quote
follow
|
18-06-2012 Not to belabor the point, but there is a connection between natalism and capitalism. Capitalism relies on ever-growing profits in order to sustain itself, and ever-growing profits can only be achieved by a greater pool of customers or cutting the cost of labor. The latter has been done on a global scale by repeatedly exploiting societies with lax labor laws until their wages go up. But they need always more people to drive consumption, as well. So, in our capitalist societies where everything is monetized, having children nets you money and other financial advantages.But ultimately the drive to start new lives is driven by indoctrination, not money. |
|
19-06-2012 Wow, great connection Francois. I never thought of it that way, but true.This is further off topic, but found out recently that birth certificates are numbered to be traded on the stock exchange and we are worth money as human commodities of the state. Uniform Commercial Code law. This is being done globally, so babies are literally worth speculative money, as a potential human resource. |
|
19-06-2012 Yea, I know. Ever since the monarchies it's always been about the tax base. |
|
07-07-2012 "Why do people keep celebrating life even after it took away their loved ones"Curious choice of words, Irina. If anything took them away wouldn't it be 'death'? Life just is, it doesn't replace non-life; death takes the place of life but it doesn't cause itself. Two people (taking the non-technological case) can give life to a brand new person, either intentionally or accidentally. And it only takes one person to take that life away. We never talk about anybody 'giving death' to someone. We talk about giving and taking life, and we also (in our language) have life doing things on it's own: Life crept up on him.. Life does that.. Life is like that.. Life threw her a curveball.. Life finds a way... Even die-hard atheists will use this kind of language because, well.. ..it's part of how we use language, isn't it? But that means that when we come to a religious notion like life being a gift, we already have a framework, or a vocabulary that supports the idea. To ask, then, why we should celebrate it after it takes something from us, we pitch our tent in the same field as those who believe that life is a gift bestowed on us. If life is just the product of chemical processes, albeit instigated by the conscious will of two people, then it can't take itself away from us any more than milk gone sour can take away my cup of tea. Life, while we have it, drives us forwards. it's not something that we give up on easily. Us humans with our higher brains can convince ourselves that we have evolved beyond the normal survival impulses of our cousins, and choose to not reproduce, not to fight for territory, not to dominate our mates and siblings etc. But look around and you'll see that for too many those choices are as alien as choosing to poke our own eyes out. So a child dies. The parents grieve. Life moves on (there, I did it myself!). And if their relationship survives the process, they will try for another. Why they do is a difficult thing to decide, but I don't think it's a celebration. They have genes to pass on, and those genes couldn't give a shit about their last child. Genes are selfish like that. ;В¬) |
[ link ] |
07-07-2012
There is always a possibility to have a long discussion about how we should use our language. I find such discussions of little interest. I don't think the choice of words is the most important issue, unless it prevents people from understanding each other. Did you not understand what I was trying to convey? I don't mind paraphrasing my question into "Why do people keep claiming life is a wonderful thing (worth passing on) even after they experience the grief of losing their loved ones". There seems to be some sort of taboo on evaluating life itself (or nature for that matter), especially if one is going to assign a negative value to it. Claiming life is wonderful, a miracle, a gift etc - is usually ok, but emphasizing the horrors - that's unacceptable. If life isn't a miraculous awesome thing, at the very least life is 'just life', or it's just 'what it is', which is an empty statement. In the end of your comment you talk about how we're driven by our biology. We are. But not absolutely. Reminds me of a good quote: “By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake…But I am happy to be voluntarily childless, ignoring the solemn imperative to spread my genes. And if my genes don't like it, they can go jump in the lake.”—How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker. Also stating how thins are doesn't prevent us from judging whether this state of affairs is generally good or bad and/or trying to promote the ideas that would change this actuality. |
|
07-07-2012 So what DaithiDublin? We already know all of this. Get to the point already... |
|
07-07-2012 Thanks for the reply. Yes, I can see where my previous comment seemed to focus too much on interpretations. I kind of intended that and I kind of didn't. What I wasn't trying to do was criticise you for your choice of words. They just seemed to me to point some way towards what it is within people that predisposes them to have that optimistic outlook (or bias).I watched a BBC documentary recently that covered the study reported in the link you included. It's a fascinating insight into our unconscious motivations. That optimism that you talk about seems to be beyond our control. Not, obviously, for everyone, but for most people that is how it seems to be. You wondered in your fist paragraph about why seeing life as brutal was too hard of a decision for people. Going by that research (which is pretty slim so far, admittedly) it would appear that it is not a decision our conscious brains make. I clicked on your post based on the title alone, and I wasn't reading it in a antinatalist frame of reference. Perhaps I missed some of your point by doing that. And perhaps I'm taking this in a direction you didn't intend it to move in. But I'm wondering if your conscious decisions, which seem perfectly reasonable to you, are making you see the decisions of other people as being equally based on reason, consideration and choice? I don't think it is that way for most people. Whether we call it an evolutionary trait, something hard-wired or an unconscious impulse, what appears to be the 'natural choice' for most is to hold onto some optimistic outlook. It seems absolutely essential for most people, as though to concede the brutal realities would leave them incapable of carrying on. Perhaps the inclination to turn to something like religion after tragedy is emblematic of a sense of confusion about where their own optimism comes from? I wonder sometimes if people are so bewildered by the processes that go on in their brains that they come to believe that their sense of optimist must have an external source. I've lost count of the times after funerals that someone will remark about some hopeful thing that happens (a break in the clouds; a bird landing near the coffin etc): "That's X looking down on / after us" !! As much as I'd like to say that the sun *always* comes out, and that birds are drawn to freshly dug earth, I find I can't bring myself to break their delusion. What right have I? I do, however, stop at platitudes like "He's in a better place now". Is that a lack of intellectual integrity on my part, or is it an expression of compassion? Should we be surprised that folk find it easier to boil it down to one of two choices: Get busy living, or get busy dying? I would also wonder at whether people's apparent optimism is as much for the sake of those around them as for themselves. That there may be an element of 'putting a brave face on it'. A comforting lie that helps people make it through the day. It being easier to deal with a well dressed lie than a naked emperor. "A committment to truth is thus a maladaptation. In order to celebrate life one has to learn to lie." I don't think it's a maladaptation. I think it's a highly evolved sense of reality, and one to be valued, but I don't think that to celebrate life we must learn to lie, just that we must accept that sometimes lies are as important as truths. |
|
07-07-2012 @IrinaThe link to that BBC Horizon documentary I mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM_iiPFkNas The video speeds up and slows down a couple of times. Just to warn you, so you don't start thinking there's something wrong with you. ;В¬) @Francois You could do with learning a little patience. I'm sure there is a lot that you already know, unfortunately I am not privy to that information and therefore can't anticipate what it is that would please or edify you to read. I may have wasted your time, but it wasn't your time I was aiming to take up. |
|
07-07-2012 Yea yea, you're not talking to me, so what? I am a commentator and I comment on what other people say, including you... You just seem to be the kind of person who talks at length without really saying anything.That being said, saying that you're rational but other people are delusional is silly. Why do you think other people are so much stupider than you are? We are all puppets of our impulses and personalities. Going around saying your decisions are made on the basis of "reason, consideration and choice"... no they're not. Maybe I could learn a little patience, but you could learn a little compassion. |
|
09-07-2012 What exactly, Francois, is your issue with me? Was your response to my first post not impatient? as in "get to the point already"? Not to mention rude. I'm not thin skinned, and I wasn't disturbed by that comment, but neither do I roll over for people who believe the anonymity of the internet allows them to behave like that. Take your shots at me by all means, but don't be surprised when I don't put up with it.Now, as for this: That being said, saying that you're rational but other people are delusional is silly. Why do you think other people are so much stupider than you are? We are all puppets of our impulses and personalities. Going around saying your decisions are made on the basis of "reason, consideration and choice"... no they're not. • Please, point me to the part of my post where I said that I was rational and other people are delusional. • Tell me how anything I wrote indicated that I think I'm smarter than anyone else. If you can, I'd be very interested to hear about it, and I would promptly retract my statements because I do not believe those things to be true. I am only too aware of my own weaknesses, both mental and emotional, and have never passed judgement on other people for the state of either that they possess. Rudeness and intolerance and similar traits are a different story altogether, and I never back down from criticising those traits whenever I find myself on the receiving end of them. I won't go through the last part of that little outburst.. 'Going around saying your decisions are made on the basis of "reason, consideration and choice"... no they're not.' ..to refute it, I'll simply direct you to reread the passage you quoted and discover for yourself that you have either misread or failed to comprehend it. I don't know you, or anything about you, but if you are just one of these people who only has negative things to say, and trawls the internet for opportunities to say them, then I'll say goodbye to you. That kind of thing doesn't interest me. If you are someone who is only courteous to people who agree with everything you say, then the same thing goes. If you have *valid* reasons to criticise my comments, then I will happily address them with you. I, unlike you, welcome exchanging ideas even with those I disagree with. But if you misrepresent me again, assign me opinions I do not hold, or wilfully distort my comments, expect to be ignored. |
|
09-07-2012 Did you already forget you wrote this:"But I'm wondering if your conscious decisions, which seem perfectly reasonable to you, are making you see the decisions of other people as being equally based on reason, consideration and choice? I don't think it is that way for most people. Whether we call it an evolutionary trait, something hard-wired or an unconscious impulse, what appears to be the 'natural choice' for most is to hold onto some optimistic outlook. It seems absolutely essential for most people, as though to concede the brutal realities would leave them incapable of carrying on." If the above is NOT what you meant to write, then write it more accurately... and cut out the grandstanding, all right? I am not interested in how you feel or what you think about me. |
|
09-07-2012 You think it is grandstanding to state a case? No wonder then that you consider it a fair response to simply quote back to me my own words without pointing out where they support the accusations you make against me.What you quote is precisely what I intended to write. I don't need to write it more accurately. Let me explain, and see if we can come to a better understanding. In the closing paragraph of the original post we find this: "The grieving person is faced with the choice: the bitter truth that leads to more pain and ostracizm, and sweet delusion in which everyone will support you. And so the horrifying show goes on. Not many people have such intellectual integrity, such inner will to truth, that they choose to rebel and oppose the majority at the time of their personal tragedy." This deals with a choice to be made: the 'bitter truth' that 'Life is something we're all stuck with', and the 'sweet delusion' that allows most people to survive personal tragedy. In this case it is those who make the 'conscious decisions, which seem perfectly reasonable to..(Irina)' who are the ones with 'intellectual integrity'. This, to me, implies that people who choose the sweet delusion do not have that same integrity because they have failed to acknowledge the brutal in life. What my subsequent comment presents is the potential to interpret the actions of such people based not on a lack of integrity (or failure to acknowledge the brutal nature of life), but in terms of the findings presented in the study mentioned in the news report that Irina herself linked to. This study presents the findings that we are hard-wired to view our future in an optimistic way. And that even when confronted with the errors in our logic we *still* fail to properly assess personal dangers and tragedy, and maintain an optimistic outlook. In light of such research, I considered the possibility that it *may be* inaccurate to presume that people are wilfully choosing the sweet delusion, and unfair to imagine that an unconscious trait in most people can be described as intellectual dishonesty. As you can see, the passage you quoted begins "But I'm wondering if...", which is qualitatively different from saying that I am "Going around saying your decisions are made on the basis of "reason, consideration and choice". I hope that makes it clearer for you. I don't like to fall out, even with strangers, Francois. And I don't want to get stuck into some slagging match with you. How other people feel does matter to me, or I wouldn't bother trying to communicate. What they think of me, like you, is not really my concern: So long as it is based on accurate information they can love or hate me to their heart's content. Regards, Daithi |
|
09-07-2012 It is based on accurate information: you just repeated it at more length. I don't know why you bother to deny it when all you want to do is confirm it. You think everyone else but you is an idiot, and that's boorish, but you're allowed to be boorish and it's not really any of my business. Carry on. |
Comments to Why do people keep celebrating life even after it took away their loved ones