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, that is, its parents’ short-term self-interest, the accidental child is the only child that is […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
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 it […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
I’ll Take Two Of Those And One Of Those, Please
Lest it be thought that regarding children as property is the preserve of the social conservative, I note Isadora Duncan being cited as an advocate for the view that “women were entitled to whatever lovers and children they wanted”. Now, this can perfectly well be taken as meaning that a woman does not need any […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
Rockabye Games Arcade
In 2010 it was reported that a South Korean couple “fed their infant daughter so little that she starved to death. Instead of caring for the child, the couple spent most nights at an internet café, sinking hours into a role-playing game in which they raised, fed and cared for an infant daughter.” This will […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
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 […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
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 […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth Is An Unsuccessful Trade
Demanding gratitude from one’s 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 what is wrong is that they were not in fact given so very much to be grateful for as the […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
The Happy Martyrs
Certain people are constructed so as to derive clear utility from feeling themselves martyrs. This is because self-pity is a pleasure in itself, and a very dangerously addictive one. With greater insight into brain function, we may one day be able to chart how self-pity plugs itself into the reward circuits, allowing us to stimulate […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
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 […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
The Remarkable 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 […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, Khnopff's Chimaera
