Why do people want to have children?

New entities seem to show up and become involved in this mess. The ones currently in it just keep walking in circles until they go "...this sucks I'm out of here" and reach Enlightenment. Generally existence is believed to be a series of cycles that will keep going, leading into new ones. Like the universe is believed to eventually begin to contract in on itself before it will rapidly expand forth and begin a new evolution period.

edited 23rd Jul '12 9:37:25 AM by Aondeug

That sounds nice.

Much less boring than having to sit on a cloud and strum harps for ever.

Though I guess It'd get slightly more confusing. And possibly inconvenient if you got turned into something small and furry.

I think being a Squirrel would be very stressful.

You have to fuck up to go back down to such. The getting the fuck out bit is neither existence nor non-existence. It's also not boring. But isn't not boring.

It's entirely separate from the concepts of boring and interesting.

That's off topic though. My last big post was technically relevant to what we were discussing.

Right. Sorry.

So, if the people that get born are the ones that want to, then there's nothing wrong with having children.

There's also the issue of it occurring anyway. The soul will just be born in another fashion elsewhere. Human extinction movements could actually be considered very harmful to the happiness of beings due to humanity being one of the few nice mixes between pain, pleasure, and reasoning.

I gather that St. Philip is a surprisingly skilled vibesman, though a tad overcommitted to hard-bop mannerisms.

@zerohelix: Why does the "necessity" of the choice rob it of its moral weight?

Moreover, the big point is that sometimes rights conflict. There has to be a determination of which rights are more important than others sometimes. The rights of a person who theoretically wanted to make their own choice about whether or not to exist are not as highly valued as the rights of people to reproduce, or the "right" of the human race to perpetuate itself. I think everyone here who thinks this anti-natalist stuff is garbage agrees with that. So even if there was some agreement that you were violating someone's rights by making an "unnecessary" determination for them, too bad. Of course, I doubt many people think that that's the case. Just as in the coma case, I make the choice I imagine my future children would want me to make.

@0dd1:

No. All I'm saying is that if you agree with any of the things I said in that post (the pre-birth bonding period, the ability to see, for example, your dead spouse's eyes in your child, the point regarding only getting the nurture side of nature/nurture) can even slightly enhance the bond between parent and child, then at most I'm saying there is a greater potential bond between biological parent and child.

Zero: I'm saying that since it's impossible to choose if you exist or not, it can't be a basic human right. There is no way I could choose if I existed or not. There is no way you could choose if you existed or not. If you killed yourself, you'd still have existed regardless of whether or not there's an afterlife. Now, you could argue that people have a right to suicide, but that is not the same as the right to choose whether they exist or not.

Your entire argument stems from the axiom of humans having the right to decide if they existed or not, which is impossible. Would it be nice if we had that right and could implement it? I'm not actually sure. It's an interesting scenario to consider. But it's not actually relevant to the topic of why people want to have children, even if it's relevant to why you don't want to have them.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

edited 23rd Jul '12 4:47:47 PM by Katrika

Actually, that totally makes sense! (sincere) That's the least [adjective] thing I've read in this thread.

Not that I had zero's exact stances to begin with, though.

edited 23rd Jul '12 4:57:28 PM by Enzeru

How long has this thread been being derailed by the question/assertion "Do people who don't exist yet and don't have any way to make their preferences known, assuming that they do in fact have a preference, still have a "right" to have those preferences respected?"

Answer: Too damn long.

Knock it off.

I'm going to lock it for at least a day. It may well get nuked.

Ok, following a cool-down period, I've re-opened the thread for discussion.

But the topic is not whether or not hypothetical people who don't exist yet have a hypothetical right to prefer to not be brought into existence and how they would hypothetically express that hypothetical preference.

Thread Hop.

At a very fundamental level, life is about begetting life. That is its purpose. All species from virii to flowers to mammals have as their primary function to reproduce. It is this way because any species that does not successfully reproduce goes extinct, leaving only those that do reproduce.

Human beings are living organisms; we are alive and we share descent with all other organisms on the planet. Therefore, reproduction is our purpose as well, in as much as the term can be applied to axiomatic concepts. Human beings that do not reproduce discard their genes from the gene pool, yet the species as a whole goes on.

As the perpetuation of our individual genes is built into our innermost drives (sex is embedded in the most primitive parts of our brain), asking why people want to have children is like asking why the chicken wants to lay eggs, or why the daffodil wants to spread its seeds.

A better question would be why, against this backdrop of species propagation, any given individual would not want to have children. The answer is accounted for in species variance; in the long run it doesn't matter which members reproduce as long as a significant number of them do, so the process can easily absorb individual perversity (I use perversity here in a technical sense, not a pejorative sense).

Bear in mind that an individual who does not wish to bear children (or is incapable due to injury, illness, genetics, etc.) can still serve the species in other ways. Defending it from external threats, growing food or otherwise providing services, assisting other individuals with raising their children, etc. All of that helps the species as a whole continue. So there's nothing individually wrong with not wanting kids as long as everyone doesn't feel that way at the same time.

Now, if you don't want to or cannot reproduce and you don't want to participate in the activities of the species in other ways, then you are a dead end and you serve the species best by being pruned from it, at least from a purely naturalist standpoint. Morally, there may be other considerations — in human culture we don't "prune" people merely for being nonproductive.

Let me conclude by saying that navel gazing about whether or not we have an existential right to bear children is something that can only be described as a "first world problem". It's something that people who are enmeshed in the day to day struggle to subsist cannot even imagine thinking about. One would think that they, being born into conditions that are objectively far worse than anything you or I would ever have to deal with, would be the ones wondering if it's worth it to keep breeding. Yet, they happily bear child after child, driven by that overriding species goal. Only we, who never have to worry about where our next meal comes from, can contemplate such things. Which makes us kind of hypocritical if you think about it.

edited 27th Jul '12 12:22:06 PM by Fighteer

I think we can just lock the thread again now. That was an awesome answer. Seriously though, I am still wondering why tropers in this thread seem so robotic. Like they don't understand other people at all.

edited 27th Jul '12 12:44:19 PM by wuggles

Well autism or social awkwardness unrelated to such a problem is rather common for tropers so in some cases they may not understand other people well at all?

While those are valid points, I would ask that we not get into armchair psychoanalysis of other tropers, out of respect. We've already said that we'll lock the thread if it turns into that sort of thing again.

edited 27th Jul '12 12:38:06 PM by Fighteer

Also, and more in general, I find that "my genes want it" is a rather unsatisfying answer. My genes predispose me to liking certain things and disliking certain others; but as a rational and moral being, I may well have different objectives. I don't go running around impregnating as many women as possible in an effort to spread my genes as far as possible. To be honest, I don't give much of a damn about my genes; and for most of human history, people did not care about genes in the least, for the simple reason that they didn't know about them.

That's actually a point that Dawkins himself makes in The Selfish Gene: while it is true that genetic selection only cares about whether a certain induced characteristic does or does not increase the likelihood of that gene spreading in the population, it does not follow that we should not have other concerns.

Personally, I believe that parenthood is good; but even though it is certainly true that my desires and instincts are in part affected by my genes, and my genes were selected in order to increase the chance of them spreading further in the population, that's not the basis on which I believe that. And if I convinced myself that parenthood is a moral wrong, then I would not reproduce, my genetic instincts be damned.

edited 27th Jul '12 12:45:33 PM by Carciofus

This is why I said that species survival allows for individual perversity. It's fine if some individuals choose not to reproduce as long as most of them are still reproducing.

The thing is that this moral stance against "inflicting" the pain of existence on a child is ultimately pointless, because enough other people don't agree with it that the species will continue, regardless of anyone's opinion. Now, if such a person were to choose to attempt to force that way of thinking on other people, I would be compelled to "prune" them because they have become a threat to the species.

That attitude is a dead end. And even so, if you're doing any form of productive work, you're contributing to the overall welfare of the species, so it's not a total loss.

edited 27th Jul '12 12:47:29 PM by Fighteer

I think that one should keep in mind that genetic determinism is a mistake. My genes certainly have an effect on my behaviour; but so do a lot of other things. I am not a puppet governed by genes, and genetic evolution is not some sort of omnipresent overmind.

Species, and their genes, went extinct in the past. It is not theoretically impossible — although admittedly unlikely, and something that I wouldn't consider a good thing — for all of humankind to decide that having children is morally wrong and ceasing to have them, undergoing voluntary extinction.

edited 27th Jul '12 12:57:01 PM by Carciofus

Of course that's possible. However, I don't think it's likely, as the average human individual is extremely motivated to continue the species, or so I've noticed.

It's more likely that we'd be wiped out by a comet or a supervolcano eruption than that we'd all spontaneously decide to stop fucking.

FYI, I edited my previous response to remove the "you" phrasing.

edited 27th Jul '12 12:52:22 PM by Fighteer

Yeah, I agree, it's extremely unlikely.

But as a (barely) intelligent and (barely) moral being, I think that my decision on whether I should have children or not should not be a function of which decision increases the likelihood that nonsapient pieces of information present in my cells become more common among other people.

My genes also want me to eat ten pounds of bacon right now — I mean, that's something that would have a true treasure back in the primitive savannah, and I certainly have the means to acquire them at a moment's notice. But I'm not gonna do that, because as a human being I recognize that as being a really stupid idea.

EDIT: OK, I edited my reply. I guess that you were using a generic "you"? Sorry for the confusion.

edited 27th Jul '12 12:57:48 PM by Carciofus

Your ability to control your behavior also means, as you said, that you don't go around having sex with every nubile female (or male) you see. The ability to regulate one's instinctive urges is a fundamental part of being a social animal; it can be observed in monkeys, dogs, etc. It in no way follows that such choice-making abilities would lead to a communal extinction pact, because such behaviors would not be beneficial to the society, unlike the ones I mentioned which help people get along with each other.

edited 27th Jul '12 1:00:52 PM by Fighteer

I never said that it would. What I am saying is that the decision whether I should spread my genes further is mine, and not the genes'. Now, granted, my genes have directed my development; but as a moral and rational animal, I am not a slave to them. I am free to act in ways that run counter the "interests" of my genes (and of course, this is just a figure of speech: a gene is a piece of information, it does not have any aims or interests, no more than the number 42 does.)

That's why I said that the system allows for individual variations. As long as you're doing something useful, your existence is a net benefit to the species whether you end up reproducing or not. With seven billion people on the planet, it's fairly certain that we'll keep existing regardless of your personal choice.

Personally, my wife and I have been unable to conceive a child. We have instead adopted a child (from Guatemala) and are raising him. Thus we make our contribution despite our genetic legacy not being passed on. It saddens me on occasion.

edited 27th Jul '12 1:11:44 PM by Fighteer

That's the first time I've hear your talk about your personal life fighter.

edited 27th Jul '12 1:15:10 PM by joeyjojo