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Comment by wruza | Hacker News Reader

I always found this loop strange (idea-wise, biological drive is easy to explain). An average man struggles, has to jump over his head to get happy, then kids quickly arrive, and the man lives in misery slightly balanced by love. Then kids grow up and the cycle repeats. This may be not your story, but I see it everywhere and not sure how I am different or able to even try. I’ve also seen enough friends’ lives deteriorating. To me kids are like opioids, every year you lose someone to it. Pretty sure most of you will find this comparison terrible, but that’s how it looks on my side.

I have a couple of nice family examples as well. But they are so different that it doesn’t even count.

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Why do people have to live in misery? (sort of a rhetorical question)

Sometimes it's hard for me to tell what is the bigger problem, having kids or that most people are living in misery, selling their life away for money and consumerism.

I can understand the argument for not having kids because you are bringing kids into this dystopia. But I could also see the argument of stop living and createing the dystopia.

My idea is stop living for someone else who wouldn’t be happy living for someone else, and live for yourself^, just like an endless amount of generations of your parents hoped you to do.

Another commenter said that subj is nihilism. But feeding The Cycle with your own live and teaching kids to do so by example / by default is much more nihilistic than using what you’ve got. The treasure our ancestors have mined so hard is not biological. It is cultural and technological advancement. (And biologically we must be degrading at the same rate.)

^ I don’t mean pure egoism and other negative traits here, just put yourself into the equation of priorities and have whatever and whoever you want according to your true abilities instead of social expectations.

Not sure I totally follow what you are saying.

But I think I might agree. Certainly agree to just engage with life and to not live based on societal expectations. (If that's what you are saying)

Key to this, for me, is to create community. Community is the only way I see to escape the cycle.

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