• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

Why Do We Procreate?

RGacky3 said:
Prior to the postwar wealth in europe, and the social democratic reforms, european families had a huge number of children ... for the same reason.

In lower developed countries having more kids MEANS having a better life for them and yourself, it means more can work in the village farms, it means more can contribute to the household, forget good schools these families are thinking about food.

Education breeds higher economic security, meaning having more kids doesn't help, since you arn't relying on people physically working for food, or a pension plan. In a 3rd world village having less kids means you'll be more hungry the less you are able to work.

As far as the islamist nonsense, there is NO evidence for that, and amung the countries with the highest fertility rates few are islamic ... what they have in common is desperate poverty, lack of inudstrialization, and lack of education.

The lack of education contributes not because people are simply dumber and have less of a desire for a decent life .... the lack of education means lack of economic opportunities.

You're racism and ignorance here is bleeding through it's obvious.
Click to expand...

Yes, because developed today means something different than it meant 80 years ago. We call that period modern period. We call the one we live in contemporary.

I am not disagreeing that children in less developed countries are an insurance policy for old age. I agree with that. stop repeating it. I told you in the prior comment too. But why is that? Because that's all you have. You have a simple life and no means to improve it through advanced education so you just do the best you can. There is no thought on higher quality of life, or a different, better life. there is just that life and think of the best way to make it work for you. It's like that in underdeveloped countries and in the poorly developed ,poorly educated regions of developed countries. Granted, those are few and far between, but they still exist.

I am not wrong buddy boy. You are just incapable of understanding the complexity of what i am saying. You have a simple mind and can't understand the correlations of issues. I've gone way past that and reached the finish line while you barely started dragging your feet into the issue.

And yes, among the countries with high fertility rates, islamic countries are quite numerous. In the top 5 countries of fertility, 4 are islamic, 1 is Christian (majority Catholic and Protestant). In the top 10, 7 are predominantly islamic and 3 are Christian. Most of those top 10 are in Africa.

And among those that are islamist, countries like Mali, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone are all countries that have religious conflicts on larger or smaller scale and the islamic radicals are very powerful.

So don't tell me that I'm wrong. I told you, you barely started dragging your feet in this topic, I've gone past the finish line.

You keep throwing that term around, 'racist' thinking it will be a bulwark against the facts. But it's not. And you're displaying crass ignorance on the issue. It's not my ignorance that is showing, it's yours buddy boy. So you better shut up and listen while I take you to school.
 
Rainman05 said:
Yes, because developed today means something different than it meant 80 years ago. We call that period modern period. We call the one we live in contemporary.

I am not disagreeing that children in less developed countries are an insurance policy for old age. I agree with that. stop repeating it. I told you in the prior comment too. But why is that? Because that's all you have. You have a simple life and no means to improve it through advanced education so you just do the best you can. There is no thought on higher quality of life, or a different, better life. there is just that life and think of the best way to make it work for you. It's like that in underdeveloped countries and in the poorly developed ,poorly educated regions of developed countries. Granted, those are few and far between, but they still exist.

I am not wrong buddy boy. You are just incapable of understanding the complexity of what i am saying. You have a simple mind and can't understand the correlations of issues. I've gone way past that and reached the finish line while you barely started dragging your feet into the issue.

And yes, among the countries with high fertility rates, islamic countries are quite numerous. In the top 5 countries of fertility, 4 are islamic, 1 is Christian (majority Catholic and Protestant). In the top 10, 7 are predominantly islamic and 3 are Christian. Most of those top 10 are in Africa.

And among those that are islamist, countries like Mali, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone are all countries that have religious conflicts on larger or smaller scale and the islamic radicals are very powerful.

So don't tell me that I'm wrong. I told you, you barely started dragging your feet in this topic, I've gone past the finish line.

You keep throwing that term around, 'racist' thinking it will be a bulwark against the facts. But it's not. And you're displaying crass ignorance on the issue. It's not my ignorance that is showing, it's yours buddy boy. So you better shut up and listen while I take you to school.
Click to expand...

There is a thought of higher quality, better and different life, which is why there is so much immigration to the first world, making life work for you the best way possible IS trying to increase the quality of your life.

Your origional post was this

Also, developed countries have a low birthrate because we put more emphasis on the quality of life than the quantity of life. If you look at the world, it's the ME and Africa that are in the top of birthrates because they either don't care or don't know what quality of life is, the same way we do.
Click to expand...

Don't try change what you said and then try and talk down to me as if I got you wrong.

1. As I explained it has nothing to do with the "quantity of life" for it's own sake, it's also trying to improve (even if just a little) the quality of life.
2. They DO care about the quality of their lives ... WHICH IS WHY THEY DO EVERYTHING (including having more children) to try and improve that quality.

Amung the top 10 countries for fertility. (from UN statistics)
List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2 hold a significat majority, 1 or 2 constitute a "barely" majority if that. The rest are christian.

Which is not that different from the rest of the world.

Of the 2 holding a significany majority only one has serious islamic only one has islamic fundementalists doing insergency, but that's definately not what's driving the fertility rate, and amung the other states there are also "christian" or other type of political insurgants.

There is NO positive corrolation between islam and fertility rates ... nor is there any evidence of any "conspiracy" to produce more islamic soldiers or whatever.
 
RGacky3 said:
There is a thought of higher quality, better and different life, which is why there is so much immigration to the first world, making life work for you the best way possible IS trying to increase the quality of your life.

Your origional post was this

Don't try change what you said and then try and talk down to me as if I got you wrong.

1. As I explained it has nothing to do with the "quantity of life" for it's own sake, it's also trying to improve (even if just a little) the quality of life.
2. They DO care about the quality of their lives ... WHICH IS WHY THEY DO EVERYTHING (including having more children) to try and improve that quality.

Amung the top 10 countries for fertility. (from UN statistics)
List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2 hold a significat majority, 1 or 2 constitute a "barely" majority if that. The rest are christian.

Which is not that different from the rest of the world.

Of the 2 holding a significany majority only one has serious islamic only one has islamic fundementalists doing insergency, but that's definately not what's driving the fertility rate, and amung the other states there are also "christian" or other type of political insurgants

There is NO positive corrolation between islam and fertility rates ... nor is there any evidence of any "conspiracy" to produce more islamic soldiers or whatever.
Click to expand...

Yes, those that can emigrate either as real migrants.. or illegals or refugees run for the developed world because there is a better chance of life there. But that's a small percentage of the population of those countries, and usually the ones who are somewhat better off than the average herd. Sure, once they get to the developed countries they lost everything they had because that's what they did to get that. Something I think it's rather silly and should be discouraged. Anyway. That's not the issue.

I know what I said. And it's true. They don't know what a better quality of life is for the most part. Those that do strive for it, those that don't try and do the same thing their parents did. Have a lot of kids and hope old age ends fast. That's not improving the quality of life. That's maintaining a more acceptable degree of poverty. Stop trying to dish out pathetic attempts at justifying your attack on my statement. It's waterproof.

I cross correlated the data between the 3 censuses and the facts I posted are quite true. I looked at which names pop the most and where they pop and how late and exact the research on the census was done and by whom.
Niger-> islam
Mali -> islam
Somalia -> islam
Afghanistan -> islam
Burundi -> Christianity
Guinea-Bissau -> islam
Congo -> christianity
Liberia -> christianity
Burkina faso -> islam
Sierra Leone -> islam
Most of them african countries. Most of them islamic countries. And the next 10 are also mostly African. In fact the whole top 30 is dominated by African and ME countries. I agree, that if you look at the top 30, you can even out the number of Christian to islam countries ratio to about even, with a slight favor to Islam. But the top 10, which is what we are discussing, is majority islamic.

Oh. And here.

Muslim Babies For Jihad - YouTube

There are religious ceremonies intended on honoring children brought up for jihad. to become martyrs as it were.

So yeah. There is a correlation. Islamic babies for the jihad against the western infidels. It's a desirable thing for islamic extremists.
 
I'm just asking questions. I don't have a problem.
Did you miss the italics part of my previous post? I wasn't assaulting you. I was questioning the stuff you wrote as that's the exact stuff others say all the time.

Is it ego then?

Are people breeding for ego? "I must keep my bloodline alive!"
 
I believe we procreate simply so the human race does not die. sadly some countries let thier people abuse the gift too procreate.
 
corlini said:
I believe we procreate simply so the human race does not die. sadly some countries let thier people abuse the gift too procreate.
Click to expand...


How many people would have to stop having children before there's even a slight danger of the human race becoming extinct?

nevermind the fact that I'm sure the world would become a vastly better place in the mean-time.
 
We've already over populated the world's ability to sustain the current population at the same level of quality much longer. There's simply not enough arable land mass, forests, fresh water, air quality and other natural resources left. Natural selection will eventually start to reduce our numbers out of the evolutionary picture substantially in order for nature to re-balance the ecosystem. But if we improve our technology enough and colonize other planets we may still expand.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
We have kids because sex is really really really lots of fun.
Click to expand...

We "accidentally" have kids because sex is really really really lots of fun.

Which is probably sufficient enough to keep the human population from going extinct.

But most people seem to feel it's their duty as a human to make more humans.

It's not "if" we have kids anywhere near as much as "how many" and "when".
 
RGacky3 said:
That's nonsense, the reason third world countries tend to have more children is because they don't have public pensions and your children ARE your retirement, if you have kids that can provide for you later on in life, you'll have a higher quality of life, and your children will have a larger social network to rely on, it has nothing to do with people in third world countries just being dumber and not knowing what quality of life is ...

All it takes is a couple minutes of thinking and logic to realize that this kind of racism you're spouting is nonsense.
Click to expand...

they colonized this world and called it 3rd world
 
Dragonfly said:
It's not "if" we have kids anywhere near as much as "how many" and "when".
Click to expand...

Pardon me, but plenty of us are opting out. About one in four women exit their childbearing years without any children, a great deal of them by choice, or simply lack of desire.

We aren't mindless. People make their own destinies... Unless they simply allow biology to dictate to them.
 
I'm seeing stats that say 18% of American women don't give birth.
 
Dragonfly said:
I'm seeing stats that say 18% of American women don't give birth.
Click to expand...

Ah, I think you're right on that one. I think the projected for my generation is higher, but yeah, the present is in the 20-ish percent neighbourhood.
 
Dragonfly said:
Is there some inherent instinct to multiply?

Why do we have kids? And why so many?

There is no possible chance that humanity will go extinct. The population is expanding.

So what is it that drive us to have children?

It just seems like it's something we're "supposed" to do.

It's part of life.

But why?

Are people who don't have children somehow deficient?

Is breeding one of our very few instincts?
Click to expand...

Humans have many instincts, one of which is indeed reproduction. Those who don't have children are not deficient, it's just part of normal statistical distribution. Some will have 15 kids, some will have zero, many (for humans) will have 2-4.
 
Dragonfly said:
Is there some inherent instinct to multiply?

Why do we have kids? And why so many?

There is no possible chance that humanity will go extinct. The population is expanding.

So what is it that drive us to have children?

It just seems like it's something we're "supposed" to do.

It's part of life.

But why?

Are people who don't have children somehow deficient?

Is breeding one of our very few instincts?
Click to expand...

Because sex feels good.
 
grip said:
We've already over populated the world's ability to sustain the current population at the same level of quality much longer. There's simply not enough arable land mass, forests, fresh water, air quality and other natural resources left. Natural selection will eventually start to reduce our numbers out of the evolutionary picture substantially in order for nature to re-balance the ecosystem. But if we improve our technology enough and colonize other planets we may still expand.
Click to expand...


We're actually talking about populations that have negative growth, like native Europeans and white Americans, and how this seems to become the norm at a certain point in societal development.
 
Dragonfly said:
We "accidentally" have kids because sex is really really really lots of fun.

Which is probably sufficient enough to keep the human population from going extinct.

But most people seem to feel it's their duty as a human to make more humans.

It's not "if" we have kids anywhere near as much as "how many" and "when".
Click to expand...
I dodnt think its so much that people are concerned about keeping the entire species going but just their specific family line going. Also there is the long history of cultural influences that compel some people to have kids. Also there is the aspect of immortality by passing the torch to the next generation. And there are things like people just like having kids around the house.

There are also religious aspects such as religions that forbid birth control. The obvious intention with a religion dictating no personal control on reproducing is to spread and sustain the religion. personally I think the government should charge religions like for example Catholicism or Mormonism for the expenses related to no birth control and how much it costs society.

But back to what I originally said if sex wasnt that much fun it would be doubtful that planned pregnancies would be very popular. Biologically sex is fun because in order to assure a good gene pool (not population of the species itself) stays healthy. The difference though now is that humans have evolved to the point that more babies survive, which is a element that eventually will factor in.
 
Rainman05 said:
Yes, those that can emigrate either as real migrants.. or illegals or refugees run for the developed world because there is a better chance of life there. But that's a small percentage of the population of those countries, and usually the ones who are somewhat better off than the average herd. Sure, once they get to the developed countries they lost everything they had because that's what they did to get that. Something I think it's rather silly and should be discouraged. Anyway. That's not the issue.

I know what I said. And it's true. They don't know what a better quality of life is for the most part. Those that do strive for it, those that don't try and do the same thing their parents did. Have a lot of kids and hope old age ends fast. That's not improving the quality of life. That's maintaining a more acceptable degree of poverty. Stop trying to dish out pathetic attempts at justifying your attack on my statement. It's waterproof.

I cross correlated the data between the 3 censuses and the facts I posted are quite true. I looked at which names pop the most and where they pop and how late and exact the research on the census was done and by whom.
Niger-> islam
Mali -> islam
Somalia -> islam
Afghanistan -> islam
Burundi -> Christianity
Guinea-Bissau -> islam
Congo -> christianity
Liberia -> christianity
Burkina faso -> islam
Sierra Leone -> islam
Most of them african countries. Most of them islamic countries. And the next 10 are also mostly African. In fact the whole top 30 is dominated by African and ME countries. I agree, that if you look at the top 30, you can even out the number of Christian to islam countries ratio to about even, with a slight favor to Islam. But the top 10, which is what we are discussing, is majority islamic.

Oh. And here.

Muslim Babies For Jihad - YouTube

There are religious ceremonies intended on honoring children brought up for jihad. to become martyrs as it were.

So yeah. There is a correlation. Islamic babies for the jihad against the western infidels. It's a desirable thing for islamic extremists.
Click to expand...

You said they prefer quantity over quality ... which both you and I know is nonsense, it's not like they ahve kids just because "more is better," to improve their lives they either emigrate or revolt ... generally the former, having kids DOES improve quality of life because having a higher income potential and a better saftey net improves the quality of life, even if your still in poverty.

Guinea Bissau isn't islamic, Sierra Leone is'nt islamic (it has majority muslims but it isn't at all islamic), neither is Burkina faso ..... So you're being a little dishonest there. 4 of them on your list (there are different lists) are Islamic .... The corrolation is extreme poverty ... and lack of opportunity .... THATS IT, it isn't religion, it's never been religion, and you can go back in history and find the same corrolation, it's extreme poverty, and lack of opportunity and lack of social security (the concept not the program). As far as that list I don't know where your getting it from, all the lists I've seen include Uganda, most include Zambia, Angola and other Christian countries ... which you are clearly purposfully leaving out.

As far as that nonsense youtube video, watch it, it's basically a Islamic version of a "saints day," there is no "have tons of children for Jihad" there .... I can find Fox news correspondents however telling Americans to have kids ... You have a comemoration of an Imam in the 7th century who's child was killed, and somehow you see a conspiracy.

There is none, a new's report on a islamic "saints day" isn't evidence, Saudi Arabia is probably the most radical of the islamic countries ... its' #57, #103 and #69 on the 3 respective lists ... why? Because it's not that desperately poor.
 
Dragonfly said:
I'm just asking questions. I don't have a problem.
Did you miss the italics part of my previous post? I wasn't assaulting you. I was questioning the stuff you wrote as that's the exact stuff others say all the time.

Is it ego then?

Are people breeding for ego? "I must keep my bloodline alive!"
Click to expand...

Yeah I know, I didn't take it as an attack on me, (I apologise if it came off that way).

I don't think it's ego either, I mean unless you think a desire for a legacy is ego, It may have been bloodlines in the past but I don't think it's that now, I think it's simply the desire for your life to have had significance. That significance is a new life in many cases.
 
Why do we procreate?

Depends on what political ideology you adhere to. Let's just take the two major US political ideologies: One does to spread the tax burden, and the other does to increase the tax benefit.

There. Now we all know.

As for me? My wife wanted kids. I did as well, but really didn't know why. Now that its been 20+ years, I'm proud of them both, and have done everything I can to have them carry with them the traditions of a southern gentleman (a dieing bread) into the future. Having kids gives a person something other than a stone maker in a grass field to represent them after they're gone. If you make a deep enough impression, you may be lucky enough to have that influence carry your memory, what you stood for and the mark you left on this world through more than just one additional generation. Very few of us make it into the history books. Our kids... they are our pages in the history book.

We want them to be happier, go farther, be more successful, have a more lasting impact on others lives than we were able to accomplish. We want to have them stand on our shoulders so they can reach levels that we could not. Build our business stronger and larger. Carry our dreams and make them a reality. Help others that we couldn't reach. And so on.

And the big plus about having kids; they make you laugh.
 
Beaudreaux said:
And the big plus about having kids; they make you laugh.
Click to expand...

Oh sure. Kids can be a blast.

But they're also a life-long source of potential:

worry
anxiety
stress
frustration
fear
economic/financial drain
gray hair
marital imbalance/stress

Just to name a few.... :mrgreen:
 
Dragonfly said:
There is little danger of life NOT going on.
Click to expand...

Yeah, may be. :)
Too much breeding and we will collapse the planet (which is happening right now).
Too little breeding and we will be overrun by animals and wild nature.
 
Canell said:
Yeah, may be. :)
Too much breeding and we will collapse the planet (which is happening right now).
Too little breeding and we will be overrun by animals and wild nature.
Click to expand...

I'll vote for too little breeding for a while. I'd like to test your theory. :mrgreen:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom