What's the deal with humans and their obsession with continuing their survival as a species?
Whenever there is a movie/t.v. show in which some catastrophic event occurs and mankind is faced with extinction a couple things usually happen. First, they try to avoid the catastrophe. This I understand. If we have the ability to drill holes in asteroids or to the center of the earth and set off nukes, I'll fully support this idea. The thing I don't understand is when or if their plan fails, they will occasionally have this back up plan, in which 1,000 or so of the smartest doctors / scientists / politicians all go to the secret bunker underground so they can wait for the nuclear winter to end and begin rebuilding society. I mean, really?! If you spend thousands of years making a sand castle and it gets knocked over by a wave, do you stick your hands right back into the sand and start over? When does "ah.. screw it" come into the equation?
Another thing I don't understand is the movie Children of Men. The movie is about the earth in which babies are unable to survive, and the youngest person in the world is like 20, and mankind is obviously coming to an end. Everybody in the movie is terribly depressed. That's a pretty poor attitude in my opinion. I think it should be more like the last day of high school when everybody is like "well, it's been fun" instead of "When I'm dead there won't be other people that are still alive, oh no!" I guess the only thing worth living for is knowing that life goes on when you die? huh? Besides, is that really such a bad thing, considering how destructive human's have been on the planet?
More recently in the news is the story of a woman who gave birth to 8 babies when she already has 6 toddlers at home for a total of 14 kids. There has been outrage over stories that the woman was recently seen getting a manicure despite the fact that she uses food stamps / other government programs to feed her family. A lot of people seem to think you shouldn't have children if you can't afford to care for them. I tend to agree.
Which brings me to my final question..
I just saw this video on youtube
I think most of us here are aware of extreme poverty in other parts of the world, so that shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. But with all the news about Octo-Mom recently, I never thought about it this way. That's A LOT of hungry children. That's also A LOT of parents having children that they can't support in countries where they are less likely to receive assistance. The children are expected to care for their parents when they get older. In one hand we have a woman who receives hundreds of death threats every day because she uses food stamps to feed her children and in the other hand we're asking for $3 billion to feed hungry children, but do very little to ask why they are hungry or how to get them out of the cycle of poverty. Is that a double standard?
i don't understand why people in the shittiest of situations bring children into the world. so you can make another being suffer? and ending world hunger doesn't start with sending food to the hungry. if you feed them, they just reproduce into the same situation and you have to keep sending more food, which puts them in a vicious cycle. no, you need economic development and investment, and that's not gonna happen for... a long time.
i agree paper. it's pretty much a taboo topic though, but in my opinion population control should be discussed very heavily.
i guess a lot of religious people are against condoms/abortion and considering a huge percentage of the world is religious that doesn't help.
then like BJ said there are those cultures where children are expected to work right away and thus people have children to create their own little slaveforce.
and then there are just the selfish people who want to pass on their progeny or have a cute little kid despite not really thinking about the consequences.
edit: oh you edited more stuff in, i don't agree with the rest of what you said. yes adults are idiots and have kids when they shouldn't, but i don't think we should talk about the follies of providing aid to those children unless you have the balls to be the one that says no to some starving kid face to face...
"What's the deal with humans and their obsession with continuing their survival as a species?"
I know what you're saying, I've asked this question before and I've never got a good answer. Funnily enough, it's usually after watching a movie/show which deals with the subject.
It's not that I'm cynical of humanity. It's hard to describe but the way this notion is portrayed in films just comes off as odd/forced/k, not explaining it well...
Ok, yea, I do get this answer a lot:
On February 16 2009 16:44 BroOd wrote: It's our biological imperative. We're hard-wired to survive.
I understand it but meh... I don't know. Maybe I'll attempt to say something with more substance in the morning.
I find it interesting that you question why people care about "living on as a species" and why they care about continuing it after they die, but in the same OP you seem to care about saving starving children balancing out the human race's priorities, presumably so it will continue to survive.
What the hell are you confused about? You really can't extrapolate that our species has developed through evolution, which has hard wired us to survive above all else? You seriously think that it's a strange reaction for us to attempt to preserve humanity in the direst of situations?
On February 16 2009 16:43 a-game wrote: edit: oh you edited more stuff in, i don't agree with the rest of what you said. yes adults are idiots and have kids when they shouldn't, but i don't think we should talk about the follies of providing aid to those children unless you have the balls to be the one that says no to some starving kid face to face...
you can't keep people from dying in third-world countries. people will die despite your best efforts, so you have to look past it and concentrate on securing food for them in the future through investment and technological advancement.
''Don't feed a hungry man a fish, teach him to fish blah blah blah''
or if you're into BW: ''don't watch battles that you already know the outcome for, go back to your base and start macroing blah blah blah''
Everything that you questioned in your op is something that I take pride in.
I think it is awesome that our species could possibly use technology to possibly sustain human existance indefinately ...
I mean we are that fucking unique. I thought this post would be a little more like "I don't understand why humans seem to care so much about surivial yet spend 90% of the history of the world spilling each others blood"
I think all of the things we do inspite of our instinct to surive are what make us shitty.
Ps Defilers> Humans I could live for days in a cloud of darkswarm tripping off plague ^^
On February 16 2009 16:50 fight_or_flight wrote: I find it interesting that you question why people care about "living on as a species" and why they care about continuing it after they die, but in the same OP you seem to care about saving starving children balancing out the human race's priorities, presumably so it will continue to survive.
I don't see how one has to do with the other. Trying to end suffering in one generation shouldn't be an invitation to bring the next generation into the world in the same horrible circumstances. I specifically brought up the film Children of Men because in that movie unlike any other, mankind is faced with extinction in a very peaceful manner. People aren't going to die, they just aren't going to be born. I don't say feed the poor so mankind will continue to survive. I say feed the poor because it's the humane thing to do.
I guess the underlying question I was getting at, that I didn't want to write in the OP so people wouldn't think I was trolling is this: Isn't not having children that you can't afford to feed the most effective way of ending world hunger? The consequences of course are societies / cultures being completely extinct. What's the greater tragedy?
Well I'll ask you this. Is it right for others to decide whether someone else's life is worth their suffering? From your point of view perhaps a life in a poor nation is not worth living, but obviously those people keep preserving.
edit: btw, I don't think there are easy answers to these questions. but we should definitely be careful whenever we try to decide what is best for someone else.
On February 16 2009 17:27 fight_or_flight wrote: Well I'll ask you this. Is it right for others to decide whether someone else's life is worth their suffering? From your point of view perhaps a life in a poor nation is not worth living, but obviously those people keep preserving.
edit: btw, I don't think there are easy answers to these questions. but we should definitely be careful whenever we try to decide what is best for someone else.
I think life is always worth living, I'm strictly talking about offspring. I think I do have a right to judge if I'm partially footing that bill. Look at octo-mom. Do you think she should be allowed to have as many babies as she wants while the taxpayers are the ones paying to raise them? I think octomom loses her right to say 'its my decision, im a mother and I choose to have this many kids' when she's not the one paying to raise them.
Besides, is that really such a bad thing, considering how destructive human's have been on the planet?
You think harm to ecosystems outweighs the value of human life!?
Well individual human lives rely on the longevity of humanity as a species, which itself is incumbent on the livability of the planet. Regardless of whether human action has actually degraded Earth's livability, imperiling one's species is at least as unforgivable as imperiling a member of one's species.
On February 16 2009 17:27 fight_or_flight wrote: Well I'll ask you this. Is it right for others to decide whether someone else's life is worth their suffering? From your point of view perhaps a life in a poor nation is not worth living, but obviously those people keep preserving.
edit: btw, I don't think there are easy answers to these questions. but we should definitely be careful whenever we try to decide what is best for someone else.
I think life is always worth living, I'm strictly talking about offspring. I think I do have a right to judge if I'm partially footing that bill. Look at octo-mom. Do you think she should be allowed to have as many babies as she wants while the taxpayers are the ones paying to raise them? I think octomom loses her right to say 'its my decision, im a mother and I choose to have this many kids' when she's not the one paying to raise them.
On February 16 2009 17:14 BlackJack wrote: I guess the underlying question I was getting at, that I didn't want to write in the OP so people wouldn't think I was trolling is this: Isn't not having children that you can't afford to feed the most effective way of ending world hunger? The consequences of course are societies / cultures being completely extinct. What's the greater tragedy?
I think that in countries such as Africa where there is nothing like a pension, a hard working couple will not have a chance when they are over 60. For this reason they get as many kids as possible, so that some will find jobs and will be able to support their parents. It used to be like that in the western world too, they're just a little behind.
On February 16 2009 17:27 fight_or_flight wrote: Well I'll ask you this. Is it right for others to decide whether someone else's life is worth their suffering? From your point of view perhaps a life in a poor nation is not worth living, but obviously those people keep preserving.
edit: btw, I don't think there are easy answers to these questions. but we should definitely be careful whenever we try to decide what is best for someone else.
I think life is always worth living, I'm strictly talking about offspring. I think I do have a right to judge if I'm partially footing that bill. Look at octo-mom. Do you think she should be allowed to have as many babies as she wants while the taxpayers are the ones paying to raise them? I think octomom loses her right to say 'its my decision, im a mother and I choose to have this many kids' when she's not the one paying to raise them.
would you support a law capping the # of children people can have?
keep in mind it would apply to even families that could afford to raise their children.
On February 16 2009 17:14 BlackJack wrote: I guess the underlying question I was getting at, that I didn't want to write in the OP so people wouldn't think I was trolling is this: Isn't not having children that you can't afford to feed the most effective way of ending world hunger? The consequences of course are societies / cultures being completely extinct. What's the greater tragedy?
I think that in countries such as Africa where there is nothing like a pension, a hard working couple will not have a chance when they are over 60. For this reason they get as many kids as possible, so that some will find jobs and will be able to support their parents. It used to be like that in the western world too, they're just a little behind.
That is assuming, of course, that a considerable percentage of the populace reaches the age of 60. A life of malnourishment can't be too healthy, I doubt the average life expectancy in Africa is much above 50 or 55. Apart from that, there's still AIDS and other epidemics thinning the population.
Taking all this into consideration, I actually agree with Blackjack here.
@ OP: Brood said it best. Unless humankind somehow figures out how to overcome their instincts, we're bound to try and maintain the human race. If people were to jump to the "ah, fuck that" attitude so fast, we'd have a lot more suicides all over the place.
Life expectancy might be 55 but plenty of people get a lot older and you gotta have your kids in place just in case. You can't just go like "oh I'll be max 55 anyways I will just stop at 2 kids" and be fucked when you become 60-80.
Check out the world bank statistics. You'll find that even incredibly poor countries such as Bangladesh have very successful family planning programs in place and have currently a population growth rate of just 2.9%.
What you guys are discussing is old news.
As the economies of these poor countries grow, education levels improve and people make better decisions about how to go about living their lives.
It used to be that in these poor countries where people used subsistence farming to survive had many children because they thought that having more children would allow them to become more productive, more efficient and richer. This wasn't the correct way of thinking since even though more children meant more money, the money per child decreases. Having said that, it has changed a lot since then as people have become a lot smarter as education has improved over time.
If you really want to help these poor people, don't make such harsh judgments about how they dug their own grave. The old saying teach a man to fish and he'll feed him and his family for a lifetime holds true. Agencies like Grameen Bank (inventors of microcredit) have revolutionised the way we think and look at the poor. They have devised a system where they give these poor people the skills they need to start a small business and give them a small loan (a microcredit) to achieve it. It has pulled millions out of poverty.
If you want to make poverty history donate to agencies like this and perhaps our children will live to see the day without poverty.
What's most important to understand is that our lives are always the most important. Our families, our future, our countries, our race, and finally our species.
For example, if a wizard gave you the arbitrary choice of either having all salamanders killed, or all humans killed, you would pick humans to survive.
If the choice were all the members of your race or those of another, you would choose yours to survive.
If the choice were your country or another, yours.
Your family, another family, yours.
If you had the choice between 99.9% of the world's population and your close family, I expect you would choose your close family.
Humans always seek security. That's the number one desire in all humans, in most animals. Food, physical, sexual, emotional security.
I think the answer to your question in the broadest sense is that it's a combination of three things:
1 genes, 2 culture and 3 involvement.
1We are programmed to satisfy our desire for security
2. we all add together our own feelings of that desire in public, and in most cultures there is a very strong notion of the importance of human life, which is pieced together by people all throughout history (such things as dignity and human rights are not very strong in our genetic programming, but they are in our cultures)
3. If we have things to care about, that we are attached to, we care a lot more about their survival. I'm sure there are quite a few people out there who are fat, ugly, stupid, socially disgraceful, were beaten as a kid, and have a generally shit outlook on life because no one ever involved them in anything; and they spend their whole lives on a computer being rude to people and listening to death metal- those people probably couldn't care less if humanity dies.
Btw to that guy who said 'harm to ecosystems outweighs the value of human life?!?!?!!?!?' human life has no intrinsic value, and neither does harm to ecosystems. Everything is relative in morality.
was kinda confused by the OP when he switched from the survival thing to the children thing.
But about the survival of humanity i think the problem is people think the meaning of life is to keep existing in some kind of form ( like reproducing and stuf). The problem with this is that all these people assume that life has meaning. I really think it doesnt. whats the point in doing anything if by some day in the future its all gonna be gone anyway. Just have fun and do as you like.
Evolution "programmed" us to ensure the survival of our children and if that is not possible our next best relatives (other humans). Also many of us like to think they will be remembered, and how can one be remembered without future generations ?
I'm also extremely cynical to all the Bono type celebrities asking for money for one thing or another. Sure, they are at least trying to do a great deed, but have they really accomplished much? What's the deal with using the bailout money to try to make $3 billion seem like a small amount of money? That's a pretty sizeable amount of money. Over the last 50 years over $2 trillion has been given in the form of foreign aid to those in poverty, and after 50 years we're laucnhing the "Human Rescue" project? To rescue people from 50 years of poverty by giving them food? That doesn't rescue anyone, that just feeds them for a year. The more children parent's have, the less money they can afford to invest in each of their children's education. Instead of trying to feed 6 children, it will be far more effective if people try to feed AND educate 1 child. If you're going to keep your child out of school so he can help support the family or if he won't be able to concentrate in school because of his empty stomach, DON'T HAVE KIDS.
Ya I think there's a lot of pointless speculation and theorycrafting here.
The reason growth rates are high in developing countries is due to cultural standards that developed before Europeans introduced basic health care services during the imperial era. Because death rates were so high, people needed to have lots of babies just to maintain the population. As health care improved, this ceased to be a problem, but the cultural standards stuck because they were not accompanied by economic development.
The reason the western world has developed low birth rates is because our affluence has increased the opportunity cost of having children. Taking care of a child is whole orders of magnitude more expensive in the west because you could be making much more working for a wage. At one point, birth rates in Western civilization were also high.
The way to control population growth isn't to bitch about it on TL. Family planning programs help, but the most effective way to control population growth and encourage "sustainable development" is simply to encourage economic development.
That's why Sean Penn's video is a little ridiculous. It isn't just a matter of putting food into people's mouths. But how do you get that food there in the first place? Is the controlling regime there ok with what you're doing? How much do I have to pay people to go distribute food in some of the most deadly areas of the world? How do I ensure this food isn't stolen by the government and resold to the west?
Still, he makes a good point. We don't spend nearly as much on foreign aid as we could, and that would certainly speed up development. But the real obstacles to development aren't monetary... they're governments, trade barriers, and social conflict.
There are whole fields of science devoted to human population research, it's part of environmental science.
It's widely accepted that 5 major factors, on average, affect the # of children women have: 1) cost of raising children 2) education of mother 3) availability of birth control 4) existence of public/private retirement systems 5) religious/cultural beliefs
Also on the idea of the whole bunker with scientists and what not, it goes with what everyone is saying on the fact that humans have survival instincts that we cannot go against.
Newsflash. People become parents for selfish reasons. In their view being a poor slob with kids is better then being a poor slob period. Feeling empty inside has a biological purpose. It's gets filled up by the only thing they know. Offspring.
On February 16 2009 16:40 paper wrote: i don't understand why people in the shittiest of situations bring children into the world. so you can make another being suffer? and ending world hunger doesn't start with sending food to the hungry. if you feed them, they just reproduce into the same situation and you have to keep sending more food, which puts them in a vicious cycle. no, you need economic development and investment, and that's not gonna happen for... a long time.
Most of the people get raped and dont have a form of birth control so you can Stfu you retard. Don't post if you don't know shit about what your walking about.
On February 16 2009 20:09 Boblion wrote: Poor people shouldn't be allowed to reproduce ! There would be only rich people on earth >_<
You know that rich people needs poor people for them to be rich?
They don't actually, or it depends on how you define "poor". In my opinion a western world factory worker is not really poor, he can afford a ton of shit and live well, and we aren't dependent on the third world countries as seen in how we lived before we started to move factories to China.
On February 16 2009 16:40 paper wrote: i don't understand why people in the shittiest of situations bring children into the world. so you can make another being suffer? and ending world hunger doesn't start with sending food to the hungry. if you feed them, they just reproduce into the same situation and you have to keep sending more food, which puts them in a vicious cycle. no, you need economic development and investment, and that's not gonna happen for... a long time.
Most of the people get raped and dont have a form of birth control so you can Stfu you retard. Don't post if you don't know shit about what your walking about.
I do not think a large rate of children being brought up in the third world are mostly rape victims, there are most likely more than here, but wtf thinking that most people are getting raped in the third world?
On February 16 2009 16:40 paper wrote: i don't understand why people in the shittiest of situations bring children into the world. so you can make another being suffer? and ending world hunger doesn't start with sending food to the hungry. if you feed them, they just reproduce into the same situation and you have to keep sending more food, which puts them in a vicious cycle. no, you need economic development and investment, and that's not gonna happen for... a long time.
Most of the people get raped and dont have a form of birth control so you can Stfu you retard. Don't post if you don't know shit about what your walking about.
I find it interesting that before Europeans ever went into Africa, they seemed to be fine and have a sustainable way of life. Perhaps one could argue that technology itself has destroyed them through guns, etc. But I think it is more sinister.
For example, could someone explain to me how digging in a river to scrounge up a few tenths of a gram of gold is more productive than....say....farming. All these people in a luscious rain forest, and they can't even grown any food. What is up with that? If any people should be able to support themselves, wouldn't it be Africa?
On February 17 2009 07:11 fight_or_flight wrote: I find it interesting that before Europeans ever went into Africa, they seemed to be fine and have a sustainable way of life. Perhaps one could argue that technology itself has destroyed them through guns, etc. But I think it is more sinister.
For example, could someone explain to me how digging in a river to scrounge up a few tenths of a gram of gold is more productive than....say....farming. All these people in a luscious rain forest, and they can't even grown any food. What is up with that? If any people should be able to support themselves, wouldn't it be Africa?
I'm surprised to hear this coming from a libertarian.
I think it's a silly silly myth perpetuated by hippies and environmentalists that "tribal" life is some kind of human ideal. In some places, maybe it was, but in most of the earth, tribal life was only "sustainable" so long as the environment chose to sustain you. A single year of drought could fuck over entire regions of people. There was no health care to speak of. Lifespans were a THIRD of what they are today. Today's integrated economy has single handedly eliminated famine in developed and developing regions of the world.
I have no problem with "sustainable growth" advocates living in that kind of world if they choose to do so. But I happen to like knowing I'll probably live past 30 and will never have to worry about putting food on the table. The problem with Africa isn't "unsustainable growth", it's conflict and corrupt government. There's nothing wrong with capitalism and wage labor in Africa. It's just our economic models don't account for the political instability that makes growth impossible.
Perhaps I didn't say it correctly but I was alluding to the idea that they are intentionally being screwed over. They are so messed up by the IMF and countries intentionally destroying their governments to take advantage of their natural resources. The video shows what I believe is the result of such manipulation.
Which implies that additionally controlling them through birth control is a bad idea and in fact will most likely be used to exterminate them, not help them.