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  • From: Diana Duncan <dianaduncan AT contentdb.net>
  • To: thomas AT tbeckett.com, "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Population [was Representation [was Candidate Match for Pres]]
  • Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 17:38:55 -0500


On Thursday, Feb 12, 2004, at 15:28 US/Eastern, Thomas Beckett wrote:

Diana Duncan wrote:


As a personal choice, I prefer to limit my offspring.

Caelan: "Mo-oooom, you never let me do /anything/!"

Hee hee!


However, what worries me is that it seems that only stupid people have lots of children nowadays.

Diane, you're veering into elitist Social Darwinism here. It's an easy conclusion to make, but only from a pretty narrow perspective.

Yeah, it's actually bullshit. I often have these Social Darwinist thoughts, then slap myself around and remind myself of the following: who makes the determinations? Hence the WARNING at the top of my post. Who's going to decide who the stupid people are? I'd like to retract any mention I made of "educated" vs. "uneducated" as I've met plenty of stupid educated people and damn smart uneducated people. I meant to keep the terms purely smart vs. idiots. :)

Most educated people are concerned with careers and with providing safe, happy upbringings for their children, and rightly conclude that smaller families make this more likely. Uneducated or extremely religious folks make the opposite choice.

Umm, like the offspring of Prescott Bush?

Yes.

IMO, every baby born is a roll of the dice. A child's social environment does not determine his or her cultural or political destiny as an adult. Some of the brightest, most politically progressive people I know come from lower-income families. And frankly, there are lots of extremely intelligent and wealthy neoconservatives getting educated at Duke and UNC both. I met them in large numbers when I studied at both places.

OK, I completely agree with the roll of the dice. Given the tendency for offspring to rebel, Caelan may turn out to be his generation's Pat Robertson or John Ashcroft. But where did I mention income? Not that you are imputing that I did, but I'd like to make it clear that income was not one of my parameters.

Anyway, I guess I really am in a weird mood today. Fun! I still worry about overpopulation as a serious problem. On the other hand, I'm delighted at all the people I know having babies. Maybe because I don't know stupid people. :P

Diana





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