the morality of childlessness

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kind of a clickbaity title, i'll admit

we often see discussions (here and elsewhere) about the duality between religious moral systems and secular moral systems, and their respective dilemmas. that's a significant thing. but when i think about it, it doesn't seem as significant as another duality: childrearing moral systems versus childless moral systems

while the distinction between religious and secular systems is more visible (because it's based on vocally publicized symbols, and on shared beliefs rather than individual plans), i think it's relatively subtle in nature. i think that the realistic and widely-available option to not have children ever (and to specifically choose to not have children ever), while still maintaining your freedom to live as a regular adult in society, is ultimately a much bigger deal. it's sort of invisible, because it's "bottom-up" (it's largely influenced by socially-dictated factors, but it happens individually anyway), but it has big implications, and it's unprecedented

for our entire history until very recently, as the biological living things that we are, reproducing was our one main guiding purpose. it's what mediated the gap between our instincts and our actual behaviors throughout life. maybe not directly, maybe not individually, but individuals would still be bound by that collective purpose anyway. if you weren't going to have children, then there would be some other role or fate reserved for you (probably one that you wouldn't like). but not anymore. in modern society, where services are provided through institutions outside of the family and outside of the local community, if you're not going to have children, you often just go on existing

that's a big deal. besides the option not to have children, today there are also more reasons to make that choice (both practical and ethical, like economic motivations or environmental footprint). and, combined with the fact that automation has just reached the point where it's gradually but permanently displacing part of the workforce from the job market (which i expect will eventually give rise to a sort of "hikikomori class" throughout the modern world), it might impact a significant percentage of the population in a not so distant future, who will be wondering:


what is your life all about when you have no specific obligations that concern anyone but yourself?


morality and metaphysics: instinct --> --> behavior --> --> self-perception


what is your own opinion on the subject? how do you look at it yourself, if you don't want children? how do you think this affects or is going to affect society at large? how do you think this should be addressed (if at all)?

is a monk or nun any less [fill in the blank] because they are childless? how does one know that one is not here to learn how to be a better, more ethical, more loving/compassionate being [via immersion learning/exposure/testing against all manner of stimulus]?

Last edited by auntblabby on 04 Nov 2016, 3:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

that's the clickbaity part that i meant

i mean "morality" in the sense of "set of guiding principles", not in the sense of whether it is morally acceptable or not

damned clunky puter/website wouldn't give me time to fix it.

well, personally, i don't believe there is actually any ultimate purpose, and i think everything just is what it is, no more, no less. but the fact is: we'll still ask the question anyway, regardless if it makes sense. because we're constantly censoring our instincts, and our brains want to know why. and i think a very large number of people will be asking it, and only hearing an echo in response, at best. that's a problem. or potentially a problem, i'm not sure

i guess i came to this line of thinking today because i haven't been sleeping well (for temporary reasons that i'm aware of), and i'm basically in "zombie mode" all day long. i even thought to myself "huh. come to think of it, i might as well be dead. i probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. lol". it got me thinking

the way I see it, those of us who survive automation/enslavement/decimation via systematic neglect, will be higher social status and therefore have more time to ponder and philosophize. there won't be too many of us left at that point. this consideration aside, I cannot believe that life is essentially meaningless, I must believe that there is a reason we're here and that we will learn this highly individual [yet general] reason in the fullness of time.

Sounds like you dont mean "morality". You mean "purpose of life". Not quite the same thing.

it's complicated to phrase what i mean though (which is why i only surreptitiously introduced the word "metaphysics", close to the end of my post). because whatever would be "quite that thing" would probably answer the question itself. and, in general terms, it's not quite the same as a purpose either. a purpose implies something larger than you. your basic individual needs as a human being are largely out of your control, but are they larger than you? intuitively, i'd say "no"

if you live a subsistence-oriented life, you may very well have all your needs met, while you're kept busy enough not to question the reason why you do the things you do. your instincts will be translated into behavior without the need for a purpose. but a subsistence-oriented life isn't a large-scale option in modern society, and even if it were, would we generally have the ability to choose it, when we could simply choose otherwise? probably not without a purpose ("i want a healthier life for my children", for instance)

but on the other side of the coin, we do have a purpose given to us whether we're actively engaged in society or not: we're consumers. we're pieces of a puzzle, moving money and influence from one point to another. so even if you feel that your life is completely unfulfilling and mechanical, there will be efforts to keep you alive. but the purpose given to you is a passive one. you're left with time to contemplate your condition and the purpose you serve, which is disconnected from yourself. your role is only to act as a pretext for things outside of your sphere of existence, and your choices have no perceptible influence on outcomes you can observe

so the presence of a purpose can be a solution, but it can also be the problem itself. the nature of the purpose is more important than its existence. and that same nature can also apply to your everyday reality without a stable purpose. if we don't have actual control (which is always debatable, but i think is not as important as it seems), we need at least the illusion that the actions we choose to take allow us a level of control over our fate and our condition. when we don't have that, we're left without inner guiding principles to translate instincts and impulses into behavior. that's the kind of problem the human brain is ill-suited to deal with

by now i'm used to the fact that i'll probably never stop asking myself about this, and it will forever be the ether i'm surrounded by. while i'm still permanently susceptible to existential crises, i'm fairly content with the workaround of remembering that the few moments when i do lose myself in the moment are (ironically) worth it. they are made special by all the emptiness that prevails the rest of the time. why it is worth it, though, is something i can't explain. it's not religious belief, it's not even spirituality as i understand it, but it is metaphysics

but i only got to this point because i'm a pathological nonconformist, which of course was also a major part of my original problem to begin with. but the tendency seems to be that more and more people will be facing the same problem for reasons that have less to do with themselves and more to do with society as a whole. and it seems to me that society as a whole will increasingly encourage the problem of that limbo-zombie state to stay unsolved and unresolved, because it makes for good consumers. so i wonder what that phenomenon will be like

tl;dr: by "morality" i mean "inner guiding principles to translate instincts and impulses into choices, actions and behaviors"

i really think the interests of humanity would be better served if no couple had more than a single child; in about seven generations the world's population would be down to a reasonable number, & many of today's most intractable problems could be solved.

if morality isn't about THIS, what use is it?

that's a good point, and it's something to think about. if humanity could agree on that, i think the problem i'm talking about would be largely solved almost automatically. is it an idea that can, itself, serve as a satisfying guiding principle for those left wondering what use are their everyday choices? possibly. if you seemingly can't do anything useful, you can at least refrain from doing something harmful that most everyone else is doing and encouraging you to do. it's active inaction, which is definitely a guiding principle

but i think that, for the foreseeable future, it's highly unlikely that that kind of shared principle will be any match for the mainstream prevalence of "the market". the proof is in the pudding. we all know that our current economy and way of life is destroying any chance that our current economy and way of life will be sustainable for more than just a few decades at best. after that, everything that's out of our control will be different, and almost certainly not in a better way. which highlights the many contradictions of the current prevailing moral systems, and adds another layer to this discussion: we're "giving a better and more comfortable life to our children" by virtually guaranteeing a worse and more difficult life for their children. and we're making our children aware of that. "now it's in your hands"

I figure I was morally obliged not to have children. For several reasons. Genetic dysfunction, overpopulation, and they're annoying.
I am attempting to get my feeling of self worth by training for a job which I hope to be successful at (and rescuing the neighbour's cat.)

Nobody, including the OP himself, knows exactly what the OP is asking.

It would be nice if he could figure out what the "nub of the case" is, so he could figure what the central question is that he is trying to ask.

But if he means "is it moral to not have kids?" then the answer is "yes", and that it was always not immoral to not have kids even during the long shank of human history when having children was thought to be your civic duty to continue the species. But it is even more not-immoral today to not have kids because the species is already over populated. And some folks are better qualified to parents than are others anyway.

well this isn't meant to reach any conclusions. and certainly no conclusions are going to be reached here. better understanding of difficult questions, though, perhaps. my point is an exchange of perspectives. it's an exercise rather than a project

as i said, though, i'm not talking about the judgement of the choice of childlessness as moral or immoral (which is only a piece of the puzzle). i'm taking the choice of childlessness as the starting point instead, as a fact. so i'm talking about moral systems. the kind of semi-conscious reasoning you apply to your everyday life so that your behavior isn't just an endless sequence of aimless actions with no structure or consistency. the sort-of-algorithms in your head that provide either motivations or rationalizations for one given course of action to be chosen over all the other possible ones

The current world population is @ 7.5 billion people.

The reasons for this are multiple, but here are a few off the top of my head:

Due to technological development, and medical advances we no longer die at the rate that we did 150 years ago.

Many people in the western world follow one of three Abrahamic belief systems. All of them have bad things to say about abortion and homosexuality, and also species propagation via the phrase 'God said be fruitful, multiply'. We have adhered strictly to this and have multiplied rampantly to the point where the human species will overrun the world itself, and wipe itself out, unless soething is done about it.

Sorry, but this is what I believe.

i'm not sure who you're apologizing to, but if you're apologizing to me in any way, then no need

In other words: you're just babbling nonsense?