topics
discussion notes
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Why people are not having children
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In Australia, people don’t seem to want to have children. Leave them with a nanny.
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In Sweden, people seem to want children, but are not in a stable relationship and lack the financial stability.
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In Colombia, people are having children early.
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Women seek other ways to fill their life with meaning → career
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Women try to attract men the way men attract women (with status/resources)
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Does it work? Men seem to value financial independence.
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Why? To not get tricked (used for money). Because having two incomes makes a big difference. To make sure that she will have something to rely on if he disappears (e.g. dies).
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Dreams
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Contradictions in the bible: sacrifice completeness for coherence, like dreams.
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Genesis
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Religion: how do we know if there is a god or not?
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Western individualism: the group serves the individual, because the individual revivifies the group - if the individual is subordinate to the group, the group stagnates.
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Why? Because reality is too complex for an individual to understand → we need individuals with different ideas/approaches → it will be visible which individuals have the best ideas/approaches → the group can be revivified.
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If the group is superordinate to the individual, the group will decide on a direction → because of the complexity of reality, it is unlikely to be the correct direction → no chance of changing, since individuals are subordinate → the group stagnates.
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No direction can be correct and stay correct, since the world changes → you need to be able to adapt → that’s why stagnation is dangerous.
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Why is having children (in some parts of the world) not viewed as something praiseworthy?
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Everyone has children → not difficult or exceptional, just normal
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Viewed as something good by relatives, but not by society
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Society views having children as a personal decision which is selfish (you do it because you want to and not in order to benefit someone else - not necessarily selfish as in bad for others).
- Not entirely wrong - people have children for their own benefit and not for the benefit of society - but it is an incomplete view, since children benefit society. Also, the children themselves benefit, since they get to live.
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Uncertainty (back to the question about why people are not having children)
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People have options today that they didn’t have before → responsibility, because it is your fault if you make the wrong decisions.
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The responsibility might make people fear uncertainty.
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The fear of uncertainty leads people to take precautions (e.g. women making sure they are not financially dependent on their partner), which results in fear of having children, not being able to have as many children or not having children.
- These precautions might make people less dependent on each other in a relationship → higher risk of ending the relationship
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Parents separating after having children
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The new partners of the parents create complexity
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Not good for the children (higher cortisol level, fight over territory, fight over attention from the parent).
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