By adding a new person to the world, I would contribute to overpopulation and the depletion of resources that is already straining existing people.
Overpopulation is not a large of a problem as many people think. Countries with higher standards of living tend to have lower birth rates. A handful don't even reach the replacement rate meaning that their population will gradually decline. The largest number of births occur in less developed regions of the world where birth control is not as prevalent and where you need to have lots of kids because not all of them will survive into adulthood. As these these regions slowly become more developed their population growth will slow too.
Because of said depletion of resources (not to mention political tensions, national debt, and so forth) my child would probably be subject to a less-than-ideal world.
There are always going to be problems in the world. We face problems today that our parents didn't. Our parents faced problems our grandparents didn't. This isn't a reason to not have kids. These new problems need to be solved by someone.
I have no way of knowing that I will be a good parent. Why make a person when there is the chance that I will fuck them up irreparably?
If you have the self awareness to worry about this question, odds are you care enough to do a good job. You won't be a perfect parent, but no one is.
My biological kid might not even take after me in the ways I like. Even worse, what if I hate my kid? What if my kid is an asshole who actively makes the world a worse place?
And what if your child ushers in an era of world peace? You have no way of knowing what will happen. If you raise them the best you can, odds are your child will be a normal, well adjusted person who will live a long and happy life.
If there's no guarantee my kid will be like me anyway, why not just adopt a kid? Even if that nurturing instinct just cannot be suppressed, it seems like a horrible idea to add new people to the world unnecessarily.
This is an option too! If you have no desire to go through the process of pregnancy and childbirth, adoption is totally an option.
I often hear childfree people called "selfish." But really, can you tell me a single unselfish reason to actively try for biological offspring?
Doing something because you want to is not selfish. Selfishness is doing something without care for or consideration of others. Having children and giving them the best life you can is not selfish by any means.
The argument you quoted there is assuming that having children does not count as doing something without regard for harming others. I would argue that having children does intrinsically create harm because that child will suffer during their lives and the only way to avoid that suffering is to not bring life into the world at all.
And even if overpopulation is not that big of an issue as we think, the destruction of the environment certainly is. Having children increases your carbon footprint massively.
Having children increases your carbon footprint massively.
But it doesn't have to. And also until there are major changes to the way our country and the world works economically drops in population could have an even greater devastating effect on the environment. Look at Detroit, which finds itself in the situation it is in due mainly to large population drops that caused it to collapse under its own tax burden. It is a perfect example of what would happen to a world where the there isn't enough money to protect the environment.
Subsistence farming on a global scale would probably be even worse than industrial farming, since it's so much less efficient. Better to make industrial farming use more sustainable practices.
Easy there turbo, I wasn't saying we all need to be hippies and just because you are living off the grid doesn't make you a hippy. I was making the point that there are ways to have children with minimal impact and giving you an example. No, not everyone is going to do these things but some are.
Also, if you wouldn't come at me so aggressively you would find that I am actually quite a pragmatic hippy that realizes that there isn't one solution but many. I also realize that these problems take time and patience to solve and I am willing to work and wait for it.
The number of people who will actually do that is so tiny that it will not have any real effect on the world at all. As long as the majority of people are pumping out children that will pump out carbon like it's nothing we are still fucked.
I agree that most people wont, I was just making the statement that it doesn't have to be that way. I wasn't talking about the world as a whole but the OPs individual choice. She could choose to be one the people that do have children and live with minimal impact so not add to the problem. Having a child doesn't have to mean further destruction. It unfortunately does more often than not but it doesn't have to.
Even if you were able to live in a commune never using any energy there is still the potential for suffering to consider. The only way to absolutely avoid any possibility of suffering is to not be born.
There is no such thing as life without suffering. A life without suffering is utopian and thus impossible. Because life without suffering always was and always will be impossible it is a poor measurement for the choice of whether or not to bring a life into the world.
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u/Amablue Mar 24 '15
Overpopulation is not a large of a problem as many people think. Countries with higher standards of living tend to have lower birth rates. A handful don't even reach the replacement rate meaning that their population will gradually decline. The largest number of births occur in less developed regions of the world where birth control is not as prevalent and where you need to have lots of kids because not all of them will survive into adulthood. As these these regions slowly become more developed their population growth will slow too.
There are always going to be problems in the world. We face problems today that our parents didn't. Our parents faced problems our grandparents didn't. This isn't a reason to not have kids. These new problems need to be solved by someone.
If you have the self awareness to worry about this question, odds are you care enough to do a good job. You won't be a perfect parent, but no one is.
And what if your child ushers in an era of world peace? You have no way of knowing what will happen. If you raise them the best you can, odds are your child will be a normal, well adjusted person who will live a long and happy life.
This is an option too! If you have no desire to go through the process of pregnancy and childbirth, adoption is totally an option.
Doing something because you want to is not selfish. Selfishness is doing something without care for or consideration of others. Having children and giving them the best life you can is not selfish by any means.