The ethics of having children in a Post-peak world

[UndercoverElephant]

You exist, because unknown million of life forms, over the past who knows how many hundreds of millions of years, procreated.

Seems bloody unfair to stop know.

Nature isn't fair.

[rue_d_etropal]

I suppose it is a bit late for me to reduce populationgrowth as my youngest(of 5) is 16, but none of my children show any interest in settling down and having children.
Also, I have mentioned it before, if you are interested in how population will not increae as much as predicted, get hold of a copy of'People Quake' by Fred Pearce. it won't be as bad as the gloom merchants will have us believe. Over consumption of food is the real problem, with more people wanting a western style diet.

[Ludwig]

I suppose it is a bit late for me to reduce populationgrowth as my youngest(of 5) is 16, but none of my children show any interest in settling down and having children.
Also, I have mentioned it before, if you are interested in how population will not increae as much as predicted, get hold of a copy of'People Quake' by Fred Pearce. it won't be as bad as the gloom merchants will have us believe. Over consumption of food is the real problem, with more people wanting a western style diet.

Sorry but you're wrong. The real problems are:

- Maintaining anything like current food production with rapidly declining oil supplies, and climate change kicking in.

There was an article in the "Independent" the other day saying that basically the oceans are going to be sterile within a generation.

- Maintaining food supply chains after the global economic collapse. Any nation that's already a net importer of food is going to be in so much f***ing trouble it doesn't bear thinking about. Especially if it is massively in debt and has no exports to offer[1]. Like the UK for example.

[1] The two being largely correlated.

[Ludwig]

When it comes to your own positions Ludwig, they appear to be that ethics are all based on a kind of fellow feeling, that this fellow feeling can be explained in Darwinistic terms, and that helping others who will only spit in your face for it is a waste of time.

I absolutely believe that. Why be a doormat?

A while back I spoke to an ambulance driver. He said it depressed him to receive mouthfuls of abuse from drunk people who he was rescuing. Yet he still did it, without losing his temper. I kind of admire that, but if I were in his situation I would take great relish in just driving off and leaving them where they were. Drunk or not, it would teach them a lesson.

Those aren't bad positions to take necessarily, but I wouldn't agree that they cover the whole of the topic of 'ethics', and on the question of whether it could be right to follow an ethic when no-one else follows it, and what that ethic would be, etc., I tend to think it is a little more open than you do.


Almost all ethics in post-Christian societies focus on what 'everyone should do', but that isn't necessarily the only basis for an ethic.

Not just post-Christian societies. All societies have ethical codes, even the most primitive. "Virtue is social": how could it be otherwise?

All that said, in this discussion I've been arguing purely from the point of view of evolutionary psychology. The opposite way of approaching ethics is from the purely spiritual point of view: the entirely subjective, as opposed to the entirely objective. According to this view, the final stage of wisdom is to understand that all consciousness is interconnected and that the highest state of consciousness is compassion and self-surrender.

I actually think that is probably true too. The problem is that to arrive at that state involves the total sacrifice of agency as an individual, and that goes against all vital human drives. Only one thing can lead you there, and that is despair - the final realisation that you cannot save yourself.

You can view events from the bottom up or the top down, from the start of the universe forwards or the end of the universe backwards. You can view things scientifically or spiritually. The results are self-consistent in most cases - the answer you get depends on the question you ask.

These ideas are all pretty standard in Hindu and Buddhist thought, and I think a lot of Eastern mystics must smile and shake their heads at c clever Western thinkers who try to trace the meaning of existence to a single cause, a singularity. (Well, maybe it is a singularity, in the sense that a singularity is itself a scientific paradox. I've come to think that there's no meaning without paradox, in fact perhaps paradox is the essence of meaning. Which might make some sense of the ineradicably paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics.)

[Prokopton]

Not just post-Christian societies. All societies have ethical codes, even the most primitive. "Virtue is social": how could it be otherwise?

You may be missing my point there.

Spengler points out that whereas Nietzsche, to break down the morality of his society, had to scream and hurl and shout and hurl it down, people like Zeno or Epicurus simply could watch theirs crumble. When our 'default morality' came to be a lie, the conversation was, 'what will we replace it with, collectively? how will society run now, how will we define duty?' -- socialism etc. was one answer -- whereas in classical times the conversation became 'what will you or I do now?' It came to make sense in their case to stick like glue to moral codes for philosophical reasons, in the full knowledge that others would follow a different one or none.

Virtue may be social, but if one believes that not lying is a form of hygiene, one can continue to practice that even knowing others will lie. Similarly with living in any other way, the question is does it strengthen me in some personally important way? I see a great deal of weakness around me, which I'm not going to emulate because I feel a certain strength in integrity... that has helped me in the past since it can create trust, very Darwin-worthy, but doing it for its own sake works for me too.

'Being a doormat' is a totally different thing! I'm not talking about "being nice" to people who are fools -- sometimes fools could use a lesson, it depends on the situation. A martial arts point of view doesn't exactly look kindly on psychopaths, but the best martial artists I've known (meaning, the ones I'd rather have on my side) believed in defending the weak. It's just as it was in the bank-gave-me-money-mistakenly thread. Where they are cheating bastards, I am not. It turns out to strengthen me more the more I do it, which is interesting because it means we are dealing with a natural process, where one can experiment and see the results.

I remember you mentioning you meditate -- I was wondering what kind of practice? Have you heard of kundalini?


EDIT: cross-posted.

I'll answer what you added...

[Prokopton]

I actually think that is probably true too. The problem is that to arrive at that state involves the total sacrifice of agency as an individual, and that goes against all vital human drives. Only one thing can lead you there, and that is despair - the final realisation that you cannot save yourself.

As someone who works on that stuff 3-4 hours/day, I strongly disagree -- it is love that does this, not despair (although despair can be a doorway, it must be left far behind), the realization that love, and vision, and bliss must not be incomplete. It is not the case that individual agency leaves, although it can be the case that individual self-concept leaves, and as it turns out, you don't miss it!

This is not just eastern -- the same concept appears in Christianity even and it certainly appears in Platonism, for example. We've had a lot of good stuff here. I work cross-culturally. Have a look at some modern transpersonal psychology, it's catching up. I also work with Taoist stuff.

The fact that science can see no reason why acting this way should be useful from the darwinistic point of view doesn't mean it never will... this is why I brought up martial arts, kundalini and internal strength. Many martial arts lineages work with internal power and they develop kundalini which on a physical level leaves you much more powerful -- you're quicker, stronger. My teacher walked away from a car wreck that should have ended his life -- I've seen guys have trucks driven over themselves, and although I'm not on that level yet, I know something of what's possible. I plan to train hard at this.

Well the funny thing is that in order to contain that power on a really high level, for some reason you need to follow a moral code. Oh you can misuse it and be an asshole sure -- but if you do, you start to lose it. I was never explicitly told that, and might not have done the work if I'd known, because I associate morality with public hypocrisy and quite rightly given the examples I was set. But I experimented and now I wish someone had informed me sooner... That kind of ethical uprightness actually turns out to be a sine qua non of personal power. It's actually how your biological system wants to be -- this is my direct experience but also that of many others. With no self-concept, you have no-one to worry about, you're quicker -- but you're also kinder, when it's right. (You're also a lot weirder...) Of course ethics aren't necessarily what they teach in Sunday School, but it's something to do with wholeness.

[featherstick]

I like prokopton. Being able to walk away from offered violence when you know you could destroy the offerer is a source of great strength. As is being able to defend the weak. I've had cause to do both in the last couple of weeks and it's reinforced me.

[Ludwig]

I like prokopton. Being able to walk away from offered violence when you know you could destroy the offerer is a source of great strength. As is being able to defend the weak. I've had cause to do both in the last couple of weeks and it's reinforced me.

I tend to square up to people if I'm offered violence, at least if I feel I might not come off worst. Perhaps this is a sign of insecurity, perhaps a sign of being naturally pugnacious. Perhaps they're the same thing. Either way, it's important to me never to let the other person feel they've won.

[biffvernon]

If you walk away before he hits you, he doesn't feel he's won, he just feels a bit confused.

[Ludwig]

If you walk away before he hits you, he doesn't feel he's won, he just feels a bit confused.

OK, perhaps what I meant is that it's important to me that the other person feels he's lost.

I've always regarded life fundamentally as a battle, a matter of either winning or losing. I put this down to a naturally neurotic temperament, coupled with some bad experiences that corroborated this view of human interaction.

My view is that humanity is split approximately as follows: a third of people are capable of gratuitous bullying and cruelty; a third of people are content to look on while other people get bullied; a third of people are inclined to be victims.

[featherstick]

The guy I walked away from is a lifelong loser. He knows it, so do his wife and kids. My walking away from him reinforced that, and didn't cost me anything.

[DominicJ]

If you walk away before he hits you, he doesn't feel he's won, he just feels a bit confused.

Either that or stabs you in the back

[Ludwig]

The guy I walked away from is a lifelong loser. He knows it, so do his wife and kids. My walking away from him reinforced that, and didn't cost me anything.

But lots of aggressive people are not losers. They're winners precisely because they're aggressive.

[Prokopton]

Either way, it's important to me never to let the other person feel they've won.

Winning can be very important in certain situations... so can the ability to run away, and martial arts teaches that too.

However the above position still puts a lot of power in the hands of someone else. That's why I was trying to talk about the classical ethics positions, which don't depend on anyone else. "Gorgias" again is particularly relevant because Socrates is arguing against a might-makes-righter. Since classical philosophy is only asking 'what makes the good for a person?', you don't have to worry about all the groupthink guilt-inducement.

But anyhow I've made my point and we're probably OT...

a third of people are capable of gratuitous bullying and cruelty; a third of people are content to look on while other people get bullied; a third of people are inclined to be victims.

Is this the result of some gallup poll I missed?

Into which category would Socrates have fallen? Or come to that Nelson Mandela, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, or indeed a couple of people from whom I've learned such as John Michael Greer -- great peak theorist as well?

As soon as you say 'I take [x] moral position because...', you've started a conversation about what is best. I would agree this isn't the place for that conversation! However, it can go in interesting directions... the idea that not lying is equivalent to hygiene doesn't meet with disagreement, so does the great uncleanness around us make lax hygiene in some way preferable, sensible, or any less weakening?

A lot of ethics is about having the persistence and discipline others around us may lack... this is hardly going to be selected out by Darwinistic forces, certainly not in the upcoming times.

[biffvernon]

I'm sure I don't fit into one of Ludwig's three thirds.