The world has always been an uncertain place. But this acknowledgement does little to capture just how surreal our current environment really is. Consider what many of today's children face. Schools are brimming with incompetent teachers, kids are taught not to stand up for themselves if they are being bullied, babies are being pumped full of vaccines they don’t need, approximately 39 million children and adolescents are suffering from obesity, young boys are called toxic and racist on the basis of their biology, and I can plausibly argue that the surgically removed breast tissue of underage trans girls is being used to manufacture breastmilk substitutes.
One look at the widespread backwards treatment of our young and it seems that the state of the world has plummeted far below the level of mere unavoidable uncertainty and that humanity is now doing everything it can to forget itself completely.
And so, for many, acknowledging the eternal uncertainty of our world hardly assuages fears of bringing more children into it.
Why would anyone want to make more children than the ones they made before they realized just how batshit things were going to get? Why would any currently childless people want to bring any children into this world at all? These unborn souls will predictably suffer all the cruelties of the world; which may have always existed, but grow ever stranger and more complex by the month. Isn't it a kindness to spare innocents from this?
::Sigh::
The Rothschilds never suffer thoughts like these, unfortunately.
Spend more than a few seconds considering that and you might start to get a weird feeling. A feeling that your tug-of-war team is on track to be the losing one. First, your team is nearly outnumbered. Worse, it isn't taking the game seriously. Your teammates are plenty fit - you could win if they’d help you recruit more players, but they're just too busy picking their noses or calling each other names to be focused on that aspect of the game. You scan the faces of your opponents. Somehow, their horrific physiognomy is no barrier to them bringing in more players at an alarming rate. Now your pride is on the line! You try to motivate your team and in response you're chided for being a spaz. Are you the only one who sees it? The potential your team has to balance the odds if only they would try to resist the pull of the favored title defenders? Doesn't anyone else want to win?
The ruling class who hold themselves above the Malthusian rules against reproducing they would very much like to selectively administer to everyone else will pull team Freedom, feet dangling, across the center line through sheer power of numbers alone unless we get busy making babies. So any argument against doing just that is worth addressing.
Here are my brief thoughts on some of the arguments I’ve heard against bringing kids into this very unstable world.
Under Pressure
My doctor once told me that populating the earth is not my responsibility. She meant well. We were having a lengthy discussion and something I said must have prompted her to assume I feel a bad sort of pressure to have more kids. It’s in her compassionate nature to soothe angst whenever she senses it, so she smiled at me and advised against putting so much pressure on myself.
I'd be lying if I said I felt no pressure. Of course I feel pressure. But my doctor misunderstood me. I think of this pressure as something good, not bad. The pressure is proof of something worth preserving in this world, something worth contributing to, worth fighting for. At the risk of sounding too cheesy, the pressure, or motivation if you prefer, represents my belief in all of us here and now, and all my hopes for the future.
I feel this pressure, for one thing, because I am and I believe that I am good. This alone reveals something worthy of procreating for: I already love my future children, and I am here waiting for them.
I suppose many in the ruling class believe they are good, too. But this isn’t a post about how to tell who is right in believing they're good. This isn’t a contemplation on how to get people we dislike to stop having kids. The focus here is on the choice to have children despite the world being full of bad actors, whatever that means to you in the details. This is about telling the but what if crowd to either nut up or shut up.
Of course, the pressure I feel is also proof of far more good in this world than just me since I do not exist in isolation. My existence and wellbeing depends on the goodness of others, therefore the goodness of others exists. I owe my good life to others because of their competence, their love, their protection, their willingness to help me achieve my hopes and dreams. Some are people I admire from afar, some I have the pleasure of knowing intimately. I am, but I could not be if there were mostly evil here.
Some of the good in this world is also seen in the children I already have. They are a great source of the pressure I feel to have more children because, in so doing, I will provide them a very powerful sort of inheritance - the non-material inheritance they will know as their brothers and sisters. If I fail to do this purely out of fear - fear the manipulator, fear the mind-killer, fear the soul-crusher, fear the captor - then I have already begun to diminish the goodness in this world. I have already allowed fear and lost potential to reign where courage and confidence should be. Thus, the belief that one should not have children because the world is a bad place is self—fulfilling.
Unfortunately, this belief is fairly widespread now. So, yes. The pressure is on. It is on us who are lucky enough to have the capability of making children since this means we also have the responsibility to do so. No one will hand down our traditions, our values, our culture, if we do not do it ourselves. The pressure is on like never before. And that’s good. It means there is good here.
Baby, don’t fear the reaper
It’s true: Life entails suffering. You get up, you ruck, and you only rest so that you can ruck again, and again, and ruck some more until finally your journey is done. But this is the whole story to the same extent that a sphere can be fully appreciated in a two dimensional universe.
What did you see along your way? What did you hear? While you were carrying your load, who was by your side? Where did you go and what did you discover there? What remained a mystery to you? What made you laugh? And what did you miss while you were away from home?
The answer to these questions reveals more of what is good in this world. The fight for Freedom is a fight to pave the way for more people to experience this good for themselves - all the heartaches, and all the joys. They cannot do this if they never exist at all. And we cannot win without multiplying the good in this world. It is for this reason I believe that refusing to have more kids out of fear, or worse, not having them at all, is to forfeit - the saddest way to lose of all.
The philosopher Seneca said that to mourn the dead, we must also mourn the unborn. Never did I expect those words to take on the flavor they have for me now. Now I kinda do mourn the unborn for their sheer deprivation. The dead at least had their chance. The unborn may not know what they are missing, but we do. We know the good that awaits them - the ecstasy of love, the thrill of the outdoors, the serenity of a quiet night, the ache of hardy laughter, the pursuit of an objective, the fulfillment of a promise, stubborn Hope against great odds - and yet many perfectly fit would-be mothers and fathers choose to forego having children in case they will live difficult lives. Oddly, the outcome most feared is death following the suffering. Death - the inevitability that returns everyone to the mysterious state that Seneca alluded to. And so we’ve come full circle - we must prevent the existence of children in case they should cease to exist.
…
Honestly. You may as well take your chances and produce life, then.
Many of the people I’ve heard expressing fears about having children are the same people who would relish any chance they could get to face their foes and tell them that all which is imbued to humanity by glorious nature, by God, by the cosmos, cannot be taken from us. They have an urge to do this even though they may not see Peace in their own lifetime. I don’t believe these people should betray the chance they have to pass the torch on to their own progeny when it is entirely possible they will see peace in their lives, if only they could be given life - if only we would refuse to forfeit. Why deny anyone the chance to experience Light because you can now only see darkness?
If it is not mere material hedonism keeping you from having kids, but rather an honest concern for the lives of the children you would like to have, I offer that this means you are part of the goodness of this world. Have some faith in yourself as an extension of this. If you already fear for children you do not yet have, it follows that you believe that bringing them into the world would magnify the goodness here. It follows that you already know that restricting their existence to the ephemeral space of your sweetest dreams does the exact opposite.
There’s some good in this world, dear reader. And it’s worth procreating for.
Thanks for rucking with me. Please enjoy the music as you exit.
Great stuff :) I love your essays !
When people complain to me about gays, lesbians or trans people. Or twisted Dual Income no kids libs... I say why worry. Live and let live! Get busy yourself, stop buying into the game I have so many Morman friends with 6-8 kids each. And all before 32. Were just gunna breed these non breeders all out in one generation.
When I moved to the USA as an immigrant, I only got along with the Mexicans and the Chinese in the workplace. No one else wanted to arrive early and work 60 + hours.
When the other people at work would comment on this I would say "One day the only people in this place are going be Me the Beaners, the Changs and the Cockroaches, because you guys barley show up. But we are all here before you and leave after you.
A few meetings with HR about what I can and cant say later and I learned to shut my mouth and not say crazy shit in America.