It strikes me as on-topic for a blog about rationality to describe my thinking processes concerning working out why I wanted children.
The urge is eminently biologically plausible—I come from a long line of successful replicators, after all. And just because this manifests itself as “I want sex” doesn’t mean I don’t also want the abstract result of sex. I also like the idea of bringing up a child.
But I had to justify the urge to myself, as the social circle I found myself in (punk-descended indie rock in Perth in the 1980s) tended to be very negative about having children. A few people had them, but many were powerfully negative about children, considering humans to be a curse upon the world, an ecological disaster, and the world to be too horrible to bring children into.
(This was the last decade of the Cold War, the feeling of which I find almost impossible to actually explain to almost anyone under thirty. We were young, but we seriously expected we could die with minutes of notice and were powerless to stop such a thing happening. It makes for good punk rock, but doesn’t seem to me to have been a healthy environment.)
So I had to come up with rational justifications of my feelings. Of course, this sort of justification backwards from the predetermined outcome is highly improper. But it did come up with useful ideas for me to then attempt to play forward and examine closely: “my children will be an improvement in the world” (which I think is true) and “the world is not in fact awful, it’s the best it’s ever been” (which I also think was true and has continued to be true). This and “and anyway, I actually want to” was sufficient for me.
Note here that my thinking was not particularly clear (e.g. I privileged the hypothesis terribly), only sufficiently clear to satisfy me as to my own rightness in thinking differently to others around me. I am certainly not advocating the above as a model of how to think well, but as a case study in inchoate attempts at rational thinking about something personally important.
(And, by the way, many of those who expressed such opinions concerning children have since reproduced themselves.)
(This was the last decade of the Cold War, the feeling of which I find almost impossible to actually explain to almost anyone under thirty. We were young, but we seriously expected we could die with minutes of notice and were powerless to stop such a thing happening
This is worth noting. Contrary to the hindsight-ridden narrative of the Cold War that is common nowadays, according to which it had already wound down by the 1980s, there was in fact serious anxiety about a USA-USSR nuclear conflict almost right up to the dissolution of the latter country.
(The explanation for this narrative probably lies in the fact that it is often told by people who lived through the climax of the Cold War, i.e. the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis etc., or else by people too young to remember even the 1980s.)
Contrary to the hindsight-ridden narrative of the Cold War that is common nowadays, according to which it had already wound down by the 1980s
I’m … boggling. Your statment is not implausible, but do you have links to such assertions?
Really, we thought we were likely to die at any time with no warning. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War was over, there was a zeitgeist of ”… Um. OK. We’re going to live. I have to plan now. Oh, God.”
And as far as I can tell, the anxiety was there right up to the moment of collapse. Despite Gorbachev’s excellent and calming media image in the final few years of it.
it is often told by people who lived through the climax of the Cold War, i.e. the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis
It is relevant, I think, that the “we” I speak of were young and powerless.
My thinking was that since I obivously like anyone I decide to have children with and since the child’s genes will be a mix of ours and the child is more likley to carry similar memes than a random one it serves my other values to adpot and promote “having children until indefinite lifespans or cryorevival are available” as a value.
However my adopting “having children” as a value hasn’t yet resulted in me having any children.
Unfortunately I have a feeling that the loss of ability to consistently use contraception is much more robust than a positive desire to not use it when optimal, evolutionary speaking and that in the long run we can’t really run away from this as long as agents keep replicating.
(This was the last decade of the Cold War, the feeling of which I find almost impossible to actually explain to almost anyone under thirty. We were young, but we seriously expected we could die with minutes of notice and were powerless to stop such a thing happening. It makes for good punk rock, but doesn’t seem to me to have been a healthy environment.)
It strikes me as on-topic for a blog about rationality to describe my thinking processes concerning working out why I wanted children.
The urge is eminently biologically plausible—I come from a long line of successful replicators, after all. And just because this manifests itself as “I want sex” doesn’t mean I don’t also want the abstract result of sex. I also like the idea of bringing up a child.
But I had to justify the urge to myself, as the social circle I found myself in (punk-descended indie rock in Perth in the 1980s) tended to be very negative about having children. A few people had them, but many were powerfully negative about children, considering humans to be a curse upon the world, an ecological disaster, and the world to be too horrible to bring children into.
(This was the last decade of the Cold War, the feeling of which I find almost impossible to actually explain to almost anyone under thirty. We were young, but we seriously expected we could die with minutes of notice and were powerless to stop such a thing happening. It makes for good punk rock, but doesn’t seem to me to have been a healthy environment.)
So I had to come up with rational justifications of my feelings. Of course, this sort of justification backwards from the predetermined outcome is highly improper. But it did come up with useful ideas for me to then attempt to play forward and examine closely: “my children will be an improvement in the world” (which I think is true) and “the world is not in fact awful, it’s the best it’s ever been” (which I also think was true and has continued to be true). This and “and anyway, I actually want to” was sufficient for me.
Note here that my thinking was not particularly clear (e.g. I privileged the hypothesis terribly), only sufficiently clear to satisfy me as to my own rightness in thinking differently to others around me. I am certainly not advocating the above as a model of how to think well, but as a case study in inchoate attempts at rational thinking about something personally important.
(And, by the way, many of those who expressed such opinions concerning children have since reproduced themselves.)
This is worth noting. Contrary to the hindsight-ridden narrative of the Cold War that is common nowadays, according to which it had already wound down by the 1980s, there was in fact serious anxiety about a USA-USSR nuclear conflict almost right up to the dissolution of the latter country.
(The explanation for this narrative probably lies in the fact that it is often told by people who lived through the climax of the Cold War, i.e. the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis etc., or else by people too young to remember even the 1980s.)
I’m … boggling. Your statment is not implausible, but do you have links to such assertions?
Really, we thought we were likely to die at any time with no warning. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War was over, there was a zeitgeist of ”… Um. OK. We’re going to live. I have to plan now. Oh, God.”
And as far as I can tell, the anxiety was there right up to the moment of collapse. Despite Gorbachev’s excellent and calming media image in the final few years of it.
It is relevant, I think, that the “we” I speak of were young and powerless.
I know someone who had a child because the she felt enough better about the world after the Berlin Wall fell.
My thinking was that since I obivously like anyone I decide to have children with and since the child’s genes will be a mix of ours and the child is more likley to carry similar memes than a random one it serves my other values to adpot and promote “having children until indefinite lifespans or cryorevival are available” as a value.
However my adopting “having children” as a value hasn’t yet resulted in me having any children.
Unfortunately I have a feeling that the loss of ability to consistently use contraception is much more robust than a positive desire to not use it when optimal, evolutionary speaking and that in the long run we can’t really run away from this as long as agents keep replicating.
Two thousand zero zero, party’s over, oops out of time…