*This is another little article that was originally to appear in Response fanzine issue #5 a few years ago. This was written by our friend Daniel formerly of the band Die Young, enjoy*
I recently turned 25. I feel this is an undesirable age primarily because this is the period of one’s life when many of one’s friends are newly married and/or having kids. These people come up to me and they are ecstatic: “Guess what? We’re having a kid!” Call me an asshole, but I think that is horrible news, as well as an utterly unforgivable action considering the climate of widespread tension, anxiety, violence, and injustice enveloping this planet and the greater scope of human relations. I can’t tell you how many times thus far that I have had to bite my tongue, force a smile, and lie through my teeth: “Congraaaaaatulations!” Truly, I want to shake these people, partly out of love and concern for them, and out of sorrow for their coming cabbage head, but mostly out of sheer frustration with the fact that most people simply do not consider the larger context of the world we are currently living in.
Look, I’m not trying to be crass or cynical. I’m just trying to be honest. Most people in the world have an affinity for those about to unleash more human life unto this planet, but this unfortunately is little more than just another example of why the masses have their collective head up their collective ass. I understand that wanting to have kids, that inner desire to create and raise life that is unique to your own genetic makeup, is only a natural biological inclination. But we’re living in an un-natural age, where the perversion and exploitation of nature (as well as people) is perhaps the most dominate feature of our day to day lives. I am heartbroken to feel the need to suppress my own inner desires to have a little tyke of my own to raise and teach swear words, shoplifting methods, and other blasphemies to. It would be a lot of fun! But alas, it would be fun for me, and just for me—it would be selfish! I would mostly be creating such new life for myself, for my own sense of purpose and need for fulfillment. It would not be for the selfless act of nurturing and parenting that I would so long for, because once I have helped to conceive and bring new human life into this world, what world would I be leaving my little hell spawn to when I am inevitably gone? I’ve got this overwhelming premonition it will not be a good one, no matter what I do. Considering the mental anguish that I’ve gone through contemplating all the dilemmas our culture, humanity, and planet are facing, I tend to think it’d be a sore punishment to force more human life, capable of such painful consciousness, to endure such a grim environment. I don’t wish the pain of this world on anyone except the tyrants who make the conditions of our societies ripe for such pain.
Of course, I suppose I could just raise my little brat-to-be to enjoy everything on a surface level, to not question the tenets of our society of blind preoccupation and consumerism. I’ll teach the little squirt to disregard the rest, to get ahead, and thus I’ll just leave him to be content as a privileged first world consumer sheep, like most people currently living on this North American continent. To be fair, I’m not trying to be smug toward the common people of the world. Perhaps I just am smug, but I assure you that I do have some empathy, and I do have some sympathy, but hey it’s the truth—we are vicious and mindless consumers on the whole. Considering we (here in the U.S. alone) are something like 3% of the entire fucking world’s population, yet we consume a quarter of the world’s energy resources, and our economy has exported every goddamn petty task down to the manufacturing of the most trivial knick-knacks to developing nations abroad (simply because we have the economic power to enforce that kind of slavery), I think it’s fair to say we’re fucking assholes. (Maybe moving to some other, under-developed country to have kids would make us somewhat less of the collective asshole.) And basically, we’re fucking assholes because we don’t think about the source of our privileges here, which are primarily derived from the misery of others which is imported to us at base cost in the form of clothing made in sweatshops, in jewelry so barbarically extracted from the lands of indigenous people, in the flesh of animals pumped full of hormones that insufficiently treat the infections they incur from living in human-made hells, or in the most obvious form: the oil that has given American forces just cause to rape and pillage the entire region of the Middle East for decades now. As much as I’d like for my hypothetical kid to be happy, I just could not ever raise him to be a sheep. I despise sheep (the human sheep, to be specific). I’d want to kill him. I’d want to kill myself in shame for being the father of a sheep.
If I had to have a kid to satisfy my own selfish urges, then he’d certainly have to be a warrior of sorts to challenge this world as a total menace, or else I might not be able to sleep at night knowing that I brought another mouth to feed into this world—one more locust to ravage the fields. There would have to be some sort of justification for my child’s existence being that is costs life to support life. And let’s face it—real, organic life on this planet is becoming very scarce. I would have to train the boy to be hell-bent on saving the world via undertaking the destruction of civilization. That’d only be fair. Then maybe, if he succeeds, my great-grandkids could have a fighting chance of living sustainably in a better world.
Or better yet, perhaps I should take that responsibility upon myself. Why don’t I—why don’t any of us who want to have children—undertake the lofty task of destroying this world as it is so that perhaps our progeny may have a better world to live in. There are a few people I admire in that regard. At the top of my list of admiration is a fellow by the name of Rod Coronado, an earth liberation and animal liberation activist who has spent considerable amounts of time behind bars for various crimes that the US government classifies as “eco-terrorism.” Our buddy Rod has helped send whaling ships hunting endangered whale species to the icy depths of the seas; he has safeguarded plighted seal populations from the unflinching pick-axe wielders of the Canadian fishing industry who lust after seal pelts; he has set free countless animals who have been tortured in laboratories or fur farms; and he has vandalized or set flame to many corporate properties in attempt to halt the unethical progress of companies that treat life, human or nonhuman, as little more than nothing, if anything. Among other great feats, and for all of these noted accolades, I think Rod has unquestionably earned the right to have children. I certainly wouldn’t criticize him for it (like I would most people I know). In fact, I think the world needs some more of Rod’s troublemaking seed to go around. I mean, what a great legacy to leave for your kids. Hopefully his kids are inspired to follow in his footsteps. The pre-requisite for being able to have kids ought to be having sunk a whaling fleet. Honestly, if your kids can’t have a world of biodiversity with whales, and buffalo, and tigers, and polar bears, open fields (instead of strip malls), etc., then what the fuck good will it really be for them? Until I have a resume of corporate and industrial destruction to compete with Mr. Coronado’s, I will do the world a favor and pull out before I cum. It’s as simple as that.
I suggest you do the same (or if you’re a female: take a pill, whatever it takes), because having kids really is a CHOICE. It should be the most pre-meditated, thought-out, and focused decision you ever make in your life, because it is just that—the most important and pivotal decision you may ever have to face. What else could conceiving life be other than just that? Especially now. After all, you would be bringing more life into a world that is already filled to the motherfucking brim (and then some) with human life. Hey you know what? Maybe you should just get a dog. They potty-train quicker and you don’t have to save money for them to go to school. Plus, dogs are about as smart as children anyway. All jokes aside (not that I was joking), it is all quite simple really. There is a gruesome reality we must confront. Consider the numbers: there are over six billion mouths to feed on this planet that was supporting less than three billion mouths roughly 50 years ago, and less than half of that in the 19th century, and so on. Worst of all, we're looking at somewhere around 12 billion of us here, sucking the Earth dry, just shy of the middle of this century. That's too much, too quickly. The basic laws of ecology tell us that some kind of basic equilibrium will have to be met, and soon. In human terms, that means there’s a lot of war, poverty, starvation, and disease coming for us…oh wait! Yeah, it’s already here! Fuck, I almost forgot about that because I was watching the latest and greatest of reality television, or playing video games, or fantasy football, or jacking off to internet porn! I was so fucking distracted I almost didn’t give any thought to the fact that we’re all generally FUCKED! And I almost forgot that having kids to strengthen the population and further the success of our species is no longer a biological obligation because our species has already trampled the Earth! We’re so far past success we’re verging on annihilation. Don’t forget it. Please don’t.
Again, I’m not purposely trying to put you down if you have kids. I’m not purposely trying to put you down if you want to have kids. I just want people to consider the age they are living in, and more so: the age their kids will be living in. What does the future hold for us anthropoids? What for the rest of the planet? If we can’t be certain that we’re contributing to a world that will indeed be as good or better than the one we are currently living in, then what good will it be for those who come next? Will it be fair to make them endure those conditions simply because we did not think things through beforehand? There’s a word that is used to describe people who maintain a complete disregard for the welfare of others in service to themselves: nihilistic. That’s right; to be become a parent here and now, quite possibly, is to be a nihilist. No one is as sorry to say it as myself.
Please consider contraception, or any kind of responsible family planning (even abortion, if necessary). Or just go adopt that dog from the pound! Would it not be in the best interest of your offspring? Birth control is no longer a moral issue—at least not in the sense of due rights to an unborn glob of cells that will likely grow to only contribute to exponentially-expanding problems of civilization. If birth control is still a moral issue at all, it is in the sense of our obligations to the future, and to the Earth that is our home and source of life
*Daniels band Die Young had their last show in October of 09. If you never checked em out, you fucked up. www.myspace.com/dieyoungtxhc*
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