🍼 Why I Won't Ever Have Kids: A Dogmatic Analysis

This post is aimed at those looking to have kids and who have fully considered the climate changed, potential nuclear doomsday wasteland, incorporated, militarized dystopia they are potentially subjecting them too. I ask that you imagine your response to your child's question:

"Mummy/Daddy, why did you bring me into this shithole knowing that it would be a shithole?"

Suddenly, what you thought was about your kids is actually about you— not just in the responsibility sense of "will I be a good mother/father?"; Paul Graham has already covered such topics in great detail. Rather, this post asks you to be accountable for your actions.

Would you bring a child into a place where everyone knows the truth, but barely anyone does anything about it?

“[…] Does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That's why we're not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets!”

— Lowell Bergman from The Insider (1999)

At the time the movie was made, yeah, it sure as hell seemed like exposing the truth would make this world a little better. In the age of the internet, information flows at light-speed through fiber optic cables, and we get to choose what light to accept.

Here are a few truths¹ that didn’t change the minds of basically anyone:

🔺 Centralized social media tracks your every move to keep you addicted to your dopamine deployment brick so you can pay Luxottica for some glasses to treat early onset myopia

☣️ Nuclear power plants do not always meltdown; they are a source of clean energy

🦆 Geese, pigeons, ducks, etc. should not be fed bread crumbs

🍫 Nestle kills children and buying their products allows them to continue killing children

🇺🇲 America is a flawed democracy with outrageous public infrastructure, economic policies, healthcare, and most things fundamental to a well-developed country (never mind being the most powerful country in the world)

⌨️ The QWERTY keyboard is extremely slow for typing

👂️You’re probably not getting “listened to” when you call someone, Google something, or say “Hey Google!” but rather indexed and ranked by a computer to determine whether you should be listened to or prioritized as part of a digital footprint

🤲 There is no evidence that prayers to [insert god name(s) here] beat probability

🍪 Cookie banners usually don’t do much to protect your privacy: one of the few pieces of failed EU tech regulation

🚙 EVs are not trying to save the planet, they’re trying to save the auto industry

🌍️ The Earth will outlive humanity unless we nuke it. Even plants were still growing in Wall-E. Recycling isn’t gonna slow climate change, it will be grounding private jets, absorbing cow/pig farts, and eliminating problematic means of electrical production

🏫 Teachers are usually not the problem, it is the underfunded, poorly planned, static system they operate in. Your gifted/special needs kid doesn’t need another teacher, they deserve another program entirely with a small class size and attention akin to a tutor

🚄 A country without a good public transit/rail system shouldn’t be calling themselves a developed country

🧑‍🏫 Children don’t need to be taught how to do taxes in high school, they need to learn how to learn. “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

👮 ACAB (not necessarily true, but should be treated as true at all times)

👁️ Stock Windows and Android are ad/spyware by Microsoft and Google, respectively. Apple is safe if you’re okay with a closed-off ecosystem with less privacy invasion. If you’re technically capable and more budget friendly, use an open Linux distro and Graphene-OS

🪑 Office chairs can be used as gaming chairs. “Gaming chairs” can be used to create scoliosis

🚘️ Modern vehicles report telemetry to insurance companies so they can increase your premium

📡 The best time to have started using RSS, VoIP, aliased emails, VPN, and password managers was when you first began using the internet. The second-best time is now

🍻 The following are legal: nicotine which is addictive² and lethal, alcohol which is addictive, lethal, and makes you "dumber," and cannabis which just makes you "dumber." Other psychedelics that ought to be legal medicinally, aren’t

The reason this is a dogmatic analysis is that a lot of these statements fit into some grey-area when unelaborated. A country's socioeconomic standing isn't fully defined by its transit infrastructure, yet that should be weighted more when considering its quality of life. Nestle may kill children, but people who are concerned about overpopulation may not care.

What I'm really saying is that even if any of these are true: nobody cares! Put your new gaming chair in your Tesla while munching on a Kit Kat bar and praying to your god that Honda doesn’t increase your monthly insurance for your 2024 Accord. That’s considered normal.

”They say, ‘Evil prevails when good men fail to act’. What they ought to say is, ‘Evil prevails.’”

— Yuri Orlov from Lord of War (2005)

Normalcy is why I won’t have kids. I don’t want my child to be born into a society where the good is known but actively rejected, and choosing to act on the truth is considered “abnormal.”

It isn't that the world sucks, it's that nobody is going to fix it.