From: Doug vanderHoof (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Feb 09 2006 - 09:54:01 PST
On 2/9/06 10:52 AM, "Tom B Whiteside" <email suppressed> wrote:
> little more worldly and a little less self-satisfied when it comes to other
> people's intensely personal issues such as reproduction and child-rearing.
Tom Whiteside,
I'm the last one to intrude on things that are only intensely personal
(I suspect it might be religious for you, no?). Let's have the greatest
possible variety of thinking and speaking and believing.
Creating more human beings in a quintuply-overpopulated world is
intensely personal but it's also an action that reverberates through our
shared planet and down through the generations. So it's personal and
social/political/economic/ecological. Don't you think that's true?
May I sketch some aspects of this and see if we have any common
concerns?
I have a friend who doesn't eat mushrooms because he thinks they're
creatures from another dimension and if he eats them it will punch holes in
his aura. I've never tried to dissuade him from this. Nor would I if he
thought everyone ought to eat mushrooms. But if he started planting
mushrooms in our shared space, I'd rush to intrude on his intensely personal
decision.
Likewise with bearing children. Every middle class American child will
do as much environmental damage as whole villages in Africa. Having a child
is currently a personal decision, but it's also one for which we all bear
the burden.
Some people really, really want to have children. That's one factor
they might consider. But it's not the only factor. Does that make sense
that one would say that?
On a related note, one hopeful trend in human history is that people who
live in cities naturally tend toward not having children. Every major
civilization has reached a point where the population ebbs and they make
laws to encourage people to have children but it never works. We're talking
China, New Kingdom Egypt, Augustan Rome, post-Asokan India, Imperial
Britain, Italy today, and probably lots I can't recall. The Mayans were
probably already in the throes of this when the conquistadors arrived. It's
happening in the USA right now. It's entirely natural. Spengler has a tidy
summary of this in the Soul of the City section of "The Decline of the
West."
Is this worldly enough for you? Actually, I'm a little stung by the ad
hominem thrust and I hope we get back on the civil tip if we keep talking
about this important topic. If we can't, never mind. I'll drop it.
As far as "self-satisfied", I'm open to hearing about how to express
strong feelings or controversial wishes and opinions in other ways.
Googling you makes me expect you'll have some valuable input if you care to
speak to this.
Cordially,
Dv
Doug vanderHoof
Producer/Owner
Modern Media
Bucktown, Chicago
(773)394-0029
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