Today I have read an interesting article/comment in a Swiss newspaper. The newspaper is very conservative but very liberal on assisted suicide and criticizes the German media for stigmatizing this topic. But the article which I read was a statement against the Birth striker movement. They used this term. I never heard of it. I think antinatalism is more widespread. But I think birth striker refer only to women.
I read a lot of stuff which would be pretty unpopular in this forum. So I translate it for you guys so that we both can get mad. It is really long. It is not ideal you cannot read it it is only available in German.
www.nzz.ch
Here is the link if you want to use google translator. I don't have much time left this evening but I will try my best.
The title is the World is way better than you think. The world develops in the right direction in so many instances. But noone wants to acknowledge that fact.
If you think the world is horrible and full of suffering you share the same opinion as the majority. They also believe in the past everything was better. The majority falsely believes: the poverty was growing, the armed conflicts were increasing, the world population would explode, the social and economical inequality would increase. There was poison in our food, the kids would get stupid and uneducated due to the internet. And the root of the evil was Manchester capitalism. Everything of this list is a lie.
Statistics would prove everything worng. And most average people would not see through this delsusion. They say way more people would believe it not only the Greta Thunberg apostles. ( he alludes to it like a climate cult)
Many things we have currently was an utopia for our grandparents. Vaccines, antibiotics , birth control pills, computer, modern plant protection. All of these inventions started a revolution. For the better. And if the current generation does not seee that this is really dangerous.
These technologies helped that way less people have to live in extreme poverty. Most media reports only spread negativity. such amazing news are kept hidden. Most people who would reply to surveys about such topics were way to negative concerning this progress.
Many sterotpyes about our world are wrong. Less people are underfed. The Ukraine war makes this worse currently but this is only an exception of the positive trend. Due to the modern plant protection people get way more food than in the past. The child mortality rate in Africa decreased in an extreme way. There are many phenomenal developments. The traffic deaths decreases, the deaths due to natural disasters, most childs are vaccinated, more people can write and read, the life expectancy increases, child abuse/violence against them is decreasig in western cultures. This is why the suicide rate would decrease. Also there were less violenct crimnal acts becuase of that. 2/3 of people on earth would live in countries with moderate average GDP, It is a stereotype that the young people in western countries were more unhappy than young people in the developing world.
Though there are also problems in the 21. century like climate change or the Ukraine war. But this would not change the fact that there are way less wars and genocides than 30 years ago. Could climate change ruin everything? Possibly but the author believes that creative humans will find a solution for it.
So why are birth strikers so popular? The brain of humans is probably wired so that we overestimate dangerous developments and ignore positive logterm developments. This probably has evolutionary reasons. Our anxiety to be killed by an animal was more important than to think rationally about longterm developments.
Then he/she says that there is one dangerous development. The people would lose trust in democracy. And the demonization of capitalism was dangerous.
The article ends with the following: if the birth striker activist would think more rationally about it in contrast to their ideological current world view they would probably conclude that procreating was the righ thing. Their children would grow up probably in the best era/epoch humankind ever had.
Yeah this was only my translation/mediation. This took me a lot of time and energy I don't have more energy to write my personal statement about it. Maybe you have some interesting replies to it.
I read a lot of stuff which would be pretty unpopular in this forum. So I translate it for you guys so that we both can get mad. It is really long. It is not ideal you cannot read it it is only available in German.
Die Welt ist viel besser, als Sie glauben!
Kriege, Krisen, Katastrophen – junge Menschen blicken furchtsam in die Zukunft, Aktivistinnen rufen gar einen Gebärstreik aus. Dabei zeigt ein rationaler Blick auf die langfristigen Trends: Die Welt entwickelt sich in wichtigen Bereichen extrem positiv. Nur will das keiner sehen.
www.nzz.ch
Here is the link if you want to use google translator. I don't have much time left this evening but I will try my best.
The title is the World is way better than you think. The world develops in the right direction in so many instances. But noone wants to acknowledge that fact.
If you think the world is horrible and full of suffering you share the same opinion as the majority. They also believe in the past everything was better. The majority falsely believes: the poverty was growing, the armed conflicts were increasing, the world population would explode, the social and economical inequality would increase. There was poison in our food, the kids would get stupid and uneducated due to the internet. And the root of the evil was Manchester capitalism. Everything of this list is a lie.
Statistics would prove everything worng. And most average people would not see through this delsusion. They say way more people would believe it not only the Greta Thunberg apostles. ( he alludes to it like a climate cult)
Many things we have currently was an utopia for our grandparents. Vaccines, antibiotics , birth control pills, computer, modern plant protection. All of these inventions started a revolution. For the better. And if the current generation does not seee that this is really dangerous.
These technologies helped that way less people have to live in extreme poverty. Most media reports only spread negativity. such amazing news are kept hidden. Most people who would reply to surveys about such topics were way to negative concerning this progress.
Many sterotpyes about our world are wrong. Less people are underfed. The Ukraine war makes this worse currently but this is only an exception of the positive trend. Due to the modern plant protection people get way more food than in the past. The child mortality rate in Africa decreased in an extreme way. There are many phenomenal developments. The traffic deaths decreases, the deaths due to natural disasters, most childs are vaccinated, more people can write and read, the life expectancy increases, child abuse/violence against them is decreasig in western cultures. This is why the suicide rate would decrease. Also there were less violenct crimnal acts becuase of that. 2/3 of people on earth would live in countries with moderate average GDP, It is a stereotype that the young people in western countries were more unhappy than young people in the developing world.
Though there are also problems in the 21. century like climate change or the Ukraine war. But this would not change the fact that there are way less wars and genocides than 30 years ago. Could climate change ruin everything? Possibly but the author believes that creative humans will find a solution for it.
So why are birth strikers so popular? The brain of humans is probably wired so that we overestimate dangerous developments and ignore positive logterm developments. This probably has evolutionary reasons. Our anxiety to be killed by an animal was more important than to think rationally about longterm developments.
Then he/she says that there is one dangerous development. The people would lose trust in democracy. And the demonization of capitalism was dangerous.
The article ends with the following: if the birth striker activist would think more rationally about it in contrast to their ideological current world view they would probably conclude that procreating was the righ thing. Their children would grow up probably in the best era/epoch humankind ever had.
Yeah this was only my translation/mediation. This took me a lot of time and energy I don't have more energy to write my personal statement about it. Maybe you have some interesting replies to it.
Last edited:
