This is why God made large predatory fish and deep water.
Anybody caught trying to pervert a child should come to know their mistake.
Your Move,Viper!
- Thread starter krichardson
- Start date
This is why God made large predatory fish and deep water.
Anybody caught trying to pervert a child should come to know their mistake.
All good man, I might be in the "easily offended" age bracket but I don't offend easily. Thick skin and even thicker skull is what my nan used to say about me
If my adopted kids kill me in my sleep they'll be orphans again, hopefully that's at least somewhat of a deterrent! J/k
There are many reasons I don't want biological kids, potentially developing a water allergy is just another to add to my already textbook sized list.
My biggest reason for wanting to adopt is this:
There is too many children in the world already who need families and loving homes. Why should I bring another child into the world when I could ease the suffering of one that's already here?
That's just my opinion, I don't expect others to share my views I just thought I'd explain a little more so people weren't thinking 'gee, this chick doesn't want kids because she's scared of a water allergy? What a nutter.' Haha
Well you have my blessings.
I will say that there are very few old folks who sit around wishing they had fewer kids to come visit them.
I wish I had found the will to have more than two kids when I was young.
But that was what my parents had. It was sorta traditional I suppose.
I won't complain because both of mine graduated with honors and are doing well.
Between them they have given me 7 grandchildren.
You can't really ask for much more than that... Well, I guess you could ask for more but it would be a little greedy..Well you have my blessings.
I will say that there are very few old folks who sit around wishing they had fewer kids to come visit them.
I wish I had found the will to have more than two kids when I was young.
But that was what my parents had. It was sorta traditional I suppose.
I won't complain because both of mine graduated with honors and are doing well.
Between them they have given me 7 grandchildren.
Hello; Well I am old and also childless. I can tell this from experience. That being you do not miss the children you never had. I will expand this with a wild guess to include that even folks who have a child or two do not miss the additional children they could have had but did not.
I do get to observe some in my family and a next door neighbor who is slightly older than me. While some of you may have very nice and worthy children I see more examples of the other kind. My neighbors kids and grand kids were around all the time when he could do for them but now are rarely seen as he is sick and has no extra cash nor a vehicle to loan out. One grandson even lived in his house with two different wives and children for well over six years rent free and the use of a vehicle when one of his went down. He hardly ever comes around now and my neighbors Jeep Cherokee still has the body damage from the last time the grandson was driving it.
Back in the 1970's there was a plan called zero population growth. (ZPG) That was the idea that each adult only have one child during their life so the total world population of humans would stabilize and the exponential population growth. That would mean a couple could have two children just as you had. But alas too few adopted the idea and the world population of humans has continued on it's exponential growth. Not sure what the estimated population is now but feel pretty sure it is nine billion or more.
The clear and logical problem results when the population exceeds the carrying capacity of the land. For humans with our clever development of technology we have been able to expand from a limit imposed by our local land area and can get foods and other vital resources from great distances. There are already many problems with our industrial food production but I will limit my examples to two.
One is as the human population expands there is a need for a place for all the new people to live, shop, work, play and such. I kept track of this back in the 80's and 90's but am not sure of the numbers today. The gist being that farmland is being turned into malls, housing developments, highway road beds and other such things. It use to be thousands of acres a year and from my observation I still see such development going on.
Another example is the loss of topsoil. The example I used in my classes is that it can take as much as 500 years for an inch of topsoil to be formed by natural processes. We had the natural gift from the past of places with topsoil measured in many feet. However over the decades the small farms that could be farmed logically using soil conversation techniques have been turning into mega farms running mega sized farm equipment. Where a small farmer could contour plow his land and have wind breaks, now the big machines don't do that so well. The land is not conserved at a sustainable rate. We are losing topsoil at the rate of half an inch or more in many places.
Do the math if it takes 500 years for nature to make an inch of topsoil and we are losing half an inch a year, then ……..?
Other examples can be had but I tire of using my energy to no point. It became clear to me back in the 1970's there was to be little chance that folks would be sensible about the human population problems. I decided to be childless. Not so much in the faint hope my choice would make a difference (it has not by the way) but more because of fear about the sort of world the children would have to live in. I am almost 72 now and was 25 when I had a vasectomy. By now if I had children back in 1975 they could have children and those could have children and maybe even some of those would almost be of age to have children.
For those who do not buy into my into my particular point of view, then at the very least the children and potential grandchildren I did not have are not competing for resources with your own. I was pretty sure the world was to become a difficult place to live in as it has become. I will confess it has taken much longer than my guestimate back 45 years ago.
My brother has two children and four grand children. I was watching the NCAA basketball with him the other day. He is ten years younger than I and we were discussing my decline with age. Out of the blue he said he was not worried so much about me but was for his four grandkids. I got it. He never accepted my world view over the decades but now sees the point I was getting at. I did not have anything promising to tell him. I do not know how bad it will get just that it is bound to get worse.
I think adopting in a fine idea. That was my choice when my second wife wanted children but it did not happen. She is remarried and had a biological child of her own even after hearing my spiel for a few years. I get that most do not care for my world view. I had hoped I was to be very mistaken a couple of decades ago but now have lived to see that my fears are currently playing out.
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I am sorry that you live with that fear. I live only with faith in the incredible abilities of humankind to succeed. There a hundred miscreants born for every virtuoso, but does that mean we shouldn't have them?
Hello; Interesting take and a clever twist on my comments. Saying back in the 1970's that I feared there was to be poor outcomes in the future (our current present) does not mean I live in fear. I will use the phrase "...now I have lived to see my suspicions are currently playing out."
Also do not feel alone as I have had conversations with many folks over the decades using somewhat similar lines of thought to yours about their views on the human population of the earth. How many children born and currently alive would not be an issue if the earth could comfortably sustain all the numbers. Alas the earth is finite and it's capacity to carry the human population does have a limit. So there are two ways to look at your question.
First being the philosophical way. That somehow we should have to endure a hundred "miscreants" in order to get a single "virtuoso". I get the point and while I suspect the ratio of miscreants to virtuosos is low. Might even be thousands to one. Here is where I claim this is not a valid point. I never stated that no children should be born, but rather that people should have reduced the number of births some. I never imagined that no children would be born, just that in order to be sustainable over time the human population needed to stay at a level of around 50 years ago. (If memory serves maybe around 4 to 5 billion) There would have still been many millions of children born during that time and using your ratio for every million there would still be ten thousand virtuiosos. Folks would have continued to have children, perhaps even myself, but the total population would have remained as perhaps a sustainable level.
Next is what I will label as the practical point of view. Just as a ship has a limited capacity for passengers so does the earth. I do contend we have passed the earth's carrying capacity but even lately have had folks argue the earth can hold many more. Even if I am wrong just now the human population does continue to increase at an exponential rate and there will be some tipping point for sustainable human population. If not now, which is what I think, then soon.
I did not see much chance 45 years ago that enough people would do what was needed to curb the human population increase and I still today do not see much chance of that happening. So after some thought, study and consultation with my first wife I determined another personal path. Because I felt the problems were going to be quite bad I decided to be childless. The real problems of too many people are and have been under way for a while now. There is more and possibly ( actually to my thinking very likely) worse to come. I simply chose to not bring new life into what I understood to be conditions that were bound to become bad over time.
As far as the ability of human being to succeed I can agree with that. We as a species can and do solve problems well. However one of the first steps of solving problems is to acknowledge just what a problem happens to be. I see a major problem for humans being the overpopulation of the planet. I suspect now and have for decades that most folks do not want think of this as a real problem.
I made my choices and will live with them. Even at this date I would like to be proven wrong in my suspicions. I do not think that I am wrong however.
I have 1 kid....and personally she's a handful. Wife wanted more but that just wasn't in ours cards. Even getting the money to adopt an extra child.
