tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2532313388110978122.post1418204785853820689..comments2023-10-28T00:47:18.069-07:00Comments on Weeks Population: Is Low Fertility Destroying Our Civilization?John Weekshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04069566137451684355noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2532313388110978122.post-21357530975410278932014-04-14T01:32:54.359-07:002014-04-14T01:32:54.359-07:00Maybe finally the message is getting thru. I am in...Maybe finally the message is getting thru. I am in a depressed phase but with all my faculties and love for books intact (heck its reallly all I got!) and leafing thru the 'western cannon' of mavericks and original geniuses since the days of Hesiodotus or Homeratio or whoever, I am seeing many familiar intellectual figures in a new light! I am astounded that Schopenhauer was the biggest 19c philosopher, or that Camus won a Nobel. because I have slowly nibbled at their philosophies in essays and blog posts, not laid out in wandering tomes. Their pessimism and deprecation of life really sticks out to me as non-mainstream, and I now believe that nature 'had us by the balls", such that the only thing that had any meaning in an arduous, hazardous, meaningless life, was...romance, ardour, sex. But since no-one wants to talk to women as sex dolls and brood mares, or tell kids they were incidental to irrational urges, but can be free labor/retirement fund now that they are here to enjoy this blessing, life, our long lineage of peasants hide-bound to custom and superstition got us here. <br />As an African, I find that the colonialists have thoroughly discredited any form of ancestral worship in my mind, and I really only have as much academic interest in my heritage as in western europe's, or edo period japan, etc though i am really an academically-inclined sort. SO this worldview seems underwhelming, and with free love and birth control, the only reason to have kids now is a living retirement fund. But if it gets to where I can't take care of myself, a prisoner to my body locked in to a place where it can be patched and taped together before the Big One, why don't I just get a ticket to Dignitas in Switzerland instead of passing the horrors and iniquities of old age on like a hot potato or inflamed genitals? A lot of things about life are messy and unjustifiable so with our rationality delineationg what is or is not acceptable I think many people will find life itself is unnaceptable-hardly original or unprestiged!-maybe not kill themselves but definitely not inflict it for some nebulous 'spiritual growth' or something. And modern society makes the choice less painful;many distractions, birth control, painless death etc. Children are a depreciating good, life is overrated. That's why social norms have to force us to have kids these days, and why we have to be forced into this absurd world anyway. I often ask myself, would anyone at all accept to be born into africa unless it was too late to do anythign about it? I'm middle class myself, but I resent that I have unavoidably put roots in my society when I know I'm gonna move somewhere with reliable rainfall and fewer goddamn dialects/arbitrary cultural divisions anyway. But I am convinced that parents worldwide are as thoughtless as african ones, with the assumption that kids must simply be chuffed (chucked?) at achance at the go-around. this incipient antinatalism can only be a good thing.schopenhauer.Pauerhttp://incognegro.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2532313388110978122.post-20907600109154844462012-11-07T08:21:15.043-08:002012-11-07T08:21:15.043-08:00I have never heard of such a scheme actually being...I have never heard of such a scheme actually being implemented. Retirement benefits (public and private) are usually tied to employment history, not to family structure.John Weekshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04069566137451684355noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2532313388110978122.post-16235325210227189182012-11-06T23:20:19.938-08:002012-11-06T23:20:19.938-08:00Thank you for your analysis. I am wondering if any...Thank you for your analysis. I am wondering if any government anywhere has tried tying retirement benefits to birth rates. I mean, giving lower retirement benefits to people with no children or one child. I don't think that this could ever become law in the USA, but I do recall hearing the idea floated occasionally.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com