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the choice I made to contribute to society by having a family You thought about it long and hard and decided "what society really, really needs, more than anyt

by gaius 9y ago

the choice I made to contribute to society by having a family You thought about it long and hard and decided "what society really, really needs, more than anything, is another one of me"?

seymour333 9y ago
What, that's not how everyone decides to have kids? Weird
- mlevental 9y ago
  of course but op said explicitly they'd made a choice >the choice I made to contribute to society by having a family
shemnon42 9y ago
Without more people society has no future, eventually everyone will die. So you need to make a decision: will my kids be a net negative or a net positive to future society? In this case with what little I know about seymour333's situation (one HN comment) I would call it a net positive because these kids grew up in an environment where they or their parents experienced upward social mobility. Perhaps mom and dad can't break the middle class ceiling, but since the kids know escaping poverty is a thing that gives them incentive to elevate past middle class.
- gaius 9y ago
  Without more people society has no future, eventually everyone will die The population of the world has doubled in just my lifetime. The risk of the species dying out is negligible.
classicsnoot 9y ago
The US government recognizes that raising children in a secure environment is a necessity for national continuity and rewards it as such. Every major religion recognizes that raising children within their prescribed belief structure is essential to continuity and honors it as such. Every tribe, ethnicity, and nation that wishes to continue recognizes the absolute necessity of propagation and establishes it's paramountcy as such. It always flusters me to see just how deeply the insidious ideologies of post-modernism and cultural Marxism have crept into the psyche of the generations of students who have grown up under their reign in academia. One need not know the scale of their contribution to make a contribution. Raising children is a gift to civilization. Only in the last 40 years has this come into question, and only by people living in places of disgustingly lavish excess. I submit that you are not your parents, regardless of similarities, and I would urge you to consider that no child is a carbon copy.
- verylittlemeat 9y ago
  Is that you Mr. Peterson? But seriously though are you convinced that no worthwhile values exist outside of nationalism and religion? You seem to be interested in this topic so it strikes me as a bit willfully disingenuous for you to not see the low hanging fruit in all of your statements. Like, you clearly have your opinion and you're entitled to it obviously but have you tried at all to find counterarguments? Peterson's ideas have been pretty thoroughly analyzed and debunked outside of his echo chamber, they're just a straightforward google search away. If you really believe his writing you owe it to yourself to challenge his ideas.
  - classicsnoot 9y ago
    I'd love a link to someone "debunking" Peterson, as he is just another scale on the ouroboros that is philosophical critique of the human experience. I'm quite interested in the topic, but I am loathe to engage in the meta-representation of the topic; I wish to discuss messages not messengers. Though there is maple in my blood I am not who you seek to disparage. I believe the most effective social organization strategies evolved are religion and nationalism, with religion being the simplest and nationalism being the strongest. I do not believe in an evolutionary stairway to enlightenment, rather a shifting physical world that creates arbitrary "final exams" for species that wish to continue proliferation. Ideas evolve like biological life forms, and meta-analysis is not a determining factor in the survival of ideas without the addition of death squads and concentration camps. With this as a point of departure, there is no precedent for social organization that can claim consistent superiority over any other. Each has a matched set of strengths and weaknesses that exhibit or recess depending on the situation under review. I firmly believe that the core criteria for a "working idea" is that it propagates generationally, through actors either cognizant or ignorant of it. Past that, all observable attributes are valued based on a particular situation, not a connected series of events (rather, a dialectic).
- Noumenon72 9y ago
  Those institutions need kids to continue, but they don't treat them well enough for me to want to give them grist for their mill. Raising kids is a biological imperative and a dumb move otherwise.

by gaius 9y ago

the choice I made to contribute to society by having a family You thought about it long and hard and decided "what society really, really needs, more than anything, is another one of me"?

seymour333 9y ago

What, that's not how everyone decides to have kids? Weird

mlevental 9y ago
of course but op said explicitly they'd made a choice >the choice I made to contribute to society by having a family

shemnon42 9y ago

Without more people society has no future, eventually everyone will die. So you need to make a decision: will my kids be a net negative or a net positive to future society? In this case with what little I know about seymour333's situation (one HN comment) I would call it a net positive because these kids grew up in an environment where they or their parents experienced upward social mobility. Perhaps mom and dad can't break the middle class ceiling, but since the kids know escaping poverty is a thing that gives them incentive to elevate past middle class.

gaius 9y ago
Without more people society has no future, eventually everyone will die The population of the world has doubled in just my lifetime. The risk of the species dying out is negligible.

classicsnoot 9y ago

The US government recognizes that raising children in a secure environment is a necessity for national continuity and rewards it as such. Every major religion recognizes that raising children within their prescribed belief structure is essential to continuity and honors it as such. Every tribe, ethnicity, and nation that wishes to continue recognizes the absolute necessity of propagation and establishes it's paramountcy as such. It always flusters me to see just how deeply the insidious ideologies of post-modernism and cultural Marxism have crept into the psyche of the generations of students who have grown up under their reign in academia. One need not know the scale of their contribution to make a contribution. Raising children is a gift to civilization. Only in the last 40 years has this come into question, and only by people living in places of disgustingly lavish excess. I submit that you are not your parents, regardless of similarities, and I would urge you to consider that no child is a carbon copy.

verylittlemeat 9y ago
Is that you Mr. Peterson? But seriously though are you convinced that no worthwhile values exist outside of nationalism and religion? You seem to be interested in this topic so it strikes me as a bit willfully disingenuous for you to not see the low hanging fruit in all of your statements. Like, you clearly have your opinion and you're entitled to it obviously but have you tried at all to find counterarguments? Peterson's ideas have been pretty thoroughly analyzed and debunked outside of his echo chamber, they're just a straightforward google search away. If you really believe his writing you owe it to yourself to challenge his ideas.
- classicsnoot 9y ago
  I'd love a link to someone "debunking" Peterson, as he is just another scale on the ouroboros that is philosophical critique of the human experience. I'm quite interested in the topic, but I am loathe to engage in the meta-representation of the topic; I wish to discuss messages not messengers. Though there is maple in my blood I am not who you seek to disparage. I believe the most effective social organization strategies evolved are religion and nationalism, with religion being the simplest and nationalism being the strongest. I do not believe in an evolutionary stairway to enlightenment, rather a shifting physical world that creates arbitrary "final exams" for species that wish to continue proliferation. Ideas evolve like biological life forms, and meta-analysis is not a determining factor in the survival of ideas without the addition of death squads and concentration camps. With this as a point of departure, there is no precedent for social organization that can claim consistent superiority over any other. Each has a matched set of strengths and weaknesses that exhibit or recess depending on the situation under review. I firmly believe that the core criteria for a "working idea" is that it propagates generationally, through actors either cognizant or ignorant of it. Past that, all observable attributes are valued based on a particular situation, not a connected series of events (rather, a dialectic).
Noumenon72 9y ago
Those institutions need kids to continue, but they don't treat them well enough for me to want to give them grist for their mill. Raising kids is a biological imperative and a dumb move otherwise.