> those of us who have children leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s
Ah, yes. A planet completely ruined by overpopulation. That is your legacy.
Also, your existence is just as meaningless as this farmer's.
You probably remember your grandparents, at least you know a little about their lives. What about your grandparents parents, or your grandparents grandparents. They were people with their own full lives, hopes and dreams. Do you even know their names ? Let alone what they were like, what they cared about, what their life was like ?
They are forgotten, just like you will be, regardless of how many children they had.
It saddens me to read such nihilistic comments here. Specially based on such clichés.
Under which metric is the planet complete ruined? and why do you think it's overpopulated? what's then the maximum number of people that should live on this planet according to you, and based on what?
Under lots of metrics, today's planet is a much healthier and prosperous place to live for humankind than it was 100 or even 50 years ago. As an example, for most human history life expectancy was no more than 30 years. Nowadays we are around 70 and quite some countries already over 80. Poverty was common some centuries ago, with around 90% being considered poor. Nowadays it's only around 10% of population. Literacy has also advanced tremendously, with now around 90% of people under 25 being able to read and write.
And all of that has been happening thanks to those that were here before us. Yes, the ones we have forgotten their names, but for whom we live now in the capable and free societies that are most of the western countries.
Having children is an extremely important part of that legacy. They are the immediate inheritors of the ideals and visions of the ones that were here before us.
> Under lots of metrics, today's planet is a much healthier and prosperous place to live for humankind than it was 100 or even 50 years ago.
We have created healthier and more prosperous societies. It is difficult to argue that we have created a healthier planet, yet our long term survival depends upon the health of the planet.
> Under which metric is the planet complete ruined?
Nature is being destroyed, we polluted our planet enough that it affected the climate. The air we breathe is filled with ultrafine particles. The water is full of microplastics.
Sure, we are able to afford more things, and we have made advances in the medical field. Our expected lifespan has gone up, but are those last few decades worth it ? Spending your last years in adult diapers and being regularly tortured by doctors in an effort to extend your life as much as possible doesn't seem like a big win to me.
Our good years are spent working longer days than ever, doing unhealthy, stressful work to the point that we have to spend our little free time exercising to keep our health. All the while the majority of humans spend their lives in cities that resemble ant hills more than a space designed for humans. More people than ever suffer from anxiety and stress-related mental health problems.
Is life really a better experience now than it was 100 years ago ?
> what's then the maximum number of people that should live on this planet according to you
Why wouldn't older folks' quality of life continue to increase as we develop new medicine and technology? Cancer and Alzheimers will never be cured? We'll never be able to induce cellular regeneration like many other species can, or artificial body parts will never advance beyond their current crudeness?
How many people spend their working years doing mind-numbing or back-breaking manual labor compared to even a century or two ago? How many people back then would have been radically oppressed from birth but even today can pursue their own dreams? Life is still relatively "nasty, brutish, and short" but it is getting better and I see no reason to expect that progress to end, let alone regress.
While you despair over a grim dark future, I look forward to a garden Earth, resplendent in biodiversity, home to fifty billion humans free from disease and material needs, yet with less footprint than we use today. Technology can do this for us, as long as we don't get stuck.
“Nature” is us, too. It’s constantly changing, but there’s as much of it as there ever was, because our nature is to build. Indeed, so are the ants whose ant hills that you criticise cities for resembling.
The improvements to duration of lifespan have also come with improvements to quality of life.
My father’s final year of life started with a cancer diagnosis, and while it was an extremely long way from “fun”, tech gave him mobility, and he’d only lived that long because of half a lifetime of treatment for disease-induced epilepsy.
My mother had a few years of Alzheimer’s — still essentially untreatable, and yet tech made it easy to keep her entertained, and GPS tracking made it easier for us to look after her without her getting lost due to a moment of intention on our parts.
Our good years involve less and easier work, in better conditions, than 1972, much better than 1921, and insanely better than 1871. When did we start mandatory schooling? When did we end actual slavery? Conscription? When was polio vaccination introduced, when was smallpox eliminated, when was anaesthetic easily available for childbirth? So yes, life is much better than it used to be.
Of course, I actually like living in Berlin, metro area population 61% of what you think the entire plant should have.
This is such an myopic human-centric world view. If every other species had a voice, or an opinion on what the success of man has meant for their own lives, their own families, their own future, what would they say ?
Consider how much man has cost every other living thing on this planet today.
I so much appreciate your point of view! I don't understand those nihilist statements as well. Looks like Satre's smoke has permeated most minds.
We are having this convo because someone had a child.
If someone really thought and believed life isn't a great thing (equating a stone wall to a human being) he'd be either a dishonest person or a weakling to be alive educating us.
For if he truly believes children and humans are all nothing, then, why toil in vain. Why procrastinate, why suffer at all for nothing.
Why is it that the majority of the humans that live and has ever lived chose to toil and provide for their family? Why is it that many folks that has ever lived are happy to have kids and nurture them. Is it ignorance that has given our ancestors the joy they experienced in child bearing and nurturing?
An "intellectual" that is enjoying the wealth of our ancestors turns to proclaim it all nothing because we cannot remember their names.
> For if he truly believes children and humans are all nothing, then, why toil in vain. Why procrastinate, why suffer at all for nothing.
Because suicide is vastly different from never having been born at all. Like every animal people have an extremely strong survival instinct. So strong that people have to be under extreme physical or mental pain before they consider taking their own lives.
This is not an argument for procreation but against it. It adds to the absolute horror that is life.
Also, after a couple generations the ancestors become so many that the "legacy" contribution from a given ancestor to a given descendant becomes statistically negligible.
Ah, yes. A planet completely ruined by overpopulation. That is your legacy.
Also, your existence is just as meaningless as this farmer's. You probably remember your grandparents, at least you know a little about their lives. What about your grandparents parents, or your grandparents grandparents. They were people with their own full lives, hopes and dreams. Do you even know their names ? Let alone what they were like, what they cared about, what their life was like ?
They are forgotten, just like you will be, regardless of how many children they had.