Hi @kennyskitchen! I'm sure that, being a member of the #informationwar community, you're a fan of freedom of thought and speech. I believe that we have these things, and others, in common. While I am sure there's a lot we can disagree on, I'm rather anti-authoritarian myself. It is right and good for you to hold the opinions that you do and for me to hold mine, and for us to share them with each other and understand each others' worldview. Accordingly, I'd like to speak on a couple of things:
On VHEMT
While it's a really controversial opinion, it is true that VHEMT holds that the best possible outcome for the planet and the Universe in general (and even for humans themselves) is for the remaining humans to "live long and die out." It's a really morbid and unpleasant conclusion, and I don't blame you for taking issue with it. Antinatalism is a dark, sad, and existentially horrifying worldview, which is why so many who hold that view rely on an extremely dark sense of humour to process it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of compelling arguments for this view, but I think the one that rings most true to me is this: life which is never created, can never suffer. And unfortunately, for the majority of lives-- for all but the most lucky of us-- life will be filled with suffering.
But while it may sound vile to you, members of VHEMT are not violent or even particularly pushy and, having escaped a cult myself years ago, I certainly couldn't call it a cult by any means. It's pretty much just a bunch of people taking a vow of childlessness. I don't think many of them actually expect most people to follow along. I think it's mostly a social support structure for people who decide they cannot, in good conscience, have children... in a world where the social norms of our society encourage, support and even demand us to reproduce. Full disclosure: while I am not a card-carrying member or anything, I'm currently childfree and plan to stay that way, and as I implied above, I think they have some pretty solid points.
On @pharesim
I'm pretty sure the "sociopathic socialist" part is a joke of sorts. Having met him personally and spent some time together, I can say that he is a kind-hearted and all-around decent person. He does, like many normal decent human beings, have limited patience and a tendency to resort to ad-hominem attacks when he runs out. Really though, he's an interesting mind who's great to just sit down and have a beer with and talk about things. Honestly, I wish all of us would do more of that kind of thing. I'm personally getting sick of the modern trend toward the death of rational discourse, in favour of everyone painting each other as smooth-brained idiots or evil sociopaths all the time. Seriously, I'm losing my patience with it. Aren't you?
On @curangel
@curangel is primarily a community of manual curators, who are entirely responsible for the upvotes the account makes. Downvotes are managed completely separately from upvotes, technically by a whitelisted subset of delegators, but these days mostly by @azircon specifically. @pharesim provides a large portion of the delegated stake, however, he is quite hands-off with regards to both curation and downvotes (though he tends to support the respective parties in their decisions). Another disclosure: I am involved in @curangel, mostly on the technical side but I also participate in administrative discussions.
Personally I have long wished for a way to delegate downvote power separately from upvote power, because if I had my way about it, @curangel wouldn't have gotten involved in downvotes at all. There have been plenty of times I have personally disapproved of the way downvotes have been used and I have raised these concerns and they have been heard. However, it is clear to me that the dominant portion of stake supports the current downvote habits, so I have largely recused myself from those discussions now. I only wish that @curangel the curation project and @curangel the downvote hammer could be separate entities. It is unfair to our curators that their hard work is rewarded with so much animosity, simply for being associated with downvoting activity they have zero control over. Alas, the way our blockchain works, this simply is not possible for now, so it's a moot point.
Other thoughts
On this entire COVID-19 era, no matter what you believe, or what is real, I think we can all agree that it's been an absolutely horrible time. Emotions have been high and remain high. People do and say some vile things to and about each other. This includes me. Some are fearful and/or grieving for lost loved ones; some are feeling smothered and grieving their loss of autonomy, and they're blaming each other for the way that things are.
But I believe that this, too, shall pass... the world is slowly beginning to move again, and we are making moves toward the old normal. Borders have opened and remain open; as it often happens, new variants are reported to be more infectious but less severe.... in my experience, the vaccinated and unvaccinated, masked and unmasked, have begun to tolerate one another in physical space once again. As whatever COVID-19 was (we'll never all agree) inevitably fades into irrelevance by whatever means it does over however long... I hope that the virtual spaces will soon follow, and that we can manage to abandon our battle stations, and treat each other as human beings again.
Hello,
your comment aroused my interest and I would like to refer to what you said. As it looks to me, you seem to mix "the world" with your personal experiences.
It is perfectly fine to remain childless or to have children, it is an intimate decision and shall remain so. If it was "even demanded of you" to have children, I ask: who demanded this of you? What consequence did you have to suffer or endure because you did not comply with this demand? Did you become unemployed because of it, were you threatened with prison, were you excluded from your family because of it?
Nowadays, at least in the (so called modern) societies I know and have personally visited, the decision to remain childless leads to the following: Nothing.
At the most, you have to put up with snickers in private debates or make yourself unpopular or argue within a family who, for example, is big. But if that's enough to publicly claim that childlessness is not socially accepted, then that's very far-fetched.
As long as you are not forced by your government and/or your fellow human beings to remain childless or to have a certain number of children, your criticism of the incentives or encouragement to have children seems a bit over the top. You can safely ignore these incentives and encouragements and therefore not become a social outcast.
It becomes dangerous when the law interferes with your decision to the extent that you do not have free choice over yourself and your body.
The current trend and the events of the last few years are not exactly pointing in the direction of free choice, and the pressure is clearly felt by everyone. It may even become very popular to remain childless and it may happen that the laws change and childlessness is favoured. The air smells of it.
Against this background I don't see why you mention that
As if it wouldn't be socially accepted in modern societies that tend to have fewer children than ever before, a large proportion of people live as singles (at least here in Germany), not even in a relationship, but alone in their homes. The stats show that in some clarity if you bother to look at them for your country. There you can see a trend.
Being a parent and receiving some benefits for having children: Do you find that unfair?
Greetings to you.
Well, I didn't set out here to complain about the hard life of a childfree person or to draw any comparisons to the hardships of other groups, really. In general we mostly complain and joke amongst ourselves about first-world problems, though there are sometimes some serious issues which arise. The "demands" are mostly social, in the form of peer pressure, judgement, and discrimination from family, friends, and colleagues. Here are a few examples of "demanding" behaviour and other issues which are discussed often in childfree spaces:
Again, I didn't set out with the intention of making a big deal about these issues, but I've listed them so you can understand that there is indeed a shared set of experiences among childfree individuals which lends itself to the development of support systems.
To answer your question about benefits: I understand why a society would want to provide soft incentives to bear and raise children. Incentives like tax breaks, benefits, etc. To the extent that I support the existence of a government at all, I do not personally take any serious issue with these things. If you are able to receive financial help for raising your children, I am happy that you and they are well. I don't see that as unfair to me. I see it as an investment in the future of society.
Talking! Rationally and honestly. Mature. Professional. Kudos.
I don't think it's right people need to hold back from speaking their minds or being themselves out of fear a post like what's seen above could happen to them. After being targeted myself by one of the individuals promoting (reblogging) the post seen above in the same way, I know how shitty it feels to be pushed around by the group acting like that and choosing to play dirty.
There's been a lot of collateral damage since the onset and ensuing smear campaign seen above. Countless members of this community are being forced to put up with it, threatened and held hostage by tags like "hiveisdead." Painting everyone with a broad brush, forcefully, and calling it, "Freedom."
That line is why I've upvoted this comment. I'm sick of it, too. Not a fan of the division being enforced and maintained either. Unfortunately I see that division being part of the mission here and have my doubts finding solutions and settling differences has ever been the goal. That's just my educated guess/opinion of course and I suppose I'll get shot for it now but whatever; I'm used to it.
Signed: Nameless proud father of two.
Good to see you again on this brief hiatus from my eternal hiatus. I am pleased that our windows of presence here have collided again.
I'm not sure if it's intentional or simply coincidental, but a few years ago, a "conspiracy theorist" was that funny eccentric uncle you loved to bits. You built a potato gun together one summer. You remember how his basement was stocked to the ceiling with ammo boxes, glass jars containing badly home-canned goods in various states of decomposition, and boxes of MREs from the military surplus store.
Now, Uncle Larry's a god-damned terrorist who you deleted on Facebook and your sides of the family aren't talking to each other. What happened? I'm not sure exactly, but I know there's a lot of powerful people who are ostensibly extremely happy that simply questioning the officially-sanctioned TruthTM is becoming a socially excommunicable offence. Does their dirty work for them, doesn't it?
Hey! If the powers that be were doing this on purpose to create immunity from dissent, that would be a conspiracy, right? Even entertaining the idea would make me a—shit.
Truth be told, conspiracy theorists have always been some of my favourite people to talk to. I like the way their minds work. I've always said that "the world is more interesting with magic in it." Sometimes I lose energy to believe in magic or to grant it an audience. Don't we all sometimes lose the energy to be the best versions of ourselves? But deep in my heart, I admire the spark of curiosity and imagination that drives people to question society's known knowns and build these fantasies. I love it. It makes people interesting. It makes life interesting.
It's just too bad that sometimes it all goes wrong and a bunch of people die hooked up to ventilators, wishing they hadn't literally memed themselves to death.
Who seeks, reads, evaluates and upvotes posts manually keeps control of what he is doing and contibutes to a really decentralized way of curation ...