Over on Huel’s American based discourse forum a member brought to attention the fact that Huel is suggesting that one having fewer children contributes to sustainability and lower carbon emissions. I would like to think that Huel is in favor of improving the human condition without eliminating future members of the human family.
I agree that this is the promotion of eugenics and it is disturbing that Huel would recommend such a thing. I did read the statement about what is “realistically feasible” but that does not explain their suggestion to have less children. I live in the middle of the country, I understand how it is not realistically feasible to go without a personal means of transportation, how such sentiments can be applied to human life or what might be suggested as far as the prevention of human life is something that cannot simply have some positive spin put upon it.
Whilst agree that there are moral factors attached to research suggesting having one fewer child, this does not constitute eugenics. Eugenics is where gene pools are bred for a specific phenotype. This occurs in canine populations (show dogs), plants (perfect looking carrots) and humans (Hitler’s attempt at the Ayrian race.
No need for the old eugenics (killing the weak, making the strong breed) we can edit human DNA to make our little aryans. But I agree the suggestion having less babies will save the planet is a bit simplistic and doesn’t address current problems with the population we already have
I am an anti-natalist; whenever I talk about population reduction people get all antsy and say I’m part of the Illuminati etc. Blah blah. Fact of the matter is, this planet is plagued by humans and our filthy ways.
Human population has grown from around 1 billion in 1800 to 7.7 billion in 2019. That’s ridiculous and look at the state of the planet in those 220 years.
People misunderstand eugenics is not the same as education and voluntary population reduction. I am not in favour of the former, and I am not in support of breeding more individuals into this world, whether human or animal. Life is pain and suffering, and if you don’t appreciate it you are an entitled minority.
Here endeth the sermon. Happy Christmas to you all.
Looking into the cited research (and responses to it), it seems there are a few issues with the less child theory since it was recommended with hardly any context considering now clearly controversial it would be.
Of course removing a person from the world would obviously also remove a lifetimes worth of carbon footprint that would have spread over 110 years or so, so it’d have huge impact, but our consumption society would be better tackled rather than population reduction.
Depends if you’re talking population reduction or depopulation surely?
I had a friend at college that was convinced the current population size would suddenly drastically drop “due to something” once we reached a point that robots and automation meant that a large number of us useless eaters weren’t needed to do the crap jobs, of course we didn’t have AI back then, so I wonder how well he sleeps at nights these days.
I mean a reduction in human numbers on the planet. It won’t be without problems because we have an ageing population, and also we need to get over the sanctity of human life and preserving it at all costs. Assisted suicide is something I agree with, but only in the case of the person agreeing to it. I am not in favour of taking the life of someone - human or animal - that doesn’t want to die, but I’d rather not breed new people anyway.
Human overconsumption also needs to decrease, and the amount of food waste highlighted in another thread needs to be addressed.
Average population happiness seems to occur in environments where there is less dense human population. People are often happier outside of densely populated human environments and also most of the happiest countries in the world are lesser populated ones. It’s a lot more complex than what I can write in a few paragraphs.
Shrink and prosper is my mantra…although Canada is an interesting exception: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-when-the-worlds-population-shrinks-canada-is-poised-to-grow-and/
And from the original list in the OP, I do quite well:
I don’t have children
I don’t have a car
I use green electricity
I rarely fly long haul
I have a plant based (60% Huel diet)
I buy 90% of my clothes second hand
Ignoring the absurd mention of eugenics I personally think it’s quite a simple idea really which is that humans consume a huge amount of resources so to have less in a resource starved world is surely a sensible idea.
I personally think it’s probably too late now anyway to make much difference but between climate change, resource wars and the diminishing of productive land and water for food I expect hundreds of millions of not billions to die. We already have arguably millions dying and I don’t see it getting better. Do we add to the problem or try and do one of the most effective things to reduce it?
I think having children can be a great thing on the individual level but there’s already enough unwanted children to adopt or look after. I personally am not sure I would want to be responsible for having a child born into where this world is going.
I think the question must be asked whether humans were created for the earth or was the earth created for humans? The rise of earth worship which suggests that humanity will be the cause of earth’s destruction ushers in a fatalistic worldview upon those willing to accept it. This is nothing new, though the environmentalist perspective has gained traction in the 1960’s and 1970’s it is all part of the same agenda to diminish the value of human life.
As far as the definition of eugenics we need to consider how it has been revised in the post-WW2 era. Prior to WW2 the proponents of eugenics advocated for the exact same means to the same ends that those of today advocate for. The difference being that the term eugenics has been commonly associated with Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Third Reich of Nazi Germany. So the Margaret Sangers of the world with the ultra-wealthy foundation heads like Rockefeller who funded the proponents of eugenics in the pre-war era had to operate under a different set of language and engage in semantic gymnastics to simultaneously distance themselves from conflation with Hitler while advancing the same eugenic agenda that they had always adhered to.
If we have a look at Sweden, home of Time Magazine person of the year Greta Thunberg, the same people who were involved in social engineering in the 1970’s to advance the eugenics agenda were proponents of the overpopulation scare, environmentalist fearmongering, and those same eugenic methods from the pre-WW2 era. Now today we have poor Greta who is being ruthlessly exploited by those same people who have always been behind eugenics. A child who’s mother has written in her memoir about Greta’s autism and development of mental illness as a result of same the fatalist neurosis that is the global climate change farce.
I do hope that at the very least Huel will consider removing their suggestion about having less children from their public advertising. Joseph Stalin has infamously spoken about how the solution to what he perceives as the problems of humanity is to eliminate human life. For the life of me, no pun intended, I cannot fathom how that perception and worldview is any different from those who suggest that having fewer children is a “solution” to what is perceived to be an issue potentially facing mankind.
Human life is worthless as is the life of every being. A few days, years or decades on a bit of rock, death…and then most of us forgotten in a generation or two.
Neither. Like all of life on this planet we evolved after a fortunate set of coincidences brought the building blocks of life together. We could all just as easily not be here.
Yeah, the earth has been around for 4 and a half billion years give or take a day or two. If you condense that into 365 days, humans have only been around since after 11.30pm on 31st December. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a while but were wiped out on boxing day; apparently auntie Flo gave sent a belated asteroid, a bit like a rocky undercooked Brussels sprout which hit the earth and wiped them out. Before October there weren’t any multicellular inhabitants…we are here as @Tristan says due to luck (good or bad depending on how you look at it).
But if you had to pick one which would you pick? I would pick the first one because we’d be less inclined to act like arseholes. It’s also the plot of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
