I was following you until this part:
Biological imperative is a much simpler (and more reasonable) explanation as to why people breed. I mean, surely you’ve noticed that every animal in the world experiences an evolutionary advantage in breeding.
You can call it selfish if you want, but then every living being is selfish (or at least had selfish parents), so it looses some explanatory power.
Only in person. 
Internet ones are fine.
I read it as “once you have a child, going back to life without a child feels less meaningful and less worth living” which is … basically true, insofar as I can tell.
But a very, very important distinction there in italic.
Read through my collection of the most heartbreaking things you have ever read on the internet. It is not exactly a coincidence that most of the linked stories there have a common theme: loss.
I am several years past the expected lifespan of someone with my congenital heart defect, if not surgically corrected. It’s kind of funny, because I’m in the tail end of the first generation to survive to adulthood with it. So half the time I have to see a pediatric cardiologist, because they’re the ones familiar with my defect. I joke that I’m either the youngest person in the waiting room, or the oldest.
I would like to disagree with you politely and have a reasonable discussion, but based on the tone of your post I can only say that as your views are total horseshit there is no point in engaging with them.
See how abusive language prevents progress?
I suspect the unspoken message here is that once you have tasted chocolate, losing that makes the previous state a bleak one in comparison.
Reading novels expose you to characters you might identify with; since books inevitably end* you will experience pain. Writing books is an immoral act for the pain and hopelessness it may cause.
* There are a few times that unfortunately don’t feel that way.
There’s an Ayn Rand/libertarian joke somewhere in that, I just can’t be Kumquated to do it.
Sorry if I waxed poetically there. Rephrasing: I’m scared shitless that my son will have a horrible allergic reaction. And I love my son intensely and deeply, enjoying every minute that I get to spend with him. Every time I drop him off at school, though, the fear of a reaction is hard to suppress. Just the very idea of having the best part of my life taken away from me is terrible. Don’t look for the logic in that… it’s all yucky, messy emotions competing with each other.
I agree with Zapffe in that technological development is progress only when it helps us to become a spiritually richer society.
Is he Amish, by any chance? It’s not a bad ethos.
You’ll have to quote the article, because that does not appear to be the article I read.
Isn’t killing a flower, just to put it’s reproductive parts on display in a vase, a supremely selfish and cruel immoral act?
I keed!
Bernard Shaw: “I like flowers, I like children, that’s why I do not cut their heads off and put them in pots around the house.”
Modern medicine has turned many of the ideas our ancestors lived with completely on their heads. Without modern medicine I would have died at the age of 7, yet my father is in his mid-90s and the only time he was overnight in hospital was after an encounter between his boat and a German mine - fortunately at the other end, in shallow water.
Modern medicine, food safety and improved transport has made life rather less arbitrary for those of us in the West. Does that make pointless tragedies like a child being killed by falling masonry better or worse?
To be fair, the “resisting the natural other to procreate” but (I’m paraphrasing wrong, and hope to update with right quote) also struck me as a bit problematic.
Where did I write that?
You wrote “a bit problematic”. @girard turned it into an emotional rant, and it was that I was objecting to. I’m prepared to defend my position reasonably to a reasonable person, but what’s the point of replying to someone who thinks abuse is a legitimate tactic of argument?
A refusal to create children, to refuse to fulfil “being natural”, is itself an action with its own karma.
On my phone, do I’ll just let the “update” stay here.
If you aren’t intending to suggest that a refusal to create children is unnatural and bad (as most people reading will associate with “karma” unless clarified), then you need to clarify.
That is the sort of phrasing that can invoke strong emotions in a contentious thread.
I liked the rest of what you wrote.
My daughter is 2 in three months time. I don’t think I can read that article.
I wouldn’t have survived my pregnancy without modern medicine. But then again, I never would have gotten pregnant without it either, so…
Thank you, @critter, @Donald_Petersen, @bishophicks, @Daaksyde, @kenny, @codinghorror, @GyroMagician, @Jilly, @SteampunkBanana , and anyone else who responded to my query.
I think I understand what you’re saying in theory now, but I don’t think that I’ll be able to fully grok it until/unless I actually have kids.
And, quite frankly, the idea of having kids now scares the shit out of me. I think I still want to, but the stakes seem to be quite higher than I previously realized.
Thank you all, once again.
