The Wickedness of Creating Large Families (Sanger)

[mike]

With the world population so high and growing, I think we can find a bit of wisdom mixed in with the racism and willingness for children to die. The world does not have the resources for continued exponential population growth. It will have to stop, either by people making ethical choices or by oppressive government control, famines, wars, and disease.

It's already slowing, so you have little to worry about. The developed world is barely replacing its population at this point, and would be in decline were it not for immigration in many cases. The only places where it's still growing exponentially is the third world and with the poor, and as Josh said in certain religious and cultural circles, and so the message to stop having large families has the same target audience as it always has: the poor. As Chesterton described this view, "The poor must be forbidden to breed." Just like Sanger, the goal of some in our society is to stop poor people from having children. The rich people are already smart enough to limit their families down to one or two.

The greater problem in many areas is not population growth but population decline. In many rural areas like my county, the biggest demographic problem is young people not sticking around, and thus the population is aging, and the available workforce is decreasing. People have been having fewer and fewer children for generations at this point, and at some point this does end up creating problems. Who's going to be around to provide goods and services for all the aged when they run out of other people's children?

[JimFoxvog]

Mike, those are also useful things to consider. Our economic system has come to be based on continual expansion and growth. Another model will be needed. One "solution", which I don't like and has its own problems, is the continued movement toward robotic mechanization.

[temporal1]

mike:
.. and so the message to stop having large families has the same target audience as it always has: the poor. ..

fascinating failure. over many decades now, the poor have not been helped, the comfortable/wealthy are dying out.
failed results so beyond dispute, it causes one to wonder what was the real goal?

- upon recognizing poor outcomes, why wasn’t the effectively suicidal plan altered or ended?

.. similar regarding artificial birth control.
this was supposed to humanely and intelligently end unwanted pregnancies! instead, for one grisly matter, it’s led to a robust for-profit abortion industry. clearly, no reduction in numbers of unwanted babies.

- upon recognizing poor outcomes, why wasn’t the effectively suicidal plan altered or ended?

brainiac chuck schumer demands:
the poor must make up for OUR short-sightedness! someone has to do the work!
presumably, his reference to “OUR” is THE ELITE, who do not live with their own policies. they just want to ensure their lives are not impacted. who cares who does the work? - get someone! [legal citizens? - no. WHO CARES.] a servant is a servant. let the servants figure duke it out.

A light was recently shone on Martha’s Vineyard.

[Karstan78]

I read her Wikipedia and from the beginning of her life I doubt she would have the biggest chance at living a biblical life. She also seemed the kind to jump into the next “big” leftist leanings.
I haven’t read through the article yet, but I wonder if she would be repeating this considering there are studies now that support that mother’s of 4+ kids are the happiest?

https://www.elfac.org/parents-with-four ... e-happier/

Or her stance on eugenics, now that overpopulation is a considered a myth?

Or that abortion is used a form of birth control and women can access late term abortions due to change of mind?

[mike]

Mike, those are also useful things to consider. Our economic system has come to be based on continual expansion and growth. Another model will be needed. One "solution", which I don't like and has its own problems, is the continued movement toward robotic mechanization.

I really like automation myself. As an employer I really like to eliminate manual labor where I can. But this doesn't mean we don't need people anymore. It means the people we have can do more. And it actually means many of the people we have are worth more because they are more productive due to technology. Technological advances have made our lives better in many ways (if not in all ways).

This is one reason why a growing global population doesn't worry me too much. I think that we are able to produce goods and services including food on a larger scale than ever before in human history, and that there is ample unused farmland which could be utilized. Food in the west is relatively cheap; here at least we are nowhere near running out of food. Housing is another problem, but some of that is caused by excessive regulation.

[temporal1]

I read her Wikipedia and from the beginning of her life I doubt she would have the biggest chance at living a biblical life. She also seemed the kind to jump into the next “big” leftist leanings.
I haven’t read through the article yet, but I wonder if she would be repeating this considering there are studies now that support that mother’s of 4+ kids are the happiest?

https://www.elfac.org/parents-with-four ... e-happier/

Or her stance on eugenics, now that overpopulation is a considered a myth?

Or that abortion is used a form of birth control and women can access late term abortions due to change of mind?

It’s reasonable to wonder. However, the pattern is, committed ideologues are not affected by reality. Evidence is, they will invest in redefining reality, including language, stats+science, to support their beliefs. At whatever cost.

Exceptions are by the Grace of God.

[HondurasKeiser]

Mike, those are also useful things to consider. Our economic system has come to be based on continual expansion and growth. Another model will be needed. One "solution", which I don't like and has its own problems, is the continued movement toward robotic mechanization.

I really like automation myself. As an employer I really like to eliminate manual labor where I can. But this doesn't mean we don't need people anymore. It means the people we have can do more. And it actually means many of the people we have are worth more because they are more productive due to technology. Technological advances have made our lives better in many ways (if not in all ways).

This is one reason why a growing global population doesn't worry me too much. I think that we are able to produce goods and services including food on a larger scale than ever before in human history, and that there is ample unused farmland which could be utilized. Food in the west is relatively cheap; here at least we are nowhere near running out of food. Housing is another problem, but some of that is caused by excessive regulation.

Mike, I am generally of a similar persuasion but I have a nagging thought....what will all of these people do in the future as work becomes more and more automated? Drugs and computer games? Work, for all the bad rap, does bring a kind of existential meaning that I don't think we should dismiss out-of-hand. What replaces that if humans, especially the kind that work with their hands, become increasingly obsolete?

I just read a fascinating long-form essay by N.S. Lyons that encapsulates much of my discomfort with technology, technocracy and "the arch of history". It's probably pay-walled, but I'd be willing to paste some excerpts if you're interested.

And no longer do the Conditioners feel much need to hide their ambitions, or to shroud them in high ideals. This is the age of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” which, as the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab tells us, will “finally” change “not only what we do but also who we are.” Everything about us, “our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns,” is now said to be up for grabs. And this is to put the case in its most mild form.

Top Schwab advisor and Davos-set darling Yuval Noah Harari has been far more direct. He affirms for us that everything we see brewing now, including the “mass surveillance systems established even in democratic countries which previously rejected them”; the governments who want to know “not just where we go, or who we meet,” but “what is happening under our skin”; the “health” justifications that have “convince[d] people to accept, to legitimise, total biometric surveillance” as a part of daily life – all of it is only prelude. “We are basically learning to produce bodies and minds,” he says. “Bodies and minds are going to be, I think the two main products of the next wave of all these changes.”

“Humans are now hackable animals; you know the whole idea that humans have, you know, this… soul or spirit and they have free will and nobody knows what’s happening inside me, so ‘whatever I choose, whether in the election or whether in the supermarket, this is my free will’ – that’s over.”

This is a brave new world which, he is not shy to say, will mean the abolition of Man:

We are probably one of the last generations of homo sapiens, because in the coming generations, we will learn how to engineer bodies and brains and minds. Now how exactly will the future masters of the planet look like? This will be decided by the people who own the data. Science is replacing evolution by natural selection, with evolution by intelligent design. Not the intelligent design of some God above the clouds, but our intelligent design, and the intelligent design of our clouds, the IBM cloud, the Microsoft cloud, these are the new driving forces of evolution. And at the same time, science may enable life, after being confined for 4 billion years to the limited realm of organic compounds, science may enable life to break out into the inorganic realm.

Somewhere in the realm of myth and story, Filostrato weeps sanitized tears of joy.

And while in Lewis’ time it took a possessed Dr. Frost to whisper to Mark that “every advance in industry and agriculture reduces the number of work-people who are required,” and so the world’s “large, unintelligent population is now becoming a dead-weight,” today Harari can muse on stage that “the biggest question in… the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people?... what to do with them and how will they find some sense of meaning in life, when they are basically meaningless, worthless?”

For Frost and the N.I.C.E. the great unspoken advantage of famines, and plagues, and “scientific war” was “that [only the] scientists have to be reserved,” while the causalities tend to be the likes of “superstitious Bavarian peasants and low-grade Russian agricultural workers.” And if the effect was therefore simply to “eliminate retrogressive types, while sparing the technocracy and increasing its hold upon public affairs,” then there was no reason not to ensure much more of a good thing. So perhaps we should be thankful that Harari’s answer is that “at present” the best solution to the problem of the “useless class” is merely “a combination of drugs and computer games.” Perhaps in their great mercy the Conditioners still yet retain some traces of the Tao.

But then we are only getting started on our journey to Order. “Humans are developing even bigger powers than ever before,” Harari informs us. “We are really acquiring divine powers of creation and destruction. We are really upgrading humans into gods. We are acquiring for instance the power to reengineer life…” Harari, who has created his own “strictly functional” new religion, called Dataism, doesn’t need to specify like Lewis that “the power of Man to make himself what he pleases” really means “the power of some men to make other men what they please,” but only because he hardly needs to anymore. And in any case he’s quite sure that he doesn’t “think that the masses, even if they somehow organise themselves, stand much of a chance,” anyway, since “we are not in Russia of 1917, or in 19th century Europe.” After all, “Once you’re superfluous, you don’t have power.”

Meanwhile, Harari is hardly the only one already eagerly seeking to build new gods. Among the many billionaires funding the gospel of transgenderism today, Martine (formerly Martin) Rothblatt is especially eloquent about the movement’s higher good. In From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto On the Freedom Of Form, Rothblatt points out the obvious: the technology-enabled transformation of the human body by transgenderism is simply “the onramp to transhumanism.”

But even transhumanism is not, cannot be, the logical end of this road. Rothblatt is the enthusiastic evangelist for a new kind of faith: a “transreligion” called Terasem, which “believes we can live joyfully forever” if only we sacrifice our bodies for a digital consciousness – a consciousness that will in time “ultimately connect all consciousness and control the cosmos” for ages unto ages. “We are making God as we are implementing technology that is ever more all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful and beneficent.”

But one can sense something else lurking behind all such twisted efforts at creation: a great howling sadness, echoing in the icy emptiness of an encroaching void; an anguished cry to a god that no longer seems to be there, a prayer to finally bring and end to the suffering of Man.

[mike]

Mike, I am generally of a similar persuasion but I have a nagging thought....what will all of these people do in the future as work becomes more and more automated? Drugs and computer games? Work, for all the bad rap, does bring a kind of existential meaning that I don't think we should dismiss out-of-hand. What replaces that if humans, especially the kind that work with their hands, become increasingly obsolete?

I think there are downsides to technology and automation, but since I'm highlighting what I think of as the upside...

Think of a technology such as an automatic meat slicer. For generations, delis like mine had to run a manual slicer because automatics were nonexistent or unaffordable. Try doing that for thirty years and see what it does to one's shoulder. What are people doing now that most deli meat cutting is done on machine with an automated carriage? I have an employee who has worked part time in supermarket delis for over 40 years. She is over 70 and is still going strong. Technology has enabled her to enjoy her work for many years, perhaps much longer than if she was cutting meat by hand or with a manual carriage slicer.

Many of the problems with drugs and computer games are with children who aren't able or willing to find part time jobs while they are still in school or under the age of 18 when they can operate equipment. I am fortunate enough to have a business where I can employ people beginning at the age of 14, and if the law wouldn't prevent it, there would be jobs for children at younger ages. They can sweep floors, bag groceries, stock shelves, dust, carry bags out for customers, and even run cash registers. I ran a cash register probably around 12 years old for my dad in his store.

As to automation eliminating the meaning to be found in work, there is a lot of satisfaction to be found in setting up and managing automated software or equipment. Employees appreciate having excellent tools to work with. When a piece of equipment is obsolete or breaking down or getting in the way of productivity, employees are often the first to ask for an improvement. When I bought a battery-powered floor scrubbing machine, my employees were very happy not to have to run the mops any more.

[Sliceitup]

I read her Wikipedia and from the beginning of her life I doubt she would have the biggest chance at living a biblical life. She also seemed the kind to jump into the next “big” leftist leanings.
I haven’t read through the article yet, but I wonder if she would be repeating this considering there are studies now that support that mother’s of 4+ kids are the happiest?

https://www.elfac.org/parents-with-four ... e-happier/

Or her stance on eugenics, now that overpopulation is a considered a myth?

Or that abortion is used a form of birth control and women can access late term abortions due to change of mind?

That study is quite interesting. It would be nice to see more about how it was done.

I wonder sometimes how much the ‘birth control’ discussion is changed by our distance to a world without it. Being Mennonite we might be a bit closer to that world, but it’s within a small subset, not the larger populace.

One of my parents and some of their siblings believe that their mother had too many children and it negatively affected her mental well being. She was incapable of caring for them. That burden fell to the oldest siblings.

My father had a vasectomy because my mother was deathly ill with a life threatening disease and a pregnancy would have been disastrous. Most of his siblings had families that were double or triple the size of ours.

Living in a world where many people do have some semblance of control over their reproductive matters severely limits our views on some of the harms that come without that ability.

[steve-in-kville]

I've mentioned this before, your social & economic status often determines how people view a large family. When I was doing good before the recession, I was told how great of a blessing our family was. When I lost it all, I was told that I should have been more careful and used birth control.

Funny how money plays a role in so much.