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Governments when theres no parental leave, unaffordable childcare, skyrocketing cost of living, no social spaces, and they actively sell out the future yet for some strange reason nobody is having children:
2019? Oh… oh dear.
The real depressing message is always… 🤢… in the comments.
There, I made myself say it. I apologize if I gave anybody flashbacks to any older, worse social link aggregator platforms.
My daughter is born in 2019. I think to myself im so sorry when I look at her.
And my son. I know how you feel.
Give her knowledge, patience, and love. We don’t know the mettle of the new generations yet. Have heart. The world wants to correct itself; we just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
Agree. We do need good people raising good people, to pass on the torch of compassion and all other good.
I’m not saying jump up and have kids, I’m saying there’s a sacred duty available and inherently demanded, in teaching the next generation.
And as we see, we can no longer rely on hardly any facet of our society to do an even passable job, even from those who want to. In the US at least it is down to parents to shape the next generation. (As YouTube, etc., do it for us…)
Yet more precariously, this is true during a phase of human history that I’d argue is newly atomized, yet increasingly dependent on cooperation.
The future looks bleak, yes, and parenting well is one crucial part of any long-term solution to our problems. I say let’s be careful with the dooming, there’s good work to be done.
(…sadly too much work to do, in the literal sense, for me and most parents, but nonetheless)
Yeah, we’re definitely in the nascency of a new age that promises to be harrowing. It sounds like you’re doing it right. We’re intrinsically a social species, and collectivism suits us better than this ugly, “I’ve got mine” mindset I’ve seen recently. I know there’s a lot more to it than that, but thanks for being a conscientious force in the universe.
With any luck, collectivism will come to flourish, even if we have to get there by being backed into it.
Cheers!
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Thank you. I love her with all my heart and I will do my very best.
I don’t doubt that you will. Don’t lose your patience to fear. You are a kindness to the world, and I respect you super hard.
At least by virtue of being so young, she was HOPEFULLY exempt from the insane worldwide mask mandate of 2020-21.
Yeah, it super sucked to do food production in a high humidity warehouse at 110 deg f, but at least I didn’t get COVID because of that. It was spreading around the Production department while we were making food for FEMA.
Jeez, sounds like all those people shouldn’t have been gathered so closely together, and being forced to work in a 110°F environment sounds like grounds for suing someone. Hospitals were t̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶e̶m̶e̶r̶g̶e̶n̶c̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶ choreographing TikTok dances.
Management bought industrial sized swamp cooler fans. We wondered why we had mold issues.
You are a hateful person, aren’t you?
Nope. Just think COVID was a psyop.
A global psyop?
OP: My desire to reproduce outweighed my capacity for foresight!
I’ll throw my lot in with OP. I’m not leaving the planet to the fucking nazis.
It almost used to be a truism that the youth were more progressive than the older generations, but nowadays… Not sure if it’s borne out of rebelliousness edginess or what. Agreed at how disappointing and gross it is.
The owner class wonders why birthrates are down. This is on people’s minds when deciding about families, whether the powerful want to acknowledge that or not. They only care about birthrates so much as it goes to maintaining their power anyway. This is why they are fighting abortion access and sex ed. They count on teen & unplanned pregnancy to prop up their labor market.
My son was born in December 2019. Not a day goes by where I don’t feel this in my soul. I hate knowing the suffering he is likely to witness or experience so a few can have it all. It equally depresses and infuriates me.
There are also great opportunities. You care, he will care. That’s a good foundation.
Thank you for saying so!
Most people aren’t these YT commenters or Twitter megaphones like Donald Trump.
It’s an attention amplification mirage. But we’ve fed the trolls and given them power.
IMO if folks were largely aware of that, they’d be burning down the headquarters of Big Tech, Big Media, stuff like that. Instead, it makes them depressed because it looks like all other humans are mad, and I find that really sad.
You definitely have a point. They’re not a majority of people. They’re just so loud and noisy the real majority can’t have a decent conversation anymore.
Not in social media, at least. Social media is totally rigged and scored to fascism.
The reason assholes like Trump can win elections is because there are SO many other assholes who support them.
Trump won because more people valued hurting others than helping others.
Trump won because of algorithmic propaganda and people following idols instead of history.
This includes the ‘assholes’ who have been indocrinated for decades.
Not necessarily. This is a very simplified, decolorized version of events.
Most voters in the US can’t even name and shallowly describe any given policy of their chosen candidate. Americans voted for Trump, because they liked one or two things they heard him say. Or simply because they only knew one of the names on the form.
Fuck that’s a depressing comic
And its from 6 years ago…
In other news, birth rates are inexplicably plummeting across the globe. Governments remain baffled.
“I bet it’s because there’s not enough spying in their homes.”
clearly the government just needs to provide pizza parties
The cause is obviously biological. Not societal. Listen to my anecdotal or correlational evidence.
China reversed its one-child policy and people there are having even fewer kids.
Latin America isn’t at the replacement rate of 2 children per couple any more. You know, the continent with all those Catholics? They aren’t having kids.
Only Africa now is above the replacement rate. Likely not for long.
Human population will peak way sooner than expected.
What will Western billionaires do when the flow of poor brown people stops? They’re dependent on them for cheap labour and to deflect blame onto.
What will Western billionaires do when the flow of poor brown people stops? They’re dependent on them for cheap labour and to deflect blame onto.
They will bring back the slave trade. This time using latinos.
Edit: I’m not even remotely joking or being facetious.
But why though? They will have robots by that time. The end game is just a small group of wealthy people living in a climate-isolated environment surrounded by a sea of automatons.
Robots cost a lot of money to make and can’t look up in awe at your astounding wealth.
And you can’t be cruel to robots.
Sure you can. The but robots would not have any issue with that. And the cruelty is the point. Slave owners in the South didn’t simply own slaves because it was economically a great system. By most accounts slave ownership the way it was done in America was far more costly than just hiring people at slave wages (which is still pretty bad but when splitting hairs…)
No, they owned slaves because lording it over a person you can definitively (in your own mind) label as inferior makes you feel good.
And strangely, people aren’t spending as much money at the same time… Better jack up prices on everything to compensate!
If I saw any real positive progress being made I’d reverse my decision to not have kids, but they all seem to want to do what’s worst for the planet, so why actively bring someone into that?
🤝
In the US at least, I think it’s possible at the local and state levels, but land and money have most of the power. To me, it feels like many leaders pushed the goals back because we were relatively close to being able to implement the progressive changes federally, but it’s become clear that’s still a ways away.
Those progressive changes can still happen in blue states, and I feel the will is there to elect progressives. States just need to be willing to go into debt to bring forward those progressive programs now.
Idk, even still after all these years, I find there are still moments that make me happy to be alive and think that it’s awesome to be alive, to have experienced things that were dear to me. Living in a place with others that still care about positive progress gives me a reason to do a little better each day.
I do think about how much greater life could be if love was what guided policy rather than the accumulation of wealth that’s worth nothing to us when we die.
Why can’t YOU be my dad? Or, rather not my dad as it were…I mean you’re ALREADY not my dad, but…
Ugh. This is getting confusing. What I’m trying to say is, I don’t want to exist if earth is my only option.
There! Simple enough now?
You want a Schrödinger dad don’t ya?
Could it be that housing prices are rising, people are living paycheck-to-paycheck with no job security, and fascism and the threat of a(nother) world war are on the rise?
Naaah, can’t be that.“Well, of course it’s the white genocide. It has to be!”
Education and rising from poverty does that. No matter how your government works, you can’t get away from that simple fact.
it’s not only developing countries
Just gotta stack up some savings. And get a biger place.
Those damn video games!
This here is straight up one of the biggest reasons I do not want a kid. Right now it sure seems like the best thing I could do for my children is not force existence upon them.
I once had a girlfriend tell me she aborted a baby I’d fathered. At the time I was surprised (I learned there was a baby), puzzled, saddened, depressed, and I went to have a drink (ok, several).
But of course she was right.
What kind of lunatic would raise children nowadays?However The problem is that only lunatics would raise children nowadays. So we’ll end up with people raised by lunatics. Our species will drift towards lunacy. (Ok, we’re already looneys) Is it realistic to throw kids into the boiling pot to counter the crazy ones? Or should we just let the crazies fight amongst themselves?
I’m for the lmatter (also I won’t be there, so it’s not like I care, unless I can haunt them, in which case theyre going to fucking suffer), what’s your POV?
As much as I’d like humanity to improve, it feels off to task my not-yet-existent child with trying to fix humanity. It still simply doesn’t feel right to bring a child into this existence, and it still doesn’t feel right to task them with fixing it all.
If I had more hope that very serious improvements are guaranteed, I might be more keen on it. As it currently sits, it’s not my unborn child’s job to fix what I failed to fix.
I struggle with this line of reasoning as almost every generation before has had similar struggles. World wars, great depressions, authoritarian regimes/dictators, and nuclear wars, just to name a few of the most recent. Add in historical contexts like plagues, invasions, witch hunts, etc. If people had the same thoughts as this then none of us would be here today, I dont fault my parents for the state of the world even if I wish it was better but I’m glad I get to experience the mystery we call consciousness and help better the world for all those in the future that come after me. If those with common sense stop having kids and teaching all we are guaranteed to do is make the world even worse off for those living today and let stupidity continue to rise in those who will be born in the future. The hateful and idiotic people aren’t questioning whether they should have kids, so if we can counter that by having and raising well-adjusted kids its imperative we try. Otherwise, humanity will be doomed to be full of hateful bigots that will destroy ourselves.
That is if climate change doesn’t turn into a catastrophe
Can it fuck up a bunch of coastal cities and make us rethink where we grow produce sure. Is it going to end the world, no not really, so move to an area that is a climate refuge and teach your kids how to be self sustainable if you are truly worried. People love to act like climate change will end all life on earth, it won’t it will fuck up how our societies are currently designed and cause a lot of death but honestly maybe thats the only way we can get out of the capitalist hell scape by having mother nature force everyone to actually work/think differently.
“Adaptation to 4°C may not be possible: A 4°C world is likely to create a set of interacting pressures, making it hard to project what will happen as a result. Models, for example, often don’t take into account what might happen if reduced water availability, new diseases, and heat extremes happen at the same time. In its 2012 report on the impacts of a 4°C temperature rise, the World Bank concluded: “there is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible … the projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur.”” https://unclimatesummit.org/comparing-climate-impacts-at-1-5c-2c-3c-and-4c/
If we find ourselves going back to high emissions we might even hit closer to 5C by 2100
Yes, but when they talk about adaption, they are talking about adapting our current world and society without adverse effects, which, of course, probably won’t work. There will have to be dramatic changes in society to work in the post climate change world, powers will shift, people will end up dying, where we grow food will change, etc. The world won’t just end but there will have to be change and maybe thats the best opportunity the world will have to get out of the oppressive systems like capitalism. Be mindful of how you view the future, dont go building a life on a costal city or area at risk of flooding or extreme heat waves, without mindful people having children and pushing life forward we are surely going to be doomed. All I’m saying is people are always living in “unprecedented times” its not a reason to not have kids if they are truly something you want, there will always be struggles and things to overcome thats the way of life. Just make sure you can care for your kids in the best way possible for your situation before having them and dont have them for the purpose of living through your kids.
There are unprecedented times and then there knowing there could be mass amounts of famines and when researching how populations over came those, realizing that modern western cultures don’t know how to most of the things we did back then, much less make things like bread out of birch wood.
Okay, that’s a fair point
That isn’t to say you shouldn’t have kids, that’s on you to assess the risk. This is to say there’s some justification for not wanting to take the gamble on this particular risk for a disaster
If I look at world news for the decade I was born (and more importantly, contemporary sources for what was actually happening in that decade), I can tell you two things. 1: That decade was objectively worse than the current one for a large fraction of earth’s population, and 2: I don’t resent my parents for birthing me into that decade. I’d rather be alive than not, and that’s mostly history now anyway.
The best part of my above comment, is you can’t tell what decade I was born from the content. They were all f’n bad.
Literally my number one reason not to have kids
Cyanide and happiness is your number one reason not to have kids?
That’s weird
they do what brings them joy (murder brings joy to some)
Every generation has had to deal with some version of this, either they could see it coming or they got blindsided by something. Not saying that makes it ok, it just happens.
Has there been a time in history where they expected their offspring to live a harder life then themselves though?
Throughout history, generation to generation changes were mostly negligible and whether the kids or parents had it easier came down to luck. People still had kids when communities raided their neighbours, when they started conquering instead of just raping and pillaging, when kings demanded soldiers fight their wars and labourers farm their fields, when they were literally denied any freedom and beaten severely or killed if they tried to push back, when large men in boats would just show up randomly at communities anywhere along the coast, when people with swords or guns went around the world saying “worship our god or die”. Or when the black plague was wiping out anywhere from 20 to 80% of a region’s population and doing it with some regularity.
There might not have been an expectation that their kids might have to suffer more than they did but suffering has been one of the most constant components of the human existence. I think the biggest difference is a relative lack of resilience (or at least the inability to imagine the resilience that will be necessary to continue on, since I also believe that we’re better at handling change than we think we are going into it).
The generations that do handle this and the ones that follow will probably look back at this “it’s cruel to bring a kid into this world” mindset with contempt. People often think about babies and children when considering future generations, but these ones will probably grow up into tougher adults than most of us are.
The difference is we all own tiny devices that give us live updates on the horrors of the world. The other generations were blissfully ignorant.
That’s true. We’ve seen this coming for decades and still can’t manage to stop it.
This is why, as a father, you go on a search for the amulet.
One of those comics that only get more depressing as it ages
2019… The good old times. And then things went bad.
It’s been bad for much longer than that but I’d argue that 2015/2016 is when it really started to go absolutely terrible.
