The Existential Relief of Having Children | Hacker News Reader

The Existential Relief of Having Children

thelivingfossils.substack.com

68 pointsjseliger111 comments

A philosopher friend of mine pointed this exact thing: After having children he stopped pondering about the big existential questions.

Paraphrasing his words: "You neither have the time nor the need to think of the meaning of it all: Children give meaning to everything ."

It just always seemed like a curse to me to only be able to ponder such a very very short small & local set of considerations. I think it's amazing that our species can take such grander views. Having children seems to truncate that perspective enormously.

Still want kids, still excited for this future. But man, I think most kids would have much better lives & grow up to be better more interesting people if the parents & adults didn't have to make such enormous sacrifices, if there was some spare capacity left over. And I think capitalism & the world we live in today is especially draining & enmiserating in this way.

> And I think capitalism & the world we live in today is especially draining & enmiserating in this way.

When was it bețter exactly?

When child-rearing was a communal activity supported by friends and extended family.

You need to have a lot of kids for that to happen.

Unpopular opinion: parents get tax breaks, extra paid time off, and plenty of social leeway for blocking sidewalks with strollers / crying babies on planes, etc.

Please don’t ask for more. We who don’t have kids have our own problems.

As George Carlin put it: “speaking as a mother, …”

This disgusts me, because I want to think about meaning, and the statement strikes me as a hand-wavy excuse for distracting oneself, as well as an attack on my values. But then, the point raised by the article is that distraction is somewhat similar to meaningful purpose, and the line is a fine one because we adapt to new problem situations. Watching myself go through such adaptation is always somewhat creepy, and the moments of choice before embarking on a momentous project are difficult, not merely for reasons of cost/benefit analysis but because "cost" and "benefit" are liable to redefined by embarking, which is just confusing. Charlie Kaufman wrote a film called "Adaptation" which I thought was about this maybe.

I think being too tired is just a small part of it. A much bigger one is that children give you an enormous sense of mission: to protect them, educate them, shape them. To foster the world around you so that when they grow up, it's not as messed up as it could otherwise be. To be a better person all round, so you can be a better parent to them. You learn things so you can teach them, you learn things from them, you pick up hobbies together to learn alongside.

Whether it's all worth the effort is a separate question, but oh boy it's a boost to existential anxiety for sure.

Yes, that's true, although it's always irritated me slightly because it has a repetitive element, from one generation to the next, an element of "kicking the can down the road" or "passing the buck". Which is not to deny that it all generates knowledge and makes progress, but it (parenthood) generates a lot of churn, too.

> but it (parenthood) generates a lot of churn, too.

That churn is also known as "living".

Well, I prefer to avoid it, whatever it's called.

The thinking-about-meaning is a distraction, too. A rather poor one, I increasingly believe, as I stare down the back side of middle age. That I’d end up flirting with that attitude would have really surprised me at age 20. Or 30, for that matter.

It’s all distractions. Pick a good distraction.

Having written that, do you have a second thought or refinement of it at all? For instance, maybe thinking-about-meaning isn't such a bad distraction, and if that's the distraction I pick, we're back where we started. I could happily admit that our minds are just elaborate functions, and so we might as well get on with it and function: but part of that function is being concerned about meaning (or purpose, a similar but more active term), so this assertion undermines itself.

Death lurks on the far horizon, distracting us and hustling us along, and perhaps tends to bias us toward the "stop worrying and get on with it before you go belly-up" point of view. Which is a shame, but practical.

I mean, I get where you're coming from and as someone who has spent a long time pondering and still wants kids, I can maybe offer you some solace in my conclusions.

A lot of "thinking-about-meaning" for me has transformed into fatalism. I firmly believe that our cognitive faculties demand a higher purpose, though I can't define what that purpose is. I disassemble my thought process, and prod deeper into my logical functions as to why I'm drawn to certain conclusions. At some point, I realize that I need to combat shortcomings and psychological "self-tricks" my mind instinctively employs. I'm prone to wanting shortcuts. In fact, I think this is the default state of non-abberant human thought. Visually, your eyes can hallucinate in the form of optical illusions where it employs predictive generated information based on patterns. Intuitively, you come to a conclusion because you've experienced proximity to similarity. But similarities are not, by definition, identical. In this delta lies all of humanity's greatest accomplishments, exploits, and suffering.

And in this I come to address the fundamental problem of "thinking-about-meaning". We draw experience from similarities, but we don't have a definitive state of 'singularity'. This is the barrier of human thought. You face the insurmountable variance of uncertainty. Cursed to cobble together primitive inference. Barely navigating this incomprehensible reality. You will never have a satisfying answer. You will always be isolated. You will always be alone. You will never be able to 'truly' share this experience with anyone else. And in here we long for comfort the most. We share wisdom and aphorisms. Our little 'shortcuts' in life.

"The young do not know what they have".

"Sex is not all that it's cracked up to be".

"The body is the prison of the soul".

Futility? Perhaps. But we sure are driven to iterate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i think the question of the meaning of life is maybe better answered by looking outward and get inspiration from other sources. look at the various religions and philosophies to find something that resonates. some people spend decades on this journey, so i don't think there is a quick answer, and not finding anything doesn't mean there is anything wrong with you.

i found meaning in the idea that the purpose of the existence of humanity itself is to carry forward an ever advancing civilization.

that means that we work together to make life better for everyone. this can mean raising children, but it also has room for many other activities and contributions that don't involve having children of your own.

having found a satisfactory answer, i don't think about meaning, but i focus on my role in the world to fulfill that purpose, while dealing with my own needs and shortcomings.

Wonderfully written. Thanks

> For instance, maybe thinking-about-meaning isn't such a bad distraction, and if that's the distraction I pick, we're back where we started.

In particular, concern that taking on a great task might demote the prominence of or drive for thinking-about-meaning in one’s life seems to me a sign of having gotten a bit lost in the woods and seeing only trees, if you will.

I think that sort of activity makes a better prologue and occasional footnote than it does a story, and that doing is both greater and much harder than thinking—which is why centering thought per se is such tempting bait. Many great thinkers warn of this :-)

Having meaning beats seeking meaning—the latter’s not much of an end, and doing less of it for having occupied oneself with meaning isn’t a loss.

Forgetting to seek meaning would also be losing one's way. Sounds like balance is probably best. Moderation in some things.

I always find myself between procrastination or escapism. If you do whatever, it most likely can be considered as escapism, if you don't, you're procrastinating what you should've been doing. There's no middle ground.

i think his wording is poorly phrased.

I think that having children put things in a different perspective/context. which makes your analysis of existence quite different.

I know that the day I held my son I felt something click/change in my mind. I can't really describe what changed, just that my priorities changed.

I still cant really aptly describe what changed... and it's been nearly 16 years to the day that he was born. (and I've also had a daughter (13) as well)

oh also, having children is a form of immortality. I know that my impact on the world will carry on, and I'm pretty pleased with the form that it takes.

i was you in my twenties, by my late 30s i figured out there is no meaning and you have to make your own meaning. Kids are the easy button for making meaning.

I heard that one ad nauseam: "the point is, there is no point," they'd* say, when I tried to coax them into discussions about what the point might be. I don't think you figured this out, I think you retreated to it.

Edit: I should be fairer about this. Yes, you "make your own meaning", in a sense, but I'm sure there is also an overarching abstract objective meaning. Even then, it's quite possibly more accurate to say a web or network of objective meanings: it doesn't seem to work very well as a hierarchy with a single value being fundamental, although I'm keen on knowledge-creation as a big one. But because abstract, objective ideas are impersonal and distant, they're not much use: you can't really work out what to do next, which is the basic moral question, from first principles, but instead have to be guided by what you like and what's around you, and this is adapting to the problem situation in which you find yourself (or the problem situations which you may choose to enter into). So to be honest I probably agree with you but just didn't like the way you said it, and I want to make a fuss about the details.

* For any arbitrary value of "them"

"Do you want to think about the meaning of life, or double it and pass it to the next person?"

After having children, it finally clicked to me that the purpose of life is simple - survival of your genes.

It is the only purpose I have thought of so far which makes sense logically - organisms who care about the survival of their genes are more likely to have their genes survive. Organisms who do not care about that are less likely to do so.

I am yet to find a reason for having children that is neither based on a past, now non-existent economic concern, nor could be retorted to with "so would getting yourself addicted to drugs". This article is of the latter variety.

Why WOULD I want to sign up for either an endless bunch of chores, OR a bogus chemical change in my brain - let alone both - to make me stop pondering the meaning of life?

Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-natalist and I support people having kids. Heck I'd pay for people to have more kids! I just want people to stop getting self-important about it. Purely by the numbers of the people who have accomplished child-rearing, it's one of the least special jobs in the world; maybe the least special of all - almost anyone can do it. There's more (real, not drug-like) meaning in agriculture or trash pickup.

Why do you believe there's more meaning in trash pickup? If the argument is that it provides more utility to people in a community, surely raising a child into a responsible, productive member of society is way more utility?

I (childless) thought this article was fantastic and convincing and then at the end the author reveals that she doesn’t have kids and then interviews a few of her friends who are parents and they are way less romantic about the whole thing.

Certainly some of the hesitation people have about having children simply comes from the many parents who don’t make it sound great.

I honestly think it’d be great to have a study that interviews parents but segments them by income. So we can see how much of the struggle is actually caused by not being able to pay for daycare or a maid etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmq0udSUuxc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32YMFjMZFc

It’s indeed such an (seemingly) easy fix ; marriage not good; get kids, bored with life; kids, seeking meaning: kids. I had friends and family do it for some or all of these reasons and indeed, at the start it helped somewhat; there was pink cloud. In the end it didn’t help and there was no meaning; divorce, depression (including suicide as there indeed was no meaning it turned out) and boredom moved back in after the kids left the house. There is no meaning, the universe doesn’t care; kids is the same as whatever else you can occupy yourself with that makes yourself feel worthy, making babies is just easier for most and it’s a ‘together activity’ that takes 25-30% of your life.

I think this might be the most cynical thing I’ve read on the Internet. Congrats.

Speaking as someone who's from a tight clique of former children of loveless homes, there's a truth I'd like to tattoo on the forehead of every baby-crazed[1] young couple:

No One Asks To Be Born.

It's on you. It's all on you. You're making the bet: half your life in exchange for throwing your genetics into the future. There's no waiting room of cherubs waiting at the vag-shaped gate for a turn on the old jumping dirt, no Sky Dad giving you gold stars for every set of fresh genitals vomited forth onto the world. But if you just end up making 60+ more years of misery for another lifeform, what in the living hell are you thinking?

Ok, alright, this is now the official "Bleak Subthread". Happy Subthreads, please continue on aisles 3 through 62.

[1] Or think they're baby crazed. Social expectations + hormones are powerful medicine. The problem is that - in America, anyway - the "social" part of that equation is fucked, nine ways to Sunday, and if you buy in without doing brain stuff, you'll be fucked, too.

> There is no meaning, the universe doesn’t care;

I just commented this elsewhere on this page - the only purpose of life is survival of one's genes. Those who care about that will have a higher likelihood of their genes surviving. Those who do not care (like you?) will have a lower likelihood. Rules of nature are pretty simple and amazing.

I get that people can debate the existential satisfaction of having kids, however what doesn’t seem debatable is the “next level” personal development that occurs by having kids. The first six months of parenthood broadens perspectives and instills more wisdom than 60 years of having pets, or volunteering at X, or traveling, or any other activity offered as an alternative.

> or any other activity offered as an alternative.

… in your opinion as a wiser person I guess. Most parents I know are considerable less ‘wise’ than the not parents: the latter group had ~20 years more of travel, diverse life, study etc. Most early parents, 6-8 years into their first (with maybe a 2nd or more there) sound lobotomised when I get to speak with them. It gets better later on, but wisdom, I think not.

> American parents really get up in arms about this stuff, which is something I’ve learned firsthand over the past few years. (I’ve also learned to recognize when they don’t want to hear my counterargument.) But the fact of the matter is, babies throughout history have slept—and in many places today, still sleep—in the same “bed” as their parents. Various positions of sleeping (back, side, stomach) are also common across cultures and time.

At the risk of being one of those parents who don't want to hear a counterargument…

Sure, this is all true, but the author's argument is unsatisfying. We've done lots of things throughout history that have since been proven unsafe. Putting babies on their back to sleep is correlated with a 50% reduction in SIDS deaths. I don't think you can handwave that away with "we used to do it differently" or "non-American cultures do it differently."

Sid deaths are 1 in 10.000; there is some indication that not sleeping on the stomach make it 1 to 20.000. But the numbers are too low, and classifying and reporting true causes is hard

So much to unpack here but as a parent that just got my kid over the worried about sids stage, it’s easily the most overrated worry once you unpack things and figure out what’s generally going on.

Most important piece of the discussion is that most parents conflate suffocation with SIDS. They are totally different things.

Suffocation risks can be mitigated. Avoid sleeping with little ones on the couch, don’t put too many blankets in a crib, etc etc.

Actual SIDS is a real thing, and it’s not certain that SIDS risks can actually be mitigated. Theres a genetic factor, birth related factors, and smoking factors.

The SIDS survey is wholly unsatisfying because it doesn’t control for stuff like loose blankets in cribs.

So my critique here isn't whether back sleeping is necessary or co-sleeping should be avoided. I have my own thoughts on those, but I'm also aware that you have to balance risks.

My critique is that the appeal to tradition and the appeal to, I don't know what to call it, "not American" by someone who isn't trained in this area is not the right approach for making that calculation.

That's fair; such appeals lack rigor. All I can say is that the early months became so much easier after developing a rational framework for thinking about SIDS and learning to not worry about it at all, after controlling for suffocation risks.

We co-sleep with the babies/kids, so caveats apply.

If you do a deeper dive into the research literature, the finding ends up being that it's fine to co-sleep if you are completely sober. No nyquil, no pot, no booze, no caffeine, no nicotine, nothing. If you put those in you and then the baby in the bed, then you start getting injuries and deaths.

So, obviously, the recommendation then has to be that you do not co-sleep. Because people are real dumb, and even more so when you've only had 4 hours of sleep in the last month. I've had other parents tell me that pot isn't a drug (its a medicine!) and really mean it. That since a MD prescribed them ambien, they can take it while breastfeeding and co-sleeping. The kids of those people are the ones the 'no co-sleeping' recommendation is meant for.

If you're totally 100% sober, it's fine for mom and baby to co-sleep.

For me it just comes down to it not being remotely worth the risk. I'm a father and I did half the midnight feedings and diaper changes (plus all of them when mother was traveling for work), and cosleeping would have definitely been more convenient. And maybe what you're saying is true, but if wrong (or just something else goes wrong), it's an unthinkable tragedy that would cost me my child. And that's a tragedy that many parents (and marriages) don't come back from.

I'll just be a little more tired and inconvenienced for a year, it's OK.

  Let’s switch tracks for a second. Have you ever noticed how at a job, not having enough work produces a different (and usually worse) state of misery than having too much?

Join a non-profit and a lot of these problems go away :)

In my youth, I found summer vacation distressingly undirected (though part of that was living overseas with a language barrier) and even benign periods of unemployment have had a similar impression.

The caption below the cartoon got me thinking...

Intense craving for sugar, is a harmless and potentially beneficial adaptation for a human hunter-gatherer. This however, can be quite harmful for a city-dweller, and forces him to incessantly keep a watch over his impulses and frequently keep applying breaks.

Is there an accepted or popular term for such adaptations which eventually turned into maladaptations as we civilised ourselves?

Yes, these maladaptations are called "maladaptations". :)

It’s not elegant, but the term is evolutionary mismatch.

Good approach, but it's time-bound. How do you find meaning after your kids leave the nest?

I don't have any experience in this area, but maybe grandchildren?

As long as you find meaning from conditional existence, it will disappear.

That’s why religions appeared, to have timeless meaning, and values. But we threw them out as superstitious, not understanding their purpose

Perfect solution: have 10 kids and go to church every day.

Or get a hobby. Up to you

But they way you say it sounds like they were invented with a purpose, which means you can replace them with another purpose; apparently short term thinking is worth writing articles about. So kids is one for a bit of your life; you can, like some guys (unfair but guys can) I know, just go to a new 20something girl every 15 years to make a new nest. Or you can find a purpose for your life, be it writing software, books, music, studying math, physics etc which your life ends up too short for and which will engulf you for however long it maybe with always having too little time while needing almost no money or other external stimuli. Wouldn’t that be better. Indeed it is.

I said appeared not invented.

If you want to put a carrot in front of yourself that can work a bit, but those pursuits are wonderful but not without it's troubles. Kids get sick, friends & family die, we get sick, we fail and much more. And in the end, we know when we are tricking ourselves.

You can experience meaning quite easily & daily without depending on tricks like that; but yeah the way of chasing external stimuli till our death is indeed the Western rational way.

Fill the 5x increase in your free time with all the books, movies, and video games you missed in the prior 20ish years?

When I was younger I used to think I need to have children in order to understand parents and belong socially when almost everyone else has had children.

I think there is some truth to that, parents don't become non-parents even after their children are adults, but I think not having the same parenthood experience can be also a good thing. People don't just befriend people who are exactly like them.

My aunt’s deathbed regret at 61 from cancer - “I wish I had kids.”

If you aren’t mentally deranged or have a genetic disease you may pass on, it really is a mistake to skip having kids. Everyone I know with kids in their 40s and 50s is content. Everyone without are getting ever more extreme hobbies, like creating huge professional-esque home breweries or starting to BASE jump.

> If you aren’t mentally deranged or have a genetic disease you may pass on, it really is a mistake to skip having kids.

Jog on mate. There's a difference between "you won't regret them" and "it really is a mistake to skip having kids."

I know loads of older people without kids. Would their lives have had more meaning and fulfillment if they had them? Maybe, probably. But they are happy and content, living lives of meaning. As for your hobbies comment...seriously?

Not everyone who “skips” having kids is doing so because of mental derangement (not usually genetic), a genetic disease (be careful with eugenics, it tends to bite), or any kind of mistake. Most people I know in their 40s and 50s who don’t have kids desperately wanted them but for one reason or another couldn’t have them, while most of those who actually chose not to had good, well-reasoned motivations and made the correct choice for them.

Spend enough years struggling to find a decent partner and then IFF you eventually do even more years struggling through the inhumane process that is IVF and you’ll also have your aunt’s regret, but not have made any mistakes along the way.

I suspect that parent comment is not referring to the same kinds of people you are. I can relate because I know several people who flippantly dismissed family formation as not for them and now that it's too late they admit it consumes them like a fire on a daily basis.

I wonder if they'd be open to adopting.

> Spend enough years struggling to find a decent partner

Even worse, what do people do who aren't decent partners themselves? I always wondered how people can think that children are for everyone, but also think that it is hard to find a partner that can help you with the kids. If there are so many people out there who would be horrible parents then maybe those people are better off not being parents, why try to convince them to be one?

I tried to address those people — as well as those who’d be perfectly fine (even single) parents but simply couldn’t afford to — in the first paragraph:

> while most of those who actually chose not to had good, well-reasoned motivations and made the correct choice for them.

Those hobbies sound pretty cool

It's hard to get counter examples because there is a strong taboo against admitting you regret having kids, _especially_ for moms.

I promise you many parents regret it.

Yep. Also moms, including mine and my grandma openly say they wouldn’t do it at if there was a do over. They all love their kids but they regret having so little time for themselves in the healthiest part of their lives.

If you talk with them in a non judgemental way, they usually cave in and confess that sometimes they wish a childless life. Of course, the moment you get judgemental, call them bad mothers, or try to "explain" how and why they are wrong, you will never get again these kind of confessions.

I think "regret having kids" is too strong here. But having doubts about it, or sometimes whishing/missing their pre-child life is very common.

For men is even worse, because they usually get the "luxury" of being almost childless having children. They put the childcare on the mother, and focus on the job, so having kids for them is like having an expensive hobby.

Those are truly the best dads /s

Well, for some men, but this has definitely changed over time.

There are many convincing arguments for kids but deathbed regrets are not one of them. First, who cares about what I will regret at the end? It’s the end. Second, I don’t trust the perspectives of people in the extreme situation of “just about to die”. They invariably have romanticised views about life, because they’re about to lose it. They’re not at all thinking of the huge stresses of children

Regret does not set in just as you are about to die.

How do you know that? It only speaks of the deathbed. Regardless having children simply to assuage future regret seems very strange to me

Because I know such people, and it is inconceivable that one would notice one's childless status only before dying.

Why does it seem strange to act so as to minimize future regret? That's just common sense. This principle guided Jeff Bezos, for one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ

Because it’s a selfish reason and also it’s entirely based on speculation. Who knows what I’ll regret?

the best way to minimize future regret is to make deliberate life decisions. look at all the factors, consider options and consequences.

for example i wish i had gotten married and have children earlier.

however, looking back, i see no way i could have achieved this. there is no choice i made that i could have changed, given what i knew then, and even given what i know now.

sure there were opportunities that i missed. like this one girl that showed interest in me, that i didn't pursue.

would my life have been different if i had chosen her? absolutely. would it have been better? i have no idea. so how can i regret a decision, where i can't even assess the outcome if i had made a different choice?

the only thing to really regret are dumb decisions. the ones where you already know ahead of time that they would be dumb. like drunk driving, or stuff like that.

but most regrets, if you think them through, should turn out to be things that you probably could not have made better anyways.

I have zero regrets right now and I don't care if I might have regrets in the future.

Kids are a hobby, given disproportionate importance by the mind-controlling evolved urges the article mentions.

OK, I admit I'm being deliberately offensive here in a tit-for-tat manner, you may have a point. I'll note though that feeling content, or happy, has never made much sense to me as a goal, since it's vacuous: the argument "you should do this because it will make you feel good" doesn't really address the "should" part, the moral dimension.

Many bad things will make you feel good, potentially for the rest of your life (this works out quicker if the thing kills you), and moral purpose seems to be sometimes clouded and twisted into disingenuous statements by for instance drug addiction, where the person is just trying to justify the compelling call of dopamine, or by parenthood.

So now we are all the same, I guess. If your aunt regreted it, everyone would regret it.

If you are in your 20's or 30's in doubt of having kids or not, and always finding a reason to not have them, you will probably regret skipoing. But if you, like me, know for a fact that you don't want kids and you never felt any kind of desire to have them, you will probably not regret it.

I'm the only one in my job over 40 that doesn't have kids. And both the quote from the article "By the same token, why does nobody ever say that having kids was a mistake?" or yours "Everyone I know with kids in their 40s and 50s is content." are false. If you poke hard enough, moms fall apart and recognize that sometimes they find themselves wishing to get rid of their kids and fantasizing about a childless life. But they don't like to talk about it because that would make them bad mothers. I reassure them that it's a normal feeling if you are going through hard times with them.

But they are not specially happy with having kids (and I'm sure there are precious times with them), nor I'm sad or regretful for not having them.

A certain small percentage of any population is comprised of outliers. It’s kind of the definition of outlier…

Your local group of ‘friends’ apparently; I have different experiences. And my friends with kids (who are 50+ now) mostly regret it for the time lost. Anecdotal is anecdotal.

As deathbed regrets go, 'working more' and ‘having kids’ aren’t two I hear a lot of.

I haven’t heard any deathbed regrets while having seen quite a lot of people die with their mental faculties intact (all cancer). I am wasn’t talking deathbed regrets, more like ‘what would you do different’. Then I have heard both of these things you mention, including from myself.

Consider how much less you have to work if you don't have kids.

> If you aren’t mentally deranged

And this sentence says more about your (probably religious) background than about people who choose to not have kids.

And if it’s not kids it’ll be something else. My mom passed away a few years ago and she commented how she regretted spending so much time doing “outdoorsy” stuff with my stepdad, and wish she’d had spent more time shopping. When you know it’s the end and your options are gone, you’ll always lament what could have been.

You username suggests you find value only in monetary gain, so it's no shock your other ideas are equally bad.

People will say they've had children to quell existential dread _and_ also claim having children is an unselfish act all in the same breath.

So?

This felt very relevant to me, i.e. the perspectives on existential anxiety and relationship with work. Our first is a week 'overdue' today and as someone who deliberated for years over whether having a child was 'right', I have no regret and I can't wait. The parts about purpose, difficulty in regretting certainly feel true. But all that may be the monkey brain chemicals racing around so hopefully this comment doesn't age poorly.

>in order to arouse crying and tears, concentrate your attention in yourself.

J. Cortázar

I doubt that having children answers the big existential questions anymore, if the planet is probably going on fire during the lifetime of the next generation.

That’s a good point and is a reason why I think it’s no longer true. Is the suggestion that when I have children I will not worry about their fate? I’m existentially worried about my own fate due to climate change (will economy explode in 20 or 40 years?)

This, along with the stress of no family support and wife working, is the main pressure to not have kids for me

What would've happened to humanity if we had that same outlook during every hardship that faced them?

Why is humanity important?

It’s a question I would like to ask Musk; some of his words and actions say humanity is the most important thing there is and the rest that comes out of him say he doesn’t actually care. I wonder which it is.

But humanity is a blib on a tiny ball. Easily missed (well, incredibly hard to spot) in our own quadrant of the galaxy.

Size is irrelevant, a cow is much larger than you, but you are important.

By what definition? And to whom? To me? Surely not to you?

"Humanity is a blib on a tiny ball, easily missed" echoes this exert from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot", which I will now fisk:

https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot

Here he makes an emotive argument based on the completely unsurprising fact that our planet, when seen from a very long way away, looks very small. The meaning of the text is somewhat ambiguous. I think it's about 88% crap.

> every human being who ever was [... blah blah blah ...] inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

What exactly is he saying by putting "superstar" and "supreme leader" in quotes there?

> The Earth is ... very small

Yeah, so what. What's the relevance of this observation about distances? Does it have some bearing on important people? Is empty space more important than superstars and supreme leaders, just because there's a lot of it? Granted those people are generally awful, but the explorers and inventors (who didn't get scare quotes, but are spoken of in the same breath) are, I think, worth more than vacuum.

> Think of the endless cruelties ... how fervent their hatreds.

Sure. But in comparison, think of all the things cold empty vacuum doesn't do, because it can't, on account of it being nothingness.

> Our posturings, our imagined self-importance

Look, shut up, Carl, you're beginning to annoy me. If people want to posture as more important than 6 billion kilometers of nothingness, I have no problem accepting that. A movie star may be a jerk, but I still rate a celebrity higher than a distance.

> the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe

I mean, "privilege" doesn't really come into it, there's nobody arbitrating this. But in so far as anything matters, we matter. For a start, we are matter, which is more than can be said for mere space.

> point of pale light ... lonely speck ... great enveloping cosmic dark ... obscurity ... vastness

STFU, Carl. Stop boggling your mind just because sizes are big. Yes, it's called "measurement", you should be used to it by now. Exactly what point are you making?

> The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

See, this is a good point. This paragraph is the only good one in the whole passage, and it deviates somewhat from the rest of it. Here he's telling us to be careful about life-preserving properties of the planet, and, in due course, to colonize the solar system so that we don't have all our eggs in one basket. But everywhere else he's just saying "yah, you're all a bunch of poopy stuck-up big-heads, think you're important, but I got a photo taken from 6 billion kilometers away so that beats anything you can do". But it doesn't.

> ... the folly of human conceits ...

One interpretation is that he's saying that conceited people, leaders and so on, are dangerous, and might wreck the joint due to not considering the "there is nowhere else" fact. I can go along with that. But this is mixed up with a general idea of "human hubris" (compared to who or what other, more humble beings?) and a bombastic, tedious assertion that we just don't matter because we aren't extremely large.

> To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

I mean, OK. But everybody subsequently has picked up this ball and dunked it into a net marked "humans are terrible", and that's not correct. Humans and their material culture are the only interesting thing we know of, really, in terms of physical objects. Humans and life on Earth, but mostly humans, and definitely not balls of gas or space rocks, or mere space, because there's no knowledge out there that we know of.

It's not a speech on how "humans are terrible". He's putting things into perspective, echoing similar thoughts to some of the astronauts that have seen Earth from above - that we need to work together to preserve our fragile (in terms of human survival) planet. The view of the astronauts is similar to the view of Sagan - a sudden realisation of how small we are. Not because some rocks and space are bigger, but because we're so similar and so close to each other in the vastness of space.

You're ragging on it being emotive as if that's a bad thing, completely and utterly missing the point of what he is saying.

Edit: it's not so much that you're missing the point of what he is saying, but I think you're severely underestimating the power of emotion in argument. I see it constantly on tech-oriented discussion sites.

I don't underestimate the power of emotion in argument, I despise the power of emotion in argument. Well, OK, I use rhetoric myself, it's no use communicating in a robotic monotone, but generally speaking emotive argument is an anti-rational trick to ram home a point of view while evading criticism.

> By what definition?

By scientifically observing the urge of an individual to survive.

> And to whom?

An organism is most important to itself.

> To me?

Yes, you are important to yourself. Your actions speak much louder than your words and the fact that you are surviving means you put importance on your life. Your words really don't matter - you can say whatever you want to say.

> Surely not to you?

Well, you know, values. What are your values? Whatever they are, probably humanity ticks a lot of the boxes, which are probably not ticked by tapeworms or wombats (even) or icy rocks floating in space. Or maybe you just have one core value, like knowledge: it's still humanity that's best equipped to sustain or further it (until we get deprecated maybe).

Or maybe you don't have any values, in which case, fair enough, good point, fuck it.

One of the hardship nowadays is that there are too many people. Therefore having children contributes to extinction of humanity.

Of course the removal of the curse of existential freedom is the reason for having children. Whether people consciously reason it out or not, it's agony wondering whether every decision is part of 'the right thing', and pure relief when a constraint descends of there being only one thing to do, which is imperative. 'You have to' frees you from the indulgent loneliness of 'You wanted to'. But neither the article or anyone here has stopped to consider whether it's ethical or defensible to bring beings into the world, to suffer, for the sake of easing your confusion and boredom. To me, it's not. Taking on a responsibility is one thing. Creating the problem that you then take responsibility for (your child's need of care), is neutral at best and, arguably, crooked.

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