You quoted a source once, but managed not to read it. You summarized 2, but did so in a way that was not at all connected to what they said. And you've done the same once again. Although that was an odd one where you basically agreed with me, but tried to pretend I'd said something different and somehow was wrong. Bizarre
:lol: I cited
your own sources back to you to show that in
two instances
they had not supported your claims, and that in the third that it did so only in a ridiculous manner. Sure, hunter gatherers don't engage in war - so long as you define the warfare that they engage in as "not war"
. By the same token, the United States doesn't engage in warfare either.
However, I am open to being proven wrong. If you can actually cite those sources
not saying what I
quoted them as saying, I would be interested in seeing it. I don't think you
can, which is why you choose to call me a liar
without being able to demonstrate any evidence of falsehood.
Actually you're pretty typical. Certainly not a representation of all parents, but pretty typical at least in the sense of the way you view others.
(shrug) if you want to accept me as a spokesmen for "most parents", that's up to you. See more below.
I'll ask you the same question I asked Chuck, which apparently scared him right out of the thread: when did your children ask to be born?
I don't see how this would be a scary question - obviously they didn't. Neither did they ask me to get them medical care, nor did they ask me for shelter that was safe for small children, neither did they ask me to teach them their ABC's, or how to speak. They didn't ask me to feed them healthy food, they didn't ask me to clothe them.
However, if you want to talk about things that posters have run away from in this thread,
I've got a whole post you seem to have decided to run away from. I suspected at the time mostly because of the fact that you had been caught either deliberately or accidentally misrepresenting the claims of two of your sources and because of this:
cpwill said:
Okay, look, this is a stupid game, because breadth of impact is not the same as depth of impact is not the same as raw total impact, and really I would bet that in those three variations the ability to differentiate between CF and CL is (just like productivity) nigh on nil, just as the idea that parents don't do those things as well is... well...
Okay, as a parent I have put a couple of dozen mass murderers in jail, and helped to secure a city of approximately 300,000 people from a major terrorist insurgency. Hundreds of school children could travel back and forth from their houses to school safely whereas before we came on scene they couldn't as one metric. We went from 200 attacks a month with a casualty rating of about 1-3 per to 2 attacks a month with one casualty between them. I've done humanitarian assistance in Thailand, trained security forces in Kuwait, dammed up the Mississippi to protect Amish communities, aided flood victims in the Philippines, increased the ability of the South Koreans to protect certain portions of their populace, and helped the Japanese when a Tsunami wiped out their nuclear reactors. So I would put forth that I've had some breadth - my impact has been literally global. I would say that I've had some depth - people are alive today partly because of me. This isn't to be braggadocious, or try to paint some kind of awesome picture of myself - I'm not particularly unique in these regards. Lots of the vets in here will tell you similar stories. MANY have had greater impact. But if you want to try to tell me that "your world is much bigger" because you don't have kids? That you "influence a vastly greater number of people"?
And it's worth pointing out, that's
before you consider the impact my children will have. As I recall, you are a writer at a small-distribution magazine. And that's just fine - if people are willing to pay you for it then obviously you bring value to others. I"m truly glad you were able to find a position where you can do what you love and bring enough value to others to support yourself on the trade - lots of english majors don't get that option. But don't stick your nose up in the air and tell me about how the CF have such larger, bigger, wider, lives and impact on humanity than Parents. :roll:
Answer me that and then we can talk about how the CF are so selfish.
(shrug) I didn't say "selfish". I said that their lives are more self-
centered.
I would say you hang out with a very unusual subset of parents. Or you're just being dishonest in terms of percentages.
I have only posted one percentage on this thread which is that if you look at the bottom 30% of the income brackets, you will find that it is disproportionately made up of those who have failed to form families, who are childless. Most the folks (CF and Parents) I hang out with are either Japanese or Military. I would posit that most of the parents (and CF) that you hang out with are of a similarly constrained community (by geography, work, and inclination), and that therefore your own anecdotal experiences about how seriously your friends at the coffee shop talk about poverty in Africa and Global Warming don't translate into actual evidence for some kind of "wider impact / bigger world" for CF.
You honestly sound like you're just ripping off the stereotype that the CF are such because they're basically children. However, the general known evidence about the CF demographic shows you wrong -- and not just my anecdata. I don't actually believe you know any CF people, honestly.
:roll: Is that your default when you lack any evidence or the ability to respond? You just call the other person a liar?
Just because you can't read well enough to distinguish between statements of activities and personality does not make me prejudice.
No, your arguments have been pretty prejudiced in this thread. But tell me more about how CF people live in a wider world and impact more people than parents because of how they understand larger society whereas Parents are just so parochialistically parochial :2razz:
*sigh* But I was not talking about the REASON.
No, as you pointed out, there are multiple reasons to decide not to have children. Yours, for example, you stated, were because of your own life goals, your own wants, your own desires; not because of any idea about what society needed. Others may buy into overpopulation (a debate for it's own thread), and I've seen some who claimed to be doing it for global warming. Others may simply think that the scars or situations in their lives would leave them atrocious parents. The reasons are myriad. What you
claimed, however, was a necessary
prerequisite of "
In order to make a decision not to reproduce in a pro-natalist culture -- especially if you are a woman -- you have to be able to understand society as a larger machine and how it can and cannot control you." - this is
not a necessary prerequisite to deciding that one does not want to have children. As you and I have both agreed, it may be simply that you don't want to, or that you don't want to and think you wouldn't be good at it. No "higher plane of existence" is necessary, though simply as a matter of psychology it
does make sense that folks would respond to:
What I was talking about is how one gets to a point where they are personally able to withstand societal pressure, regardless of the reason.
said social pressure by developing defensive delusions of superiority and/or grandeur.
