I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
“Nothing new under the sun” I suppose!
But you just gave the same reasons people have been giving forever. That’s not very nuanced. Things are measurably different now If you’re using the same perspective thinking about this that our parents did, then we’re truly getting nowhere
Edit: Or maybe what you’re saying is we need to have kids so they can be raised to be some kind of revolutionary super soldiers?
All I’m saying is the fight is coming whether you want it or not. Its at the point where this affects all living things, and the perpetrators don’t care and won’t stop. Whether you have kids or not, there will still be children. Therefore, you still have a choice to inspire hope in them or not even if you can’t understand why people would have children in this time.
Yeah, I know. I think it’s asinine that people are out here having kids, pretending that the future is going to be status quo. That’s kind of my whole point. I’m not, like, anti-humanity. I have nieces and nephews and I try to inspire them every single day. But I’m also real with them. I let them know that the future is fucked, that many things are past the point of no return, and that we should all be practicing resilience. Humanity will live on, and life will go on, but not the way that it is now. And saying any different is either lying to them or ourselves. That’s not hope, that’s delusion.
How can we say the future is fucked when all climate scientists are still begging us to take action and saying every little bit will help? We can’t. I know its glum. But you still can’t tell kids they are fucked. They aren’t yet, and right up until all climate scientists commit suicide from the insanity of this whole circus I will still be on the side of hope. Its not delusional. What else have we got to do? Only the wretched accept a bleak tomorrow. And I am still refusing.
Most climate scientists would agree that we’re fucked, actually. But most climate scientists would also say that every little bit helps. It’s not a binary switch. You and I? Our children and our children’s children? They will not live in a safe, sane, or comfortable world. That shipped sailed a couple of years back. But you’re right, there is hope. If every corporation and state stopped extracting right now, then in about a 100 years, with a lot of hard work and dedication and an international effort like never before seen, we will return to normal.
So yeah, teaching kids to be good people, and good stewards of the planet is an extremely important and necessary thing right now, but so is teaching them to grow their own food, mend their own clothing, build things, build community. Because that’s the only way we get through.