Uh… which side of the argument is motivated by religion/ moralizing?
I don’t think flowers desire to reproduce. Some evolutionary lines are happy accidents. Also many trees only survive by living in a relationship with a fungus. Their reproduction relies solely on a symbiotic relationship. So no desire there. The ability to reproduce is present in all living creatures, but I disagree that there is an element of desire present in all reproductive cycles.[/quote]Plants don’t have instincts; but if they did, they would be sex maniacs.[/quote]
And plants would be horny for bees which would be considered immoral to have such cross-species relations.
I don’t think flowers desire to reproduce. Some evolutionary lines are happy accidents. Also many trees only survive by living in a relationship with a fungus. Their reproduction relies solely on a symbiotic relationship. So no desire there. The ability to reproduce is present in all living creatures, but I disagree that there is an element of desire present in all reproductive cycles.[/quote]Plants don’t have instincts; but if they did, they would be sex maniacs.[/quote]
Do plants not use light as a motive power? How about a plants ability to supply and withdraw chlorophyll? Is that not instinctual?
Also, couldn’t one argue that humans don’t have insticnts? Instinct is unlearned behaviour. Humans have the ability a fine tune their instincts, thus rendering them mind rules, rather than actual instincts. The trick to evolution is parsimony.
Do plants not use light as a motive power? How about a plants ability to supply and withdraw chlorophyll? Is that not instinctual?
Also, couldn’t one argue that humans don’t have insticnts? Instinct is unlearned behaviour. Humans have the ability a fine tune their instincts, thus rendering them mind rules, rather than actual instincts. The trick to evolution is parsimony.[/quote]I dunno, but I’ve never had my leg shagged by a horny shrub. Yet.
It’s nothing to do with magnaminity. My question is: Why do people insist on having children that come from their gene pool? If you want a child, why not adopt one?
Caveat emptor?
Because we wish to see ourselves recast?
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
So thou through windows of thine age shall see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time…
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tomb’d with thee,
Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.
Mr/Ms Jaboney thank you for your reply. So it is ultimately an instinctual thing to overpopulate (and by proxy) starve our planet into self-annihilation. Some real ammunition for the rabid evolution naysayers at last.
[quote=“jimipresley”]Mr/Ms Jaboney thank you for your reply. So it is ultimately an instinctual thing to overpopulate (and by proxy) starve our planet into self-annihilation.[/quote]Yes [quote]Some real ammunition for the rabid evolution[/quote] naysayers at last.[/quote]On the contrary… our genes are more suited to life many of thousands ago as I already said, when shagging and eating as much as possible was the recipe to survival. It’s only in the past couple of centuries that adoption and plentiful food has been available. We are mere sperm in the life of er… life
If we were programmed to live in today’s life, we wouldn’t need those genes.
There’s nothing moral about evolution. It’s survival of those that shag the most.
Don’t male lions (might be something else, so don’t hold me to that) kill the babies of other fathers to make sure their genes survive? Completely immoral, due to evolution.
[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]
Don’t male lions (might be something else, so don’t hold me to that) kill the babies of other fathers to make sure their genes survive? Completely immoral, due to evolution.[/quote]
We are not lions, nor are we cockroaches. The analogy is superfluous. Humans are at the the highest point of the evolutionary ladder and food chain. Surely I don’t need to give a first-year anthropology lesson?
Mr DrMcoy. one can always rely on you to bring irony to an otherwise inane conversation. 
Is anyone going to answer my question? Only Jaboney and Buttercup have attempted. The rest of you have just gone “blah blah blah”.
I actually knew a couple who had decided not to have their own children, but to instead only adopt. They went through the entire process. In the end they decided not to adopt because it was too stringent. They would have to agree to random house visits for the lives of the kids, would have to keep the agency up-to-date on all of their information. They felt like instead of getting a kid, they were getting government constraints. They both had Ph.D., were both securely employed, had no criminal records, had a great house, would have been great adoptive parents. And they really believed in adopting over making new babies. Now they have two homemade kids. It’s sad. In the states 25% of my students either had a kid or were pregnant. I taught high school. No one will be doing house visits for these girls. But you get a qualified couple and they are treated poorly.
I also have a friend who just adopted, but refused to adopt from the US. Again, too stringent. She adopted from a South American country instead.
[quote=“Buttercup”]
How is adoption a hugely different urge? It’s still a way of recreating that small family scenario for our own benefit. [/quote]
The “urge” is not the issue. What confounds me is the fact that people conciously choose to bring their offspring into an already overcrowded world teeming with unwanted and disposessed sprogs. Sorry, but it seems immensely selfish and egocentric to me. People will happily pay lip-service to the poor abandoned puppies and kittens, and encourage adoption, but the right to your own progeny remains sacrosanct. I don’t buy it. Bad advertising.
adoption is a noble cause, but we are hard-wired to reproduce in our own image. it is tough to change that.
People are not plants, but people are not pets either. I think, Mr. Presley, that your vision of the world is much too negative. I don’t accept your question as being fair or rational. Having kids is not selfish. The world is not vastly overcrowded. You seem to be suggesting that nobody should have children. Adoption is a wonderful thing too.
You seek an answer to a question you have already answered. That’s more like seeking approval. Well, you have it from me, and I have the scars to prove it.
It’s a touchy subject. As seen in Maoman’s reaction, no one wants to be told that they are selfish or whatever else. This thread could turn into a shit fest within a split second. Simply put, it’s not so much selfishness, so much as people are desensitized enough that they can make wrong choices comfortably.
I know I won’t be very popular with the parents who post here.
ALL
my fucking friend now have kids. All of them. Martin has two boys, Burt has two girls, Jacynthe has three boys, Naomie and Pauline both gave birth recently, etc, etc, etc. It’s contagious, apparently. I don’t hate them for it, but I wish they invested so much of their life(which is a whole lot if that is what they choose to do) making a difference in the lives of already existing little people, who otherwise, will most likely have a miserable existence if any.
This is really not complicated at all. I think you made a solid point when you mentioned adopting strays instead of breeding dogs. Except it’s people we are talking about, here. There’s no way most of my friends (and most people for that matter) would have chosen to procreate had they actually had a chance to hold a homeless child in their arms. I’m sure of that. If you put a small child in front of them and made it clear that if they procreate instead of adopting the child in question, the child will remain unwanted, they would bring the child home. But it doesn’t happen quite that way, although in reality, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Now some people may say that in the picture it may not make a difference, but that would be like saying that if everyone who buys a pet in Taiwan would rescue one instead, there would be the same amount of strays on the street anyways. It just doesn’t add up. And again, it’s people we are talking about.
This to say that I think you are posing a very good question, Mr. jimipresly.
Adoption can be more painstaking in some countries, but well worth it, IMO. It certainly isn’t that hard, here, in Taiwan. A former Canadian co-teacher and his wife, also a Canadian, have adopted a baby in Kaohsiung. Within a few months, the child was bearing their names legally, and they are now forming a happy family with this little Taiwanese person they call their daughter. It’s just wonderful.
Kids do die each minute because they have no one to care for them, Good Dr. That’s not being negative, it’s reality.
marb
I’ll say it one more time.
Kids are not pets.
[quote=“Dr. McCoy”]I’ll say it one more time.
Kids are not pets.[/quote]
No, they are far more important(to us) is what they are. That makes jimi’s point that much more disturbing.
marb