Hacker News Reader

Comment by icxa | Hacker News Reader

> the liberation of women from the home and from conservative sexual values.

Everyone is unhappy, married people on average are happier than unmarried, religious people are on average happier than unreligious people.

The sexual and feminist revolution got some 'splainin to do.

Of course, my view, the answer isn't "liberating women from the bonds of motherhood and family" but empowering women and supporting them in arguably the most powerful and most important thing one human can actually do in this world: bring new life into it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/happiness-...

View on HN

Feminism was motivated by the minority of women that wanted a job in 1950, and their legitimate frustration with how the system was trying to stop them from doing that. Somehow that got switched around into a society where almost every woman is required to have an income. It's like we went from oppressing half of all women to oppressing the other half of all women.

It's a form of prisoners dilemma. "Cooperating" with traditional society meant being a single-income couple. "Defecting" is being a dual-income couple. Once enough couples start defecting, they're so much more competitive that other couples have to defect to survive.

What about the right to vote? That was a pretty big feminist movement. Or the right to own property/have a bank account without a male cosigner?

There have been several "feminisms" in history, each with their own motivations, supporters and attitudes.

Seems a bit circular to me. If the most important thing a human can do is bring life, then that life also has as its most important mission to bring some more life into the mix and so on. You end up with an endless chain of causation and no real answer as to what makes the entire thing worthwhile.

You broke the first rule of fight club.

"An endless chain of causation" isn't circular, that's more or less the definition of life. What's the alternative, a task that a species must complete so that it can then go extinct?

Perhaps a chain of loop-de-loops would be a better mental image: a series of circles rather than just the one. If the importance of any life is justified by its relation to other lives that are themselves justified by other lives, you end up with no core importance. There's no meat inside the loops.

I don't have a definite answer to your question but looking at most of what has happened in history I do wonder if developing opposable thumbs and a frontal cortex was worth it.

I'm pretty sure reproduction/biological success is considered the prime biological directive of any species. There's no romantic explanation for it be worthwhile.

I'd say the idea of a directive is also a romantic explanation, since it implies a some sort of planning. The reality is more tautological. The current crop of beings is there... because they made it to this point. There is no deeper reason or value to be assigned to their survival.

A being doesn't want to reproduce in itself, it wants to fulfill needs that compel it to reproduce. A desire for sex, for companionship, for a social role, etc. It's possible to be highly attracted to someone who is infertile because we chase the signs of procreation rather than its actual occurrence. We can rationally plan to make procreation happen but even in this case it is an illusion, we are still chasing some state of mind that leads to procreation.

On the contrary, I am trying to dispel the romanticism here and the hidden additional romantic layer that anthropomorphizes the process of evolution itself by giving it some sort of direction.

> You end up with an endless chain of causation and no real answer as to what makes the entire thing worthwhile.

There are many reasons I don't want children, but this one in particular has stood out in my mind most of my adult life as the perfect reason not to.

Is bringing another being into the world the most important thing one can actually do? I'm not sure if you've noticed but we're getting pretty full. And we're living longer. Feels to me like the bus is getting full.

Well procreation is essential for all self reproducing organisms. If you don't prioritize it, then congrats, people like you won't influence future too much.

Also bus isn't getting full. The issue is two fold: chain smokers in first rows and overcrowding in back rows.

Not saying that it's the most important thing one can do, but it's at least as important as making money for other people as some career schmuck. Which is what most work outside the home boils down to.

Each person is free to choose their own destiny, including unhappiness.

Feminism isnt the search for happiness, its for equity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com