THE Peak Parenting Thread

Sencha · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 7:06 pm Post subject:

Nope, sorry I'm not going to apply it to the rest of the post. You clearly weren't joking. You think children are tools. Hawkcreek you know I'm right, just admit it. Come on, you know you want to.

Hawkcreek · Expert Joined: Aug 15, 2004 Posts: 1000

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Sencha · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 7:42 pm Post subject:

I wish I could figure out how I want the rest of the story to go, but it seems like everyone else is writing it for me. I believe we have less control over our own lives than we like to think. I never wanted to write into my story that I was going to know about Peak Oil.

The idea that Peak Oil dominates so much of my thoughts, consumes a part of me every damn day, is maddening. To think, the worst of what people are expecting to come out of it, hasn't even happened yet, and already I am as much corrupted and consumed by it as I could imagine myself being.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, bitter or criticizing but I can't help myself. I'll admit, alot of what I have said stems from perhaps what is an irrational fear. I fear being reincarnated. Who wants to be born again in a post-peak world? I'm sorry, but I just can't imagine that the world can be a good place after the crash, I just can't. I know people are encouraging me to try, but its going to take time and a little inspiration, which I don't see right now.

jesus_of_suburbia · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:43 pm Post subject:

Sencha, if you felt this way before peak oil, what did you expect your life to be like if this was a non-issue?

I myself am really not to hot on the "come on people now, smile on your brother" crowd either. However, I don't care for those who have decided to go "all Ted Nugent and crap" much either.

I'm so confusing about this issue that I can't even come up with a scenario. I know now, that if I'm going to do any pining, it will be at least after something has happened.

It all seems scary now, but do you know how you will react in a crisis. I used to have a paralyzing fear of everything. When I was young, it was tornadoes and tainted beef. In my early teens, it was bioterrorism. I always said to myself that the minute I heard the first case of anthrax, I would lock myself in my room. That day has come and gone, and I never did do that.

I've been through some frightening situations. They may not be the same magnitude of what others have experienced, but I have handled them pretty well. I've watched my brother almost slip into a coma because of dangerously low blood sugar on numerous occasions. There have been times when I have had to revive him all by myself. One night, I woke up from a dead sleep at 2am as my brother was seizing in the next room. I was scared, I didn't know what to make of it or what was going to happen. Did I run around the house frantically screaming and pulling my hair out? No. I stayed as calm as possible and talked with the 911 operator on the line.

I can't compare that to what we may be facing, but it does serve as my motivation. I'm worried and quite afraid of what the future could hold. However, I can't and won't let it dominate my life.
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"Abortion doctors aren't baby killers. They're life un-ruiners"

gg3 · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:40 pm Post subject:

Yo, everyone, listen to each other, please...

Sencha:

Itch is a friend of mine and I can say with certainty that he has a thoroughly tasteless sense of humor that's funny as hell face to face. When I read his post I could practically hear him saying the words out loud, and I could hear where his tone of voice would shift to imply "tasteless joke mode." Ever since before the internet was available to civilians, people have been saying "humor doesn't translate online." That's why we have these smileys, they originated out of necessity, and the very first one was the : - ) symbol, which meant specifically "that was a joke."

Re. my intuition: thanks; the main thing is I listen to what people are saying and reflect on it. So hey, you figured me out too!:-). That's cool, we should talk some time.

Re. time-consuming & busy schedule: I'm a telecoms engineer, my schedule is so full I typically get 5 hours' sleep on weekday nights (and tonight I have to reprogram a bunch of voicemail routing), but I still find time for contemplation and reflection. So, while you're walking to class, you can take that walking-time as an opportunity to take off (or at least switch) the perceptual filters for a while. Looking at trees is good because they have so many subtle shades of color in their leaves and branches, and there is much three-dimensional depth in their shapes and forms.

Now I'll let you in on a little secret: the first time you really pay close attention to three-dimensional depth, it's going to get you a little high. You're going to feel just a bit different, in a way you didn't expect. Normally I don't tell people about that part until they're doing the exercise (when I do this with people in person), but I get the impression your natural sense of curiosity will want to find out as soon as you get the chance. And that's just the beginning of what's possible.

Also, the fact that you're in school demonstrates that there's a part of you that is still willing to fight for your future. And yeah, it's OK to have part of you fighting to live, and part of you fighting against your life, and part of you just wanting the fighting to stop so you can have some peace from time to time. The human brain can support from eight to twelve distinct locii of consciousness, and typically runs three or four of those simultaneously at any given time. Sometimes they seem to work at cross-purposes, so we sharpen our ability to choose which of them to listen to at each moment. Sometimes they seem to all be in agreement, which is a good opportunity to practice questioning ourselves.

I could go into more detail about this stuff (I call it "the Human Operating-System") in private messages if you're interested, rather than in a topic devoted to another subject. Or we could create a topic for issues related to perception/cognition/emotion, i.e. psychology & cognitive science as related to individual and collective responses to ecological & resource crises.

Hawk, the fact that you have had a chance to observe life in the third world on multiple occasions means that you've had opportunities for travel that most people don't have, which implies the economic means for doing so, which in turn implies fairly secure personal circumstances. I'll guess you're older than 45, which means you were a kid during times when the cultural paradigm in America and most of the West was one of economic and cultural security, and nearly boundles opportunity. Consider the fact that Generation Y, i.e. Sencha's generation (I assume Sencha is 18 - 22, since Sencha is still in college), has had no such security, and a far diminished sense of opportunity.

The world "is" a very different place depending on the set of filters one wears: your filters and mine as well as Sencha's and others'. That's not a moral judgement, it's simply an empirical fact. Making morally consistent choices is a matter of what we decide to do about the empirical facts.

Back to kids:

A sacrifice and a joy at the same time. But again, the key is how you handle the responsibility of parenthood. Fact is that all of us here have much in common, and in subtle ways we're helping each other to figure out how to address the coming crises constructively. Even if we don't all agree on the diagnosis or the prescription, the fact that we're discussing, debating, and collaborating, is movement forward.

So about kids, all of us agree that resource availability per capita will be shrinking over the foreseeable future, and this affects the decisions people make as parents. I once knew a guy who worked for Pacific Telephone (in the days when it was called that, rather than SBC), who earned a good living as a technician. He and his wife lived in a quasi-rural area, and they lived almost like the Native Americans or the early European settlers in California. Among other things, they grew most of their food, hunted for most of their meat, tanned the hides to make clothing, made most of the rest of their clothing from raw cloth, lived in a house they built according to the old ways, and so on. They were not hippies and this was not a hobby This is how they lived, and how they raised their kids. They, and their kids, will be a net benefit in the years to come.

This is the challenge to parents and their friends today: whether you have no kids or three or four, whether you have them by reproduction or by adoption (and why not have as many as you like by adoption if you can support them?), the key is the values you raise them with and the skills you teach them, so they can play a constructive role in the years ahead. Sustainability requires more than just a reduction in our absolute numbers, it requires an increase in our individual and species-wide capabilities of intelligence, strength, honesty, courage, compassion, and clear-headed ability to look ahead.

hoplite · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 22, 2004 Posts: 300

If you are aware/intelligent enough to post on this forum, you are the ones who SHOULD be procreating. It's shocking to realize that the ONLY people considering NOT procreating are the people with the intelligence, education and knowledge to alleviate or perhaps recover from this crisis.
Wake up.

Sencha · Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 7:11 pm Post subject:

Right, so people that know about P.O. are "intelligent" and so naturally the kids they create will inherit that intelligence...kay.

Get on that then, you're children have a whole life time of hard labor and scrounging to get to, what are you making them wait for?

Fatherof4 · Tar Sands Joined: Aug 18, 2004 Posts: 79

Too late x4... but I am getting a vasectomy this month! I don't know if I would have planned a smaller family if I would have known about peak oil and all of the economic and geopolitical implications. The whole concept is so contrary to everything I hear from all mainstream media sources on a daily basis. I have trouble discerning fact from fantasy.

The only option I feel I have now is to raise my children in a way that will prepare them for a very difficult future. However our current idealized suburban lifestyle is not such a good place to start.

As a family, as community and as a nation we will adapt to the ever increasing stress on our energy supply and ecomony as circumstances change. What it will all look like in 50 years, I cannot tell. There will be great villians and great heroes, my hope is that my children will be heroes.

bamagirl · Coal Joined: Sep 29, 2004 Posts: 10

Sencha · Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:12 pm Post subject:

EnviroEngr · Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:12 pm Post subject: PerCogMotion

gg3 · Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 4:34 am Post subject:

Sencha, check out Itch's posting in the Revolutionary Machine topic, that'll give you a sense of his evil sense of humor (and no, he doesn't smoke crack:-).
Bamagirl, EnviroEngr, re. the Human Operating-System: yeah, I'll create another topic for this over the weekend if I have time. I could probably dig up my earlier postings, and paste them into the new topic.

My point earlier was, we're here on this forum right now, with whatever kids we have right now. No one here is going to drown one of their own kids to get below replacement level.
I'm gay and I'm not planning to have any. My brother and his wife have three (I told my brother he could "have one of the ones I wasn't going to have," which he did, hence three). So our family's net impact is 25% below replacement. The only reason America's population is increasing is due to immigration, and we have to shut those doors eventually, probably sooner than later (speaking as the grandson of immigrants, and having at least one friend who's an immigrant).

But again, the main thing is, we are in this forum and have a certain number of kids born or on the way, and those things aren't going to change. Scapegoating or blaming those of us who have more than two as of when they joined this forum, is as pointless as scapegoating gay people for causing a potential shortage of marriage licenses in Massachusetts. It doesn't compute, and it does no good.
Encouraging people to stop reproducing from this point forward is useful. Encouraging adoption is useful; and that solves a multitude of problems at once.

In some cases that will mean encouraging and supporting abstinence even within married life (e.g. if someone belongs to a denomination that doesn't allow contraception, and they're scared of using rhythm methods). Look folks, you're not going to drop dead from not having sex, OK? There are more important things in the world than your next orgasm. So if you believe contraception is sinful, then don't have sex, and don't complain about it. But the flip side of this is, at some point, certain denominations' doctrines *must* change as a matter of moral responsibility to the world.

So another task we have here is to develop new forms of intimacy within married life, that do not require sex.
And another task is to develop critiques and proposals related to issues of religion and contraception.
More about all this later; back to work...

jpatti · Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 6:12 am Post subject:

Falconoffury · Expert Joined: May 25, 2004 Posts: 1471

For people who think the world would get a net return on children who are taught the proper values, I have to ask this question. Why do you have to make children in order to achieve this? You can always adopt children or find other ways to teach people to be more self-sufficient and sustainable. You could probably get a net return greater than teaching your own children if you can teach a wider audience. The admins of this website, and other activists such as Matt Savinar have been working on helping people learn how to cope with the future without the need to have children. Having children is just not an effective method of helping society as a whole weather the coming storms.

When you have a child, that person is going to require resources in order to live. In a world after peak, there will not be a surplus of energy, so anyone who is born will have to lower the energy for everybody. For every person you add, the energy gets spreaded more thinly over everyone.

I envision an ideal society as one that has a steady population and good quality of life for everyone. Instead of human history where there were hard swings in the population going up and down in various regions, and the quality of life doing the same, I envision a world with no hard swings in strife or happiness. I honestly think our race could live a happy existence without having to be on an upswing in prosperity.

It seems like it's human nature to put more value on your own genes, children, and family than other people, their genes, and their family. Such thoughts are dangerous and largely responsible for us having the nature to destroy ourselves. I happen to think the only real trait that matters is one's spirit, and that everyone has a spiritual level of equality. When I hear about people willing to fight and die for their children, it saddens me. It saddens me to think about who's children might die because of such acts. The idea of "every man for himself" or even "every family for itself" are the root ideas that have caused all the suffering and strife in human history. I say, "Love thy neighbor." I sure hope Jesus can help us into this transition, and that he didn't just say, "Fark it", and decide we are beyond all hope. Our best hope to better our lives is through cooperation. We have to respect the spiritual equality of every human being, and stop thinking that we or our children are worth more than anyone else.

I don't think mass killings are the answer, but I also don't think we should be so afraid of death as a society. Times will get tough, and those who are best able to adapt will survive, while the weaker and least adaptable will perish. We don't need nukes or even mass genocide in order for such things to happen. What matters is what humans do in the long term. We have a dug a deep whole of unsustainable existence, and we need to change back to the sustainable. The trick will be maintaining sustainability and happiness, and not letting us get caught in the trap of prosperity and strife thrusting up and down like a rollercoaster through the ages.

In conclusion, not having any children is ideal given the reduction of energy needed for survival. Any human being, regardless of profession or skills is going to need resources in order to survive. Without surplus energy, that individual will be taking energy from everyone else in order to survive. Having children does nothing to boost your quest to inform and help people learn about peak oil and how to live in a sustainable existence.
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"There is not enough trash to go around for everyone," said Banrel, one of the participants in the cattle massacre.
"George W. Bush loves poor people. He keeps making more of them." -unkn

jpatti · Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 9:49 am Post subject: