There’s an alien race in the above called the baby-eaters who eat their sentient offspring because this alien species is genetically unfortunate enough to produce thousands of immediately-sentient offspring at a time, and therefore they must cull their offspring.
More and more each day I think we are becoming like baby-eaters. Except of course we don’t murder our offspring by directly consuming them.
What is murder? What is consumption? It is the reclaiming of productive resource and the denial of future growth. When a poor person, having lived through years of their life giving what little they must to society in order to survive, dies on the street, there is another person that has been eaten by society.
We are eating each other, and often by the time someone has reached their preteens we know that they will be one of the ones that will be eaten. Therefore, in many ways, we are becoming baby-eaters.
However unlike the baby-eaters, not all of our society has normalized baby-eating to the point that we cannot see it as anything other than unquestionably good.
What would we ask of the baby-eaters? How should we act today?
When a poor person, having lived through years of their life giving what little they must to society in order to survive, dies on the street, there is another person that has been eaten by society.
At least with respect to today’s western societies, this seems off-key to me. It makes it sound as if living and dying on the street is simply a matter of poverty. That may be true in poor overpopulated societies. But in a developed society, it seems much more to involve being unable (e.g. mental illness) or unwilling (e.g. criminality) to be part of the ordinary working life.
What would we ask of the baby-eaters?
You’ll have to be clearer about which people you mean. Baby-eating here is a metaphor, for what exactly? Older generation neglecting the younger generation, or even living at their expense? Predatory business practices? Focusing on your own prosperity rather than caring for others?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5TqCuizyJDfAPjkr/the-baby-eating-aliens-1-8
There’s an alien race in the above called the baby-eaters who eat their sentient offspring because this alien species is genetically unfortunate enough to produce thousands of immediately-sentient offspring at a time, and therefore they must cull their offspring.
More and more each day I think we are becoming like baby-eaters. Except of course we don’t murder our offspring by directly consuming them.
What is murder? What is consumption? It is the reclaiming of productive resource and the denial of future growth. When a poor person, having lived through years of their life giving what little they must to society in order to survive, dies on the street, there is another person that has been eaten by society.
We are eating each other, and often by the time someone has reached their preteens we know that they will be one of the ones that will be eaten. Therefore, in many ways, we are becoming baby-eaters.
However unlike the baby-eaters, not all of our society has normalized baby-eating to the point that we cannot see it as anything other than unquestionably good.
What would we ask of the baby-eaters? How should we act today?
At least with respect to today’s western societies, this seems off-key to me. It makes it sound as if living and dying on the street is simply a matter of poverty. That may be true in poor overpopulated societies. But in a developed society, it seems much more to involve being unable (e.g. mental illness) or unwilling (e.g. criminality) to be part of the ordinary working life.
You’ll have to be clearer about which people you mean. Baby-eating here is a metaphor, for what exactly? Older generation neglecting the younger generation, or even living at their expense? Predatory business practices? Focusing on your own prosperity rather than caring for others?