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It is the simple things that is the hardest. If anything, having children revealed many of the mentioned. To me, having children is enlightenment

by a_c 1y ago

ErigmolCt 1y ago
There's something about raising kids that strips away all the fluff and forces you to confront the core of who you are
tirant 1y ago
I fully agree. It gives also a sense of impact in the world that might span over centuries or even longer. Sometimes I joke about the simple concept that we are all the descendants of a chain of ascendants that manage to successfully reproduce and have children without interruption, through all the evolutionary stages, from homo sapiens to hominids, monkeys, mammals until reaching the first life organisms. And I am not going to be the one stopping that long evolutionary chain ;)
silexia 1y ago
Having children is the literal purpose of all life forms. Birth control is the worst thing that humanity has invented.
- grugagag 1y ago
  Birth control is not to not have children but to control when you have children.
  - Night_Thastus 1y ago
    Sort of... Many people do not want to hear this. Many would point to economic factors as the main problem. But I think that when people are educated about the risks and responsibilities of parenthood and given the choice of doing so (birth control, abortion, etc.) - the simple fact is that they CHOOSE not have enough kids to meet the replacement rate. The reason you can see this is because the lowering birth rates aren't limited to one or two countries. It is every industrialized country. Every single one. If the issues were purely economic, those countries with amazing parental leave and better social nets would avoid the problem - but they don't. I'm not sure what that kind of future for humanity will look like long term. It will be an interesting reckoning in ~100-200 years.
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      Good observation. Those could very well be the only considerations for some people. Maybe a good part of this is the risks and responsibilities without a co-operative village to grow families interactively. What if the lingering problem is one of scale, that has not yet been solved? Remember this whole thing is from a 90-year old and the smaller the village, the fewer the population of any one age group. It's really making people think about all kinds of things all over the ball park. If it's a small enough village you can't end up with a crowd of 1st graders ever, for instance, so age segregation as we know it for any years at a time has no similarity, and across-the-board people of all ages are part of the same group more so. Which means for one thing, if there is a 90-year old among the village, almost every one would be familiar with interacting with them routinely, as they were all growing up no less. An overwhelmingly more abundant number of adults would effectively be taking care of the children from start to finish, compared to how widespread adult influence is not intentionally minimized today, but ends up that way with same-age peers being more influential and naturally less mature. Counter-intuitively it may even be that humanity, in the body of each family itself, thrives better when there remains satisfying group support for community focus more so than separate individual cocoons, which today are each more like on their own in rapidly changing times. The villages humans mainly evolved to thrive in are about the opposite of what we have now in the big city. It's also a good reminder that those of us who are a lot closer to 90 than we are 20 have still got a lot to learn. So no quitting or you'll never be as wise as this letter shows.
    - Anamon 1y ago
      That's under the assumption of framing it as a problem. Personally, I think naturally declining birth rates are a corrective measure for an already wildly overpopulated planet. And that we can be damn glad that this is the way things seem to be heading, because the alternative would be an ever accelerating freight train heading for one of several much more devastating scenarios of population reduction. Even with sub-replacement birth rates I don't see humanity at a threat of extinction (from natural population decline!) in the next tens of thousands of years. And even if -- what's the issue? It's only humans who think humanity is this great gift to the universe that needs to be protected and spread.
- layer8 1y ago
  You are basically saying that the purpose of all life forms is to create further life forms, whose purpose then is again the same. In other words, the purpose is eating its own tail. In my mind, this circularity disqualifies it from being a meaningful purpose.
  - silexia 1y ago
    Read any biology textbook. The purpose of every life form is to reproduce and create more life. This is the purpose of all evolution and all life.
    - Anamon 1y ago
      That's not a "purpose", though. It's a precondition and a post-fact explanation for why life exists. There's nobody to say that any individual is supposed to continue the cycle.

It is the simple things that is the hardest. If anything, having children revealed many of the mentioned. To me, having children is enlightenment

by a_c 1y ago

It is the simple things that is the hardest. If anything, having children revealed many of the mentioned. To me, having children is enlightenment

ErigmolCt 1y ago

There's something about raising kids that strips away all the fluff and forces you to confront the core of who you are

tirant 1y ago

I fully agree. It gives also a sense of impact in the world that might span over centuries or even longer. Sometimes I joke about the simple concept that we are all the descendants of a chain of ascendants that manage to successfully reproduce and have children without interruption, through all the evolutionary stages, from homo sapiens to hominids, monkeys, mammals until reaching the first life organisms. And I am not going to be the one stopping that long evolutionary chain ;)

silexia 1y ago

Having children is the literal purpose of all life forms. Birth control is the worst thing that humanity has invented.

grugagag 1y ago
Birth control is not to not have children but to control when you have children.
- Night_Thastus 1y ago
  Sort of... Many people do not want to hear this. Many would point to economic factors as the main problem. But I think that when people are educated about the risks and responsibilities of parenthood and given the choice of doing so (birth control, abortion, etc.) - the simple fact is that they CHOOSE not have enough kids to meet the replacement rate. The reason you can see this is because the lowering birth rates aren't limited to one or two countries. It is every industrialized country. Every single one. If the issues were purely economic, those countries with amazing parental leave and better social nets would avoid the problem - but they don't. I'm not sure what that kind of future for humanity will look like long term. It will be an interesting reckoning in ~100-200 years.
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    Good observation. Those could very well be the only considerations for some people. Maybe a good part of this is the risks and responsibilities without a co-operative village to grow families interactively. What if the lingering problem is one of scale, that has not yet been solved? Remember this whole thing is from a 90-year old and the smaller the village, the fewer the population of any one age group. It's really making people think about all kinds of things all over the ball park. If it's a small enough village you can't end up with a crowd of 1st graders ever, for instance, so age segregation as we know it for any years at a time has no similarity, and across-the-board people of all ages are part of the same group more so. Which means for one thing, if there is a 90-year old among the village, almost every one would be familiar with interacting with them routinely, as they were all growing up no less. An overwhelmingly more abundant number of adults would effectively be taking care of the children from start to finish, compared to how widespread adult influence is not intentionally minimized today, but ends up that way with same-age peers being more influential and naturally less mature. Counter-intuitively it may even be that humanity, in the body of each family itself, thrives better when there remains satisfying group support for community focus more so than separate individual cocoons, which today are each more like on their own in rapidly changing times. The villages humans mainly evolved to thrive in are about the opposite of what we have now in the big city. It's also a good reminder that those of us who are a lot closer to 90 than we are 20 have still got a lot to learn. So no quitting or you'll never be as wise as this letter shows.
  - Anamon 1y ago
    That's under the assumption of framing it as a problem. Personally, I think naturally declining birth rates are a corrective measure for an already wildly overpopulated planet. And that we can be damn glad that this is the way things seem to be heading, because the alternative would be an ever accelerating freight train heading for one of several much more devastating scenarios of population reduction. Even with sub-replacement birth rates I don't see humanity at a threat of extinction (from natural population decline!) in the next tens of thousands of years. And even if -- what's the issue? It's only humans who think humanity is this great gift to the universe that needs to be protected and spread.
layer8 1y ago
You are basically saying that the purpose of all life forms is to create further life forms, whose purpose then is again the same. In other words, the purpose is eating its own tail. In my mind, this circularity disqualifies it from being a meaningful purpose.
- silexia 1y ago
  Read any biology textbook. The purpose of every life form is to reproduce and create more life. This is the purpose of all evolution and all life.
  - Anamon 1y ago
    That's not a "purpose", though. It's a precondition and a post-fact explanation for why life exists. There's nobody to say that any individual is supposed to continue the cycle.