From - Sun Jan 20 11:40:08 2002 Message-ID: <3C49BB01.BB219153@earthops.net> Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 13:29:21 -0500 From: Tiny Human Ferret Organization: copyright 2001 all rights reserved -- non-UseNet transmission prohibited. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.17 i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.gothic Subject: Re: [childfree] Goths and Childfree, dead-end street? (was Re:Handicapped child at ballet References: <3C45A9E7.30F4097F@earthops.net> <3C45FF2B.E7BF0EDD@earthops.net> <3C46E966.AA6CE68D@earthops.net> <3C48622D.54D1AD70@earthops.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.205.1.226 X-Trace: vienna7.his.com 1011465046 65.205.1.226 (19 Jan 2002 13:30:46 -0500) Lines: 445 X-Authenticated-User: tjh22isp Path: vienna7.his.com Xref: vienna7.his.com alt.gothic:837617 Zoe J Selengut wrote: > > On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Tiny Human Ferret wrote: > > > Zoe J Selengut wrote: > [five lines of attributions snipped - it's me and him all the way down] > > > Good! Shall we for the sake of the argument propose that these women are in > > fact emblematic or highly-representative of smart upperclass > > college-educated women throughout the "western world"? > > Well, if we do, we will have to suppose that three quarters of them intend > to get married and have children by their mid-thirties. I am amazed every > time I hear this from a peer, but I keep hearing it. Maybe they've thought it through and have reached conclusions similar to my own. > > > > Reasonable doesn't mean what doing what everybody else is doing. But > > > 'everybody' is not forgoing children, either. > > > > That's the crux of my argument, or half of it anyway. That's the problem to > > which I wish to focus attention. Essentially, "those who are sufficiently > > intelligent to recognize the need for birth control use it; but stupid > > humans breed like rats". > > And I don't think you have evidence that those who 'breed like rats' are, > in fact, overwhelmingly stupid. You know more about biology than me; you > must know how crucial the early years are for brain development, and how > critical proper nutrition pre- and postnatal care are. You can't look at a > stupid adult who's been dirt-poor all her life and say with certainty that > there is no way she could have turned out any differently. This is quite true. But I'm not, other than by extremes and categoricals in that little aphorism, discussing people who are of more-or-less normal intelligence, nor really discussing even those who are slightly dim, but I'm trying to focus on people of clear high intelligence. That sort of presupposes that they've had fairly good developmental support, I guess. (klaatu) > > That in itself might be an > > excellent argument for adoption, but it doesn't make a very good argument > > for forgoing one's own reproduction. > (Zoe) > No; overpopulation does that. You've mentioned it yourself, from time to > time; as I recall you disapprove. If the couple had created a child where > none existed, however well they raised it, they would be doing nothing but > fulfilling their responsibilities. By adopting, they have not only added a > productive member of society to the future, they have removed the prospect > of one more poor, miserable, and unproductive one. > > Your statement is rife with presupposition. Most glaring and troublesome is > > that the adopted child will inevitably be a productive member of society. I > > I was the one who said there were limits on what you could raise a child > to be; you were the one who claimed that good parenting takes care of most > problems. Please stop snipping the debate into surrealism. "Leave that to me." I've reinserted the snipped material so that both of us look a bit less wacko. If you will track backwards through the thread, in context it is evident that I claimed that good parenting generally prevents twisted bitter creatures. I don't claim it cures all ills. > > > Your statement baldly presupposes the inevitability of a life's outcome as > > being based on the social-class of one's rearing. > > So who was it, again, worrying about rich, educated women not having > enough children? If social class has so little influence on life > outcomes, what's the big deal? I did not in any way suggest that it has little influence on life outcomes, I stated directly that it is not the sole determinant. Nor, for that matter, did I _ever_ argue that rich educated women should have more children, I strongly argued that _intelligent_ women should have more children, and in fact, I will further argue that it is highly desirably that those children themselves be female. Again with the presupposition, Zoe? Intelligent women are always rich and educated? Rich educated women are always intelligent? > > In any case, as I tried to make clear, social class is not the only factor > leading me to believe this boy will have a happy, productive life: he has > two mature, stable, educated, intelligent and loving parents, and this > would be true regardless of their income. Actually, the income of an > adjunct professor is probably a lot lower than that of your average > secretary, plumber, or construction supervisor. I would look up the > numbers so I didn't have to guess, but it would only depress me. > > [social class is not identical to income level yes I know] Nor is intelligence necessarily related to either. > > > I am not positing human cultures as analogous to species. I am positing > > irresponsible people who cannot possibly care for their children, > > irresponsibly having children anyway, _knowing that it is likely that others > > will raise their children for them, quite possibly at the expense of others > > having their own children_. > > It's only at their expense if they would have liked to have their own > children anyway. Or have the capability, etc. > Many foster parents and adoptive parents do both. Many > others have a choice between adoption and childlessness and choose the > former. Children nobody wants end up on the streets or in state-run > orphanages - couples aren't forced to take them in. > > > And what of the laudable goal of passing on the genes their ancestors gave > > them? > > Sorry, that's not a laudable goal. It's not shameful, any more than roller > blading, art collecting, or rock climbing are shameful activities, but > it's done for private satisfaction and no other reason. We beg to differ, as does all of Nature. The sole meaning of life, if life can be said to have a meaning, is the struggle to perpetuate genes onto posterity. > > > Can you honestly suggest that it is more laudable to assure the > > survival of another's genetic line, than to assure one's own? > > Yes, of course. Of course? Would you please care to elaborate? Specifically, how is it more laudable to assure the survival of another's genetic line, while not assuring your own? That's not altruism, unless there's a specific case of your line being defective and the other line being known to be non-defective or even advantaged; and even in this case the altruism is to society or to "mankind". > Assuring one's own genetic survival is a matter of free > choice, not duty, the conviction of many people that their offspring > are God's gift to the world notwithstanding. Again, rife with presupposition. > > Again: the people in my anecdote are not ensuring the survival of a > genetic line, they are ensuring the physical survival of a particular > child who exists, right now, in the real world. If that child grows up and > wants children of his own, what makes you think he won't adopt them > himself, having seen firsthand the good it can do? What does that matter to the argument at hand? The instant debate is not concerned with the worth of adoption as an institution of significant and unquestioned positive value. You appear to be putting forth the idea that a child does not represent the continuation of the genetic line of the child's parents; that's clearly not the case. > > > No, they have one mother, the birth mother. "Heather has two mommies". A mom > > need not be a mother. > > I don't have a mom. I call my mother Mother. If she calls me up tomorrow > and tells me I was adopted, she will not stop being my mother, and she > will not suddenly have never been my mother. Actually, she will! She has been and would in any case continue to be your maternal parental unit. She would have never been your birthmother. > The dictionary and common > usage are both on my side. Nope, usage one always takes precedence over usage two. That's why it's usage one. > > > > Haven't you ever heard that there's a time and a place for everything? You > > > don't go to an AA meeting to sell liquor, you don't offer steak to a > > > vegetarian, you don't try to seduce a monogamous married woman. Not > > > because liquor, steak and seduction are bad things, but because it's rude. > > > > It would be rude to presume that none of these parties are interested, one > > must make the offer even knowing it will be refused, to remain in good form. > > If you are in an AA meeting or a childfree newsgroup, you do not need to > presume anything. It is all made explicitly clear for you in their rules > and regulations. > > > The presumption might be so likely as to approach certainty, but one should > > make the offer in any case, if for no other reason that demurral will give > > the person made the offering a chance to exercise their demurrals and > > demonstrate their own committment and resolve. > > You can jump up behind students coming out of a self-defense class and > yell Boo! at them to give them a chance to exercise their training and > reflexes, too, but don't expect them to thank you for it. Actually, when I was in martial arts class, we did precisely thank people for sneaking up an yelling "boo" at us. It was an expected and desirable part of the course of study. > > > newly-empanelled President's Bio-Ethics Commission, which will be examining > > a lot of the issues of cloning, stem-cell research, exogenesis and > > There are no issues of cloning separate and distinct from extant issues of > reproduction. Sure there are; the NAS certainly felt free to scoff at you almost immediately after you posted this. They promptly weighed in with the pronouncement that they believe that reproductive cloning be banned unilaterally, though they strongly recommended that cloning for purposes of organ and stem-cell generation be not only permitted but potentially encouraged. > I wouldn't be surprised if the President's commission thinks > otherwise; perhaps they also think that only one of a set of twins has a > soul. No, they know better than that. See the report of the former commission, conveniently mounted at http://www.earthops.net/cloning/cloning_report.html > > > Now we're getting very far afield. How do you keep unethical -- or even > > criminal -- parties from obtaining and operating such equipment? > > Probably you can't. You can't keep unethical and criminal parties from > having babies the old fashioned way, either. > > > The point I was trying to make was that scholarships do happen... to > > _scholars_. Who may emerge from any class or from any background.. but which > > appear to be rather more likely to appear from families containing a long > > line of intelligent mothers. > > _I know_. Intelligent mothers, found among the poor, who had more children > than they could afford. That's what I'm saying. If you accept that smart > people must have had smart mothers - and that's your thesis, not mine - > you must accept that smart mothers are to be found among what you seem to > think of as the dregs of society. And this follows naturally. So, what are the likely outcomes, in your opinion, of intelligent persons being raised -- perhaps across multiple generations -- in conditions of privation and probably violence and even repression? We might also ask whether or not intelligent women in such conditions might -- presupposing the accessibility of such -- tend to acquire and use birth-control, lessening their financial burdens due to child-rearing, and through hard work and superior abilities rise from poverty? I give you Condoleeza Rice as an example. Do you think Ms Rice is in poverty? Do you think for a moment that she would do anything that she had reason to believe would impoverish herself? Would any such woman? So we might reasonably expect that, with the establishment of "a level playing field", intelligent women would rise from poverty at a minimum, with reproductive restraint being a major factor. Meanwhile, while they are having few or no children, those who would be poor and/or dysfunctional regardless of their socioeconomic disadvantages (or repression by The Man etc etc) seem to be tending to have many more children than those who wisely choose to rise above by not tying millstones around their own necks. And do the math: which population grows more quickly? > > > > > impoverished classes. And the relative ranks of the intelligentsia are > > > > shrinking even more rapidly. > > > > > > Do you have a short definition of intelligensia you could throw at me? > > > > Well, broadly speaking one could use the standard definition amounting to > > "people who have demonstrated that they can think fairly well about > > complicated matters, and who commonly do so and who commonly consult on such > > matters with others who are much the same". More precisely speaking, degreed > > persons. > > HAH! I hope their ranks are shrinking a bit, actually; the glut of Ph.d's > makes the academic job market a miserable prospect to contemplate. The world is an increasingly complex place, requiring a much higher level of competent managers. I would suggest that if there actually too many PhDs, some of those would be much better off if they went into management of complex systems rather than into academia or research. > > > Or, to use the classic definition of intelligence: the ability > > to accurately identify factors in one's environment which can be > > modified, and to assess and select the best methods for modifying those > > factors. (more or less) > > So you're back to saying that there's fewer smart people than there used > to be, which assertion you have yet to prove. I have never said that. I have said, and will continue to say, that the reproductive rate of the clearly not-too-bright far outstrips the reproductive rate of the clearly-highly-intelligent. > > > > We're going around in circles again. For many women past and present, > > > having a future is directly contingent on _not_ having kids, or having > > > only one or two. > > > > for many women... That phrase appears to be the crux of your argument here. > > But not all... so, we must question which factors might enable some to > > choose to have more children, and which factors require that most choose to > > have less children. > > You are attacking the problem backwards. Most educated women having one or > two children, no more, is not a problem that needs fixing. The actual > problem is rampant poverty and lack of sex education and every other kind > of education among the people you think shouldn't be reproducing. I > surmise that you are focusing on the other end of it because it involves > changing the behaviour of fewer people and seems less daunting. Primarily. Broadly speaking, there are several rather obvious cases being argued here, some by exclusion of mention of them. One case involves the conditions of all persons in all classes restricting their reproduction to replacement levels, or to levels resulting in an actual population decline. This may be the most desirable case; further increases in population as a whole is to be seen as highly detrimental to the ecosystem and thus to all beings which inhabit said ecosystem. Another case is that the population increases in all classes. Global population exists at the present level only because ongoing advances in technology have established rather complex systems, entire industries and their related infrastructures, economies, and administrative and data and feedback systems. As population increases, these systems have had to become larger, more complex, more finely tuned, better micromanaged. They have also concurrently been discovered to be inherently dangerous, less so because of the exceptional damage potentially resulting directly from failure, collapse or mismanagement, and moreso because of the utter dependence of large segments of global population upon the uninterrupted and nearly-flawless operation of these systems. As the population increases, the complexity of the systems grows, and eventually the complexity of the system exceeds the possible bounds of effective management and the systems break down. Dependent populations are unable to fulfil their own tasks, and populations dependent upon that group are themselves unable to fulfil tasks upon which other populations depend. This cascade failure collapses the entire society and if not properly triaged will leave an awful lot of damage which will last even beyond the cycle of mass-starvation and probably a lifestyle of murder and cannibalism which will necessarily follow, presuming for now that there is no major use of weapons of mass destruction. A sub-case of the second case is that while the incompetent continue to reproduce without restraint, the hereditarily intelligent restrain their own reproduction. In direct proportion to the degree of reproductive restraint, the complex systems more quickly run out of competent managers. __This may turn out to be the more desirable case in terms of permitting more widespread survival of a social systems cascade failure__; the global population is smaller as are the systems which fail: less dangerous crap is left lying around and there is less loss of life in raw numbers as the population falls to a level where it can exist without reliance on complex systems. Another sub-case of the second case is that the intelligent classes maintain a high level of reproduction so as to ensure availability of sufficient competant management of complex systems. Supplied with sufficient competent management, the systems become more complex and the populations can be supported at a the same levels of lifestyle until they grow much larger than they could without sufficient competent management of complex systems. Eventually, though, the population exceeds the limits of ongoing enhancement of the complex systems and overwhelms the complex system upon which these populations depend. __This may be the most undesirable sub-case of the second case__, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall". There are other sub-cases of the second case which trend more closely into the first case, which is the only case permitting longterm survival of either humanity or ecosystem. But I will not discuss them. Genuinely intelligent people will see these cases immediately, and will almost certainly -- having once considered them -- refuse to contemplate them at any length, as genuinely intelligent people are generally not monsters or do not wish to see themselves as such. However, at present we as humanity appear to be given little more than a choice between the obvious extreme sub-cases of case two, above. Whether by intent or otherwise, when the hereditarily intelligent restrict their production of the next generation of the raw material of competent management of exceptionally complex systems likely to be required to sustain a global population of some 15 billions by the year 2100, they pretty much assure that the system will have collapsed before that time, possibly permitting some slightly higher degree of surivability. Alternatively, there is some hope that flooding the world with as many highly-intelligent person as possible will not merely prop the whole thing up longer until it falls much harder, but perhaps provide the brainpower necessary to create some long-lasting solution in the form of an escape valve, such as inexpensive mass transportation to space. However, this is very much a long shot against increasing odds at exponentially-increasing ultimate high stakes. > > > Do you think that more highly-intelligent women would be more likely to > > reproduce (or reproduce more) if they believed that it could not negatively > > affect their career (other than perhaps for merely the maternity leave > > taken)? > > > > For instance, if there were a variation on child-care not dissimilar to the > > extended family of a village, which could assume most daily childcare > > functions? If this could be kept rather non-costly, and the staffing quality > > kept high, do you think that would make a difference? > > A little bit. Some women would wonder what the point would be of having a > child they saw so rarely. I mean, obviously the point would be to > perpetuate their superior genes, but I don't think they'd be any more > easily convinced of that than I am. Please consider the scenarios detailed above. I realize that perpetuating one's superior genes into a role amounting to little more than being a zookeeper isn't all that attractive, but what are the alternatives? > Those who thought it was a fine idea > would come up against harsh criticism from those who think a decent > woman's life ought properly to involve some kind of sacrifice and > heart-wrenching choice between irreconcilable alternatives. Such persons expressing such opinions may handily be dismissed as "idiots". Or you may dismiss them as "jealous idiots". > > It probably does a child no great harm to be raised by a comittee, > considering that the more authority figures you have to deal with, the > greater the likelihood that they will disagree amongst themselves and > allow you to play them off against each other. Social conservatives would > protest in swarms, however. Bang on the head of the nail with the word "swarms". Again, see the scenarios above. Note also that it is possible that persons supportive of such approaches would become the authority figures. > > Zoe -- Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae. Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow. <-----> http://earthops.net/klaatu/