From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Wed Sep 13 2000 - 11:04:49 PDT
> a) Deciding you prefer responsibility to freedom as a source of meaning
This is always the kind of loaded language that gets used when the rubber hits the
road in discussions about having kids. Why is there a choice between "freedom" and
"responsibility," i.e. why the implication that those are opposed in some way? Why
does the pro-parenting crowd inevitably imply that "preferring freedom" is
necessarily "irresponsible?" IMO, though this isn't alway the case, folks who make
the decision *to* have kids are *often* making an irresponsible decision.
Conversely, IMO, I think anyone who makes a decision *not* to have kids is by
default making a *responsible* decision.
Let's extrapolate: so, decision to parent == preference for responsibility. Those
welfare mothers of 12 kids must be really responsible people, huh?
> Yes, I believe people who are able to go through all of these enter moredeeply
> (according to my humble utility function) into the "human experience"
...or, maybe it's just "the parenting experience." Really, Ernie, you mean to tell
me that having kids is in some way "more deeply human" than, say, spending your life
backpacking across the world?
Extrapolating again: parenting == "more deeply into the human experience."
Therefore, those welfare mothers must be buried up to their eyeballs in "the human
experience," huh?
Interesting.
> P.S. And actually most rich people I know *do* preach that everyone
> 'should' be rich,
We should've recruited some of them a few weeks ago for that thread....
jb
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Sep 13 2000 - 11:22:58 PDT