Example: I believe that IP is a direct contradiction of nature, sacrificing the advancement of humanity and the world for selfish gain, and therefore is sinful.
Edit: pls do not downvote the comments this is a constructive discussion
Edit2: IP= intellectal property
Edit3: sort by controversal
Your feelings are not facts.
Being offended, doesn’t mean you’re in the right and the other person is in the wrong.
Just because your religion says something (or claims it does), doesn’t put you in the right.
I believe antinatalism is a dire mistake, and the highest thing someone can aspire to be is a parent
antinatalism is gross but I don’t think the highest aspiration is parenthood
antinatalism is gross
Why so?
Have kids, find out. Spoiler, it is, for most people.
Sorry but the language here alienates those who cannot have kids. you can speak for youself just fine but the response as stated was gross. ugh you’re gonna fuckin reply to me again aren’t you. i really dont want to continue with this discussion, please, as a personal favor
lemmy needs a fucking disable inbox replies option. i dont want to block anyone and i feel the need to point out this perspective but i really hate getting msgs like these on this particular subject days later
On, that’s easy to address. You don’t need to have kids as long as you’re improving society so that other people’s kids thrive.
Now we’re inclusive of the infertile and accomplish the same goal.
But I also agree, fucking is the best
Oooeh this is one is gonna piss off a lot of lemmings. This is one of those hard echo chamber topics that haunt Lemmy.
Also don’t mention religion, that will also twist a lot of panties on here
and the highest thing someone can aspire to be is a parent
Be a good parent.
Far too many out there are shit, or at best mediocre parents.
If you’re going to say the church, the school, the neighbors, other family members, anyone else is who should raise your kids, you should aspire for a vasectomy.
If you aspire to just pump out kids for a number game, you missed the Dark Ages. Though a Mennonite community may be your thing.
imo u don’t necessarily have to be a parent, you can be a parental figure to a younger person, be a good role model and teach them well
Sure I don’t see why adoption ot being a godfather to someone shouldn’t count. I just think that anyone not engaged in raising children or making the world a better place for them is just using the world and giving nothing back
Just having a child is not enough, parents also need to be helping to make the world a better place.
I believe that its pointless to argue this way or that about antinatalism, as we no longer have control of a population encroaching 8 billion. It just becomes a moot point to bash each other on over the internet (which can be said about a multitude of other subjects).
I’m not going to have kids. That’s just what I want. Going extreme on antinatalism or pronatalism is just circling back to telling other people what they should do with their bodies. Everything is just so extreme these days. Its do or die in the eyes of the public, no matter what you do, and its grating.
The debate shows… the next generation it’s OK to have strong feelings both ways?
(initially I was going to make a point that seemed on shaky ground given search engines exist - “not everyone has formed their opinion yet” so for those [young] people, just check out a couple opposing books from the local library and that’s sufficient? Ooooh, what about when they want to debate what they read! Ground feels less shaky!)
I agreed with this up until the ‘and’.
Why?
Because I don’t think there’s a point to living without reproduction. Everything else is living a pointless life of minor hedonism and disappearing into oblivion at the end.
I don’t think doing so is immoral, just pointless
If the pinnacle of your life is cumming in a woman you need you do some soul searching.
Say it with me: everyone on the Internet is a BOY
The internet, where:
- The men are men
- The women are men
- The children are FBI agents
So, you’ve internalized life’s universal purpose as your own. It’s not necessary or even noble. Life will take care of itself.
I don’t think life is ‘less pointless’ if you procreate. It’s both very pointless, except for personal fulfilment. What should it matter if you follow a path that evolution laid out before you. With consciousness, there is no more reason to consider that path in my eyes, just do what feels right.
Bringing a person into existence for your own entertainment is the ultimate form of pointless hedonism
Because I don’t think there’s a point to living without reproduction.
So the meaning of life is … the continuation of life? Or to put it another way, life is the meaning of life. That seems rather tautological.
There’s a difference between a point and a meaning
This doesn’t help your argument.
So you believe that every person on the planet should be a parent? Is 7 billion people not enough for you?
No, we need more people. Developed countries are facing a demographic cliff that is very bad for us
There’s no point in living at all. Reproduction doesn’t change that.
There’s all sorts of types of reproduction.
Take the reproduction of knowledge, for example. Say you have a person who never had kids, but dedicated their life’s work to something like Project Gutenberg. They’ve ensured art and writing and understanding is reproduced for generations to come. Is that pointless?
So Nikola Tesla’s life of scientific research was pointless?
Sure why not
Huh. So you enjoy being a mindless husk with the sole purpose of breeding the next generation.
I’m sorry you’ve been traumatized so much by life that you’ve given up on yourself as a person.
I don’t know why you’re so offended at someone having a different opinion than you
I’m not sure why you think I’m offended. But I feel you’re still hurting and perceive this as an attack, so I apologize to you.
It’s fine to give up. Take your time and try to heal. Even if you don’t find value in your own life, raising your children is still very much meaningful as you say.
There’s opinion, and there is just pure stupidity.
It’s not the opinion so much as the perceived judgement. No one would bat an eye if your opinion was simply that you couldn’t see your life having any meaning without kids. But you go on further to say that you don’t see how the lives of people choosing not to have kids has any meaning. Consider one of those families with more than a dozen kids looking down on you for not having enough kids. Saying they don’t understand how your life has any meaning when you could still be having babies.
I get this is an opinion thread, but you dumb.
Its a dumb opinion, but not invalid.
Why is it the highest thing someone can aspire to? You don’t think being a Nobel-winning scientist is as important as being a parent?
Well obviously if you’re fully antinatalist you’re basically working towards human extinction.
But I think that a healthy society includes a few child-free people. In fact, as someone without kids, I’d happily pay a much higher tax rate so that parents can stay home with their kids. I doubt I’d be a good parent anyways, and so I’d prefer to contribute to society in ways people with families can’t.
But I think that a healthy society includes a few child-free people.
Regardless of one’s views on antinatalism, we absolutely need to acknowledge that not everyone is suitable for parenthood. I’m not suggesting that we (as a society) impose restrictions on it. Rather if someone self-selects for not having kids, people need to STFU and accept it rather than trying to shame or pressure them.
Thank you. I did not have kids for a number of reasons, and I can assure you the world would not be a better place if I had. But I do always enjoy people telling me my life is pointless, haha
Donct ypu realize the end of the world is nigh, and also bad things happen that cause sadness, and therefore our species should stop procreating until nothing bad ever happens again?
The free movement of people is a human right!
Note that capital is free to go whatever it wants to.
Mine: Kids are pretty great, actually. They are smarter than you think and can make sense of a lot of stuff you wouldnt expect them to. You should treat their thoughts and feelings with the same respect that you would give an adult.
I like to call them little adults in this context.
As in, they are adults, but still growing. If adult is the end game, we should treat them as such.
This doesn’t mean don’t protect them tho respective of where they are at, which is dynamic and surprising.
Kids aren’t dumb, but they are stupid.
They are still growing and cannot handle the full dose of reality yet.
Kids are crazy smart of you don’t baby them their whole lives. Talk to them like responsible adults and (surprise!) they’ll learn to behave in responsible adult like ways.
Hey, thanks for this answer. I am under the impression that there is a lot of negative talk about having kids in the News/internet etc, which made me very anxious about the decision to have my own. And while I think that it’s important to vent about the difficulties of parenting, I sometimes miss people who voice the positive things about it.
You should definitely not feel bad about that. And please don’t let the doomers on this platform influence how you feel about your decisions. They have a very negative view on the world because they are terminally online, don’t go outside, don’t see all the wonderful things life has to offer just around the corner or down the street. I mean, times are tough, shit happens, that’s a fact. But kids actually are better at adapting to changing times than we are.
My kids bring me great joy. I share my hobbies with them and adopt theirs. Spending time with them is not a loss or hindrance. Having kids is not for everyone and that’s fine, but the negativity online it outright toxic.
If you look at the facts kids are leaning towards progress. Less underage sex, less drug and alcohol use, and women are more educated then ever. Boys are starting to lag though:/.
I don’t think “less underage sex” is a good thing. It means that humans remain in a state of childhood longer and longer. They’re achieving life milestones at later and later ages. I’m not gonna say when the correct time for everyone to start having sex is, but when I was in high school 15 or 16 was a lot more common than 18+
That’s actually a crazy thing to say that we need more under age sex.
That being there are 2 types of people, the ones who cherish childhood and those that want to go up.
We need teenagers to start living their lives again, which it seems like they’re not. A lot of people under the age of ~24 are in a really poor state, developmentally
And mere sex is the way to do it? What about laws restricting social media from being as predatory and anxiety-/depression-contributing towards young people, as has been well-documented over the past, entire decade? As that other Lemmy user said, where is your scientific evidence that younger sex is the way beyond just your own opinion? Encouraging sex without solving the hypercapitalist issue is just pouring more gas on the dumpster fire, if anything.
Teenagers slept around because they were bored. Now they can learn coding and game. They are legitimately using less drugs. Drinking less and having sex left because they are busy developing skills for work and life.
Sex has nothing to do with emotional or mental maturity except with more education you are less likely to have casual sex. It has nothing to do with “becoming a man or woman”. Plenty of adults are extremely accomplished without getting sex involved. Sex is literally just an act of putting your genitals together. How does that make an adult from a child? It doesnt.
It literally does though
Is this an “I turned out fine” opinion, or is this based on something more concrete?
Do you actually think it’s a bad thing to have sex at 16 years old? I think it’s a bad thing that young people are so terrified of living their lives for so long
No, I never said that but it does show that this serious situation isn’t taken lightly.
What serious situation
If you dont think sex shouldn’t be taken lightly phew o boy.
I think Gen Z voters reversed the trend in many nations including Germany and the USA, at least the males have a strong conservative bias compared to Millennials.
Part of Gen Z and almost all the people my age I know are heavily conservative. It’s pretty isolating.
Unpopular Opinion: Kids are great? get off the stage
U should lurk more lemmy comments. Mfers here really are anti children
I also apply this logic to animals. A lot of people, even some pet owners, are quite far divorced from our connection to animals, and don’t spend enough time with them. Even wild animals, they are far more intelligent, inquisitive, emotional, and communicative than most people give them credit for, and coexistance with them would actually be a wonderful thing. I’m not religious, I don’t say grace, and I eat meat… But anytime I eat an animal I try to at least be mindful and thankful for the animals sacrifice.
“Humans are the weakest of all creatures, so weak that other creatures are willing to give up their flesh that we may live. Humans are able to survive only though the exercise of rationality since they lack the abilities of other creatures to gain food through the use of fang and claw.”
Plus you can make them do a ton of chores for twenty bucks a week.
Ah yes, the lovely child labor.
/s
That’s a mixed bag. They can be very smart, but they still don’t have the experience to properly contextualize many things.
That self-defense is not a justification for lethal force.
Polygamy should be legal. If three or more consenting adults want to commit to each other, who the hell cares? Same goes for relatives in sexual relationships who aren’t having kids. Like why do we care who fucks who as long as everyone is capable of enthusiastic consent?
Two that may be controversial. 1st There is no such thing as a just war. Both sides will always justify war and believe they’re on the right side of it. I can still look at the war and choose a side but I dont think im morally above someone who chooses the other side.
2nd, warcrimes and rules of war are always valid strategies and people will always brake the rules if they think it would help them win or not lose. I understand the reasons we have them and i support post war trials to punish those who commit them but I dont think I’m morally above people who commit war crimes since I’d do exactly the same thing if it helped me not lose a war.
3rd one: you have a moral duty to defend your country from invasion.
It’s okay to call stupid people stupid to their face - them, their ideas, whatever it is that they’re doing dumb. In the U.S. we’ve gone too far over on the “tolerate all people and their views” which has allowed fascism and MAGAts to gain far too much power - putting idiots in their place is (or at least would have been) the best way put it back where it belongs.
My perspective on what rights are and how they work sometimes has people looking at me like I’m literally the devil. But it’s really not that crazy.
First off, rights aren’t absolute and have to be balanced against each other. Spend an hour or two following along with mundane SCOTUS cases and you’ll see all kinds of examples where two reasonable principles come in conflict with each other and it’s not immediately apparent which one should take precedent. I would actually argue that, if you want to treat principles as absolutes, you only get one, because any two concievable principles can (at least theoretically) come into conflict with each other. You can’t serve two masters.
Moreover, what rights actually are are a theory about maintaining order and keeping people satisfied and content. The theory goes that people were reasonably content in a “state of nature” and that if they become discontent in civilization, it must be because they’re lacking something that they would have naturally had. As a general rule, it works well enough - but viewing it this way means that you’re viewing rights as a means to an end, rather than an end of itself, which is a very important distinction. What that means is that if you’re in a situation where you have to choose between upholding rights and the end goal that rights are meant to achieve, then it makes sense to prioritize that end.
Again, something that makes people look at me like a demon (or call me a “tankie”), but like, there was a point in the Civil War where Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus in response to the genuine, existential threat posed by the Confederacy, and it was probably necessary for him to do so, or at the very least he had good reason to think it was.
The well of discourse on this subject has been poisoned by politicians leveraging imaginary threats for self-interested purposes, and the fact that we in the first world are so used to basic security that we take it for granted. Certainly, there’s plenty of people who say, “The ends justify the means,” but who aren’t really following that principle, they just want to do illegal things for other reasons, like torture being motivated by cruelty, hatred, or revenge but justified on the pretense of extracting information to save lives.
However, just because people use imaginary/exaggerated threats like that, that’s no reason to think real existential threats don’t exist for anyone ever. And when you’re facing a legitimate existential threat, all bets are off, you should give it 100% and do whatever it takes to survive and win. If you’re not prepared to do that, you should give up the fight and walk away. Otherwise, how can you ask others to lay down their lives while you’re pulling your punches, just to feel good about yourself? A guilty conscious is a small price to pay.
Somehow, we’ve got all these people with martyr complexes who have got everything mixed up, that your job as a moral agent is about serving these abstract moral principles as an end to itself, rather than your job being to do the things that lead to the best outcomes and the principles being guidelines that generally, but not always, help you find that course of action. It at least makes sense if you believe following those principles will get you into heaven, but many people still act as though that was their chief concern even without believing in such an afterlife.
rights are not real, and convincing people they have them actually allows their sovereignty to be infringed.
I wish there was a third option to knock down things that aren’t actually controversial. In threads like this an upvote and a downvote are both an upvote.
One for the world:
I think dog / cat ownership makes you a bad person. There are huge energy and material costs to supporting those animals.
Cats when allowed outside will decimate ecosystems and are literal invasive species. As for dogs, I can’t help but feel that they’ve have been weaponized into a deniable tool for harassing other people.
One for Lemmy:
I think capitalism can be good. I think in an ideal world where everyone’s needs are met, there will still be a market and people getting ludicrously wealthy. And I think in that ideal world those ludicrously wealthy people can translate that wealth into political power.
This seems insane for those of us trapped in this present, but I think it is good for there to be a mechanism where understanding some reality that is tied to physical phenomena gives people power.
I think large organizations can get by for a very long time inculcating in their members strange philosophies. If the only path to power is by acquiescing to your superiors and parroting dogma, I think that would be bad.
Of course, conditions in the real world look nothing like those in that ideal world.
Following the Rule of law seems to be my super-power
The pay rate of the lowest paid worker of any company or institution should be somehow legally and directly tied to the pay rate of the highest paid executive.
If the executive wants to make more money and gets a raise, then so do the workers.
Animals don’t exist for us to use. They aren’t ours. Outside of survival scenarios, it’s wrong to eat animals or take things like milk or eggs from animals. It’s fucked up.
Do you feel the same way about plants?
Do you think that plants are sentient?
Do you think fish are sentient?
Firstly, do you mean only animals aren’t possessions? What about all other things and resources?
Secondly, are you saying people should do they best to keep consumption to a minimum, while surviving themselves? Does this mean we could let all animals die and stop existing because we have no use for them, or should we do our best to maintain biodiversity and life on this planet?
Extend that to plants and mineral resources, and you’ll be both fully moral and dead.
Plants and minerals aren’t conscious, don’t have feelings and sense of self.
They also don’t exist for us and aren’t ours. Your first comment didn’t mention consciousness or feelings.
I mentioned specifically animals, and didn’t feel the need to go into detail to why I feel that way. It doesn’t feel like you’re really commenting on good faith, so I’m not gonna respond any further than this.
That hasn’t been proven yet, and plants and trees do have sensations and awareness of others around them.
Also I don’t understand how you can reconcile your opinion about animals when they hunt each other, play with their preys, and are sometimes cannibalistic.
they hunt each other, play with their preys, and are sometimes cannibalistic.
Pretty wacko generalization. Human animals who do this are called sociopaths. My dog has never done any of this stuff. There are tons of herbivores, etc.
Weird carnist fantasy. Too much “social darwinism”.
Why impose human concepts of ethics onto animals that survive based on instinct? Humans are omnivores, and in places where we have access to Lemmy, we also have access to things like grocery stores and farmers markets. We don’t need to eat animals to be healthy, nor do we need to eat any other animal products. We do so out of tradition, or familiarity, and then justify the horrible way we treat other life because we like the taste. Plant life having sensations isn’t equivalent to the sensations that we know that animals have, and the suffering we know farming animals causes. And rather frankly, eating animals requires growing more plants and killing more plants than just eating the plants.
Listen, I understand where you’re coming from. But plant farming can be just as bad as animal farming. They cut down massive swaths of local wildlife, trees, flora, and use pesticides and other means that soak into the ground water and run off into lakes and streams. That affects literally everything too.
Yes, animal farming causes massive emissions. It’s filled with cruelty and waste. But so is plant farming. You can sustainably farm. But if you shop anywhere but your own back yard you’re contributing to that pollution. The produce we get at markets and stores comes from those big battery farms. Even farmer’s markets aren’t safe anymore - at least here the sellers are no longer small-time farmers. They’re resellers and from the big company owned farms that have more acres than workers. Because it’s too expensive for small time farmers to keep up with demand.
Vegan leather is so much worse for the enviroment than leather made from skin. Actual leather decomposes and becomes food for the earth. Vegan leather is usually made of plastic. The nail polish my spouse found recently is vegan - it’s made with plastics rather than biodegradable materials like beetle shells and plant-based colors.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. You are a part of this cycle too.
No, I don’t think you do understand where I’m coming from. One aspect of that is that I haven’t made a long thorough explanation of where exactly I stand because that was never my original intent w/ this thread. I meant it as one comment sharing an unpopular viewpoint, but I digress. Totally, animal farming also causes emissions. So does driving. There’s cruelty and waste all throughout capitalism - and we should do what we can to avoid as much of it as possible. Some things are in our personal control, such as choosing what we eat, where we shop, and reducing our personal waste through re-using things. Veganism is one part of activism, not the whole. I can totally agree that “vegan leather” is awful and instead of buying plastic people can use what they already have, or simply put not buy leather OR pleather products. I do, however, still take issue with treating other sentient living creatures as if they are products for us to own and use however we want, with no regard to their own desires, and with no autonomy over their own lives. If a human is raped, we consider that one of the worst things you can do to a person and if caught, the rapist will likely end up in prison for a very long time. But if you set up a factory to systematically forcibly impregnate millions of cows, take their children at birth and kill them, then harvest the milk they produced for those children for human consumption, then not only is that considered totally ethical by most people, but you’ll end up making a lot of money off that operation. Eugenics on humans is typically seen as unethical, but when we breed chickens to produce more meat so much that as they grow their legs break because they cannot handle their own body weight, that’s seen as fine and just business. When we throw millions of male chicks that aren’t useful as they won’t lay eggs, onto a conveyor belt that drops them into a box of spinning blades to chop them up, or put them into gas chambers, that’s just business. The worst possible things you could do to another person, you can do to an animal that feels many of the same things we feel, and it’s seen by the general population as totally fine because they like the fucking taste of a cheeseburger - even though they could just eat a black bean patty and a slice of fake cheese. And yeah, plant farming has it’s problems - and part of the advantage of not eating animals is that it takes less plants to eat just plants, then it does to eat animals - since you have to feed those animals too. We’re all part of this cycle, and there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but that doesn’t mean that animal agriculture is okay or should be supported in any way.
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but that doesn’t mean that animal agriculture is okay
of course not. but it is probably ok, regardless of whether there is ethical consumption under capitalism
part of the advantage of not eating animals is that it takes less plants to eat just plants, then it does to eat animals - since you have to feed those animals too
animals graze, and what crops they are fed are often crop-seconds or parts of plants that people can’t (or won’t) eat.
So you have moved other animals into your circle of respect but not plants. You still draw a line somewhere.
And outside of that line, you chomp down with the crushers evolution has placed in your mouth
What an incredible concept, that one would want to avoid causing suffering yet still eat.
Some people are so chauvinistic that they dont recognize their kinship with animals. Because animals cant speak. Then they come up with bullshit like `animals cant suffer´.
Some people are so chauvinistic that they dont recognize their kinship with plants. Because plants cant make sounds. Then they come up with bullshit like `plants cant suffer´.
