is a reactionary stance, a deterministic and myopic worldview that dissuades people from caring about the well-being of children. Yes, we are all a culmination of predispositions. Some children will excel in reading or math without any specific intervention. Some will be naturally inclined to charity and other pro-social behaviors. And some will be little shits. But you can’t forget how great of an impact nurture and experience have on people. It is the duty of leftists to cultivate material and social conditions around children such that they will be good people. To me that is worth much more than their weight in carbon.
I'm definitely a nature/nurture combo believer, you can certainly create an environment for someone to become a leftist but ultimately it is up to them to wield what they have learned for the benefit of all. Agreed that we have to create an environment that allows that and without leftist parents then an important area of that environment will be lacking