The "kids" question came up *again* the other day. This time it was in response to my getting a 2-door sports coupe instead of a 4-door family sedan.
"But what will you do when you have kids? Where will you put them?"
<omit sarcastic and over-the-top reply about kids and trunks>
"oh, I think with 6.5 billion people the planet doesn't need another one from me"
"but you have to have some so that you can raise the intelligence level!"
Ok, what's wrong with this argument? Can you spot the breakdown points?
Let's start (as always) with the Romans. Augustus saw such a problem with low birth rate among the aristocracy that he instituted laws to try to get the upper classes to have more babies. It didn't work: the Christians took over anyway.
History is consistent on this point: the educated and rich don't want babies. Has this led to the dumbing down of society? Ask the people whose average lifespan is double what it was 500 years ago because of science. Sure we can chart that American kids can't find their own country on a map, but at least they know what a map is! And that map doesn't have pictures of dragons and "Beware of the Lions" written on the edges.
Its the Humanist variation of the Muslim/Catholic/Mormon argument: world domination through breeding!
The problem, as illustrated very well by 5th-generation-Mormon, 10th-of-11-kids, ex-Mormon MLEIV is that those darn kids grow up and develop minds of their own and don't always stay the course. Sure, some do. The golden oldest child, the wild youngest who repents. But by and large the religious behavior gets less and less fanatical with every generation who are exposed to the thoughts/cultures/beliefs of others. This is a good thing and whether or not I breed has nothing to do with it.
In the end, its an odd kind of peer pressure: "what's wrong with you that you are intelligent, middle-class, 37, can afford a nice car, have been with the same woman for 14 years, and don't have babies? Everyone else does..."
Somehow the "everyone is doing it" argument is not supposed to work for drugs but is supposed to work for babies?
Jeff:
Thanks for yet another honest and intriguing post.
Here are four quotes that may make you and Emily smile and/or nod your heads in approval:
"The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children."
-Clarence Darrow
"The world might, perhaps, be considerably poorer if the great writers had exchanged their books for children of flesh and blood."
-Virginia Woolf
"The perpetuity by generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them who have no posterity."
- Sir Francis Bacon
"Setting an example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age."
-William Feather, Sr.
So, here is to the two of you...life is to be enjoyed and not lived based on what someone else thinks it should be.
Amen Brother Sean!!!