Quote from: heffeque on December 20, 2023, 10:13:09I am choosing to not have children because the planet is already overcrowded as it is, natural disasters will become more and more common everywhere (droughts, extreme temperatures, etc.), more nastier wars will come up, food will start to be scarce, and less and less safe places will be left on Earth (safe from nature's disasters, and safe from dangerous people). I wouldn't want my children to live a life that will most certainly be going more and more to sh¡t as time passes. I'm actually fairly certain that I'll get to see some of it happen in first person during my lifetime, so...
Living standards have deteriorated A LOT in the States in the last decades (accelerating it's decline as we speak), and Europe is starting to see the same trend (Sweeden as a great example). Not good.
It's difficult to not be "unhinged" with these prospects.
Most Americans have no idea how people live in third world countries, and especially in authoritarian/totalitarian ones. Compared to this hell, they still live in much better conditions. And only laziness, ignorance and stupidity force people in such a country to eke out a miserable existence if everything is in order with their health. If everything was bad there, they wouldn't build a wall on the border with Mexico, no one would want to go there.
As for children, this is exactly how the most developed societies die out. The higher the level of education (but not enough money and strength), the less desire to have children, because potential parents from the "middle class" understand that they will not be able to ensure the normal development (better than theirs) of their children. But more primitive people do not think about such things and simply breed like animals. That is why, in less developed societies, the birth rate is many times higher; as soon as education reaches a certain average level, the birth rate there begins to fall rapidly. Now we are seeing something similar in Asia and Africa - the main suppliers of new inhabitants of the planet. And it is their heirs who are gradually filling and overflowing the planet, and not the well-educated (read expensive) heirs of the most developed part of human civilization. The most unpretentious creatures breed, who easily let the education and development of their children take their course, often giving it thoughtlessly into the hands of others, deciding that by the very fact of their birth and providing for the simplest needs, they have fulfilled their parental responsibilities. And many parents have openly selfish interests, so that their heirs support them in old age (instead of a pension with which nothing worked out) and be as mentally attached to them from childhood, for which they can even easily sacrifice the development of the child and his future success in life, for a more reliable connection with yourself mentally. Those who are older understand all the nuances. Sometimes a child is literally in mental chains, even as an adult. It's not easy to detach yourself from such parents...
It's good to be so experienced (and rich) at 22-30 years old, but more often than not, sufficient wisdom for the proper development of a child appears in people after 40 (well, or children receive a developed mentality not from young parents, but from grandparents, if they have not yet have fallen into insanity by this time, i.e. they themselves are not yet very old), when it is most often too late to give birth (usually only the rich, whose life is fully organized and have servants, do this, which is constantly confirmed in practice), and someone else's child (adoption) is not an option for many or even more expensive.
That's how it works. At first, people are inexperienced and lack resources for the proper development of the child, and then, when wisdom and resources come (and even then not always), they no longer have the strength to pull this burden for 22-23 years, after 40...
As a result, idiocracy wins on the planet - the most uneducated sections of the population and, of course, a small handful of rich people multiply and multiply (who thereby only strengthen their superiority over the crowd, although sometimes annoying mistakes happen there). Those who are satisfied with unpretentious conditions and are satisfied with the patterned development of a child of an average level or even below the average level.
Humanity has passed its "golden age" and is gradually beginning to undergo accelerating degradation and a rollback to more primitive forms of existence. We are not talking about material well-being, but about mental development, the level of intelligence, which is clearly visible in recent generations. Which, of course, ultimately, in the future, will lead to a drop in the material standard of living everywhere, without exception, due to the inevitable collapse of infrastructure.
As soon as humanity sharply sheds its excess numbers (ever less effective, for scientific and technical progress, segments of the population) and escapes (of course through default of obligations) from accumulated debts in the next 70-100 years, a new, more cruel and small civilization will begin development at a new stage spirals. If they're lucky...
Once upon a time, in the 20th century, in the USA, one of the couple in a family provided the entire family with 2 children with at least one of their income. You could buy a house with 1.5-2 years' income in the 1960s. Now the couple needs to work together to ensure the quality development of one child - these are all already proven facts. There is no one to take care of the child's development - and because... As retirement is pushed further and further by the authorities, due to the Ponzi scheme, raising a child not by parents, but by grandparents, also becomes impossible - they are too old, too weak and, most often, by the age of 70 they have already degenerated too much intellectually. It turns out that there is no one to raise the child except the state. What interests the state (the ruling kleptocracy) in his upbringing? For the mass case - stereotyped thinking and unquestioning submission, humility, faith in state ideology...
This is actually why the United States finds itself in the current situation, like other Western countries - there are fewer and fewer children with non-standard thinking, because... Their parents cannot take care of their high-quality all-round development; they simply have no time - they both work. And this directly affects the quality of human capital, which was the strength of the United States once in the "golden" 20th century, its heyday. But now everything is in the past, they are driving on the remains of the previously extracted "fuel".
But Africa (and still Asia) is quickly filled with hordes of mostly meaningless people, from the point of view of benefits for the development of civilization and scientific and technological progress (and not running in place), because their mass standard of living is still gradually growing, catching up to the same " middle" level, when future parents finally begin to be burdened by the understanding of the impossibility of developing their future children even more (due to improvements in their own education). That same "average income" trap...
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