Am a biologist, can confirm.
Women looking at this meme: so am I supposed to be a lesbian?
Creepy. I just watched this scene seconds ago after not watching the film for years…
Yes I was scrolling while watching, I’m sorry.
Old saying in is: In Internet men are men, women are men and children are FBI officers.
Edit: 4chan rules of the Internet:
Rule 29: On the internet men are men, women are also men, and kids are undercover FBI agents.
Some philosophers agree with biologists on this one.
Bust a nut, pass your genetics and perish. Thats it. What you do in between that is up to you.
No, social behavior has always been a party of biology. Even after you reproduce how you care for your young and your extended family has a huge impact on the species. Herd animals or anything that flocks can’t function solo. If all the adults just left after they reproduced the species wouldn’t survive. Reproduction is key for the individual, but it’s never that simple. The version you’re told in school is always a highly simplified version of the truth.
Honestly the entire idea that the only purpose of humanity is to make the next generation or support that process in some way just feels gross in a very eugenics adjacent way. If you start with that premise, it’s just too easy to conclude that anyone who isn’t working towards that end is disposable.
I’m in the “there is no purpose,” camp. It seems like a bit of a mental disorder to me to (without any evidence) assume that oneself or one’s species isn’t just hanging around by random happenstance. Wouldn’t that simply be narcissism? People have long asked the question, “why are we here?” Yet there’s never been and never will be a definitive answer.
Not just humanity. That is the purpose of all living things, insofar as we can be said to have a purpose at all.
We did evolve grandmother’s. That was an evolutionary pressure response. Deep knowledge and long growth have lead us through doors of perception far beyond the reach of all life we have yet precieved.
Tangential nitpick—the phrase “evolutionary pressure response” evokes the idea that there is an intelligent or benevolent purpose behind the process. When a beneficial trait randomly occurs and gets passed on, that is a release from evolutionary pressure, not a response to it.
We did evolve grandmother’s.
Grandmother’s what? What’s implied by the “'s” after “grandmother”?
How about I do something which will make life better for people who are actually alive already instead of increasing total human suffering by making new people.
Having kids can be extremely fulfilling, doesn’t increase human suffering at all. Having kids subjectively improved my life and the lives of many people adjacent to me, e.g. the lives of my family members and friends and my kids’ friends.
I don’t understand how the Internet is so anti kids, it’s pretty baffling.
You say it’s improved your life and the lives of those adjacent to you, your family members, friends, and your kids’ friends. But you haven’t said its improved your kids life. I think that’s what the OP was talking about. A being who doesn’t exist doesn’t desire to exist so making new life isn’t doing them a favor and only exposes them to harm.
I don’t understand how the Internet is so anti kids, it’s pretty baffling.
Because people who are chronically online are chronically online because they had shitty childhoods which gave them chronic depression. Thus they associate the creation of children with the creation of suffering.
Source: me
Virtually every sentient life experiences a non-zero amount of suffering. Progeny that doesn’t exist categorically doesn’t suffer; progeny that does exist is virtually certain to suffer to some degree. The hedonist argument that progeny may get to experience some joy falls apart because progeny that doesn’t exist categorically doesn’t experience any lack of joy (i.e. that would-be joy is not mourned by that which does not exist).
Ensuring the certainty of the sum total of suffering in another person’s life just for one’s own self-fulfillment is incredibly selfish. Procreation is a cycle of blithe selfishness that perpetuates universal suffering and is at best wrought by apathy for others’ suffering and at worst wrought by enthusiasm for others’ suffering.
I’m anti-kid because I didn’t consent to the sentience that I have experienced and I have the empathy to want others not to suffer.
Human suffering is caused in part by overpopulation (as is the suffering of all creatures - we are invasive, destructive and afflicted with a superiority complex) and in part by religious indoctrination, so while you procreate, as long as you don’t force offspring into a single and restrictive belief system, I suppose it’s okay, and all the best to you.
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Well, now I should take this meme down. You’ve given me a counterpoint so complete I have no retort. I will now go grab my towel.
that’s not the meaning of life, that’s the answer to the ultimate question about life the universe and everything…
