August 20, 2024

"Like Dr. Frankenstein, we are neglecting the monster’s point of view. What will our possible children think of their existence?"

"Will they be glad they’ve been born, or curse us for ushering them into being? Having children, [the philosopher Mara] van der Lugt argues, might be best seen as 'a cosmic intervention, something great, and wondrous—and terrible.' We are deciding 'that life is worth living on behalf of a person who cannot be consulted,' and we 'must be prepared, at any point, to be held accountable for their creation.'..."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "Should We Think of Our Children as Strangers? A new line of inquiry asks us to imagine them as random individuals who just happen to live in our homes" (The New Yorker).

Based on the title alone, I presumed I was about to read some anti-natalist material. Who would commit to accepting a random stranger into one's home — with no option to kick him out? To ask the question in that form is to undercut the pro-natalist propaganda that is — unless women are coerced — needed to keep humanity from becoming extinct. 

And, indeed, Rothman gives short shrift to the pro-natalists (though he does say a little more than that they include Trump and Vance, which, I suspect, would be enough to put off most New Yorker readers):
Against “pronatalists”—among them Donald Trump’s Vice-Presidential nominee, J. D. Vance—who urge us to have more kids on practical, moral, and existential grounds, “anti-natalists” maintain that having children may be morally wrong, perhaps because it increases the total quantity of suffering in the universe (life is hard!) or because it pushes the planet closer to ecological collapse....

Van der Lugt inventories the reasons why people have children, ranking them from callow (conformity, boredom, satisfying your parents) to admirable (purpose, companionship, happiness, love). Yet she finds that even the best, most sincere reasons come up short: life can be full of struggle and is possibly meaningless, death is inevitable and sometimes painful, and “love alone cannot justify all things.”... 
To be a good parent—arguably, to even become a parent—you need to exercise your power. But that power is always slipping through your fingers, undermined by the unpredictability of life, your children’s resistance and liveliness, and the passage of time....
On the topic of pro-natalism, seen not from the perspective of the individual but from the threat of population collapse, listen to Peter Thiel, at the end of his 3-hour conversation with Joe Rogan:


"If it's one on average... one baby per woman... then it's in 33 generations, 2 to the 33rd is about 8 billion, and if every generation's 30 years, 30 times 33 is 990 years. In 990 years, you'd predict there'd be one person left on the planet... and then then we'd go extinct."

107 comments:

Jersey Fled said...

and “love alone cannot justify all things.”

I disagree.

narciso said...

they really do have a death wish, they want to erase this country,

Dave Begley said...

More fucked up opinions from a "smart" lib. At the core of this idiot's opinion is that the Earth is doomed to burn up in 2100 unless we achieve net zero by 2050. Nothing could be further from the truth. And I've got the math to back me up.

There is a silver lining to this piece. I urge all New Yorker readers never to have children. They'll miss out on all the joy and pride that comes with being a parent, but they'll have the money and time to go to the latest Broadway shows and then for a swank drink at the latest hotspot.

And since I'm the Althouse community's resident expert on Frankenstein, note well that Mary Shelley wrote the line, "What's in it for the other man?" (paraphrase) There's plenty "in it" as a parent. Moreover, parenthood prevents societal collapse and that's coming to China and Japan given their birth rates.

Parenthood is about hope and notwithstanding the infamous Obama "Hope" poster, the libs don't have hope. They live and spend for today.

The more I encounter modern day liberal opinion the more convinced I am that liberalism is a mental illness. We conservatives have NOTHING in common with the libs.

joshbraid said...

At least he thinks that children are persons, so that's a plus. The minus is that the loneliness of nihilism is its selling point.

Scott M said...

Sounds like a retreading of The Violinist philosphy 101 hypothetical.

Saint Croix said...

Not so much pro-choice as anti-life.

J2 said...

And - just in time - you can get on the bus for a vasectomy or abortion at the Democratic National Convention.

RideSpaceMountain said...

I truly wish that the parents of people like this had made the choice to entrust to oblivion the pickwickians that write twaddle like this.

RideSpaceMountain said...

As Spike Lee once said, "GET ON THE BUS DEMS. GET ON THE BUS!"

Sebastian said...

"because it pushes the planet closer to ecological collapse"

Haven't read the article, not sure if it's meant as an actual argument, but calling BS just in case. "The planet" has no feelings, its ecologies have collapsed many times in many different ways, and worrying about collapse is a matter of human hubris.

"she finds that even the best, most sincere reasons come up short"

OK, now consider reasons for other things. Which reasons for other actions do not come up short? If struggle and pain and death undermine choosing children, why don't they undermine anything else just as much?

“love alone cannot justify all things.”

Is that meant as an argument? By a philosopher? Since love "alone" cannot justify "all" things, therefore love combined with good sense
can't justify this one thing?

"But that power is always slipping through your fingers"

Right. So? Someone even wrote a pretty good poem about it. Love is proved in the letting go. Profound experience, if you aren't blinkered by phony philosophy.

Dave Begley said...

"A person’s life can never be fully explained, justified, or contained—not your child’s, and not your own." The last line in Rothman's piece. Please! Life's a gift and I don't think it is a proper use of the gift of life to write inane pieces for The New Yorker that only reinforces the whacked out views of its readers.

No word as to whether Rothman has children. Hope not. Total loser.

Smilin' Jack said...

"If it's one on average... one baby per woman..."

The average is irrelevant. Some women have more babies than others, and that type of woman will come to dominate the population. In 990 years there'll be plenty of people, but they'll all be fundamentalist wackos and Nigerians.

Rusty said...

Children are a gift. And as a parent we spend the rest of our lives deserving that gift.

Todd said...

"Will they be glad they’ve been born, or curse us for ushering them into being? Having children, [the philosopher Mara] van der Lugt argues, might be best seen as 'a cosmic intervention, something great, and wondrous—and terrible.' We are deciding 'that life is worth living on behalf of a person who cannot be consulted,' and we 'must be prepared, at any point, to be held accountable for their creation.'..."

This is the sort of drivel that is created when too many people have it too easy, on this world. Noodle this through, the amount of "spare" time and careless existence one must have to ponder crap like this. This is from the same entitlement that the discussion from last week originates from, that "dogs have agency" tripe. Lord the entitled are so exhausting...

Saint Croix said...

We are neglecting the monster's point of view

It doesn't surprise me that pro-abort philosophers immediately think "monster" when ordinary people think "baby."

That's the whole point of fetus rhetoric, to dehumanize babies and make it easier on our conscience when we kill them.

Dave Begley said...

Rothman spent a decade working on a doctorate in English. And then there's this, "In 2008, when Joshua Rothman was studying English as a graduate student, he had a panic attack while walking across the campus quad. “A wave of fear washed over me. Its origin wasn’t at all mysterious: I had no workable plan for my life. There were almost no jobs for new English professors, and the search for work would likely send me and my wife to different parts of the country,” he writes. “How would we ever build a life together, or start a family? Intellectually, I had known for years that we were approaching our future in an unrealistic way—but now the problem registered as a physical assault, contained in the brightness of the sun and the stirring of the air. Oh, my God, I thought. What am I going to do?”

AlbertAnonymous said...

The world is ending unless you join the cult so you can be saved…

JK Brown said...

Would your children hate you for forcing them into life in this time of growing socialism, speech suppression, and the managerial class no longer pretending to care about those they harry?

You know when people had children in the past? When there was hope for the future and jobs building that future. Now we have college-credentialed unskilled, pretentious public dependents.

People had to be able to ‘afford’ to marry and have children. When economic conditions changed dramatically and called for a huge burst of extra labour, in other words with the early labour-intensive phase of the industrial revolution, then the age at marriage dropped and a larger proportion of the population married. Population grew rapidly as jobs became available.
--The Invention of the Modern World by Alan Macfarlane.

Wa St Blogger said...

When you celebrate the self, denigrate the traditional family, kill your offspring before they are born all because you believe that a professional career is the epitome of self-actualization. you get this.

Until society recognizes that motherhood is more valuable than CEO, this will continue.

tommyesq said...

Yet she finds that even the best, most sincere reasons come up short: life can be full of struggle and is possibly meaningless, death is inevitable and sometimes painful, and “love alone cannot justify all things.”...

If she hasn't yet killed herself, she does not really believe this.

God commanded his children to "go forth and multiply." Genesis 1:28. Therefore, you are basically ordered to have kids so as to be in God's plan. On the other hand, if you believe there is no God and this life is all that there is, you are denying your potential progeny the only thing that this world would have given them - the ultimate denial.

Oso Negro said...

How many children does Mara Van der Lugt have? How many grandchildren? If the answer is ZERO, she can sit on her unseeded cunt and keep her mouth shut. If she does, I feel sorry for them. I will not buy her book to find out. How about “ we have children because the big molecules compel us to do so”? Or, “ we think the world is a fine place and we want to continue the human experience”. Or, in my case, “i produce superior children and I intend to go right on doing it because it pleases me”. Fuck the child haters! I’m 67 and my 25 year old wife is pregnant with our second, which will be my fourth. Ha ha ha! I piss on her philosophizing!

Greg The Class Traitor said...

"Like Dr. Frankenstein, we are neglecting the monster’s point of view. What will our possible children think of their existence?"
So Joshua Rothman is a monster, and therefore things the rest of us are, too.
got it

Tom T. said...

In the comic-book series "Lucifer," the title character is angry at God because he cannot stand the thought that he was beholden to someone else for his creation, that he was born into someone else's universe.

tommyesq said...

Not exactly on topic, but one of the most interesting things about people like Theil and Musk (and even Rogan himself) is a willingness to ask questions and listen to the answers. As distinct from the smug know-it-alls who currently run the country and are spending this week directing a shouty nag-fest our way and/or smarmily talking down their noses at us (e.g. Obama's typical speech).

Greg The Class Traitor said...

“anti-natalists” maintain that having children may be morally wrong, perhaps because it increases the total quantity of suffering in the universe (life is hard!) or because it pushes the planet closer to ecological collapse....

1: It only increases the total NET quality of suffering in the universe when the Left is in charge. Or do these sickos not care about joy, only about "suffering"
2: If there are no humans, why should we care whether or not the planet has an ecological collapse?
Oh, it's because your side is nothing but insects and worms, and therefore you dont' value humans more than insects and worms?

Aggie said...

Anybody that feels they shouldn't bring more life into the world shouldn't do it. I absolutely endorse this position - even while acknowledging that they're transgressing their biological imperative. But people like this: They've never had a baby, never gone through a pregnancy, either personally or in a supportive role. I'm a grandfather now, so I've seen it from both perspectives.

And if, by some bizarre extension, they have had a baby, and in spite of that, feel this way. Well - they're monsters, psychopaths. They are untouchable by human connection, and should be treated that way, as pariahs of civilization, which is fundamentally a construct meant to nurture children, while celebrating humanity.

Birches said...

We have children to become more like our Heavenly Father. He gives us the power to create as he did and through that process we gain a greater understanding of his loving kindness for us as His children.

Dave Begley said...

What will it take for liberals to realize that the Dem party is a total failure? The prices at the grocery store and gas pump aren't enough reality for them. The unnecessary disaster of the covid masks and shut down didn't convince them. The George Floyd riots didn't do it. The invasion of 10m plus illegal aliens didn't do the trick. Do we need a total social collapse or attack by China?

At the Walz rally on Saturday, 75% of the crowd was female. Of that, at least half were unionized school teachers. Omaha public schools have a terrible record of student achievement. At many of the schools, not even 20% are proficient. These lazy and stupid women are failures at their jobs and just want to protect their paychecks.

I had an encounter with a Goth girl who attended a public high school. I had yelled at some Hamas Dems to take off their masks. I asked them if they were proud of October 7th. This child told me that I couldn't criticize them because they were minors. I told her that they were in a public forum expressing their political opinions and they weren't immune. I later told her that teenagers died in WW2 to protect her First Amendment rights. Her response? "Lame."

That's the job the public schools have done. The March through the Institutions is complete.

Howard said...

No. Strangers are people who are not directly related to us by blood. It's more subtle. The key is knowing that even an infant is one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet than that. Children are individuals they're not you they're not your spouse but they do have aspects of both of you plus aspects of other ancestors who have preceded you. They are individuals.

The job of a parent is not to change the personality. The job is to make the child feel secure and your love. Not the squishy type of love talked about on the Phil Donahue show. More like the unconditional love that a drill instructor expresses to his recruits. That love can be gentle but more often harsh designed to fortify the young human to be strong intelligent healthy and happy. That is the tetrahedron of success that generates the synergy to resist forces of nature.

Freeman Hunt said...

Not a joke: Anyone who thinks that people, in general, would be better off never having been born than enduring the usual sufferings of life should probably seek treatment for depression. Wishing you had never been born in not normal and a sign of mental distress.

Kate said...

Dr. Frankenstein's fatal flaw was that he took on the power of God, creation, without having God's infinite love. After one look at his creation, the Monster, the Dr. shuddered. He rejected and scorned it, casting it out into the world with no human connection. Every consequent action the Monster takes is a result of this pain, this lack of love that almost no human parent would feel toward their child.

I hate when people use a novel they haven't read as a metaphor.

The rule of Lemnity said...

In 900 years we could figure out a way not to go extinct. If the aliens could figure it out, why can't we? #Overtherainbow.

traditionalguy said...

That sums it up succinctly.

MadTownGuy said...

narciso said...

"they really do have a death wish, they want to erase this country,"

I think the expected outcome will be a planet (not just the US) with a fraction of the population, just enough to support the cloistered elites, and subservient enough to stay in their roles. There won't be a right to reproduce, outside of the blessing of the state.

O Brave New Normal!

David53 said...

If we give up, who's going to take care of all those stray cats?

chuck said...

Hormones. Nature suckers us into intercourse using hormones, which makes us desire sex, and rewards us with immediate pleasure. Hey, it works, we are still here after many thousands of years. Nature don't care about your thoughts on the matter. I didn't wake up one morning and decide women's nether parts were interesting and their butts beautiful, it just happened.

wildswan said...

I think it's natural for people who hate their own lives to not wish to spend time on someone else's life. You might ask "why do they hate their lives?" I would not ask them anything, I've heard their reason many times (life is meaningless, love inadequate, then death) and I've lost interest. It seems to me, their real point always is "and it's your fault, or God's, or the two of you." While people are thinking that way, they are impervious to any solution. The point is to complain. Go away.
A friend who's overwhelmed is another thing or even a random stranger who needs to talk to a stranger. But she-who-is-fixed-within-her-grievance - no

traditionalguy said...

You know there really are people who care for no one else.period. They see society that loves as a ship of fools. Only they count.

But justifying that lifestyle requires huge and near perfect virtue signaling. Hence the NYT articles get consumed.

Howard said...

You're just arguing one fairy tale versus another fairy tale. That's one definition of insanity.

n.n said...

The mellifluous melody of our Monsters, ourselves. Abort.

This could be an episode of The Outer Limits but it is an era of The Twilight Fringe. Abort.

Welcome to the Ouroboros. Another fetus in the clinic.

Howard said...

You're absolutely correct nature, or the universe, as you please, is indifferent. However, as human beings we are not. That is the beauty of consciousness that Odin has blessed us with. Live your best authentic life and you might just get into Valhalla

John henry said...

As a gay man what is Peter thiel doing to stave off population decline?

Gay and childless John Maynard Keynes famously said "in the long run we are all dead" politicians have been using this to borrow against the future ever since. (deficit spending)

He and Thiel are both dead in the long run. Most of us are not. We live on after death thru children grand children and so on.

That immortality is just one of the benefits children bring.

John Henry

John Henry

Howard said...

Justification is the realm of the gods not as mere humans. Therefore, you are point is not only 100% wrong It's silly.

Scott M said...

I've always wondered if that type watches the Alien movies completely differently than I do.

Dave Begley said...

And read "Frankenstein, Part II" available via the Althouse AMZN portal. My high school friend, Mike Kennedy a/k/a M. Reese Kennedy, picked up right were Mary Shelley left off.

Michael K said...

Poor farm workers did not marry until their 30s as a form of birth control in 18th and 19th century England.

Michael K said...

Congrats. I have 5, all adults and thriving.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Many people, many I know, did not "decide" at all. It happened and they went with it. Some carelessly, some taking precautions that failed to prevent pregnancy. So my premise is that the ease and availability of effective birth control, including abortion since that is the reason most cited (don't want a baby), is contributing to our demise. The old joke was if men had the babies we would go extinct, but it seems women, given the ultimate choice are choosing extinction.

tommyesq said...

But what if all of the aliens did go extinct? See Fermi paradox.

Static Ping said...

People like this tend to be self-correcting, as they do not have children and therefore do not show up for the decision making of the next generation. They won't be missed.

dbp said...

"To ask the question in that form is to undercut the pro-natalist propaganda that is — unless women are coerced — needed to keep humanity from becoming extinct."

This is not what pro-natalists think. Coercion is neither needed, wanted nor ultimately sustainable.

We think that one of the highlights of a well-lived life is having and raising children.

We think that the most valuable thing ever created in the universe is Human civilization and that to maintain this priceless thing, people must continue to be born.

As such, we should consciously conceive of how we can move society to a place where most people will be able to raise a family. And most people will want to raise a family. A healthy society is one in which people can thrive and part of thriving is reproducing.

Kevin said...

Yet another big lie: Feminism is about women having choices.

Yancey Ward said...

"Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them."

Orwell is ascendant these days, isn't he?

The rule of Lemnity said...

Is this an open border in disguise argument? Prepping for the brave new world.

Bob Boyd said...

Poor farm workers did not marry until their 30s as a form of birth control in 18th and 19th century England.

It worked, but it was hell on the sheep and donkeys.

Iman said...

Fuck these people and their shitty values.

Christopher B said...

JK Brown .. I wish I could find the link to one of Assistant Village Idiot's relatively recent finds on SubStack that advanced the proposition that what we think of as the post-WWII baby boom actually started much earlier than 1945 and was directly related to the increasing value of male labor as war started and loomed (remember that for most of the world WWII started in the late 1930s, not 1942). Men marry and produce children when they feel valued and have a positive outlook on the future and that's what drives fecundity, not giving a single mom $6K for popping out another mouth to feed.

To the topic at hand, I always remember something passed on to me when my son was struggling through his teen years .. Parenting eventually becomes a cooperative effort.

hombre said...

"A new line of inquiry ...." Just what we need. /s Here's one old, straightforward answer among many to such inquiries: Genesis 1:28, 'And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”'

Yancey Ward said...

I remember reading this one from late last year with the same idea.

rhhardin said...

XVII

Are there any little boys who think they are a
monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the
dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him
joyfully

- Anne Carson

mikee said...

There is a meme that went around recently, where people would show something they did and superimpose a popular song over it, with the lyrics, "Don't ask me how I did it. I just did it. It was hard."

One need seek no further regarding retrospectives on reproduction.

Carol said...

What hombre said. The proof is in the biology.

Fred Drinkwater said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

Transhumanism.

Scott Patton said...

"We are deciding 'that life is worth living on behalf of a person who cannot be consulted.."
That's only half of the question. The other half complicates things a good bit... "worth living or not".

n.n said...

It's exactly like Dr. Frankenstein whose model of evolutionary fitness was reduce, reuse, and recycle. What you don't grow, can't grow,, you can groom and harvest in posterity.

FullMoon said...

When overpopulation actually becomes a threat, we got the solution with our nuclear arsenal. Plenty of room in India and China once we thin the herd.

TosaGuy said...

Left alone from moronic deconstruction designed to sound “smart”, people will have sex, have kids , and take care of those kids—it’s like we are hardwired to do so or something.

But leftists have always ignored human nature.

TosaGuy said...

…or tried to undermine human nature

Tofu King said...

If Trump and Vance are the pro-natalists, why is Harris touting an increase in the child tax credit? Closet pro-natalust?

Temujin said...

They make my argument for me on a regular basis. People on the left are the most miserable human beings on the planet. '

" We are deciding 'that life is worth living on behalf of a person who cannot be consulted,'"

I love their concern that the living weren't consulted about having a life, but have no qualms at all about the aborted babies- 1,000,000+ annually- who are not 'consulted' about whether or not they'd like to have a life. Instead, that is considered a celebratory ritual by many on the left.

Just awful minds running around out there.

Michael K said...

At the bottom is the delusion of global warming. It's a shame that greedy promoters have spread this for profit.

Michael K said...

The abortion and vasectomy lovers will cancel their own. That's called "The Roe Effect." Time to read "Brave New World" again.

J L Oliver said...

Nihilism as the core philosophy in the article. Nothing is better than a life that is mixed with joy and suffering. Weird is the word.

PM said...

That just expands my pool of 'You stay away from my child.'

Michael K said...

I once mentioned children to another doctor who was gay but I didn't know it. H got very (inappropriately so ) angry and gave me a talking to that sounds like this writer. I had no idea that this was a hang-up with gays.

J L Oliver said...

I swear these people are a death cult.

Lucien said...

Thiel needs to take a system dynamics course.

Marcus Bressler said...

Attaboy, Oso Negro. I am 69 and three years ago my Guyanese GF ask me if I would be her "baby daddy" as she was 34 and wanted to start having children. I politely declined because IMHO I can't be much of a dad at my age. Though the GGF did find an old BF to do the deed and I enjoyed being the honorary granddad. But now that the 28-year old FWB is off hard drugs, she has a monthly cycle, and I have to take precautions got to wind up HER baby daddy. (P.S. I hate those terms)

Michael K said...

She has no ideas of her own. Her handlers look for ideas that are popular.

Quaestor said...

In 990 years, you'd predict there'd be one person left on the planet... and then then we'd go extinct.

Welcome to the Planet of the Cats, Bright Eyes.

Prof. M. Drout said...

Where are these extremely creepy commenters coming from? I skip reading Althouse for a couple weeks and when I come back there is this new crop of--no other way to put it--weirdos. Did a new set of "throw sand in the gears everywhere" orders go out?

Sebastian said...

Temujin: "I love their concern that the living weren't consulted about having a life, but have no qualms at all about the aborted babies."

Prolifers should adopt this line of argument. Respect for nature includes 1. seeing reality from the point of living creatures, in imagined "consultation"; 2. consciously cultivating an ecology of care in which life can thrive. Unborn babies are living creatures. Therefore, by the logic of a deep-ecological ethic of care, they must be consulted and conditions for their thriving cultivated. Somehow, I expect a little self-serving resistance to the prime premise.

Kai Akker said...

-- ... coerced.... --

Not merely rot, but bad rot. Comment quotas too low lately, Madame Trolleur, provocatrice?

The Vault Dweller said...

I think that the motivation for this article and arguments like it, is in the same vein of feminism as healthy at any size. People, especially women, shouldn't feel badly about any choices they have made. There are a lot of folks who are 45+ now who are childless. They were all aboard what the culture sold to them saying that the most important things in life are to have a good career, to be worldly and travel, and in general to have a life that is summed up by Live, Laugh, Love. But most of them probably feel incomplete, like their life is lacking in an important way. And it is. And since a major principle of this type of feminism is that women shouldn't feel badly for the choices they have made or their situation in life those choices have led to, then it must mean that the choices they made were actually good to make. All that is left is find out the reason why they were the good choices which will help those people feel better about themselves. There was some screed on MSNBC posted here some months ago, it might have been Joy Reid,, where she was saying that having children is one the worst things that people can do for the environment. It causes pollution, energy use, global warming, blah blah blah. While it was an anti-natalist diatribe, I thought the goal wasn't to convince people not to have children, (Joy Reid has 3 children and I suspect their carbon footprints are much larger than the typical American child's), the goal was to make the already, and almost certainly for the rest of their lives' childless, people feel better about their decisions and life outcomes.

JaimeRoberto said...

"As a gay man what is Peter thiel doing to stave off population decline?"

To be fair, men really aren't the bottleneck here, so to speak.

JaimeRoberto said...

If your worldview is oppressed vs oppressors, it's not hard to see man as oppressing nature, and therefore man should be done away with.

Jessica said...

Once in a while you'll hear a conservative voice the observation that leftists' decision not to reproduce will make for a better political future. Still makes me sad though.

Leland said...

Avoid analysis paralysis and just have the child. It will be hard at first, but the number of hard years is far less than the great years that just get greater once they too are adults.

Owen said...

David Begley: You are doing good work. Please don’t stop. I assume you are familiar with Francis Menton (“Manhattan Contrarian”) and Roger Pielke Jr. (“The Honest Broker”) who supply good stuff on “climate change.” As for the abuse of the legal system perpetrated to capture Trump: oy. Jonathan Turley is one of my go-to guys, as are Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker at Power Line.. But so too are you. Thanks.

Readering said...

In no other species do the parents wonder about what offspring think of their existence

The world population still grows by 70M p.a., which is about the same as the total world population in the year Rome was founded (according to tradition). I suspect demographic extinction is still more than a millenium away. Although demographic collapse happened in the city of Rome even before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and will no doubt occur in parts of the world in the coming centuries.

GrapeApe said...

Wait for China who already reversed their one child policy to requiring a two or three child policy.

Christopher B said...

Keep whistling past the graveyard if you wish. Neither of us will be around to see it but it's likely in the next century, not millennium. A big part of the world collapse is the demographic disaster the One-Child Policy visited on China. The Han Chinese are already facing near extinction because of it. India has already surpassed China in population and Nigeria will later this decade IIRC.

gilbar said...

the Future Belongs, to those who show up..
What (WHO?) will the Democrat Party be in a generation?
I'm Sure they are ASSUMING, that the south americans they are shipping in, will vote D.. But:
a) will these south americans have kids?
b) HOW will those kids vote?

the Future Belongs, to those who show up.

n.n said...

Was Dr. Mengele inspired by Dr. Frankenstein? Is Dr. Levine? Doctor is sex-agnostic.

Lucien said...

What a pathetically parochial “we”. Eight billion humans including billions of parents don’t worry about these things. Only a fraction of a rounding error do.

gilbar said...

lot's of videos on Tiktok and you tube by "42 years old, childless, and loving it"
most of them just look Sad.. ALL of them have a drink in their hands

and ALL of them have committed genetic suicide

imTay said...

This is one of those articles where the IQ bell curve meme applies, where the high IQ types agree with the morons that it’s complete nonsense, and the midwits lap it up.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Yes. Closer to the truth that the dumb book handmaid's tale.
The left's obsession with illegal immigration proves they want a China-style slave class - no middle class - and their wealthy elite supper club.

imTay said...

Projection is the default mode of propaganda.

effinayright said...

Worst of all, they try to destroy and change human nature

effinayright said...

Or how about the Planet of the Cat Wymyn…..shudder..

jaydub said...

The fundamental problem with progressives is that they are incapable of imagining a better world in the future. They seem to think the constraints on life today will always be the same, that the energy types and usage today are all that is out there, that there are no options for "sustainment" other than radical reduction of the use of existing resources as well as a drastic reduction in the number of resource users. This is of course sheer ignorance of human history or understanding of how far humankind have come in recent times, hence how far we are likely to go in the next century, let alone the next thousand years. Most progressives seem to be both scientifically ignorant and innumerate, therefore ill equipped to analyze or expound on the future or to even understand the limitless possibilities. For example, anyone who seriously believes atmospheric carbon is the principal driver of global climate is too ignorant to even realize that atmospheric water vapor concentrations are an order of magnitude more important. Pity the fool who believes in anthropogenic global warming, but don't let pity lead to voting the fools into office. I firmly believe the future of mankind depends on eliminating idiots like the "laughing hyena" from political discourse, let alone political power. Fortunately, I'll be 80 next year and with any kind of luck won't be around to see the fruits of progressive governance fully ripen. But here's a prediction if it actually happens: it's going to be a world class shit show.

The Godfather said...

When I was growing up in the 1950's, some of my friends' parents had a couple of kids and a few had several. In those days a lot of the BIG families were Catholic, and some were Jewish (you maybe have heard of the Holocaust?). Today I'm a grandpere. The point is that values change. My grandchildrens' generation is growing. I don't expect that one of their descendants will be the last human being.

Michael McNeil said...

So, it wasn't because he was “Abby Normal”?

Cappy said...

What is wrong with these people?

JIM said...

I'm confused, aren't Democrats in charge right now? All I hear from them is if I just vote them into office "all will be well". Say it with me, Utopia is right around the corner Comrade.