Author Emily Holleman wrote recently on New York magazine’s website The Cut that “the decision to have children has always struck me as an essentially selfish one: You choose, out of a desire for fulfillment or self-betterment or curiosity or boredom or baby-mania or peer pressure, to bring a new human into this world. And it has never seemed more selfish than today.”
Holleman is an author, so we should expect her to write in dramatic and evocative terms — her piece is about the “end times” and the “apocalypse.” And by the end of the piece, she finds herself inexplicably hopeful. So this isn’t a comment on Holleman’s piece, per se, but on the sentiment expressed in it: that having children is selfish and harms the planet.
Recommended Stories
It’s an increasingly common sentiment. Again and again these days, I read writers or talk to neighbors who, when they look at other humans, they see 58.6 tons of carbon per year, or they see a vector for coronavirus. Or, depending on the other person’s skin color or sex, they see someone who is probably deeply racist or a sexual predator.
It’s gotten so that one of the greatest thought crimes today is hope or optimism.
When you centre your identity around grievance, those who are happy with their lives represent a betrayal pic.twitter.com/vWio6zslXk
— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) May 11, 2021
This view that other people are bad is sad and incorrect, and here’s one way to see how incorrect it is:
The quality of human life goes up and down over time. But look at human history in large segments — maybe 100 years, maybe 500. Life today is better than it was 500 years ago, which was better than it was 500 years before that. We’re generally on an upward slope. What’s making human life better? Is it reptiles? Is it aliens? Is it sunspots?
No, it’s humans. Humans, through science and art, innovate to make life better. Simply with more people, we make possible gains through trade.
And the value of people is more fundamental than that.
Other humans give us someone to love. And loving other people is the best way to be loved ourselves.
So maybe, if you suffer from civilizational sadness and believe that hell is other people, your problem is that you don’t realize that you, yourself, are good.
But you are good. God loves you. So make some more of you, and know that you are giving a gift to the world.
