On Not Having Children

A friend of mine recently complained, again, about someone remarking on her and her husband’s decision not to have children. It wasn’t a kind remark which makes me wonder what business is it of anyone’s what people do with their lives. Oh, that’s right, Nietzsche’s Will to Power. And that’s just one of the reasons my wife and I have similarly decided not to have children.

People don’t ask me if I have children very often; it’s almost as if they know better. When people do ask if I have children and I say ‘no’ it seems I’m let off the hook because I’m a man. Judging by how often they talk about it, though, women are under much more pressure to have children as if it were some sacred duty. With the planet’s population approaching nine billion, I call bullshit. There are many reasons not to have children, the least of being overpopulation, which I’ll address shortly. Here are some other reasons why I don’t think it’s a good idea to have children:

-       1-I refuse to bring children into a world that is in the midst of social and political upheaval. True, this has always been the case historically. But it will continue to be true. Authoritative regimes are on the rise around the world. Even in the U.S. the evangelical right continues to labor to turn women back into property. Why would I risk bringing a daughter into a world where too many men don’t understand that raping a woman or a little girl is immoral on every account? Why would I risk a child’s safety in a world where they can be assaulted just for being different from their peers? It must be a nightmare to care for a child’s safety in today’s world.

-        2-I refuse to bring a child into an increasingly poisonous environment. Countries like China and Indonesia think almost nothing of trashing their environment. In the U.S. the GOP is practically going out of their way to destroy the environment. The oceans are full of plastic waste. And no one is doing anything about climate change. It’s practically child abuse to make a newborn face the future environment now.

-        3-Back to overpopulation. Frankly, children annoy me, as does anyone under the age of 18. There are too many people everywhere as it is and we don’t value life as much as we should because of it. The world population is approaching nine billion – I don’t think there’s any danger in humans going extinct. Unfortunately. There are too many people and it shows both in overcrowding and pollution. There’s practically nowhere you can go anymore to enjoy by yourself or not find trash there. Well, unless you’re rich, of course.

-        4-On a more personal note, I have things I want to do; I enjoy my free time. When people say this is selfish they’re saying I have an obligation to have children. Says who, society? The dictates of society are for the weak and the easily controlled. And wanting kids is just as selfish, so why is the kettle calling the pot black?

-        5-Children are blackholes of money. I already work hard enough for myself and my wife for us to enjoy what we have. I don’t want to work endless hours a week because my kids have to be fed, have to have health care, and get a decent education. I want to be able to go on vacation without it being a hassle or to be more kind, without it being a challenge.

-        6-Oh, but it’s different when it’s your child, Breeders argue. So, what, I got my genes into the next generation? Big whoop. There’s no evidence that my genes/my child will be any better than I am. Oh, but I can give them a better life than I had? No, I can’t, because the rest of you are fucking the place up. And I would expect my child to grow up working as hard as I have. I would have no intentions of coddling my child and giving them everything they ever wanted because they wouldn’t stop misbehaving or crying. (Oh, but we can’t spank anymore because liberals.) Any fool without contraception can have a child. I’m content to leave it to the people who really want them and not say anything if those people will leave us non-breeders alone.

-        7-Breeders seem to value the idea that having a child forces you to love someone unconditionally. I don’t believe in unconditional love; it’s a ridiculous concept. If my wife and I had the next Hitler, I’d try to kill the child myself. Isn’t a love for humanity more important than anyone’s desire for their own crying sack of projected neuroses? If you think there’s nothing your child could do to make you surrender your love for them, I’d say your potential to be a danger to the human race is high.

-        8-Pregnancy usually changes a mother’s body for the worse. It doesn’t have to, of course, but 99% of women who get pregnant never get their old body back which for us men was probably one of the top reasons we wanted to have sex with our partners in the first place. I like my wife’s body the way it is. So does she. (Though of course we both have to face aging. But why screw things up ahead of schedule?)

In my opinion, most people aren’t sound enough on any number of accounts to be having children. There should be some kind of a test or license to have babies, but, oh, we can’t say that because that would be fascist. We’re just not allowed to say who should or should not have children even though it’s clear many people are unqualified or aren’t in a position to care properly for them. But what do I know? I don’t have children. And that’s how I sleep at night.

Who Are You? Who, Who? Who, Who?

Whereas the narrative of American liberals once tried to convince us that one’s identity, particularly in regards to race, is not very important, that narrative has since been abandoned as minority populations increase in numbers and presence. Currently, the liberal narrative sees Caucasians as agents of the Devil, as if white liberals should be going out of their way to admit the faults of their ancestors in hopes that some admission of institutionalized wrong-doing will allow them to avoid being lynched themselves when Caucasians finally become a minority in the United States. Moreover, social media in America is currently abuzz with sexual politics calling for freedom for the female nipple and to repeal slut shaming. Social media among Millennials is humming with the need to acknowledge cultural appropriation and a demand that Columbus Day be repealed. And everyone, regardless of whether their candidates are actually for changing the status quo, Democrats and Republicans both blindly vote along party lines. In short, America is awash in identity politics. But a sense of identity cuts across all cultures and in part, an identity is in fact how anyone would know that they do belong to a culture.

Why is identity so important? Why does anyone struggle to “find themselves”? It has long been assumed that a personal identity is a close to an inherent right as one can get, but is it possible that the need for an identity isn’t as important as it is made out to be? Is group identity more important? Is it possible we have been sold on a social construct that doesn’t exist in reality, but instead serves as a wedge between individual people and groups?

Let’s try to answer the first two questions: The answer as to why identity is so important varies from source to source. As we grow from infancy, we begin to form an identity, setting ourselves apart from the world around us. The formulation of an identity is born out of the human tendency to compartmentalize information in hopes of understanding the world. It allows us to set ourselves apart from other objects in the world and allows us to compare ourselves against those objects. An identity also helps us to know our likes and dislikes and detects who is going to be like us, physically and culturally speaking, so that we may form groups in the interest of self-preservation and procreation – whereas the inclusion in a group potentially gives one access to safety in numbers and resources. To have such an identity enables self-esteem and feelings of superiority over another person or group; in this way we use identity for social comparisons and may be used as a yardstick for success (which is itself a social construct). Crucially, an identity will largely dictate how we behave towards others and the world around us.

Being aware that having an identity will strongly influence how we behave may make us aware to the shortcomings of possessing an identity (or at least diminish its importance to ourselves). For instance, Governments rely on identities to know who to keep accountable for crimes or who to oppress. Capitalism relies on people having a sense of identity so that companies know who to market their products and services to. Individuals often employ the No True Scotsman logical fallacy in order to cast group members an individual doesn’t like in an unfavorable light. (For example, a Republican Christian stating that a true Christian would never register as or vote for a Democrat.) As mentioned before and I will mention again because it’s important, identities serve as a wedge between people which leaders are all too willing to capitalize on when they want to declare war on another country or worse, attempt the genocide of another group of people.

With the current liberal narrative in the U.S. contemplating identities as a way of knowing when we are wronged – assuming you are non-white – other Western narratives are attempting to dispense with identity nearly altogether, presumably to make up for the long, long history of crimes by white people, even against themselves. One example is taking place in Sweden where a boy or girl is now being referred to as a ‘hen,’ a gender neutral term meant to help children grow up free from the impact of being identified with a particular gender. While there is an obvious downside for one gender in patriarchal cultures (which most Western nations practice), is there any downside to abandoning identities such as the Swedes are attempting? It is inviting to contemplate a Slippery Slope argument here as one wonders what will follow from the abandonment of gender identities as it is clear there are differences between males and females. Will one’s family identity fall next? Will their national identity and their European identity follow suit until all they’re left with is to identify themselves as human beings? Might even that succumb to the notion that human beings are not a distinct entity from the animal kingdom or the universe itself? At what point will the Swedes decide it is okay to have an identity or will they decide identities are largely a bad thing? This seems to be the direction many progressively Left countries are headed.*

[* There is currently an effort to rebrand progressive liberals as ‘regressive leftists’ by moderate liberals who recognize that going to extremes usually ends in the oppression of someone. Again, identities help us identify threats or dangerous ideas.]

Here we may ask our third question; are identities actually as important as they’ve been made out to be? While we have an idea as to why we form identities, perhaps the Swedes have recognized that there seems to be a lot of harm that comes from having them. Should we abandon our identities within a family, a nation, or even as human beings? We might hypothesize that if human beings stopped regarding themselves as entities distinct from the world around themselves, the world wouldn’t be quite the ecological disaster it is. If we recognized that our interactions with other people had far reaching implications for better or worse, it is possible we might behave in a manner that would have ‘better’ implications. Unfortunately, most identities do not include such vision among their qualities or practices. Case in point, the #blacklivesmatter movement which seeks to end ‘white privilege’ may allow for the eventual equal treatment of blacks, but there is no indication that once equality is achieved black people are going to abandon their collective identity. So, there will always be a division, a division that will always allow for potential negative effects (usually negative effects).

It appears we may have been sold a bill of false goods as far as identities are concerned. The desire or need for identities make little sense from an evolutionary standpoint. This is to say that while identities may help forge bonds which allow for safety in numbers and access to resources such as food and shelter, identities actually work against human beings when it comes to the most important resource of all, mates. We’ve known for some time that restricting a gene pool to lesser and lesser variety results in mutation (this is presumably why it is not safe to mate with a close family relative, even a first cousin). In this way, having an identity works against the human race by limiting the people we might otherwise mate with; gene variety is the key to surviving a disease that might otherwise wipe out the entire species. It is another presumption that this may be why some of us are tantalized by foreigners as these ‘outsiders’ would provide offspring with a ‘superior’ set of genes. (As Richard Dawkins said, our genes use us, not the other way around.) It appears as though having an identity may have individual short term advantages, but for the human race as a whole, identities seem to be detrimental. Imagine the disconnect when one’s identity is threatened or attacked and this causes people extreme stress or depression, for what if they learn they are not who they thought they were? Is even this remote possibility worth the price of investing in an identity?

Before writing this blog entry, I counted all the things that were characteristic of my identity. Without even trying, I racked up more than 40 characteristics. What does this mean? I may be a teacher on one hand but I am a musician on the other. Or, I am all these things at once? Again, identities allow for the compartmentalization of information so that it is understandable, or in this case, identifiable. But we all know – if we allow for a few moments of reflection – that the truth is far more complicated than a person either being black or white, so why do so many people reduce identities to such common denominators? Because it is easy and most human minds do not like investing the energy to think about it. (This is not a slight but simply the way the human brain works; use as little energy as possible to understand what is going on. Unfortunately, the result is little understanding of an entire situation.)

I would argue that the need to ‘find oneself’ or wrap oneself up entirely within an unshakable identity is the hallmark of a weak mind and follower. Few leaders are elected on the strength of their group inclusion alone (if they are, it's simply because there are more people in a particular voting block). President Obama would not have been elected if he only appealed to blacks or only appealed to Democrats. Great leaders have other qualities besides their basic identity that allows them to lead and it is these qualities that should be remarked upon as the make for the entirety of an identity, something that is going to vary greatly from person to person. Lacking a diversity of characteristics means one is a caricature. So we should either give the totality of identities their due or give little weight to such concepts, for now we know that superficial identities are not the whole picture. In the words of Dr. Seuss, “Today you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you.” I judge people on their individual merits, not on the color of their skin.*

[* To which some minorities will remark that such a comment is a distinctly ‘white’ thing to say.]

The Age of Assholes

The trend of political correctness has existed for so long now, especially on college campuses, it has become standard operating procedure in the collegiate arena. Whilst even the most innocuous racist or sexist comment or behavior now results in the immediate suspension of the perpetrator, a disturbing new trend has emerged over the past few years in which a student can take ‘legitimate’ issue with anyone – including professors – whose ideas or words offend them. The institutions of higher learning seem to have become infected with what many liberals would consider ‘fake liberalism,’ which in reality is liberalism taken to its logical conclusion: protection of one’s beliefs from any criticism or critical analysis whatsoever. While liberals once criticized this kind of behavior from white Anglo-Saxon males, they failed to see the ultimately disastrous consequences of their own worldview. Political correctness has run so rampant that most notable comedians – the truly observant member of society – refuse to play colleges anymore.

The atmosphere has gotten so bad in academia that college professors in public universities now have to include in their syllabus fair warning, or a ‘trigger warning,’ that the course may include ideas that may be objectionable to a student. Even so, this doesn’t appear to protect the professor from repercussions should they upset a student. I’ve seen it myself, when a philosophy professor hypothesized that Jews and Muslims have a prohibition against pork because of the threat uncooked pork posed two millennia ago. A Muslim student (a red headed Irish lad, strangely enough) reported our professor after expressing his displeasure with such speculation, nevermind that the student had signed up for a philosophy class.

Colleges, being in the business of making money like any other business, understandably don’t want to upset students who are paying tuition, which itself has become exorbitant. What has changed about today’s students though is that they now enroll in college with the expectation that there will be no challenges to their beliefs because they are special, whereas students of yesteryear went to college precisely because they wanted to be challenged in their beliefs and wanted to ‘be relieved of their ignorance’ while the onus was on them to become special*. While Caitlyn Flanagan, author of Better Watch What You Say: How the New Political Correctness in Ruining College, says what is happening in colleges now is the result of 30-years of identity politics and is the fault of parents, she doesn’t seem to see exactly what the result of parental coddling has done to the latest generation; it has produced the most narcissistic generation of all time. (This honor formerly bestowed upon The Greatest Generation of WWII era fame, who at least worked to deserve their narcissism.) Couple this with the rise of social media, and there is no wonder we are now living in the Age of Assholes.

[* Bill Maher sees the previous college model as outdated and the model for Millennials is more akin to a country club. Notice how observant a comedian is.]

It has long been observed that an American in their 20’s is primed to take up some great cause as hormones still raging from their emotional adolescent years linger in their bloodstream. But unlike college students of old, Flanagan notes, today’s college student has nothing invested in the battles they choose. They are not going to become estranged from their parents or friends or risk being shot by police during a demonstration or be reprimanded for shouting down a guest speakers whose ideas they disagree with. When a college student has nothing to lose by taking up a cause, they are compelled to believe their cause is all that more just and are even less inclined to hear anything to the contrary, which reinforces how wonderful they think they are. This is why David McCollough Jr.’s speech “You Are Not Special” back in 2012 caused such an uproar among liberal parents; the kids he was addressing were getting ready to go off to college. Can you imagine today’s college student, who has no grip on reality, entering the real world and expecting everyone to reaffirm their beliefs? You don’t have to imagine. It’s happening. If there is a culture war currently raging, it’s a war on reality in which everyone’s views are sacred. Socrates turns once more in his grave.

Clearly, even the most half-witted bumpkin knows not everyone’s views are equally valid or deserving of respect. (Kindly refer to my entry, The Flaw of Multiculturalism.) But what consequences has this attitude wrought? On one hand, gays and lesbians have finally been granted the right to marry and this is at least one thing that is as it should be. A critical eye has also been focused upon police brutality in America, which seems to be as it should as well. But this is where the slope starts getting slippery for social issues, as white American males become ever more vilified since they are traditionally regarded (by minorities and white college kids who have no interest in self-preservation and exhibit ‘white guilt’ though they themselves have done nothing wrong) as lacking the appropriate respect for other’s beliefs.

On the other hand, while these same college students and social activists bemoan the current state of The Union, they fail to do anything to prevent it from becoming worse. They don’t do anything to curb teen pregnancy rates which are the highest in the industrialized world. They don’t do anything about the root causes of gun violence which again are the highest in the industrialized world. They don’t do anything about incarceration rates, you guessed it, the highest in the industrialized world. They don’t do anything to address the problem of homelessness except enable the homeless by giving them handouts. They don’t do anything about math and science scores which rank in the lower half among first- and second-world countries. This may be why they don’t do anything about the national deficit, because they cannot add and see the problem for what it is. They don’t do anything to address the staggering lack of press freedom or journalistic integrity now that U.S media is less about facts and more about political posturing and grandstanding. And they surely don’t care that an ‘institute of higher learning’ would rather have their money than make them think. Are these things to feel special about?

Perhaps the surge of narcissism has a lot to do with the ever present specter of existential angst and having the tools to ignore it (that is, again, belief affirmation by parents and schools, and social media). But no matter how special anyone feels, they nonetheless remain a speck on a minor planet in orbit around an average star in an average galaxy in an unremarkable region of the universe who is going to die someday. And that means you. That means you are not special. Not even Steve Jobs was, so don’t feel bad.

The flood of narcissists ignore the basic premise of their own philosophy at their peril: If their own beliefs are beyond reproach because their specialness is a priori, everyone’s beliefs are beyond reproach and this leaves no room for criticism of even the most evil person or people, not even white people. Of course, the narcissist in all their assholishness, will reply that it doesn’t matter if anyone else is special; it is only their specialness that matters. Leave it to narcissists to ignore the flaw of their own argument regarding their specialness. But, I suppose it takes a special type of ‘intelligence’ not to see this.

Click here for a link to David McCollough’s speech, “You Are Not Special.” It is critical reading for today’s self-righteous college student. Assuming they can read.

Santa, Because

Theory Parker here with your 2013 Christmas Hanukkah Kwanza Solstice holiday message. This year, like every year, I bring you another positive, politically-correct message sure to please everyone. And why not, since the winter holiday season is that time of year people are least likely to be offended by anything. That said. I’ve got some mother fucking shit to drop. 

The Truth About Santa Video

Regarding the War on Christmas (well, it’s more of a Conflict on Christmas since the people who are waging war on Christmas haven’t got the cojones to actually say they’re waging a war on Christmas), I say this: Leave Santa the fuck alone. He’s just a character; it’s all just a story. But, some people seem to think lying to children is offensive, nevermind that they’re the same people who say that every person – no matter what they’ve done – has inherent worth, are the same people who tell children not to pollute Mother Earth, and are the same people who tell their children that fruits are “nature’s candy.” Obviously, parents lie to their children about all sorts of things and most of the time it’s no Big Fucking Deal because in the grand scheme of things, lying about the existence of someone like Santa doesn’t scar the believer when the find out the truth. (While we’re on the subject, let’s not forget the hypocrisy of a group of people who herald the virtues of science while ignoring the scientific explanation for why human beings lie; in short, because it works.) I also contend that a smart enough child would not be terribly upset by finding out Santa isn’t real because a smart child would already suspect the whole story’s a myth anyway.

[If you’re reading this and can still feel the sting of and resent finding out Santa wasn’t an actual person, yes, you are a dumbass.]

Still, if you’re one of these people who still thinks lying to a child about the existence of Santa is so horrible, kindly show me the evidence that this particular lie constitutes the psychologically terrorism you say it is and then we’ll start a discussion. I’m merely asking that if you don’t have the evidence I’m asking for, to shut the fuck up and let people enjoy their fairy tales. As I pointed out moments ago, there are worse lies to tell your children.

So if you’re Christian, Merry Christmas; if you’re Jewish, Happy Hanukkah; if your American but prefer to be called African-American, Great Kwanza; and if you’re a vegan lesbian, Splendid Solstice. The rest of you, let the rest of us enjoy the holidays without fucking whining like Janeane Garofalo when she’s PMS’ing (which, granted, is all the goddamn time).

If you’ll excuse me, I got some presents to open because once a year on my birthday just ain’t enough.