4 ms·
When people feel the game is unfair, they quit. When the game is society, the society ceases to exist. It's wild that we find it harder to change the system th
by kelseyfrog 1y ago
When people feel the game is unfair, they quit. When the game is society, the society ceases to exist.
It's wild that we find it harder to change the system than to walk away from it entirely. People opt out in a thousand small ways - refusing to have kids, refusing to participate, numbing themselves with distractions, or just mentally checking out. If the core pitch of society is "keep grinding or suffer," it’s not surprising so many people choose not to bring new life into it. Liberty and freedom aren't abstract ideals. Their real absence makes people find coping mechanisms in a world that often feels rigged.
If a society truly wants to persist, it has to give people a reason to stay - something more than survival, more than struggle, more than empty promises about meritocracy or bootstrap fantasies. Otherwise, the logic of self-preservation kicks in, and people will exercise whatever autonomy they can muster, including the right to say, "No, not this."
So, yeah, access to abortion isn't simply about individual rights in the abstract; it's a symptom and a signal. When people would rather not create new life than subject it to the current system, that's not a moral failure on their part. It's an indictment of the system itself.
TLDR; make a better society bruh.
- teitoklien 1y agoThings should be made better I agree, But at the same time. Every single generation before ours had worse life outcomes in everyway than us. They had lower lifespans, struggled with food insecurity, Lack of travel accomodations, no access to education for the majority, nothing. Yet if you speak to anyone from those generation or even from our generation who have lives similar to them, they have far more positivity and energy. (and higher fertility and birth rates) More things, "non meritocracy", "bootstrap fantasies", those things arent the problem. People of our generation and the one before, are just always whining complaining, too lazy. I dont want to believe that either, but it is the truth. Our freedom to do anything and everything, abort children easily, control birth planning easily, making casual sex the norm, etc, making housing unaffordable to keep this stupid real estate based bubble alive for banks, and politicians alive under garb of "Regulation" and "NIMBYism". Are 100% much more contributing to all of this. Than nihilism, doomism, etc. Give people better things, more money, better lifestyle, and more freedoms and no societal pressure to have kids, people are just opting for the "DINK" philosophy, Double Income No Kids.... , spend on expensive cars, better homes, more travel, but no... no kids. Go observe every major society, the top 10% of each society in almost all of them have a pretty decent life with good savings and sense of security, freedom to not overwork too much. This is the top 10% populist politicians villify as having everything. Now go look at the birth rates of that top 10% in EVERY major society its lower than the rest of the 90%. More money, more affordability are not linked to birth rates at all, except for a teensy minority who overthinks things and calculates 1000 different decisions from climate change to their wealth to their partner's loyalty, to decide if they want kids. They are not the majority No amount of motivation, higher incomes, etc will reverse this trend of birth declines, (however governments and society should strongly work towards giving people higher income, less overworking, more motivation to be optimistic not for boosting birth rates, because it wont, but simply because its the duty of public servants, politicians, policymakers and the state that serves the society in return for the society serving the state with loyalty) TLDR; make better society yes, but even that will just lead to even fewer kids, make a more responsible society while improving people's lives.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoEmpirically, how well does the "we have it better off now" response work against feelings of an unfair system. Does it tend to change perspective in your experience?
- teitoklien 1y agothe mindset you're discussing isnt whats driving this for majority of people (im myself young and in my 20s). its a problem in your extremely small bubble of leftist spaces which i've often heard this doomism being argued. World has never been that fair, its a work in progress that has been going on since 1000s of years heck probably 100,000s for humans. First there was Anarchy / Stateless Societies (Pre-Leviathan), then came the notion of leviathan / Authoritarian Centralization the idea that letting a state get run by a ruler and his nobles would lead to a more stable state (the era of kings and emperors since last several centuries), then came Theocratic or Feudal Orders : Society governed by divine rule or hierarchical feudal obligations. Middle Ages in Europe, dynastic China, Islamic Caliphates. then Absolute Monarchy / Early Nation-States then Constitutionalism / Enlightenment Liberalism then came Democracy (but anti minority and primarily majoritarian with tons of political violence on minorities, still can see it in places like bangladesh, malaysia (singapore itself was born out of violence on such a non-malay minority) ) then came Liberal Democracy / Republic Which is what most western europeans, americans, indians, japan, etc live under or atleast the ideals its politicians promise to follow and do follow majority of the time. Everything you and enjoy in our lives was created and improved upon by people before us, life has never been 'fair' nor will ever reach that utopian ideal of fair ever. Nor has it ever been the limiter on birth rates or growing societies. It's just an excuse (sorry I'm not saying your concerns are invalid, but only that you share it with every human who has ever existed across time, and this has never been the bottleneck for our current problem with birth rates) The problems are more behavioural in kind, and the norms that have arised rather than unfair system, psycological issues like that.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoCan you explain how all of this is supposed to make me feel like it's worth opting in to? It sounds like this society is fundamentally broken. Why support something I don't believe in? Make a society worth believing in.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoIt’s symptoms all the way down. If the system decides it needs more births it will ban abortion, and that’s not a moral failure on the system’s part, it’s an indictment of the symptoms itself.
- nothercastle 1y agoAbortion won’t change the game you would have to ban condoms and birth control
- Teever 1y agoIf you can't successfully ban cannabis and cocaine (in prisons no less). You can't effectively ban condoms and birth control
- ako 1y agoHans Rowling found that one of the best way to increase numbers of births is to reduce education for women. Or at least there’s strong correlation between both.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoI'm not sure how useful this is. Isn't not like we're going to throttle education for women like it's a governor for fertility rate, right?
- kelseyfrog 1y agoThe system has no morals, but every person operating within it does. If the system demands what it needs from us without regard for morality, it's on us, as moral agents, to refuse compliance. The system can demand what it wants, but no one is obliged to give it anything. If the point is that the system will coerce what it needs from us, then it deserves not merely to perish, but to be destroyed, actively, deliberately, and ruthlessly. If births are the air it breathes, let us suffocate it by refusing to bear its children. Let it choke on its own demands.
- pyuser583 1y agoSociety has been getting better and better. The privations our parents and grandparents went though were insane. Conscription, poverty, illiteracy, I mean wow. By almost every conceivable metric, the world is getting better.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoI don't disagree, but better doesn't make up for unfairness. Inequality isn't an act of nature. No volcano or hurricane is disrupting lives. The source is human, a system we built, the society we live in. If we can't change the system that binds us, then it doesn't deserve us. The core conceit is, "When I win, it's merit. When you lose, it's fair."