Because I didn’t want to stray from the Dearth topic too much, I thought it best to create my own.
It seems Phaedrus and I have differing opinions on whether or not we should be able to regulate who has children.
I personally think it’s ridiculous that we are still spending so much time and energy on debating stem cell research and abortion. In my opinion, we should be debating what would be a good system to qualify those who can or cannot have children.
I am not debating currently what kind of system of government would be required for such a system to actually work, but I am arguing the idea itself.
So the argument is: We should have a qualification system for people who wish to have children in our country. If they do not meet the proper criteria, they simply cannot have children. Your thoughts?
Having another child had in 2 days time actually. A Tabette. Stressful.
There is a simple rule to govern the above case:
“I can have as many children as I like - but other people should have less, or none, if I think they shouldn’t.”
Children, not a rational drive. Cannot be governed by rational. Imposition and enforcement of any law would result in revolution, blood, and general amounts of horribleness.
But paying people more not to have kids might work. Or selling and buying of birthrights perhaps, if everyone got a freebie in the first place, or a lottery, or wreastling or something - as long as everyone has hope…
Problems though - whatever system is used to ajudicate ‘rightfulness’ to procreate would simply become another evolutionary influence.
Money - you get a race of rich kids. Or at least kids who are the offspring of people who will do what it takes to get the cash.
beauty - get pretty people. and then even more beautiful people. then totally bizzare people - think wolf → sausage dog.
lottery - you get lucky kids…? Watch out Vegas.
We’ll hit even more trouble too - stop breeding and you also stop expanding, stop expanding and you stop technology drivers and inventiveness. More heads → more brains. More problems → more solutions.
It’s a good idea. Limiting populations. Eugenics. Leanmeanfightingmachinics. Completely unworkable though unless everyone rips out their bleeding hearts.
The problem with this idea is that you can’t predict the quality of child that will be born. Sonny and Cher (singers from the 70s) spring to mind here.
Sonny was a small dark Italian guy and Cher still is a tall well-formed, dark, part American Indian woman. They had a child that turned out to be a small, blonde, stocky, fat, lesbian.
Bless her, but who could have predicted that?
I assume that you could breed people like dogs and get some pretty good results, but it would require comple slavery, and that’s impossible.
Well, I’m definitely not suggesting that we control who has children for the physical attributes. While I know the physical attributes of a child aren’t influenced by nurture (except maybe McDonald’s every day), the beliefs and personality of the child are greatly influenced by the parents, which is why such a system would be in place.
That makes sense, but would be very tough, due to the fact that bad parents will lie about just how bad they are.
In all my military experience I’ve met quite a number of what I assume to be psycho killers. These are people that know little or nothing, maybe they don’t care, about reasons for killing but are all too ready to do it. A lot of these guys have had some pretty tough lives, as children and I guess that spoiled them.
Eugenics is a good idea. I’d go as far as to say it’s the only way to “save” the human race. The problem is, we can’t carry it out on ourselves; we need either aliens or some kind of home-grown AI to do it for us.
Well how arrogant of us to assume that we, our simple selves stuck in a certain temporal societal period, know what ‘better’ is. How arrogant that we know what types of humans we should be producing.
Either way I don’t think it’ll matter too much. Nature has its own Eugenics and Earth knows very much which direction to move in. And that is the destruction of the virus which exists on earth today – the cancerous elites which are brainwashing everyone.
Psychics will be the mode of human most suitable for this task, as you cannot suppress information through the media if the media is no longer required to spread news. Already there are swarms of near perfect psychics in Asia being born. I’d tell you to check the media but, well… yeah.
The problem with breeding humans is that we have no idea what the future holds for us.
Techno society could collapse in a few hundred years and what will be needed are groups of big dumb guys, but instead we’ve bred a race of accountants.
I think to some extent, that would be good - not for making the world ‘better’, because as Gobbo said that’s nearly empty brawl, but for regulating existent pressing problems: poverty-stricken families, demented parents, etc. In order to have a baby, you need to be able to care for his up-bringing. Applying for children should be like applying for a loan at the bank.
This has its down-side, though.
The real question is: how do you enforce such a method ?
If a couple want to have a child without a license for it, how exactly do you stop them from doing it ? Mind you, most couples want children, despite their resources - Africa.
In an example of this sort, the Communist regime in my country passed a law in the seventies that no woman is to have an abortion. This triggered a horrendous surge of illegal, unsanitised abortions all throughout the country, most of which were done in gruesome conditions. A lot of women died, a lot of foetuses went down the drain. The Communists were eventually aborted too: in the aftermath of the Revolution, a lot of them were shot.
My point is that if you interfere in something as delicate as natality and birth control, you’re bound to cause a very big chain of unwanted consequences. I think it’s somehow nice to care about all those unborn children, but it’s difficult to put that concern into practice.
I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to conclude it is better that we do not abuse children. We know what “better” is in many various instances, a lot of which aren’t being taken into account or even questioned at this point. It needs to be the point of discussion. We shouldn’t allow people to raise their children however they see fit. There are definitely “better” and “worse” ways of raising a child.
Should we legislate who can and can’t have children and how many they can have?
No … not yet … and hopefully never.
But we can and must enocourage couples to have only one child, even to the point of allowing social ostracism for failing to do so, as negative population growth is now absolutely required to solve the deadly population management and pollution problems that threaten to destroy our planet in a very, very short number of years.
I once read that some Indian tribes are trying to stay away from technology, because they believe that western civilization will fail, one day.
I have no idea if the oil situation is yet another scam, or if some amazing energy source is just ready to come out, but if it all fails then then the high yield breeders will be a good thing. A return to the 18th century will bring a lot of death.
My fear is that the ripping away of our atmosphere from pollution or from nuclear war caused by too many people living way too close together that they choose the neurotic way out and “eat” each other … will take these Indians along with everyone else.
Due to my past and present,i say if a child is gunnu suffer,it should not have been born.
Enforcing this though would need something super-human to say the least.
As i see it,the sex urge is perhaps the most powerful urge,it cant be stopped.So it seems reproduction is unstoppable.
I’d often thought since everyone is doomed to suffer,exept in really bizarre cases, all reproduction should be stopped… That is impossible. And mainly i guess because we get the occasional healthy person here,despite mankind’s best efforts…Lucky basterds.
In light of this,i’m totally behind genetic engineering the next generation because of DEgeneration,as seen unmistakably happening. To at least alter them as to not suffer…
