Archive for the ‘Khnopff's Chimaera’ Category
Only one good reason to have children
Enjoying sex is the only possible good reason for having children. If this is a dubious reason, well then, all the others are worse. Although people claim to be horrified by the irresponsibility of careless sex that results in children, the accidental child is the only child that is not brought into the world [...]
Wanted children are logically impossible
It is logically impossible for a child to be wanted. More precisely, it is not logically possible for Child X to be wanted. For there is no way of being acquainted with Child X before its conception, so as to want it or not. Child X is created only at conception, prior to which [...]
We got ourselves into this for your sake
People generally beget children without reflecting overmuch on the biological and cultural imperatives that ruled them. Once they have the children, however, and are beginning to realize just what they have gotten themselves into, then is the time to start the ex post facto rationalisation. That is when they start telling the children whoppers about [...]
One unborn, no vote
Environmentalists are always calling on politicians and citizens to reduce current consumption in order to leave some resources for the grandchildren. They are wasting their breath; there is no possible political mechanism for looking after posterity. For the unborn have no votes. Neither can they apportion pork or appoint cronies or scratch political backs. As [...]
Be grateful, or else
Demanding gratitude from offspring is a peculiar sort of enterprise. It is normal for children to feel love for and gratitude to their parents, and if they don’t, there must be something wrong. Perhaps they were not given so very much to be grateful for as the parents are pretending. And by demanding gratitude, perhaps [...]
Ethical naturalism on Anopopei
When I was doing moral philosophy, there was a school of thought that viewed ethical terminology as denoting some real characteristic of the object, on which everyone could agree. A knife, for example, was called good when it was suitable for its purpose, namely cutting. Calling a person good was more complicated, as it was [...]
The spinster
When people have children to look after them in their old age, but expect the children to have children of their own before doing so, we have a stable system in which everyone sacrifices and everyone is sacrificed for. In some cultures, however, symmetry is broken; the parents demand that the daughter remain a spinster [...]
We need the eggs
Parents argue that they bring children into the world in order to benefit them, the children, and claim that non-breeders are ‘selfish’. Why, then, does family size always fall when prosperity rises? Because, say the social scientists, the parents no longer need the children’s labour.
We are, after all, the only animal that can use [...]
A child for the furnace
The ultimate example of producing children for the market was the worship of Moloch. Philistines, and Carthaginians after them, sacrificed their first-born children to the god. This was done by placing the infants in the arms of the statue, which by mechanical means then lifted and tipped the babies into a furnace. No doubt the [...]
Producing children for the market
Economists differentiate between subsistence farming and production of crops for a market. In the same way, we could usefully distinguish between production of children for household consumption alone and their production for the market. In the first case, children are produced in order to look after their parents in their dotage or as extra labour [...]
