4 ms·

So because you think it's a moral duty other people shouldn't get access to birth control?

rayiner 5y ago
Did I say anything about birth control? I’m not Catholic. I’m talking about defining “child free” as some sort of identity instead of being a disappointment to your mom quietly. It’s like building an identity around stealing other people’s lunches from the office fridge. If you’re going to do it, do it in a way that maintains plausible deniability.
- tptacek 5y ago
  As a Catholic: this is a bad, reactionary take. Pull up any of the dozens of lists of "famous childless people" Google will give you and note how many of them you wouldn't ever think to accuse of "stealing other people's lunches from the office fridge". Our duty is to leave the world a better place than we found it. One way to do that is indeed to raise children to keep the ball rolling forward, but there are others. Obnoxious cosmopolitan liberals are, well, obnoxious about valorizing childlessness, which is not by itself a moral virtue. But forgoing the comforts of family in the service of a greater goal is. You're trying to take soi-disant elites down a peg, as you often do, but you've wildly overshot your mark here.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Like I said I’m not Catholic. I suspect my view on this is strongly shaped by Islam, as a matter of acculturation rather than theology. The way I see it, America isn’t morally different from a Bangladeshi village. Our efforts are more specialized and allow us to subsist in greater comfort. But the history books won’t talk about 99% of people involved with Facebook any more than they’ll talk about Bangladeshi rice farmers. For all but a few of us, our kids are the only legacy we’ll leave. I’m not taking aim at “elites.” Living life to maximize personal self-gratification is pervasive in American culture. I’m mad at the elites only insofar as they’re fishing for moral justifications for this practice, where I think non-elites at least are a little beholden to traditional socialization and feel a little guilty for “not doing what they’re supposed to do.”
    - tptacek 5y ago
      I feel like I wrote a pretty concise and direct comment, and you didn't really read it. We agree that living life to maximize personal self-gratification isn't a moral good, and that it's bad to valorize doing so. Where we part company is your belief that choosing not to have children is evidence that someone is living a life for their own gratification; clearly: no.

Did I say anything about birth control? I’m not Catholic. I’m talking about defining “child free” as some sort of identity instead of being a disappointment to your mom quietly. It’s like building an identity around stealing other people’s lunches from the office fridge. If you’re going to do it, do it in a way that maintains plausible deniability.

tptacek 5y ago
As a Catholic: this is a bad, reactionary take. Pull up any of the dozens of lists of "famous childless people" Google will give you and note how many of them you wouldn't ever think to accuse of "stealing other people's lunches from the office fridge". Our duty is to leave the world a better place than we found it. One way to do that is indeed to raise children to keep the ball rolling forward, but there are others. Obnoxious cosmopolitan liberals are, well, obnoxious about valorizing childlessness, which is not by itself a moral virtue. But forgoing the comforts of family in the service of a greater goal is. You're trying to take soi-disant elites down a peg, as you often do, but you've wildly overshot your mark here.
- rayiner 5y ago
  Like I said I’m not Catholic. I suspect my view on this is strongly shaped by Islam, as a matter of acculturation rather than theology. The way I see it, America isn’t morally different from a Bangladeshi village. Our efforts are more specialized and allow us to subsist in greater comfort. But the history books won’t talk about 99% of people involved with Facebook any more than they’ll talk about Bangladeshi rice farmers. For all but a few of us, our kids are the only legacy we’ll leave. I’m not taking aim at “elites.” Living life to maximize personal self-gratification is pervasive in American culture. I’m mad at the elites only insofar as they’re fishing for moral justifications for this practice, where I think non-elites at least are a little beholden to traditional socialization and feel a little guilty for “not doing what they’re supposed to do.”
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I feel like I wrote a pretty concise and direct comment, and you didn't really read it. We agree that living life to maximize personal self-gratification isn't a moral good, and that it's bad to valorize doing so. Where we part company is your belief that choosing not to have children is evidence that someone is living a life for their own gratification; clearly: no.