[Truth To Power]

Which validates Marx’s emphasis on labour as the basis of all that is human.

No, it completely refutes it. Marx was totally wrong. Bees, beavers, and many other animals also labor. The basis of all that is human is our right to property in the fruits of our labor. That is what enables the technological progress, accumulation of producer goods, and consequent relief of scarcity that have made us the most reproductively competitive species ever.

We shape the world to meet human needs and this shape ourselves. An epistemology that doesn’t consider man inseparable from the natural world doesn’t recognize the distinctly human basis of our early beginnings to modern society in all its forms.

What distinguishes anatomically modern humans from progenitor and competitor hominids is our natural rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of our labor. That's how we defeated them all in the Darwinian competition to survive and reproduce.

[late]

No, it completely refutes it. Marx was totally wrong. Bees, beavers, and many other animals also labor. The basis of all that is human is our right to property in the fruits of our labor. That is what enables the technological progress, accumulation of producer goods, and consequent relief of scarcity that have made us the most reproductively competitive species ever.

What distinguishes anatomically modern humans from progenitor and competitor hominids is our natural rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of our labor. That's how we defeated them all in the Darwinian competition to survive and reproduce.

You just dropped Western thought into a blender and hit puree.

[Unthinking Majority]

They didn't have safe, reliable contraception, and women had no route to economic security but by marriage.

I agree young people don't want responsibility. The problem is that the specific responsibility of raising children now comes with a financial cyanide capsule as well as the unavoidable physical and emotional burdens.

I suspect there's more to it than that, like endocrine pollution.

They see how hard it is to raise a child, physically, emotionally and especially financially, and they don't want to go there.

I know why they don't want to raise kids. But it's a suicidal decision.

Most people are used to an easy life with many comforts. They want that to continue. Well congrats western civilization is dying as a result. Nature ensures the strong survive over the weak, this is no different.

[Potemkin]

I know why they don't want to raise kids. But it's a suicidal decision.

Most people are used to an easy life with many comforts. They want that to continue. Well congrats western civilization is dying as a result. Nature ensures the strong survive over the weak, this is no different.

Does it? Then why are the dinosaurs just fossils while the earthworms are still around doing their earthwormy-type thing? Does this mean that earthworms are ‘stronger’ than dinosaurs?

[Unthinking Majority]

Does it? Then why are the dinosaurs just fossils while the earthworms are still around doing their earthwormy-type thing? Does this mean that earthworms are ‘stronger’ than dinosaurs?

Yes. They're better able to adapt, survive, and procreate.

[Potemkin]

Yes. They're better able to adapt, survive, and procreate.

Then you mean “fittest” rather than “strongest”.

[Truth To Power]

You just dropped Western thought into a blender and hit puree.

Nah. I just trimmed the rotten parts.

[late]

Nah. I just trimmed the rotten parts.

Only in your dreams.

[Truth To Power]

I know why they don't want to raise kids. But it's a suicidal decision.

It's a decision made under duress.

Most people are used to an easy life with many comforts. They want that to continue. Well congrats western civilization is dying as a result. Nature ensures the strong survive over the weak, this is no different.

The specific institutional arrangements that make child-rearing so unattractive are part of Western civilization, true. Specifically, of capitalism. But it's an open question whether capitalism is central to Western civilization. IMO the West can supersede it, as it superseded slavery and is superseding Christianity.

[Unthinking Majority]

It's a decision made under duress.

Every other generation besides the boomers were poorer. It's not simply an economic decision. People don't want the responsibility.

[Steve_American]

Every other generation besides the boomers were poorer. It's not simply an economic decision. People don't want the responsibility.

Yes and no.

My seat of my pants estimate is that 50% of American women can't see how they can afford to pay the $200K over 23 years that it costs to raise a kid today.

The other 50% are either raising a kid or like you said don't want the responsibility or some other such reason.

.

[Truth To Power]

Every other generation besides the boomers were poorer.

They also didn't have safe, reliable contraception.

No generation before the boomers ever expected women to both raise children and sustain careers. Only a tiny minority of women have the stamina to do that without suffering physical and emotional burnout.

It's not simply an economic decision.

Obviously. But if you aren't addressing the institutional economic factors, it's hard to take your concern seriously.

People don't want the responsibility.

They also don't want the massive negative financial returns.

But more importantly, asking women to both work and raise children is supererogatory, and in the current economic environment, asking a man who is below the top 10% in earning power to be the sole breadwinner for a wife and kids is also supererogatory. Not rocket science.

[Unthinking Majority]

They also didn't have safe, reliable contraception.

No generation before the boomers ever expected women to both raise children and sustain careers. Only a tiny minority of women have the stamina to do that without suffering physical and emotional burnout.

Obviously. But if you aren't addressing the institutional economic factors, it's hard to take your concern seriously.

They also don't want the massive negative financial returns.

But more importantly, asking women to both work and raise children is supererogatory, and in the current economic environment, asking a man who is below the top 10% in earning power to be the sole breadwinner for a wife and kids is also supererogatory. Not rocket science.

Sure, more men should be picking up more of the child and domestic responsibilities too, and that's on them.

Whoever is to blame, whatever, there's enough to go around. The point is that western culture is ill and it is literally killing a civilization. It is an unsustainable culture that is doomed to go extinct unless something changes.

If westerners are ok with inviting South and East Asians into their country to pick up the slack in terms of population and replace western culture with East and South Asian culture well that's fine. I have no issues with these people in moderate numbers, however I would prefer not to go extinct. But it is offensive to even mention this, another ill part of our culture that is suicidal.

[QatzelOk]

I hate sounding like this, but it only took feminists 30-40 years to destroy the family unit.

You are not incorrect here, but your timeline is inaccurate.

Before Second Wave feminism, there was post-war suburbia and car culture. Post-war suburbia was lived in front of a TV screen - a major propaganda vehicle. People were psychologically manipulated into accepting career transfers - which broke up the extended families that children have always depended upon.

And then the vast, unsafe distances created by sprawl (and its killer road network)... along with the sealed alienation of car culture (the community is sealed in metal cages, away from the children who require community)... and then the introduction of mass media propaganda in the home (replacing the natural socialization of the community that has been destroyed)....

All of this preceded the Second Wave feminism that made long-term marriage impossible.

...As a philosophical idealist, he places an absolute divide between humanity and nature. He doesn't want us to shape the world to meet human needs, and thereby shape ourselves. He wants us to leave nature alone, as though the Neolithic Revolution had never happened. Marx understood that labour is our connection with the natural world, and is the only truly creative force. Abstract thinking limps along in a poor second place.

"he places an absolute divide between humanity and nature."

No I don't. The place an absolute divide between technology and nature.

" He doesn't want us to shape the world to meet human needs,"

Jet-skis, leaf-blowers, and nuclear wars... are not human needs. Re-shaping nature should never be an end in itself as this will inevitably lead to a total inability to meet any human needs. Many of the needs of children (community, extended family, a safe environment, economic stability, solid local traditions) have already been destroyed by technologies (chainsaws, not teeth).

"He wants us to leave nature alone, as though the Neolithic Revolution had never happened"

No, I want us to stop destroying nature. And humans were interacting with nature before the Neolithic Revolution, so you are constructing your criticism of my texts using falsified descriptions of my central thesis. Strawmen.

So unlike you! What's up with that?