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I appreciate the romance, but those of us who have children leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s. He’s a 72 year old Batchelor who’s onc
by usgroup 5y ago
I appreciate the romance, but those of us who have children leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s.
He’s a 72 year old Batchelor who’s once stepped foot outside a Welsh valley. If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who don’t choose it.
- chuckSu 5y agoHater alert!!
- jorvi 5y agoChildren aren't much of a legacy either. They have 50% of your DNA and nurture. Grandkids 25%. Grand-grandkids 12.5%. Within a few generations your contribution is watered down to almost nil. Children are amazing in their own right, but they're not exactly a legacy. If you want legacy, write a good book, start a successful company, etc; ideas are things that can become legacy.
- boredtofears 5y agoYes, what an amazing world we are leaving our children. I'm sure they'll be so thankful of the task our habits and livelihoods have left them. You've left them so much, indeed.
- testmasterflex 5y agoYou speak as if everyone of us is guilty and actively participates in making the world worse. Perhaps you should evaluate your nihilism.
- oilostthelast 5y agoThere's such a slim number of people to pull from in any "developed" nation that aren't complicit in a long chain of subjugation and destruction that I'm absolutely sure you're not one of them. It's not your fault, but you're guilty by association, you're part of the scourge simply by the virtue that you honor the social contract and maintain the status quo - not that we're given practicable options, but fortune never resulted in absolution.
- ageofwant 5y agoTo put your accuser in the nihilism box does not absolve you. It would be extremely unlikely for you to not be a active participant in the process of making the world worse.
- indy 5y agoThere are many paths to happiness, no need to denigrate this man's life.
- makach 5y agoI don't think he was doing that. It's just a perspective. It is when I read these stories that I truly consider how short our lives are. I can't stop thinking about how fragile our beliefs are once we hold them up against someone elses values, earthshaking.
- CognitiveLens 5y agoThe grandparent post compared the farmer's experience to being lobotomized - if that's not denigration of someone's life, what is?
- celticninja 5y agoHe very definitely was being derogatory.
- beaner 5y agoSuch a close-minded view. Children are great but they're just more people with their own experiences, like this man. And it seems rare these days that they might be as naturally at-one with the world around them as he is.
- raffraffraff 5y agoI hear you. In not sure if want to be raising kids today. I had a moment in my 20s where I just stopped and thought, "Every single ancestor I had from my parents back to algae had offspring. What if I don't?" If you consider the whole Ocean as history, and the present moment as a single solitary wave heading towards the shore, and your life as the surfer on that wave, it doesn't matter what came before you. What matters is the wave. You get to ride it and wipe out. And that's it. I don't care if that wave is a composite of a million unknown ripples in the cast Ocean. It doesn't matter really.
- verbify 5y ago> "Every single ancestor I had from my parents back to algae had offspring. What if I don't? A large proportion of your ancestors offspring didn't themselves have offspring.
- nly 5y agoSomething like 10% of all humans that have ever lived are alive today.
- raffraffraff 5y agoThey must be so fucking old. I bet they have some good stories. /s
- kebman 5y agoWhy would you have children if you live in a cramped apartment in an equally cramped and dangerous city? The amount of effort you're putting in for that tiny life is barely enough for subsistence, much less for having children. The answer to that isn't having material wealth, especially when you get no time left over to appreciate it. So the problem is having enough time when you waste most of it toiling for the dreams of another man, and for next to nothing in return. Because that's the real economy. (If you do, though, then congratulations I guess, but then you're not in the position of most people anyway.) I think, however, that you'd change your mind about things if you had the freedom, the space, and the ability to grow your own food. Then you'd see how foolish most city dwellers actually are. As for the philosophical musings about whether you should have children... Well, it's your life, man. If you don't want a shot at prolonging your true legacy, then that's up to you. But you're certainly doing a service for everyone else who do want their kind to succeed.
- PostThisTooFast 5y agoWait, WHAT? Maybe you're a dick.
- teatree 5y agoA human being's inability to accept he is a finite random experiment with no specific purpose is the cause of most of suffering.
- M277 5y agoPeople are different, with different desires, personalities, mentalities, ..... Isn't it only natural then that 'happiness' would be different from one person to another? Why speak low about him? You're content with your life, and he is content with his... it really is that simple. You can't go up to an artist and say, "Hey, your painting is crap, you should change x, y, z," because it is the artist's painting, not yours.
- renewiltord 5y agoThese threads are always so entertaining. Someone will make up this pastoral romance while implying that the city life is somehow lacking. Then someone will do the opposite and the wars will begin. Very entertaining. For my part, I enjoy modal editors so I think vim is better than emacs and I like the GPL over BSD.
- lelanthran 5y ago> For my part, I enjoy modal editors so I think vim is better than emacs and I like the GPL over BSD. We need more fuel on this fire. What's your take on spaces vs tabs?
- jkepler 5y agoThat farmer is happy keeping tabs on his space. He enjoys his work, his place, and doesn't much mind (it seems) what others think of him.
- hughrr 5y agoAsk ‘make’ about that :)
- SyzygistSix 5y agoThe Butlerian jihad is coming for you all.
- glitchc 5y agoTabs of course. Spaces are for people who keep missing the tab key. Maybe the target is too small to hit.
- bicepjai 5y agois it that hard to accept others perspective ?
- Haga 5y ago*I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” This valley dwellers will be there long after the ruins you created swallowed all you touch.
- shafyy 5y agoOh man, this is great. Thanks for sharing. Here's Bryan Cranston's reading of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts
- timeon 5y agoI'm afraid that those children of yours might not be left behind with good manners.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- whobar 5y agoIf you meditate then ironically you're trying to achieve the state of mind this man has achieved and lives every day.
- bobmaxup 5y agoAre we to infer that you aren't happy?
- StanislavPetrov 5y agoPerhaps he gets more satisfaction out of a stone wall than a child. Happiness and achievement are completely subjective. It isn't a credit to anyone who doesn't grasp that, much less denigrate another out of that lack of understanding.
- StavrosK 5y ago> If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who don’t choose it. Why not? By definition it would leave you happy, what does it matter?
- mrphoebs 5y agoChildren as your legacy are no less consequential or meaningful than this man's stone walls. In the end you are grasping for empty meaning and purpose in the same way the farmer is, your children will perish, their children will perish, you will be forgotten and so will they like the rest of human existence. Our lives have no larger purpose or meaning beyond what ever we pretend gives meaning to your life, like children or stone walls. We are mere Spatiotemporal blips of information in the infant universe with delusions of grandeur. So if you have to tell yourself deep in the night that you actualising your reproductive prerogative makes your sad little life more meaningful than the farmer, please grasp at those straws.
- tacitusarc 5y agoWhat if you're wrong?
- Tddddd 5y agoHow much do you rally know and remember from your ancestors which is more than a handful and always the same stories? How did that really influence you? We can look back, we are not a magic generation unique to all the other generations before us. We know what's going to happen with us and our legacies.
- lukeck 5y agoOne difference between the current and previous generations is just how much information is recorded by and about us. There will be a lot more evidence of the existence and experiences of people alive today than people of a century ago. Whether people will care to look is a different matter.
- daniellarusso 5y agoOne large-scale EMP incident, and that is no longer the case. We have alot more data now, but I am not sure how durable it all is. I have quite a few DVDs and hard drives that no longer work.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 5y agoWhat an arrogant opinion. You're unduly proud of being a parent. There is no inherent value to it at all. You force beings into this world and believe this is a feat? Ridiculous.
- nindalf 5y agoJFC, who speaks like this about someone else? Have some respect for a kind man who's content living a simple life. Imagine if someone looked at your comment and denigrated it "oh wow you had unprotected sex with your partner and managed to not kill your kids before they turned 18. Congrats on the achievement!"
- raffraffraff 5y agoPeople who have children do indeed leave a lot more behind. Yet almost nobody can name their great great grandparents, know what they looked like, or in fact, know anything about them. Sure, "you're their legacy", but they never got to know you and vice versa.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoI think this is a more recent phenomenon of the modern’s. One can look to other ancient societies that still exist in small pockets, and their storytelling is orders of magnitude better than ours. Especially when it involves passing down family history.
- raffraffraff 5y agoOh there's a great history of story telling on my father's side of the family. He's 94. There's a solitary photo of him sitting on his great grandfather's knee when he was about 5. He has an astonishing memory (that I'm afraid to actively doubt for a number of reasons, mainly though, he's the oldest person I know and nobody alive could corroborate or deny anything he says). He's recently been on TV, being interviewed about his time as a steam train fireman. An example of the amazing stuff he knows... My mother grew up in a large country house that her family somehow inherited. (Honestly, I have no idea and neither does she - they were broke, like most people, but they were rattling around in this large house, and totally mismanaging the land). It was built by a decendent from a French Knight who landed in Ireland in the 1100s during a conquest. There's next to no information about the family, beyond what you might find in Wikipedia about the Knight, and a few generations of the family before they blended into the population. Still, they retained status (justice of the peace, and owning a large estate) and were definitely wealthier than the locals. But the last of that line was Richard DeVerdon, who only had a daughter, Elizabeth. She died at the age of 18, in the year 1845. I was doing some research on the matter an found a large headstone in an ancient graveyard a few miles from our house. My mother knows next to nothing about her family history, and there are few records from the time. Talking to my father opened up a surprising story from his side of the family. My great great great grandfather was a young boy living high on the hills above the graveyard. His own father was ill in 1845 and could not go out to the end of the field to look down to the graveyard, so he asked his young son to go out and look down at the funeral procession and come back to describe what he saw. It's probably why the boy remembered it so vividly. It was a huge funeral, because the young girl was heiress to the estate. He related it directly to my own father when he was a boy, as they stood in the same field looking down at the graveyard. And my father told it to me simply because I asked if he knew anything about the De Verdon family, and the girl's death. It astounded me that I could barely read her name from a very worn headstone, but he could give me a description of the funeral procession that he got from someone who saw it with his own eyes in 1845. Still hope the old man wasn't just trolling me.
- slyall 5y agoThink of all the people who made an impact on history and the world. How many of them did it by having children? This guy at least got an article written about him, what have you done?
- tomcam 5y agoHoping cperciva answers this
- cperciva 5y agoI won the Putnam?
- betwixthewires 5y agoPrecisely twice as many people have had an impact on the world by having children as the number that have had an impact on the world through action. Unless you believe that Mary was really a virgin. Then the number is slightly less than twice as many.
- earth_walker 5y agoWell, Einstein's mom, for one.
- Tddddd 5y agoIt is a simplified illusion. I always wanted to do ancestry for my family (family tree?) And I realized and still realize how far away people really become. My last grandpa will die soon. I know his stories everyone knows but I don't know what he would have voted, what his favorite food is, what music he liked. He has dementia now and forgets that he is at home and asks go go home. What do I know from his life really? He will end in some online tool as a name, two dates an image and lines connecting him to other family members. I thought about making a legacy somehow and if I would make children I would create a family book and create rules which would share my thoughts with every future generation and everyone gets reached to follow it and enhance it like having Familie values and keeping them. But at the end of the day I do realize for myself that this will not work as imagined and it doesn't matter at the end anyway.
- max_entropy 5y agoChildren are continuations of your own or someone else's membrane, but this man built one himself /s
- kebman 5y agoThat man has set the ideal conditions for raising a lot of children. While most city dwellers scramble from 9 to 5 to own but a cramped apartment—which also leads most of them to forgo having children in the first place—this farmer has plenty of time, and plenty of space. And he grows his own food! It's the ideal condition to raise children. And it's far safer too. I would know, because I grew up on one. But today both women and men are of course taught that a career is much better, toiling for the dreams of another man. Well, I'm not so sure.
- astura 5y ago>today both women and men are of course taught that a career is much better, toiling for the dreams of another man. What kind of awful garbage take is this? It's objectively false, people who willingly don't have children are saw as society as second class citizens who are thought of as pathological. The VAST majority of humans have children at some point in their lives. It's true that there's a larger amount of people who willingly forgo having children than in the past, but it's still an incredibly fringe way of life. >I would know, because I grew up on one. Not saying that nobody should ever raise children in a rural area but the majority of people I know who grew up in rural areas got heavily involved in drugs and/or alcohol during their youth out of boredom. So there's downsides as well. The world doesn't have an infinite amount of farmland, you can't raise "a lot of children" on a farm and have their children raise "a lot of children" on a farm indefinitely without running out of farmland. That, by definition, makes it not "ideal."
- celticninja 5y agoWhy is it a lobotomy to enjoy something? And sure you might have added code to Facebook to more accurately track users, or you made a 1% difference to your employer's bottom line, but this guy is a farmer, and you can have all the money in the world but at some point you still need a farmer somewhere to supply you with goods. No one NEEDS what you create. So perhaps don't be so derogatory about others life choices, I am pretty certain that this farmer would not criticize you for your choices.
- paganel 5y agoMy peasant grandmother very rarely set foot outside her village’s mountain valley. When my grandfather got to held an important political party position she had to make do with living ~20 km down the valley in the area’s only town (that’s where my dad was born), but as soon as the chance arose to get back to her village she immediately took it (and I presume she also convinced my grandfather to take it, he became the village’s mayor). She was very, very happy with her way of living (she lived to about 85 or 86), almost no medical problems in her entire life (apart from the last couple of years), why would she have wanted to give that all away? For some fancy trips to the seaside? That was not what she considered a good way of living.
- PicassoCTs 5y agoThey are not rich, but they do have way less stress then the city dwellers. And if stress is to be considered the one thing you do not like, they spend way less time in situations they do dislike. Unless they go into debt. Then the bank owns them and the farm, and the debt turns into stress and you have the city experience, out in the great outdoors.
- celticninja 5y agoChildren learn from their parents and if this is your attitude then I expect your children will inherit it. Will the world be better for them and their perspective of it is the same as yours? I very much doubt it. Hopefully your children will learn how not to judge others for different life choices, perhaps they will be more humble and not assume superiority over others just because they had children. In case you had not looked around the world recently, having children is no great achievement. Any idiot can have them.
- astura 5y agoThis person's children are so fucked, its obvious they don't see their children as human beings with thoughts, feelings, dreams, and emotions of their own - just as a way to extend their own personal ego. It's an emotionally damaging way to be raised.
- andyjohnson0 5y agoThat's such an unkind thing to say about another person's life. He seems like a contented and inoffensive person, and he's quietly living the only life he'll ever have. There's real dignity in that. I do wonder why you wrote this. As for children: being a parent myself, I think it's best not to instrumentalise them by viewing them as a legacy that you'll leave behind after you. They're their own people. They don't owe you that obligation.
- CalRobert 5y agoIn enough generations, not one atom of your descendent's DNA will be specifically yours. The impact of your parenting will be diluted. The time spent on parenting shuts off an infinity of other options. I adore my children but the ways we enrich our culture and those around us matters just as much as our kids. And besides, why should a well-lived life look the same for him as for others?
- livinginfear 5y ago> ...not one atom of your descendent's DNA will be specifically yours. Ignoring the fact that you are probably not correct scientifically speaking, I think that the constitution of your descendants is figuratively, symbolically, if not scientifically, yours (please pardon my English). It's yours because you played an entirely crucial role in creating this lineage. Whatever path it took after your role in it, that path was shaped by your involvement. You don't have to believe in the spiritual importance of lineage to acknowledge that your actions, and simply being, have some important, significant impact upon it. I find this outlook a bit too modern and nihilistic for me.
- laichzeit0 5y agoHappiness is a negative. It’s the absence of pain and boredom. It’s achieved by negating those two forces. Or so sayeth Schopenhauer.
- Aaargh20318 5y ago> 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.
- layer8 5y agoAlso, after a couple generations the ancestors become so many that the "legacy" contribution from a given ancestor to a given descendant becomes statistically negligible.
- tirant 5y agoIf that would be true, we would all be living in stone age.
- tirant 5y agoIt 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.
- breakfastduck 5y agoYour child is just as likely to be a terrible person as they are a good one. In fact, having children significantly increases the risk that what you leave behind is actually detremental to the world overall. It takes a special lack of irony to write a comment like this. One of the most closed minded comments I've ever read.
- ojhughes 5y agoThis sounds quite sanctimonious, just because you have children doesn’t mean your life is somehow more valid than those that don’t. This mans life is arguably more valuable to society than us sat in an office. He’s producing food and helping to feed a nation
- LocalH 5y agoChildren are not the penultimate achievement of humanity. In fact, they're one of the core things that take zero learned skill and can be created and raised entirely via instinctual means. I would argue that those who leave the most behind are those who are kind and thoughtful to those in their lives. They leave behind one of the most important and precious things that anyone ever could - pleasant memories in the minds and experiences of others. They brought direct happiness to others through their kindness. This is the type of person I strive to be, and I feel enriched and deeply fulfilled when successful in doing so. In some ways, the type of peace that can bring can be one of the few things that you can "take with you" in death, in that you will feel that happiness until your very last moment, which you will most likely not generally do with material possessions.
- Grustaf 5y agoPenultimate means “second to last”. But what is your message, that children are the most precious heritage or not?
- LocalH 5y agoI don't believe children are inherently our most precious heritage, but I believe they can be up there if raised with care
- asidiali 5y agoJust like one could live their life wholly not applying the same level of effort you describe here to their lives, living on “zero learned skill” and purely “instinctual means” alone. I’d argue having children is the same. You can do it with zero effort, or you can do it with intention, to leave behind a better off generation, and devoting yourself selflessly as a parent to that cause. I believe the lifelong quest of high-quality intention is what ultimately is the greatest achievement of life one can chase. Whether that is intentionally treating others with kindness and leaving pleasant memories, or intentionally raising healthy and inspired children who will continue to take up noble intention.
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago>I appreciate the romance, but those of us who have children leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s. How many children are optimum?
- dang 5y agoCan you please not post shallow dismissals or personal attacks or generic tangents or flamebait, or call names, in HN comments? You did all of those things here. I'm glad that you've found satisfaction in having children, but that's no reason to put someone else down. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html