This may be the most uninformed and ridiculous comment ever. Having kids does not mean you can't do what you love. It means you get to share that love and passion with a person so enormously important to you that everything else pales in comparison. It's the best feeling in the world. You say you should throw what you love away when you have kids - I'd say you have no idea what love is until you have kids.
People like you are just compensating for your complete lack of original ideas, convictions, and security. You're probably 23 years old.
Let me guess, you are upper middle class, with a masters degree, who happens to have your dream job so you can come to Slashdot and lecture us lesser people who are younger and probably will never have the perfect job where we do what we love and get rich while doing it.
Lets be realistic here, most of us don't get to have the dream job. Most of us don't enjoy getting MBA's, or masters degrees in boring yet high paying subjects when we could be going to concerts, drinking, getting high, and partying 24/7 for the rest of our lives.
Most people don't enjoy 12 hour shifts doing boring paper work. Most of us probably don't even get paid well for the work we do!
You act like security is free, as if you can get security without sacrifice, but that's IMPOSSIBLE.
People who don't sacrifice are called starving artists, and society treats these people as bums. And sure, they do what they love every single day, but what they love doesn't give them enough money to keep a girlfriend, so they can forget about getting married, and to even think about having kids when you have no reliable income is insane.
Sometimes the only way to have security is to sacrifice happiness. That's just how capitalism is, we can't all get the dream job and make the money, so only those who sacrifice the most tend to get it.
If you don't love taking care of your kids, then what you love is no longer rational. Rational sometimes feels bad, doing whats right may not be what you love to do, but to not do whats right because you don't love doing it, is selfish.
I'm not saying that it's the sole measure of success, but it's one of the most important measures of success. A father is a provider as well as a mentor.
And the cost of raising children is not going down, it's going up, so there is reason to think that during a recession with a falling dollar and rise in the cost of oil, along with climate change, that perhaps that drop in income could make a HUGE impact on the life of the children.
Sometimes a small drop in income can make the difference between the children going to private school and getting into an ivy league university, and going to public school and getting an overall shitty education leading to community college (not that anything is wrong with the community college route since thats the route I took.)
Money is becoming more important every day due to climate change and the reduction of opportunity.
1. Climate change increases the cost of providing physical security for your children. The cost of climate change could include increased health care costs for your children due to environmental pollution (lead in toys, asthma etc)
2. The cost of creating opportunity for your children is increasing, no longer is it enough for your child to just graduate from highschool to get an opportunity to live like your parents did, now your child has to graduate with a masters degree just to live the sorta life we expect and want them to live.
There is just no way to give your children a quality life on the cheap in a capitalist country like America. This is not Sweden.
If you have one point it's a lot easier to stay focused. You can at least admit that by simplification you can create a laser like focus which can make it a lot easier to keep your priorities straight than if you create a map of purposes.
Besides, what other purposes can you list besides kids? After the kids leave the next, your job in life is done, you can retire and wait to die, or you can finally do what you love and not need to have a purpose anymore.
If you are one of these people who believe in serving society at the expense of your wife and childrens future, then you doom your children into a poverty cycle.
This is the problem, the servants of society have no security at all for themselves or their kids. Yet they feel good inside knowing they are serving society.
What you are doing is dangerous. You have a lot of integrity for doing it, but I think you are serving a society that doesn't give a shit about you, your family, etc and your energy would be better focused if you served only your family and yourself and stopped worrying about society.
But I'm not you, so you can disregard my opinions on this. I'm the cynical one and you're the idealist.
The person who asked Slashdot said they had a wife and kids. Read the original post.
Secondly, YOUR family is YOUR kids. Your parents family is YOU. But you cannot claim to have a family of your own until you create that family yourself, it's not something you can inherit and call it yours.
Now, that being said, not all concepts of family are biological, but or sake of this discussion, thats how I defined family. You can have a family built up of friends if you choose.
But the truth is, if you think that sacrificing for family is a hellish existence, then you are better off not having kids unless you want to lose the freedom which you currently value. You cannot have the freedom you value and have kids, that much is a given.
Having kids truly is the end of life as you know it. And if you want to call it a hellish existence, then for you having kids would be the beginning of the hellish existence and this is why birth control is so important. And believe me, I don't blame you, I don't want kids right now either,
but I do want kids someday because I know my parents wont live forever, and I have to be loved by SOMEBODY.
The system of society, the game which we all are forced to play, is a game of sacrifice. The parents must sacrifice their happiness to protect their children in many cases.
If you are the lowest class, this is definately the case. How else are you going to afford for the private school education that your child will require? So you must sacrifice your happiness by working at the job you hate simply because this job allows your child to go to private school.
Because your child went to private school, now your child got into Yale, has an MBA from Harvard, and now has the opportunity to make millions of dollars, freeing your grand children from this cycle.
In this example it's worth it that you sacrificed your youth and happiness because now your grandchildren have a life that is so much better than yours that they can focus their entire life on figuring out how to be happy. They'll never have to worry about survival, they'll never have to worry about how to pay for private school for their kids.
The point is, in order to break the cycle of poverty you have to sacrifice your happiness. The reason most people are unable to break that cycle is because they think like you, believing that happiness is the most important.
This is why so many people who are born in ghettos die there, and their kids are thus doomed to a life just as bad if not worse. In my opinion, if you aren't going to try to sacrifice your happiness, you probably shouldn't be having kids, because you are going to have kids.
Just because some people managed to raise a kid in Africa and have that kid go to Harvard in the USA, and be successful, it does no mean everyone will be that lucky.
You have parents who are the perfect parents, who raise their kids in poverty, and their kids become drug addicts in the ghettos or trailer parks because their kids decided to do what they love rather than sacrifice.
You don't seem to understand that happiness is not an option for every individual and every family. Survival comes before happiness, and in some families and environments in this country and even moreso globally, the only option you'll get as a parent is to watch your kids die in front of you, or sacrifice your happiness.
You act like there are good schools in the urban ghettos in this country. You act like society gives a chance to homeless people. If you aren't making any money your woman will leave you, and if you make too much money your woman wont be happy but at least you're kids will have a chance to go to school to study music, or art, or film and not be forced to go to law school, or join the military, or go to prison.
You act as if there are all these options that are just give to people, as if there are all these opportunities that are just being handed out. The truth is, all opportunities are created through sacrifice, and these sacrifices most often are a sacrifice of happiness for security. Sometimes you just don't get the cards that allow you to have both at once.
1. You sacrifice your life so your children have a slightly better life.
2. Your children sacrifice their lives so their children can have a better life.
Over a period of generations you aren't poor anymore, you aren't living in the ghetto anymore, now you're a rich family of millionaires who have made it.
Think of the Trump family, the Hilton family, or any of the other success stories. The point is, you sacrifice now so your offspring has it easier.
That is the reason why people go to college. That is the reason why capitalism works. No one works for the money, we work for our families. And if you make a whole lot of money then you leave that excess money to your offspring who actually WILL get the option to do what they love.
I know I won't be able to do what I love, but by not doing what I love, my offspring will be able to do what they love. It's a big game, learn to play it.
The only reward you'll ever get out of life is, perhaps after all your sacrifice, your babies that you raised to become adults, will love you and be there for you when you grow old.
And if you are really lucky, maybe your partner will also love you and be there. The reward is love and family.
What else matters beyond love and family? Don't most of us want that?
You're right, if you are single with no kids then you can do what you love. If want a girlfriend or wife, then you have to do some things you don't like doing, and if you have a wife and kids you might have to do some things you hate.
If you want to do what you love for all of your life, you shouldn't have kids. The moment you have kids, what you love no longer matters anymore.
The moment you have kids, all your hopes, your dreams, you can throw all of it in the trash. Once you have those kids your purpose in life is those kids and nothing else matters besides those kids.
Just because you feel like doing something else it doesn't change the fact that your purpose in life is to protect your family (your kids). It does not change the fact that you are the only person in the world who can protect them, and they need you.
So what you love doesn't have anything to do with how able you are to provide to your children. You might not love IT anymore, but if it pays well, nothing else matters because the whole point to your existence is to protect and raise children.
If you aren't having kids, then the situation is different. If you don't want kids then you are free to do whatever makes you happy for the whole of your entire life. As long as it pays decent, you'll probably find and keep a woman somewhere in between.
We sacrifice all the time to get what we want or need out of life.
We go to college, sacrificing our youth so that when the time comes we can afford/support to maintain a wife and child (family).
What is the cost of maintaining a family? Often we have to settle for a boring yet high paying career path because thats what will get us the woman of our dreams.
Despite what people say, women want men who have good high paying jobs rather than men who are happy but total bums. And children NEED a parent who makes enough money to protect them.
You have to protect them by raising them in a nice neighborhood. You have to protect them by putting them in private school so they can get a good education. You have to protect them using your high salary.
The cost of getting and maintaining a family continues to increase, and despite what anyone says, it's not and never has been free. Families are expensive, and require total devotion and sacrifice to maintain.
Everything should be a means to an end with the goal being to protect and support your family.
If your job pays good money, be a man and provider and sacrifice your happiness so your child can have a better life. Having 8 hours of boring yet high paying work is better than having 8 hours of fun yet low paying work, because the boring life is better for your wife and kids welfare.
Come on man, don't you care about freedom? The people who support outsourcing are corporatists. They don't give a shit about people in either country, they worship corporations.
Corporations have replaced the ancient Gods of old.
If Bill Clinton can tell you what you want and think and you'll just accept it.. and if Microsoft can tell you what you want and think and you'll just accept it. Why should I think of you as a free thinker?
If they steal windows thats copyright infringement. They'll be treated as terrorists and killed by blackwater or some faction of private army controlled by the copyright holders.
The last thing we need to do is criminalized the third world. It's people who think like you, who supported the war on drugs in an effort to criminalized the ghettos. It's people who think like you who do everything you can to support the construction of prisons.
You voted for George W Bush didn't you? Sure you might not admit it now, but we all know who you voted for and whats in your heart. You sir are a neo-conservative pro war corporatist.
Windows has a broken random number generator. All encryption on windows therefore has a backdoor built in. I wouldn't recommend any electronic communications if I were the lawyer unless they were smart enough to use something other than windows.
Freedom is not subjective. It can be scientifically measured and is therefore objective.
If you want to use your freedom to vote us all into a global prison, then you are objectively and scientifically anti-freedom and using your freedom to rob others of their freedom.
Freedom does not mean you have a right to sell yourself into slavery, because if we include that ability then that reduces freedom for everyone else as well. If we were to allow slavery that would create an environment where they will be less freedom for us all.
I promote only the kind of freedom that promotes freedom. I don't promote the kind of freedom that promotes slavery.
So I guess I believe the best Tyrants are the constitutionally recognized sort who let me do whatever I want with my life. If you want a Tyrant that will micro-manage every aspect of your life, then we just disagree.
But to expect no Tyrants at all is to be an anarchist. So we have to pick the BEST version of freedom.
There are some people out there who view the children in the third world more as pets than as independent individuals who are capable of providing for themselves.
Why should children in the third world be forced to depend on US corporations? How are they ever going to get out of poverty if we don't teach them to fish?
How are they supposed to create a workplace when you give them LIMITS and reduce freedom with closed source snareware?
The goal shouldn't be to train them for jobs that don't exist. The goal should be to train them to be innovators, to create their own jobs and markets.
Slashdot Mirror
People like you are just compensating for your complete lack of original ideas, convictions, and security. You're probably 23 years old.
Let me guess, you are upper middle class, with a masters degree, who happens to have your dream job so you can come to Slashdot and lecture us lesser people who are younger and probably will never have the perfect job where we do what we love and get rich while doing it.Lets be realistic here, most of us don't get to have the dream job. Most of us don't enjoy getting MBA's, or masters degrees in boring yet high paying subjects when we could be going to concerts, drinking, getting high, and partying 24/7 for the rest of our lives.
Most people don't enjoy 12 hour shifts doing boring paper work. Most of us probably don't even get paid well for the work we do!
You act like security is free, as if you can get security without sacrifice, but that's IMPOSSIBLE.
People who don't sacrifice are called starving artists, and society treats these people as bums.
And sure, they do what they love every single day, but what they love doesn't give them enough money to keep a girlfriend, so they can forget about getting married, and to even think about having kids when you have no reliable income is insane.
Sometimes the only way to have security is to sacrifice happiness. That's just how capitalism is, we can't all get the dream job and make the money, so only those who sacrifice the most tend to get it.
If you don't love taking care of your kids, then what you love is no longer rational. Rational sometimes feels bad, doing whats right may not be what you love to do, but to not do whats right because you don't love doing it, is selfish.
I'm not saying that it's the sole measure of success, but it's one of the most important measures of success. A father is a provider as well as a mentor.
And the cost of raising children is not going down, it's going up, so there is reason to think that during a recession with a falling dollar and rise in the cost of oil, along with climate change, that perhaps that drop in income could make a HUGE impact on the life of the children.
Sometimes a small drop in income can make the difference between the children going to private school and getting into an ivy league university, and going to public school and getting an overall shitty education leading to community college (not that anything is wrong with the community college route since thats the route I took.)
Money is becoming more important every day due to climate change and the reduction of opportunity.
1. Climate change increases the cost of providing physical security for your children. The cost of climate change could include increased health care costs for your children due to environmental pollution (lead in toys, asthma etc)
2. The cost of creating opportunity for your children is increasing, no longer is it enough for your child to just graduate from highschool to get an opportunity to live like your parents did, now your child has to graduate with a masters degree just to live the sorta life we expect and want them to live.
There is just no way to give your children a quality life on the cheap in a capitalist country like America. This is not Sweden.
If you have one point it's a lot easier to stay focused. You can at least admit that by simplification you can create a laser like focus which can make it a lot easier to keep your priorities straight than if you create a map of purposes.
Besides, what other purposes can you list besides kids? After the kids leave the next, your job in life is done, you can retire and wait to die, or you can finally do what you love and not need to have a purpose anymore.
If you are one of these people who believe in serving society at the expense of your wife and childrens future, then you doom your children into a poverty cycle.
This is the problem, the servants of society have no security at all for themselves or their kids. Yet they feel good inside knowing they are serving society.
What you are doing is dangerous. You have a lot of integrity for doing it, but I think you are serving a society that doesn't give a shit about you, your family, etc and your energy would be better focused if you served only your family and yourself and stopped worrying about society.
But I'm not you, so you can disregard my opinions on this. I'm the cynical one and you're the idealist.
The person who asked Slashdot said they had a wife and kids. Read the original post.
Secondly, YOUR family is YOUR kids. Your parents family is YOU. But you cannot claim to have a family of your own until you create that family yourself, it's not something you can inherit and call it yours.
Now, that being said, not all concepts of family are biological, but or sake of this discussion, thats how I defined family. You can have a family built up of friends if you choose.
But the truth is, if you think that sacrificing for family is a hellish existence, then you are better off not having kids unless you want to lose the freedom which you currently value. You cannot have the freedom you value and have kids, that much is a given.
Having kids truly is the end of life as you know it. And if you want to call it a hellish existence, then for you having kids would be the beginning of the hellish existence and this is why birth control is so important. And believe me, I don't blame you, I don't want kids right now either,
but I do want kids someday because I know my parents wont live forever, and I have to be loved by SOMEBODY.
The system of society, the game which we all are forced to play, is a game of sacrifice. The parents must sacrifice their happiness to protect their children in many cases.
If you are the lowest class, this is definately the case. How else are you going to afford for the private school education that your child will require? So you must sacrifice your happiness by working at the job you hate simply because this job allows your child to go to private school.
Because your child went to private school, now your child got into Yale, has an MBA from Harvard, and now has the opportunity to make millions of dollars, freeing your grand children from this cycle.
In this example it's worth it that you sacrificed your youth and happiness because now your grandchildren have a life that is so much better than yours that they can focus their entire life on figuring out how to be happy. They'll never have to worry about survival, they'll never have to worry about how to pay for private school for their kids.
The point is, in order to break the cycle of poverty you have to sacrifice your happiness. The reason most people are unable to break that cycle is because they think like you, believing that happiness is the most important.
This is why so many people who are born in ghettos die there, and their kids are thus doomed to a life just as bad if not worse. In my opinion, if you aren't going to try to sacrifice your happiness, you probably shouldn't be having kids, because you are going to have kids.
Just because some people managed to raise a kid in Africa and have that kid go to Harvard in the USA, and be successful, it does no mean everyone will be that lucky.
You have parents who are the perfect parents, who raise their kids in poverty, and their kids become drug addicts in the ghettos or trailer parks because their kids decided to do what they love rather than sacrifice.
You don't seem to understand that happiness is not an option for every individual and every family. Survival comes before happiness, and in some families and environments in this country and even moreso globally, the only option you'll get as a parent is to watch your kids die in front of you, or sacrifice your happiness.
You act like there are good schools in the urban ghettos in this country. You act like society gives a chance to homeless people. If you aren't making any money your woman will leave you, and if you make too much money your woman wont be happy but at least you're kids will have a chance to go to school to study music, or art, or film and not be forced to go to law school, or join the military, or go to prison.
You act as if there are all these options that are just give to people, as if there are all these opportunities that are just being handed out. The truth is, all opportunities are created through sacrifice, and these sacrifices most often are a sacrifice of happiness for security. Sometimes you just don't get the cards that allow you to have both at once.
The way out of the ghetto is sacrifice.
1. You sacrifice your life so your children have a slightly better life.
2. Your children sacrifice their lives so their children can have a better life.
Over a period of generations you aren't poor anymore, you aren't living in the ghetto anymore, now you're a rich family of millionaires who have made it.
Think of the Trump family, the Hilton family, or any of the other success stories. The point is, you sacrifice now so your offspring has it easier.
That is the reason why people go to college. That is the reason why capitalism works. No one works for the money, we work for our families. And if you make a whole lot of money then you leave that excess money to your offspring who actually WILL get the option to do what they love.
I know I won't be able to do what I love, but by not doing what I love, my offspring will be able to do what they love. It's a big game, learn to play it.
The only reward you'll ever get out of life is, perhaps after all your sacrifice, your babies that you raised to become adults, will love you and be there for you when you grow old.
And if you are really lucky, maybe your partner will also love you and be there. The reward is love and family.
What else matters beyond love and family? Don't most of us want that?
The important question to ask, if it worth it to get married and have kids?
Right now it probably isn't. That's why fewer and fewer people are having kids.
Everyone dreams about having the dream job and the dream life with the perfect family and picket fence.
But thats an unrealistic goal. So sure, you can search for jobs but during a recession?
You're right, if you are single with no kids then you can do what you love. If want a girlfriend or wife, then you have to do some things you don't like doing, and if you have a wife and kids you might have to do some things you hate.
If you want to do what you love for all of your life, you shouldn't have kids. The moment you have kids, what you love no longer matters anymore.
The moment you have kids, all your hopes, your dreams, you can throw all of it in the trash. Once you have those kids your purpose in life is those kids and nothing else matters besides those kids.
Just because you feel like doing something else it doesn't change the fact that your purpose in life is to protect your family (your kids). It does not change the fact that you are the only person in the world who can protect them, and they need you.
So what you love doesn't have anything to do with how able you are to provide to your children. You might not love IT anymore, but if it pays well, nothing else matters because the whole point to your existence is to protect and raise children.
If you aren't having kids, then the situation is different. If you don't want kids then you are free to do whatever makes you happy for the whole of your entire life. As long as it pays decent, you'll probably find and keep a woman somewhere in between.
We sacrifice all the time to get what we want or need out of life.
We go to college, sacrificing our youth so that when the time comes we can afford/support to maintain a wife and child (family).
What is the cost of maintaining a family? Often we have to settle for a boring yet high paying career path because thats what will get us the woman of our dreams.
Despite what people say, women want men who have good high paying jobs rather than men who are happy but total bums. And children NEED a parent who makes enough money to protect them.
You have to protect them by raising them in a nice neighborhood. You have to protect them by putting them in private school so they can get a good education. You have to protect them using your high salary.
The cost of getting and maintaining a family continues to increase, and despite what anyone says, it's not and never has been free. Families are expensive, and require total devotion and sacrifice to maintain.
Everything should be a means to an end with the goal being to protect and support your family.
If your job pays good money, be a man and provider and sacrifice your happiness so your child can have a better life. Having 8 hours of boring yet high paying work is better than having 8 hours of fun yet low paying work, because the boring life is better for your wife and kids welfare.
There aren't any jobs in Africa.
Come on man, don't you care about freedom?
The people who support outsourcing are corporatists. They don't give a shit about people in either country, they worship corporations.
Corporations have replaced the ancient Gods of old.
If Bill Clinton can tell you what you want and think and you'll just accept it.. and if Microsoft can tell you what you want and think and you'll just accept it. Why should I think of you as a free thinker?
If they steal windows thats copyright infringement. They'll be treated as terrorists and killed by blackwater or some faction of private army controlled by the copyright holders.
The last thing we need to do is criminalized the third world. It's people who think like you, who supported the war on drugs in an effort to criminalized the ghettos. It's people who think like you who do everything you can to support the construction of prisons.
You voted for George W Bush didn't you? Sure you might not admit it now, but we all know who you voted for and whats in your heart. You sir are a neo-conservative pro war corporatist.
Windows has a broken random number generator. All encryption on windows therefore has a backdoor built in. I wouldn't recommend any electronic communications if I were the lawyer unless they were smart enough to use something other than windows.
Freedom is not subjective. It can be scientifically measured and is therefore objective.
If you want to use your freedom to vote us all into a global prison, then you are objectively and scientifically anti-freedom and using your freedom to rob others of their freedom.
Freedom does not mean you have a right to sell yourself into slavery, because if we include that ability then that reduces freedom for everyone else as well. If we were to allow slavery that would create an environment where they will be less freedom for us all.
I promote only the kind of freedom that promotes freedom. I don't promote the kind of freedom that promotes slavery.
So I guess I believe the best Tyrants are the constitutionally recognized sort who let me do whatever I want with my life. If you want a Tyrant that will micro-manage every aspect of your life, then we just disagree.
But to expect no Tyrants at all is to be an anarchist. So we have to pick the BEST version of freedom.
Thats illogical. If you want to use your freedom to destroy freedom, then you are an enemy of freedom and why should you have freedom if you hate it.
Why not give them better than what we had?
There are some people out there who view the children in the third world more as pets than as independent individuals who are capable of providing for themselves.
Why should children in the third world be forced to depend on US corporations? How are they ever going to get out of poverty if we don't teach them to fish?
How are they supposed to create a workplace when you give them LIMITS and reduce freedom with closed source snareware?
The goal shouldn't be to train them for jobs that don't exist. The goal should be to train them to be innovators, to create their own jobs and markets.