so....Not having children=Selfish?

[ElPatron]

You seem to have trouble reading full sentences. You're missing bits like, exploitation, which was not demonstrated.

Then the bit about personal advantage.

And lastly the bit the fact I never accused you of being racist against me.

However it does fit some things you've said quite perfectly.

typically by

typically by

typically by

typically by

For someone who accused me of not being able to interpret phrases, you sure missed out those two words.

You exploited the theme of racism as leverage against me. It is exploitation.

Right now, I am exploiting the fact that you did not read the "typically", which implies it is only an example.

However it does fit some things you've said quite perfectly.

Yeah, I totally accused you of racism and used the fact that I am white as leverage against you.

No, that just doesn't work. Me pulling a race card would be saying your opinion is invalid because I don't like your ethnic group.

 

[ElPatron]

Why the hell people like to abuse the word scientifically I don't know, but it's really annoying.

So people can't abuse the word "science" but you are free to abuse the word "racism" even if I have never expressed that any race was superior.

Like you said, double standards are for racists.

 

[ElPatron]

preserving your special little ethnic group

Now you changed to a patronizing tone?

Some people "snip" the bits that they find to illogical to even reply to, others just turn them into a slurry of unreadable mess. I cut them off because they are nothing more than dead weight, but that makes me different from others.

So yeah, I am pretty much convinced you have developed an irrational rivalry against me.

So just answer this.

Are you against "positive racism" or not?

Perhaps now we will see your true colours. Pun definitely not intended.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet or not, but not having children is not selfish in and of itself. However, not having children can show a tendency to avoid responsibilities towards others in order to focus on oneself -- in other words, not having children isn't selfish, but it's a choice that selfish people tend to make.

 

[ElPatron]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet or not, but not having children is not selfish in and of itself. However, not having children can show a tendency to avoid responsibilities towards others in order to focus on oneself -- in other words, not having children isn't selfish, but it's a choice that selfish people tend to make.

Exactly. Correlation does not imply causation.

I had a younger brother for the most part of my life and he used to be a little prick, but right now he is alright. I don't understand most of the arguments that involve "I don't want to care for a crybaby for all my life" because I think it's just admitting "I am too immature to deal with children and I don't want to have that responsibility".

Positive racism? Presumably you mean affirmative action. Yes, against it. You really do give off the image of someone who is quite irrational when you make leaps from what I've said to my potential position on such things.

Then tell me what is irrational in being against this:
[link]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8937856/Muslim-women-not-used-to-drinking-walk-free-after-attack-on-woman.html[/link]

Because, yeah I am pretty satisfied with how in the place I live hasn't reached this point, but I always loved London since a kid.

Then I actually set foot in there.

Multiculturalism has it's perks and I experienced a lot of them, but when you just don't give a fudge things start going downhill. Fast.

Ever heard of Detroit and the "white flight"? Something tells me we will see it in London if the authorities are more concerned about celebrating how good multiculturalism is than actually fighting crime.

Now then, since I indulged an apparently irrelevant question, do tell me why you feel it is relevant.

Is it relevant arguing if "pulling the race card" must only benefit you if you have been targeted by racism?

It's not relevant nor productive. Just like a lot of things I let out. It was on purpose, but it wasn't because I felt I was wrong and too ashamed to admit. I just got myself cornered on arguments that would never end.

 

[Aesir23]

Personally, I don't want kids as I don't think I have the right demeanour. However, if I do choose to one day become a mother then I will likely adopt. There are too many kids out there who already need a home and a family.

 

[R0cklobster]

I don't think it's selfish, ultimately it's your body and time; nobody has the right to tell you what to do with it.

 

[ElPatron]

... Something tells me you don't really know anything about that phenomena and have made assumptions about causes -__-

White British families have moved out of London as many immigrants have settled in the capital. The report's writers expressed concern about British social cohesion and stated that different ethnic groups were living "parallel lives"; they were concerned that lack of contact between the groups could result in fear more readily exploited by extremists. The London School of Economics in a study found similar results.

 

[Darkmantle]

I only skimmed your post, but it's selfish because you are jeopardizing the economy and stability of your country by refusing to have children. Every couple must produce at least two children on average to sustain your population, but since there are factors such as early death, sterility, homosexuality inhibiting us, couple must produce above 2 children or the population will dwindle over the years. Then of course there's the fact that the ratio of boys to girls is not equal, so even more children need to be produced.

Lowering the national reproductive rates to below the par required for sustaining to population results in age demographic imbalances. China is famous for it's one child policy they introduced to help counter overpopulation. This has been disastrous because it actually worked to an extent and since people stopped producing enough children, the country's average age is very high compared to most countries, it's a big problem when your country mostly contains seniors for obvious reasons.

Canada's population is actually at risk because too many people don't feel it's worth their time to have kids. Personally I think the government needs to offer more incentives to parents. Sure you will have welfare bums who will only benefit further from this, but more good will come of it than bad I think.

Former Premiere of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell made the situation a little worse in 2010 with the introduction of the new tax system. Yeah, let's tax all children's clothing and goods, I'm sure more people will have kids if we do that.

Agreed. Just look to Japan for a worst case scenario. They have a rapidly aging population and no-one to care for them. Their economy is suffering for it too. Australia is in a similar boat, we have more Baby Boomers who will need aged care that we can afford while maintaining sensible tax rates.

So it's selfish to not want to raise kids to take care of a bunch of people you don't know? People need to care for the aging so it's the duty of the young to crank out kids to provide for them?

that would be the definition of selfish. Not wanting to help anyone who isn't in your immediate group. So yes, it is selfish.

No, that isn't how selfishness is defined. Furthermore you're dishonestly exaggerating it. It's a matter of magnitude, not willingness to help others. Come back with integrity, or maybe better reading comprehension.

Only caring about you and yours, is selfish.

Babbling about things I didn't say in response to me is stupid. And goes to show that maybe you do have reading comprehension issues. Nothing I said implied only caring about you and yours. Is being honest that hard of a concept?

Ah I see you cut out the original post, which if you READ it, shows that I'm right, And you accuse me of being dishonest? maybe you should consider actually trying to argue my points in just saying "NO YOU'RE LYING"

 

[Biosophilogical]

mother of all snips

True. But spending years of your life to raise kids is more than a little solidarity. That is years of your life, work you have to do, interests of your own you have to shelve.

That sounds selfish doesn't it? Putting your own interests before others, isn't that what selfish is? (Just to continue a discussion on the internet, nothing personal.)

I think the way to look at this is that future children don't actually exist. So on one hand, you aren't being selfish in the traditional sense of it harming someone else, and on the exact same hand, assuming you are still calling it selfishness (despite not being harmful to others) is to point out that it is not hurting other people. So either way it isn't a bad thing, but depending upon how you view the concept, it isn't actually selfish.

 

[Mikeyfell]

But people get smarter as time goes on. If a person from the year 1900 who was considered to have average intelligence were to take a modern-day IQ test, they be considered mildly retarded by today's standards. Besides, just think about it--if it really worked like it did in Idiocracy, then how has our society come so far since, say, the Middle Ages?

Not that it means you're obligated to have kids. The whole "people are getting dumber!" thing just really irritates me.

I think you're confusing "There are smarter people today" with "People today are smarter"
Nobody back then was half as smart as Stephen Hawking, but how many people today are half that smart? You may be extremely knowledgeable about a lot of things but you have to realize that somebody hundreds of years ago came up with all of those things.

I think we're past the tipping point for intelligence, meaning that our resources have out stripped our need to think.
A fictional character from a videogame said it best.

All scientific advancement due to intelligence overcoming, compensating for limitations. Can't carry a load, so invent wheel. Can't catch food, so invent spear. Limitations. No limitations, no advancement. No advancement, culture stagnates.

People don't need to think for them selves any more because there's a shortcut for pretty much anything you'd need to do. Modern infrastructure means everything is too convenient, and with convenience people get lazy. And lazy people have no intensive to innovate.


I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that in 30 years the only notable scientific advancement is that the phones will be smaller.

There's just no way. People from any time period have no idea where their technology is going. Back when computers were just enormous calculators, do you think people had any idea that they would ever be anything more than that? Scientists did, of course, but even they had no idea what they would eventually turn into in sixty years. I don't know where our technology is going, but cloud computing, quantum computing, commercial space travel, and artificial intelligence are all being worked on right now. The Singularity could happen in the next 30 years.

The IQ thing is a fact, by the way. It's called the Flynn effect--the average IQ goes up about 3 points every decade, meaning average-intelligence people from the 19th Century would be considered mildly retarded today. People in general (not just the occasional geniuses whose scores would barely affect the average) get smarter.

Look at the state of technological advancement today. They made cameras, cell phones, MP3 players, Laptops, etc. and what's the next step? they put them all in the same device. Technology has started moving sideways.

And while the Flynn effect may hold true up to a point I still think that thing I said about the tipping point is also true, that we've either peaked already or we will very shortly. You know the old saying: What goes up must come down.

This kind of stopped being about kids. Hell I might be wrong, but I care about my nonexistent offspring enough to not risk their patience on it.

I don't mean to sound condescending, but do you think it's only this generation of people who've thought this way?

Back in the early 1800's, people started saying man had starts to ascend God and was nearing the point of finally reaching the point of having nothing else to learn. Scientists could "tear aside the veil of nature" and see it's inner-most secrets.

Technology is in no way 'moving sideways' because phones have cameras in them. Cars do fine with radios and televisions in them and we haven't suddenly stopped learning as a result. Technology 'slowing down' is a pattern we see time and time again - often before a big technological upheaval with a quick succession of radical improvements to what we already knew.

If you're worried we're reaching our peak, I wouldn't just yet. I'd go as far as saying you don't have to until the sun explodes.

EDIT --

Totally forgot to address your point about people becoming lazier when it comes to learning, let's try that again =D

I don't know how intelligent people were a hundred years ago - a lot of literature likes to suggest everyone was speaking Greek and Latin for funsies but very few people even had access to that type of education - and some people just love to learn. With every subject in the world, there is bound to be one enthusiast who loves it enough to try and learn it all. Even if we start having less and less of these people proportionately, there will almost certainly be a profit to be made somewhere and the people who aren't 'thinkers' will happily be 'funders' to the people with the initiative to chase what they want, at least in my mind.

I don't know, this is all just my opinion of course. For now, I bet an internet cookie that we'll see some kind of appliance in every household in the next fifty years that didn't exist prior to today. If I'm wrong: cookie for you, Sir.

You make good points. I just find that being pessimistic about stuff like this has a much greater chance of yielding a positive outcome. If it gets better, awesome! If it gets worse, at least I was right.

To be honest (and to steer this back to the initial point of the whole conversation) that's not even the reason I'm not going to have kids. I just can't stand the little fuckers, I can hardly stand people my own age. And if genetics have anything to do with anything any kids I may or may not have will hate everyone just as much as I do. And I just don't want to put up with them until they're old enough to realize that they have to put up with all the same shit I have to put up with for how ever long they're going to live.

I still stand by all that stuff I said about the cultural tipping point, that's just not the real reason.

 

[CaptOfSerenity]

I only skimmed your post, but it's selfish because you are jeopardizing the economy and stability of your country by refusing to have children. Every couple must produce at least two children on average to sustain your population, but since there are factors such as early death, sterility, homosexuality inhibiting us, couple must produce above 2 children or the population will dwindle over the years. Then of course there's the fact that the ratio of boys to girls is not equal, so even more children need to be produced.

Lowering the national reproductive rates to below the par required for sustaining to population results in age demographic imbalances. China is famous for it's one child policy they introduced to help counter overpopulation. This has been disastrous because it actually worked to an extent and since people stopped producing enough children, the country's average age is very high compared to most countries, it's a big problem when your country mostly contains seniors for obvious reasons.

Canada's population is actually at risk because too many people don't feel it's worth their time to have kids. Personally I think the government needs to offer more incentives to parents. Sure you will have welfare bums who will only benefit further from this, but more good will come of it than bad I think.

Former Premiere of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell made the situation a little worse in 2010 with the introduction of the new tax system. Yeah, let's tax all children's clothing and goods, I'm sure more people will have kids if we do that.

There's 7 billion people in the world, and 330,000,000 in the U.S.

There is no population danger. And having kids that you have to spend a lot of money on hurts you, and it would hurt the economy, as well, because you're not spending money on shit you need for yourself.

It's not selfish, it's a choice. To call somebody selfish for not wanting to pollute the world with another asshole-in training is wrong.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

I only skimmed your post, but it's selfish because you are jeopardizing the economy and stability of your country by refusing to have children.

Are you buying only products made in your country? Are you helping your country's exports? Are you sitting on money (savings) that a bank is using to buy stock in foreign companies instead of pumping it back into the economy? Are you protesting when once national brands sell themselves off to overseas buyers? Campaigning the local, state and federal governments on these issues? Etc., etc., you get the picture.

 

[instantbenz]

The 'economy' issue brought up by so many people is moot. Money accrued will be greater for the potential parent. At some point that money gets used or absorbed by the economy regardless. This isn't rocket science here.

If you don't have kids, you have fewer expenses. You can then spend money on what you want instead of on diapers and baby formula so check this out:

$ for shit I want into economy=$ for shit I'd spend on baby into economy

so, transitively, using a condom is like buying a ticket to a future of you pumping money into the economy as knocking someone up is a ticket to a future of you pumping money into the economy

ta-da

 

[instantbenz]

I only skimmed your post, but it's selfish because you are jeopardizing the economy and stability of your country by refusing to have children.

Are you buying only products made in your country? Are you helping your country's exports? Are you sitting on money (savings) that a bank is using to buy stock in foreign companies instead of pumping it back into the economy? Are you protesting when once national brands sell themselves off to overseas buyers? Campaigning the local, state and federal governments on these issues? Etc., etc., you get the picture.

Oh so true, just like no foreign governments ever bribe our politicians to vote in favor of policy to benefit said foreign national companies.

Margaret Thatcher and the Saudis? The money comes back to us.

Again, the 'economy' issue proves nothing. It is not selfish to not procreate.

 

[S_SienZ]

The 'economy' issue brought up by so many people is moot. Money accrued will be greater for the potential parent. At some point that money gets used or absorbed by the economy regardless. This isn't rocket science here.

If you don't have kids, you have fewer expenses. You can then spend money on what you want instead of on diapers and baby formula so check this out:

$ for shit I want into economy=$ for shit I'd spend on baby into economy

so, transitively, using a condom is like buying a ticket to a future of you pumping money into the economy as knocking someone up is a ticket to a future of you pumping money into the economy

ta-da

It's not about spending money. It's about ensuring a continuous input of the labour force.

Countries like Japan and Germany are already showing dependency ratios at dangerously high levels.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

I only skimmed your post, but it's selfish because you are jeopardizing the economy and stability of your country by refusing to have children.

Are you buying only products made in your country? Are you helping your country's exports? Are you sitting on money (savings) that a bank is using to buy stock in foreign companies instead of pumping it back into the economy? Are you protesting when once national brands sell themselves off to overseas buyers? Campaigning the local, state and federal governments on these issues? Etc., etc., you get the picture.

Oh so true, just like no foreign governments ever bribe our politicians to vote in favor of policy to benefit said foreign national companies.

Margaret Thatcher and the Saudis? The money comes back to us.

Again, the 'economy' issue proves nothing. It is not selfish to not procreate.

Double negatives always give me that split second of headache, lol.

 

[irishda]

Oh the Escapist, wherein a bunch of mid-20's to early teens try to rationalize children or their hatred of them without actually understanding them.

It's not selfish to choose childlessness, but, most of the time, you don't get a choice hahaha. Even with contraception, more than half of the parents I've ever talked to said they had children DESPITE planning/trying against having them. A lot of people hate kids, right up until the moment they have one of their own.

 

[zehydra]

I never really understood either OP.

The only way I could see it as being selfish is if your parents really want grandchildren, and you don't want children.

Selfish is an awfully negative term for making your own choice regarding how you want to spend the rest of your life.

 

[zehydra]

Oh the Escapist, wherein a bunch of mid-20's to early teens try to rationalize children or their hatred of them without actually understanding them.

It's not selfish to choose childlessness, but, most of the time, you don't get a choice hahaha. Even with contraception, more than half of the parents I've ever talked to said they had children DESPITE planning/trying against having them. A lot of people hate kids, right up until the moment they have one of their own.

Nah, I love kids. I'm in the minority when it comes to that on this site lol.

But yeah, you're right. I've always found that the whole idea of "planned parenthood", or planning to have children as fundamentally flawed. You're fighting millions of years of optimized biological instinct to reproduce, good luck with that.