Philosophy Moral Obligations and Parenthood

[ShieldWife]

Below is the copy of a post I made in the Transgender thread about the moral obligations, if any, of having children. Punch Card Girl asked me to make it a thread in this sub forum.

Moral obligations are a tricky thing. There are a great many activities which no one individual is obligated to engage in, and yet if no one did it, would be an utter disaster. Having children is included in this category.

This idea kind of borders on Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. To decide if an action is moral or immoral, imagine the outcome if everyone acted in such a way. Of course, the categorical imperative has its flaws, but he was onto something too.

What if no one had children anymore? Humanity would die out, which would be one of the very worst imaginable outcomes. What if we limit it to a single nation or people? What if British people all stopped having children? This would lead to an end to British people. Is this bad? I would say very much so. Oh sure, maybe immigration from Pakistan (just as one example) would bolster the declining British population - but though they may be living in the British Isles, they won’t be British people any more than I am a Cherokee because I am living on land that they used to occupy. If you think that it’s fine for the British to disappear and be replaced by Pakistanis, then I would invite you to live in the UK for a while and then live in Pakistan for a while and compare and contrast the differences.

Of course, nobody is obligated to have kids, unless nobody is having kids in which case maybe it starts to become an obligation.

Maybe no one is obligated to stand up for what they believe in when it is dangerous to do so, but if no one is willing to, then there will be profound tangible and negative effects from failure to engage in these non-obligations.

 

[Nitramy]

Well, my take on it is that rights come with their attendant responsibilities. Anyone who says one doesn't come without the other would have to make a very convincing argument to get me to change my way of thinking.

 

[Cherico]

Life is a series of trade offs.

You want more children either make divorce fair or make it rare.

The current system punishes marrage and family formation the result is that your going to get less of it.

 

[Scottty]

Life is a series of trade offs.

You want more children either make divorce fair or make it rare.

The current system punishes marrage and family formation the result is that your going to get less of it.

It also makes raising children very expensive, especially if you want them to have a chance at a decent standard of living.

 

[Deleted member 1]

@ShieldWife , thank you for posting this! I really do appreciate the consideration.

So, there were two unrelated threads which I wished to discuss, based on your post. The first was actually about land and peoples. As you said, "What if British people all stopped having children? This would lead to an end to British people. Is this bad? I would say very much so. Oh sure, maybe immigration from Pakistan (just as one example) would bolster the declining British population - but though they may be living in the British Isles, they won’t be British people any more than I am a Cherokee because I am living on land that they used to occupy. "

I would answer that because of the inherent nature of humans, who live in touch with our landscape and respond to it, that you are a little Cherokee, and Pakistanis in Britain would ultimately become a little British. In Traditionalism we call this a part of the process of "racination", or the laying-down of roots, and Herbert was deeply influenced by the concept of "Harsh Lives Make Harsh Ways" in Dune. Kipling's Roman Centurion is a beautiful example of this racination into a land and its environment.

LEGATE, I had the news last night - my cohort ordered home By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome. I've marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below: Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go! I've served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall, I have none other home than this, nor any life at all. Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here. Here where men say my name was made, here where my work was done; Here where my dearest dead are laid - my wife - my wife and son; Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service, love, Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove? For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fields suffice. What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful Northern skies, Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August haze - The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June's long-lighted days? You'll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and olive lean Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps Nemausus clean To Arelate's triple gate; but let me linger on, Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront Euroclydon! You'll take the old Aurelian Road through shore-descending pines Where, blue as any peacock's neck, the Tyrrhene Ocean shines. You'll go where laurel crowns are won, but -will you e'er forget The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in the wet? Let me work here for Britain's sake - at any task you will - A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops to drill. Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite Border keep, Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old messmates sleep. Legate, I come to you in tears - My cohort ordered home! I've served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome? Here is my heart, my soul, my mind - the only life I know. I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!

In a thousand years, when the blood of Britain is subsumed, the fog will still roll in off the coast, the hawthorn in the sun, the bracken in the wet -- oaks and seas of heather derelict. Gradually the Pakistanis will un-learn the customs of Harappa-way and the Indus. They will not lose them entirely, and something of Britain will be forever lost. But they will adapt to their climate. Their women will be less confined to the hareem and more inclined to roam like their Celtic foremothers. The men will, through the seed laid in the Raj in the minds of their elite men, gradually become neater, calmer, more reserved. Whispers and ghosts of Britain will come into them -- and in another thousand years after that, perhaps, others would call them "British", and all that had been lost, and all that had been gained, would be lost in the mists of time.

I think the American Revolution stemmed from a similar racination into the mindset produced by the environment of the Americas. We became less British, and more Haudenosaunee. Less Scots, and more Cherokee. In the end, that meant we revolted against the customs and authority of the Crown. It was certainly not the only cause, but it was a factor. It is a sad, cold comfort, that when our people has diminished, the land we knew and loved will at least exert the same inexorable influence upon the souls of those who come next. The Turk at the height of his glory was more than a little Byzantine.



For the second point:

"Moral obligations are a tricky thing. There are a great many activities which no one individual is obligated to engage in, and yet if no one did it, would be an utter disaster. Having children is included in this category. "

I would agree, and say that society has an obligation to pressure individuals to accept this role as assertively as it can. Society also has an obligation to let someone who, resisting to all that pressure, still refuses, make their own way. This is the traditional society's way of permitting exception. If you regard the exception as a sin, it falls under "hypocrisy the tribute which vice pays to virtue"; it's not really hypocrisy, I might add, because it is a social expectation that everyone comport themselves in a way that promotes the social objectives--if you are not going to reproduce, you must at least have the decency not to get in the way.

Life is a series of trade offs.

You want more children either make divorce fair or make it rare.

The current system punishes marrage and family formation the result is that your going to get less of it.

I agree that is the case in practical terms. One thing I suggest is increasing the actual political power of families by giving votes held in kind by the mothers of children, so that they can vote for their underage children. That would create a strong statement in favour of childrearing and a reward for it in terms of political power, and be just in terms of promoting motherhood (if the mother was not alive or had lost custody, the vote might be held by the father).

I would also add that some things are morally acceptable depending on circumstances. For example, adoption by homosexuals and sapphists is very morally defensible in the context of abortion being legal, because any parents are by definition better than a dead child.

 

[Lanmandragon]

To me the moral obligation to have a son is Paramount. Because in my opinion failing to at least try to. Is insulting your father and his all the way back to the start of your line. Because you are making a concious decsion to end said line.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

To me the moral obligation to have a son is Paramount. Because in my opinion failing to at least try to. Is insulting your father and his all the way back to the start of your line. Because you are making a concious decsion to end said line.

I think you're attaching far too much importance to the family name when you insist upon a male heir. Any child of any gender equally carries forth the upbringing and traditions of both sides of their family; there is no real "just male line" unless you artificially make it so by refusing to teach family traditions to non-male children, and if you do so that is your failing rather than theirs.

 

[Lanmandragon]

I think you're attaching far too much importance to the family name when you insist upon a male heir. Any child of any gender equally carries forth the upbringing and traditions of both sides of their family; there is no real "just male line" unless you artificially make it so by refusing to teach family traditions to non-male children, and if you do so that is your failing rather than theirs.

Thats your opinion and your entitled to it. Luckily your opinion and frankly anyone else's. Is wholly and entierly irrelevant to how I lead my family. It's not a topic that's up for debate at all. My post was simply laying out my beliefs about the situation.

 

[Fleiur]

Life is a series of trade offs.

You want more children either make divorce fair or make it rare.

The current system punishes marrage and family formation the result is that your going to get less of it.

Yeaah. That's why I believe that when it comes down to choosing a spouse he/she should share your values and you're both heading to the same direction in life. Because yes, divorce is a choice/option but if you both value commitment you'll stick till the end. It's hard work but it's achievable/possible.

 

[LifeisTiresome]

In a thousand years, when the blood of Britain is subsumed, the fog will still roll in off the coast, the hawthorn in the sun, the bracken in the wet -- oaks and seas of heather derelict. Gradually the Pakistanis will un-learn the customs of Harappa-way and the Indus. They will not lose them entirely, and something of Britain will be forever lost. But they will adapt to their climate. Their women will be less confined to the hareem and more inclined to roam like their Celtic foremothers. The men will, through the seed laid in the Raj in the minds of their elite men, gradually become neater, calmer, more reserved. Whispers and ghosts of Britain will come into them -- and in another thousand years after that, perhaps, others would call them "British", and all that had been lost, and all that had been gained, would be lost in the mists of time.

I frankly find this a bit naive. The land influences culture I agree but that does not mean that just because it affects one culture in this way, that it means another culture will have the exact same thing.

Europe like France and Britain will no longer truly be the land of the ethnic french or British due to their collapsing birthrates. It will in the future be the land of the immigrants whose population is rising. Now I myself don't care cause I'm a mixed race and not particularly nationalist anyway. But even I can see that reality clearly for whats happening to Europe.

Another thing to keep in mind is that modern living has disconnected people from being affected by the environment aside from extreme weather events as otherwise they are nuisances. So less influence on these immigrants.

Europe is finished basically. Sorry.

Life is a series of trade offs.

You want more children either make divorce fair or make it rare.

The current system punishes marrage and family formation the result is that your going to get less of it.

Divorce is just one problem. The other issue is culture. There are people cause of culture nowadays who never want to get married or have kids at all. And these people are encouraged by the media who while proclaiming on western people to not have kids also complain about low population and thus why the west needs more immigrants.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Europe is finished basically. Sorry.

Western Decadence or the sex&violence of their fictional entertainment, hopefully is something that does not get censored as fuck and actually becomes something the younger generations prefer over romanticising about fighting for some crazy causes or unhappy repression that finds its release in worse things

 

[LifeisTiresome]

Western Decadence or the sex&violence of their fictional entertainment, hopefully is something that does not get censored as fuck and actually becomes something the younger generations prefer over romanticising about fighting for some crazy causes or unhappy repression that finds its release in worse things

Huh?

Are you saying the things I'm mentioning are a good thing?

They already prefer it. Its honestly quite pathetic. An entire civilization surrendering everything to outsiders. The only example of this I can think of is Rome and even that still required actual conflict before Rome was finished. Here the west will literally do nothing but fade away.

Whats your opinion on this topic btw?

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Huh?

Are you saying the things I'm mentioning are a good thing?

They already prefer it. Its honestly quite pathetic. An entire civilization surrendering everything to outsiders. The only example of this I can think of is Rome and even that still required actual conflict before Rome was finished. Here the west will literally do nothing but fade away.

Whats your opinion on this topic btw?

I was saying that perhaps instead of falling into a pseudo-Theocracy ruled by douchebags who'll ban women driving as well as showing much exposed skin for women and demanding that NiER Automata's 2B wear a Burqa and banning pork, that maybe, just maybe the younger generations will look at the FUN Western Civilization enjoys, realises that their original or their parents and relatives and authority figures highly disapprove and get into it out of a desire of both fun and rebellion

I can see a black market or even a Deep Web Black Market for plenty of fanservicey European comic books that may have been banned or burned for their "immorality"

Honestly, I wouldn't care so much about race, I'd care more about if the Culture or level of tolerance as well as love for uncensored entertainment remains and gets transferred onto the new populations. Though, I think coming to love all this "immoral" fictional entertainment is more likely from illegal immigrants south of America's wall on the basis that they don't have entire populations who are more-or-less sorta having Sharia Law breathing down their necks to varying degrees