Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Marie Stopes would like a word with you from beyond the grave.

Seriously, we've had modern birth control for a century. Not only has society not collapsed but a whole number of hidden evils have been abolished (Tuam passim), and needless poverty avoided. It's our perfect anti-Malthusian weapon.

This is Hacker News in the 21st century. Tradition alone is a terrible reason to do things. I'm astonished that your comment seems to have been upvoted here.

Edit: I'm trying to keep it civil but I'm really disappointed not just that this appears on HN but it's sitting at the top of its thread tree not greyed out at the bottom.

Oh, and it's "alluding" not "eluding".

View on HN

Sure society hasn't collapsed, but we've lost a lot all in the name of "progress".

What all have we lost due to birth control?

Teenage pregnancies dropped down ... people can have regular sex without having 7 children ... horrible ...

Before birth control, it was an accomplishment one could be proud of to have children at the right time. It required stable relationships and self-control. Your family and church would give you a lot of respect if you succeeded, and contempt if you failed. It was a test that separated the virtuous from the lazy, weak, and sinful.

When such hardships are made optional by technological or social progress, most find new challenges to conquer but many regret their loss.

Birth control is old news in the Western world. But the cycle will repeat with new technologies. Suppose you're serious about fitness, you spend hours every week spinning and cross-fitting, and your abs are rippling. And tomorrow, a pill is developed that lets everyone be perfectly fit with zero effort. What do you get for all your hours at the gym? Can you imagine being bummed that everyone else is getting for free what you worked so hard for? That might give some idea what pre-birth-control nostalgia is like.

The problem with this lovely wheat-from-chaff heuristic is that "failure" results in the introduction of a new human life into a world that may not be prepared for it and will be strained ecologically for its existence. I would much rather have a world where the lazy, weak, and sinful pop pills towards an ecologically sustainable population than one where the virtuous are lauded for bringing five or six new people into existence, but, you know, at the "right time".

Me too. The failure mode of pre-contraceptive society (unwanted children) was terrible. But human nature is what it is, and many people are willing to accept terrible externalities in order to have a means to display their comparative virtue. The recent attack on universal health care in the US is an example. Many voters seem to desire a world where people who have their financial shit together will live, and others will die.

For a clear-eyed view of these less inspiring aspects of human nature, read Sapiens and Homo Deus by Harari.

Reminds me of a Steinbeck quote:

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

> It was a test that separated the virtuous from the lazy, weak, and sinful. When such hardships are made optional by technological or social progress, most find new challenges to conquer but many regret their loss.

And it used to be that, in order to eat food, you had to work 12 hours a day under the hot sun, which was great because only the righteous could be fed.

Now anyone, even those born to a weakling family, can get a job as a software developer and spend time chatting on Hacker News, and still feed a family. It's shameful.

Trust me, the only people with pre-birth control nostalgia are misguided men who are still alive because a) they didn't die in childbirth and b) don't have to have a period every month. I suppose you think that life before the polio vaccine was better too because not winding up in an iron lung is an accomplishment and how DARE someone just get a small needle in the arm without having to put in years to avoid dying a slow, paralytic death?

I don't think you understand just how painful some women's periods can be. I take birth control NOT to have unbridled sex, but to live my life normally without excruciating, debilitating pain every 23 days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com