Idk about you but I watched the sopranos senior year of high school, and the premise of that show is literally “the party’s over”.
Didn't watch that show, but I'm assuming you mean "the party's over" as in the world is already fucked. Fuck that noise, even if it were, then the question only is "how hard did you fight to leave this world better than you found it anyway?"
I still love my parents.
Good for you.
No one hates their parents for having them.
Hard disagree from my own experience. I've met plenty of people across different backgrounds who hate or resent their parents for bringing them into this world, and then gave some half hearted "Your generation will figure out climate change" schtick when confronted with the naive question, "Why aren't we all doing something about it?" The hate and resentment comes when you realize they were selfish and weak. If they really wanted kids, why not adopt? Oh but MY genes. MY heritage is what matters. Why?
Why not fight the good fight and protest instead? Meh, it's just easier to live a comfortable life today than fight for a better tomorrow I'll never live to see. I'm still a good person! I raised a beautiful family of people who will likely make the same selfish decisions, but because I cared and looked after them and them alone, I swear, there's no way you can question my goodness!
Again, fuck that, hell yes I can and should question that bullshit, and break the fucking cycle of selfish idiocy. Not having more kids is the absolute least I can do.
Theres obviously room to work towards a better society while also raising children.
You live a privileged life for being able to fantasize that that is he case for the majority of people. Most people make little to no money, and had they not had children, might look at their shitty circumstances and had enough time and willpower to take a chance and upend the systems that oppress them. Instead, out of fear for their children's wellbeing, they bow their heads and accept increasingly shitty conditions, all the while praying that somehow life will magically be better for their children. No, you can't exert the kind of political pressure necessary when there are many more sociological pressures to simply feed your kids. The kind of pressure needed to actually change things requires your undivided attention and an exorbitant amount of your time.
Fair enough. I will say that the novelty or whether things haven't always been in decline doesn't denote that therefore, having children doesn't inherently contribute to worsening the climate crisis. It does. Faith that things will somehow be resolved by future generations and not by the present one is a lazy, kick the can down the road approach that I am obviously very critical of.
This is a very fair argument in which I am in general agreement with. I would also point out that the decision to therefore "have my own genetic kids" is not the right approach because, again, having children inevitably contributes to worsening the climate crisis.
There's no incentive to pay people enough whether they have kids or not. There are no laws incentivizing nor disincentivizing employers to pay their employees more based off of them having children.
The people in power are incentivized to encourage the general populous to have children for many reasons, but one of them is simply that, like your job and other obligations, having children forces you to divide your concerns away from protests and other forms of activism, as I mentioned earlier. You've criticized that my argument that the assumption that change can only happen with more immediate action ("faster"), more time spent, and with undivided attention (ie "can't do two things") is plainly false.
I'd argue that while beneficial societal change does happen slowly over time due to long uphill battles by protesters, that this change would have been more dramatic and rapid had people had had less obligations to keeping the bourgeoisie wealthy and with a fresh supply of future workers, and therefore had more time to devote to protests and activism. But I'll concede this is a hypothetical.
Well, to be fair, the original argument I was making was that the point of not having children was to leave the Earth itself better off than when we came to be on it regardless of whether we go extinct or not.
The decision to not have children in this context is an act of defiance, a breaking of a malicious cycle of contributing to a global society that has over generations come to the conclusion that modern comforts, societal hierarchy, and inherited cultures, are more important than ensuring the longevity of the human race and the majority of life on Earth as we currently know it.
The only ones who ultimately benefit from this endless cycle are those who have figured out how to exploit the majority of people and resources around them to their whim. The decision to not have children isn't a decision to somehow deprive the powerful of anything, other than future participants in their game.
My argument is that the change a person can make is proportional to the time they can devote to it. Protests that are most effective are literally the ones that occur where people have nothing but time. They walk out of their jobs, they refuse to work, and yeah, they take time away from their families to do so. All I'm saying is that if you have no children you're obliged to take care of, you have more time and energy to devote to the cause, and can thereby make for a more effective societal movement.
Good example, and I won't argue it. As mentioned previously, my take that these movements would have been more effective had they had more time had they not had children is a hypothetical that I strongly believe to be true, but has no historical basis because the majority of people end up having children.
That said, I'll concede that having children of your own often inspires those who would otherwise not have participated in social activism to do so. I would contest that you can achieve more by fighting for the children of others than by dividing your attention between raising your children and fighting for their future.
Fair enough. You're right and it was mean spirited and wrong of me to do so. I'll not make excuses and simply apologize for doing so. I got overly heated up in making my argument, and should have never made it about you personally. I apologize.