posted
Snowden/Irami had this statement to make to me during a discussion about drugs in which I also brought up why I don't think that anyone does anything in isolation.
quote: Amka,
I'm not a self-perpetuating baby factory, whose goal is to make more babies who will make more babies until the sun burns out. I'm a thinking, acting, person, in a sense, and end unto itself, and that's deeper than my ability to produce viable material offspring. A person's family is a special thing, but it isn't something you attend to like an automoton in a factory. The entire world isn't centered around a family. Everything you do isn't with respect to your family. I'm a great believer that you can live a fulfilling life without offspring, and further, you can raise offspring who all have jobs doing something else and kept your nose to pumping out baby grindstone that your life has passed you by and you've denied your being, your causa finalis, because you've spent too much time attending to your causa materialis.
It is statements like this that made me lose a lot of respect for the professors of my honor's courses in college.
You seem to think that motherhood, because it is so common and (you assume) so easy, is inferior. You seem to think that motherhood is all about mindlessly following instinct. You seem to think that unless you put self first, your life will be pathetic.
Even a little ageism has crept into your intellectualization of selfishness. Is it really true that after 40 or 50, "life has passed you by"? Tell that to my mother, who is currently writing lyrics very successfully.
You really have no idea what you are talking about, Irami.
I'm not just defending myself. I'm defending millions of women who are mothers, and religiously so. Many of them are much better mothers than I. But every mother is more than that.
I'm a writer. I'm a computer programmer. I'm a graphics designer. I'm the secretary of a non-profit corporation. I’m a school volunteer. I’m a church volunteer. I’m a wood worker. I'm a seamstress. I'm a musician. I'm a student. I'm a damn sexy woman.
and
I am a mother.
It is of no concern to me whether you choose to procreate or not. But it is of concern to me when you think you have no obligation to the society around you other than to serve your own desires.
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Thank you for saying everything we as fellow mothers might have thought to say. What an awesome statement. Made me feel powerful just reading it.
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quote: A person's family is a special thing, but it isn't something you attend to like an automoton in a factory. The entire world isn't centered around a family. Everything you do isn't with respect to your family.
I say, how sad! Perhaps our world would be a far better thing if it WERE centered around families.
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posted
we should be centered around families, friends and community I think Balance should be achieved... A woman who wants to seek out things outside of her family that makes her happy in addition to it should not be looked down upon As long as people are doing the best they can and raising their kids well, it shouldn't matter. We all are different... I just hate it when single women pick on married women or married women look down on single women and mothers who work outside of the whole fight with mothers who stay at home and visa versa... If they are doing whatever they are doing well, and it makes them feel complete than nothing else matters. Achieving a balance between self and community is a good goal. *likes the middle ground*
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quote:You seem to think that motherhood, because it is so common and (you assume) so easy, is inferior. You seem to think that motherhood is all about mindlessly following instinct. You seem to think that unless you put self first, your life will be pathetic.
None of that is actually in the quote. You've assumed it's all implied, which I don't think is a safe assumption in this case.
Saying that "the entire world isn't centered on the family [and having babies]" (which is basically what he said in that statement) is very different from any of the three claims you attributed to him above.
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posted
Sigh. I don't think being a mother is "inferior". However, I have reached a point where I've gotten very tired of people telling me (and people have told me this) that I am inferior and unnatural because I have chosen not to have children.
Case in point...I was taking a cultural geography class one time, in which we were talking one day about cultural attitudes toward having boys versus having girls. Because it was a small class, the instructor asked each student in the class which they would prefer to have as a first child - a boy or a girl. When my turn came, I said that I would prefer to have neither. Well, one of the women in the class just came unglued. She started yelling at me (literally; this is not an exaggeration for storytelling purposes) that I was just selfish and horrible and unnatural and that it was my duty to have children. The instructor finally had to tell her that she needed to either calm down or leave class.
To this day, I don't understand why she was so offended that I had made a choice not to have children.
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posted
Also, I don't see where you're getting this from:
quote:It is of no concern to me whether you choose to procreate or not. But it is of concern to me when you think you have no obligation to the society around you other than to serve your own desires.
Is that what someone's doing if he doesn't focus on his family? Why? There's more to the world than family. There are friends and there are strangers. There is the greater good, if you believe in it. Just because you don't bring any new people into the world to care for doesn't mean you don't care for the people already in it.
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posted
If one donates time and money in exchange for a license to be self-righteous, can it still be considered altruism?
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There is room for both in this world. Many people choose not to have children BECAUSE they want to help the world. They think there are too many people in it. (and some are actually quite militant about this-forget what the group is called, but they are going for zero population growth?)
I also want to add that men stay home, too. Lots of them.
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posted
I agree with ae and tres. The quote from Irami didn't seem like an attack on motherhood at all to me. It's simply a statement that his life doesn't revolve around having children, not that no one's should.
I think it's a little odd that so many mothers feel under attack, when my experiences are far more in line with those of littlemissattitude's. While my parents and in-laws are ok with my husband's and my decision not to have children, I have had colleagues and acquaintances give me much grief about it. For example, we had a search committee for a new faculty member last year. The grad students took all the candidates to lunch each time. At one of these lunches, we were discussing one of the grad students whose wife had recently had a baby. I said something to the effect that I would never want to have children while I was in school.
The candidate looked at me and said, "But of course you want children some day, right?" I said, embarassed, "Um...no, not really." (pause--he's obviously waiting for me to explain further here) "I just don't think it's right for me." He replied, "Oh, but I've heard that children help focus your professional life tremendously!" He was pretty intent on pursuing the subject, but at this point, a friend of mine (god bless her) changed the subject.
Now, this is an extreme example, and this particular fellow was completely tactless, but obviously the view that women SHOULD be having children is still out there in some substantial form. I have a great deal of respect for mothers; I just don't think I want to be one. My reasons are a little different than those mentioned in Irami's post, but I think that parenthood is just NOT RIGHT for some people. And, I don't think that anyone should have to explain that decision unless they want to.
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posted
I think it's downright rude for a person to say to someone who doesn't want to have children, "Why, what's wrong with you? It's selfish not to have kids." How? I think it's worse to be forced to have kids before a person is ready for that responsibility. I also think it's honestly none of their business and that goes for people who say, "How can you stand having so many kids? Isn't it stifling?"
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posted
Those who want children should have them. Those who don't want children, shouldn't.
A great variety of problems arise when this simple two-sided truth is not adhered to. That's how we get people who are sad because they can't have children, or haven't had the opportunity. And it's also how we get abused kids living in homes with people who never really wanted them in the first place.
Sadly, we can't always solve the medical/biological and even social barriers to having children for those who really want them. But I think we could do better than we do now.
We shy away from stopping people from having children when they don't really want them. Much to the detriment of the kids, I think.
And the only answer I can give anyone who is worried about what other people think about their choices (to have or not to have children) is that you should know yourself and realize that the ignorance of others is not a reflection upon you or your choices.
The argument reflected in this thread is specious. Both sides have created paper tigers to attack without acknowledging that the folks on the other side DIDN'T ACTUALLY SAY what they are accused of saying.
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posted
Irami never said that motherhood was easy, inferior, mindlessly following instinct, or that a mother's life is pathetic. He also is stating that its possible to let life pass you by if all you do is pump out babies, he never said all mother's let life pass them by.
Amka, you should be ashamed of yourself for eloquently defending motherhood by attacking a strawman argument and attributing that argument to a fellow member of hatrack.
WOW I am asleep.
[ September 19, 2004, 10:15 AM: Message edited by: Paul Goldner ]
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*shrug* Both think their life choices are right, but either insensitive to others when laying it or else wildly need approval for them.
There's another way to put Irami's argument: "The world is bigger than a tiny blood circle, and our obligations to make this a better world are more encompassing than that tiny circle. If no one outside those you are related feels your influence, you have let that larger world down."
A few years ago, the General RS presidency told the women of the church that it was time for the larger world to feel our influence. It was insistent enough and loud enough that my step-mother was roused to run for the local city council. She did it, and she did it well, but honestly the only reason she did was because she felt like it was then part of what she should do. And that's okay! It's even nice, because she really wasn't getting anything out of it personally. But the positive side of what Irami is saying is something that even the church has said.
I think the positive aspect of what Amka is saying is that it doesn't matter how big you think if you neglect your own - that no earthly success can compensate for failure in the home, and just because the home is the primary focus, it doesn't the rest of life is a failure. If you are going to have kids, then it does take a lot of time and focus, and there's often not a lot left for the rest of the world then.
-----
That's the positive aspects. There's a lot of pride and elitism mixed in with both arguments, and I don't think either is listening.
posted
The tales of women who spent their lives expecting motherhood for the sake of motherhood to be their end, then slip into postpartum depression are much more heart-breaking, but strangely similiar to those men who go through mid-life crises and do all manners of destructive things. Being a person is more than what you do, and responsiblity is attending to what you are, including and besides, what you produce on your list at the top of this thread.
Your list on other thread concerning drug users didn't approach that user like a person, but like a family instrument. Instead of dealing with drugs as in how they may be harmful to a family, it's more appropriate to speak about drugs as centrally destructive in depreciating the value of what we are, as we are, attacking that with makes us human, and may be through that violence, their effects on the family.
We are more than what we do, and those responsiblities we put upon ourselves are in service to Being, and not the other way around. The strange and beautiful character of the statement "I am a mother," isn't the mother and it's not the I, it's the 'am.'
posted
Perhaps I should have quoted the entire thread. Much of what I said was in reply to the general theme of what Irami was saying.
But the baby factory and automaton comments were highly insulting, and fairly personally directed. This comment by Irami "kept your nose to pumping out baby grindstone that your life has passed you by and you've denied your being," is also very insulting to motherhood. Those statements do, in fact, imply the inferiority of motherhood.
Many other assumptions have been made about my argument. First of all, that I think my choice is better than his.
I specifically stated that whether he chose to have children or not was of no concern of mine. I know people who don't want children and recognize it can be a valid choice, and I've even supported people in that choice. No one should ever have kids for the wrong reason.
Second of all, that my own argument that motherhood is far more than what Irami was saying, implies that I think that Irami should follow my own religious convictions about an after life and what God expects. I do not expect him to do that, but I do feel there is a moral ground that is quite apart from religion. It isn't about family, although for those that have a family, it becomes centered there.
It is about understanding that personal choices have an impact on the world around you. It is the fact that even if you choose not to have kids, you should not act in a manner that makes society more harmful to children.
This isn't because they are innocent little creatures that need to be protected (though that is true). It is because they will grow up. What they have been given today is what society will become tomorrow, whether they were your kids or not.
The culture of selfishness has hurt children a great deal, and it is only when we look past ourselves that we will begin to heal the hurt we've made to society.
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quote:This comment by Irami "kept your nose to pumping out baby grindstone that your life has passed you by and you've denied your being," is also very insulting to motherhood. Those statements do, in fact, imply the inferiority of motherhood.
Actually, Irami was talking about himself not being a baby factory. And since I'm pretty sure he's male, he was clearly insulting fatherhood, if anything.
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posted
That was my read, too, Frisco. However, it isn't something I have a lot of emotional investment in myself (unlike so many other things!), so I don't know how someone from a different background would naturally read it.
If I could be so forward as to paraphrase Irami (my read, my interpretation, FWIW): having nothing to your life other than being a baby factory is not a good thing for you or for the world. Babies grow up and move out, and even while you are producing and raising babies, their lives can be more enriched by your having other broader interests, too.
Of note (in my mind) is that he made no claim in the thread as far as I could see as to whether those broader interests should be financially gainful, involved in specialized and formal fields (such as higher education), or the like. I took him to mean that it would be good for mothers and fathers to read up on history, to listen to radio that was thoughtful and thought-provoking, to discuss world events with one another, to be involved in local politics, to study nature (and share it with their children, as does Jenny Gardener), etc.
I think Irami doesn't equate being a mother or father with "just [pumping] out babies," but rather sees one style of parenthood as going down that road. This, at least, seemed obvious to me at first read, and it seemed a perfectly sensible thing to say. On the other hand, were I someone who in my personal life was made less of just for even having kids, I might have been more likely to read him differently.
[ September 19, 2004, 03:46 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
Pumping out babies is not a phrase usually said in regards to men, and he was talking to a woman. But I agree. I think he has insulted fatherhood as well.
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posted
(just a note that I edited as Amka was posting)
I'll reiterate: I'm not sure where the equation of parenthood to "just [pumping] out babies" came from. I think he was criticizing the latter, not the former, although I can't speak for him conclusively.
[ September 19, 2004, 03:45 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
What he said was in response to me saying that I felt that a drug user who harmed his family was a bigger enemy to society than a drug user who was simply unproductive. I then when on to another argument about why I thought that "two consensual adults makes it okay" was a philosophy that I thought was harmful to society. I listed STDs, single parents left in that condition because of deadbeat parents, and single parents who have multiple partners not caring how it affected their children.
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posted
So, do you think he could have been saying that in order to get a full idea of what the ill impact was, one should look to more than just the impacts on families? That is, could he have been agreeing that these are bad things, but pushing for a bigger list of bad things (since there are things which are bad in the world, over and above whether they have an impact on families -- although impacts on families can be bad things, too)?
I think he was objecting to just framing things in terms of families, not that they couldn't be framed in terms of families as part of the story. Just not the whole story.
Just as a life may include parenthood, but it also (by necessity) includes citizenhood and being a member of the local community and adding to the grand discourse of life. [Those latter roles] can impact on and be informed by parenthood, but parenthood doesn't exhaust them.
I propose this with the understanding, Amka, that if it touched on a point in my on life about which I was sensitive, in my current state of mind I would have gone ballistic. I don't even have kids, so it isn't sensitive, but if it was about not having kids, things would be different for me in the reading of it.
[ September 19, 2004, 04:03 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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If he had said the same without resorting to such insulting language, I would not have had a problem with the argument.
We both agree drugs are harmful, but he thinks it is more because it degrades the user and I think it is more because it harms those around the user. For me, actually, that is a fine line. When I made my decision not to use drugs, I had no husband or children, and I didn't really care what anyone thought of my actions. I just thought it was not wise to give up control of my facilities to illegal drugs or alcohol.
But now that I'm older, I realize that we make no decisions in isolation. This is more pronounced if we have a family, but it is true even if we don't have a family. We are all part of the larger picture, whether we want to be or not.
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posted
See, I've found your posts to be equally insulting. You speak in absolutes, and instead of expressing opinions, you make it clear that your way is the right and only way and when we're older and wiser, we'll understand that.
I think you're both being condescending, and Hatrack is the last place on Earth that'll fly.
There are very few things that even a majority of the board takes as a given. I think the only thing we've all agreed on so far is that puppies are cute.
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I don't disagree with your (vague) statement, just with your ideas on what diminishes society. Also, I think there's a larger picture than the one you're selling as paramount.
I don't disagree with quite a few of your statements. If I could figure out what they meant in the context of this discussion, however, I think I would.
posted
Yozhik, I'm not sure. I remember hearing it once - in General Conference or the women's meeting, I think - but I remember it more because of my step-mother retelling it and the story of how it spurred her to action. I'll have to look it up.
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Puppies are much better than cable. You can love cable, and you can love a puppy, but only one of those will love you back.
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Puppies are much better than cable. You can love cable, and you can love a puppy, but only one of those will love you back[quote] But I'm not allergic to cable!!!
quote:I'm not a self-perpetuating baby factory, whose goal is to make more babies who will make more babies until the sun burns out. I'm a thinking, acting, person, in a sense, and end unto itself, and that's deeper than my ability to produce viable material offspring. A person's family is a special thing, but it isn't something you attend to like an automoton in a factory. The entire world isn't centered around a family. Everything you do isn't with respect to your family. I'm a great believer that you can live a fulfilling life without offspring, and further, you can raise offspring who all have jobs doing something else and kept your nose to pumping out baby grindstone that your life has passed you by and you've denied your being, your causa finalis, because you've spent too much time attending to your causa materialis.
Here is what I really meant: I'm not a self-perpetuating baby factory, whose goal is to make more babies who will make more babies until the sun burns out. I'm a thinking, acting, person, in a sense, and end unto itself, and that's deeper than my ability to produce viable material offspring. A person's family is a special thing, but it isn't something you attend to like an automoton in a factory. The entire world isn't centered around a family. Everything you do isn't with respect to your family.
Now here when it could have been confusing:
I'm a great believer that you can live a fulfilling life without offspring, and further, you can raise offspring who all have jobs doing something else while you've kept your nose to pumping out baby grindstone and your life has passed you by and you've denied your being, your causa finalis, because you've spent too much time attending to your causa materialis.
Now after I said, "I'm a great believer that you can...," I was speaking to the general you. You as any idle reader. I thought that was clear from the sentence structure, but that's the nature of the beast.
Katharina is right. I am talking about here in this world. I don't deal in the next one, and to tell the truth, I think it makes me take this one all the more seriously, but that may be another debate.
I think people ought to think really hard about what it means to be a person. And that doesn't mean come up with answers or give themselves rules or plans or schedules, but that they should think really hard about this condition we are in, consider the problems not as something to be solved immediately, but to be considered honestly and not forced into an expedient answers. Quick answers to why we study history, english, math, science, chemistry, or philosophy, and why ought not do drugs and why we ought to praise marriage, is the reason why we are so bumfuzzled when we approach speaking to, laying these matters out before, people to be taken to heart.
In my mind, the people who rattle off a bible quote and don't think about what sense it makes are just as bad as people who quickly dismiss religion, that bond between humans or the holy, as hocus-pocus, as is if studying a kind of thing that ties us is a waste of time.
I know that this is tricky business, which is why the fact that anyone who teaches well is deserving of awe.
______________________
Sara said:
quote: I think he was objecting to just framing things in terms of families, not that they couldn't be framed in terms of families as part of the story. Just not the whole story.
Just as a life may include parenthood, but it also (by necessity) includes citizenhood and being a member of the local community and adding to the grand discourse of life. [Those latter roles] can impact on and be informed by parenthood, but parenthood doesn't exhaust them.
That's what I said. I said it more forcefully and with less art and more artifice, but Sara understood precisely the sense of what I said.
quote: I took him to mean that it would be good for mothers and fathers to read up on history, to listen to radio that was thoughtful and thought-provoking, to discuss world events with one another, to be involved in local politics, to study nature (and share it with their children, as does Jenny Gardener), etc.
_________________________
This is where I'm going to become a little more strong than Sara ventures. We've mastered the earth, death and natural disasters aside, we've got the earth licked. But we haven't taken the time to seriously think about the enormity and responsibility of such dominion or what that means for how we get along with ourselves, that we just keep plugging away, like a program in a loop. And now we have these wars, too. We don't think of what we are as we are, so instead of thinking about it, we speak in terms of a cost benefit analysis. Except instead of Brazilian rainforests, we tear down and commodify entire cultures without regard. Now I'm not saying this Wal-Mart is wrong, but I don't like the kind of reasons I hear for why it is right.
This is where I go even farther, and I'm still reading and thinking and it may these thoughts may not be ready for primetime, but I think that Christendom is ossified. Not Christianity the faith, faith isn't something that belongs to time. Faith is a another kind of quality. It's got a special place within our suprasensual powers. I don't even know where to start, it's something else.
Christendom, I'll call that stuff between the arranging of the Gospels/the Councils and today is a little outdated, and it's been outdated for a while. It didn't matter. As if you were driving down a road and the breaks went out, it wouldn't matter until you tried to slow down. Well, now we are asking questions that require us to slow down and Christendom needs to square itself with Thor, and when it's done, square itself with Islam.
Nobody should be surprised that this can happen to a historical religion. Christendom bursted apart with Martin Luther, and he was an effect of a system, not the cause, just as the Magna Carta was an effect and not the cause, and the French Revolution was and effect and not the cause. 400ad Islam is being busted up as we speak.
The dangerous part is in the Revaluation. That's the hard work. That's where we need the minds. Rethinking values doesn't mean throwing them out wholesale, rather refining and reflecting and constituting values with extreme honesty and responsibility because mouthing the old values like a 1st grader in a Catholic school mouths the Our Father and a 6th grader in a public school mouths the Pledge has nothing to do with thinking, attending to that which calls for thought. This is a problem because it's like building a boat when while we are at sea, thinking about thinking and being what we are as we think about being what we are.
It's a whole lot easier to think about cable, puppies, beer, and sports, and it's even easier to ignore the questions in favor of the simple answer, or put everything into some calculus determined by our interests, hoping nobody notices our poker face when we say that that is politics.
Frisco, I speak from conjecture, belief, or from knowledge. Depending on what I know vs. what I believe. False modesty is silly, and healthy true modesty is somthing different, though. If you tell me that Sara is a kindly young woman in the midwest, I'll say you are telling the truth. If you say that Sara is right here on my computer screen, I'll say you are telling the truth. But if you say Sara is a 60 year old man in outer-Mongolia, I'll say you are not telling the truth. There are different senses of the truth, correct judgements concerning the essense of a being, but come on, let's take ourselves seriously.
Paul:
quote:Irami never said that motherhood was easy, inferior, mindlessly following instinct, or that a mother's life is pathetic. He also is stating that its possible to let life pass you by if all you do is pump out babies, he never said all mother's let life pass them by.
yep.
_______
Katharina,
quote:There's another way to put Irami's argument: "The world is bigger than a tiny blood circle, and our obligations to make this a better world are more encompassing than that tiny circle. If no one outside those you are related feels your influence, you have let that larger world down."
I don't think that's it. It's not even that one's being is bigger than the blood circle, as much as I think that they are a different kind of thing. What you, as the brother of so and so, is a different kind of thing than what you are as a person. It's a different character of responsibilities, I imagine that these would be more manifest if you were a member of Hatfields or McCoy's. Or just as if you had to judge over your sibling's tormentor, or even worse, if you were the sibling of a tormentor.
posted
"What you, as the brother of so and so, is a different kind of thing than what you are as a person...."
I'll tell you something, though, Irami.
What I am as "Tom Davidson, father of Sophia," is NOT a different kind of thing than what I am as a person. In fact, I would argue that the fastest and most accurate way to understand what kind of person I am is to observe what kind of father I am.
This is certainly not universally true -- but you should recognize, I think, that it's a fairly common and not inaccurate sentiment.
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quote: It's a whole lot easier to think about cable, puppies, beer, and sports, and it's even easier to ignore the questions in favor of the simple answer, or put everything into some calculus determined by our interests, hoping nobody notices our poker face when we say that that is politics.
quote:What I am as "Tom Davidson, father of Sophia," is NOT a different kind of thing than what I am as a person. In fact, I would argue that the fastest and most accurate way to understand what kind of person I am is to observe what kind of father I am.
This is certainly not universally true -- but you should recognize, I think, that it's a fairly common and not inaccurate sentiment.
I think it's a mistake to talk of "what you are as a person" as if it were some independent entity floating in space. There is no "what you are as a person" outside of what you are as a father, a brother, a friend, and so on. And, I suppose, what you are when you're alone. What you are as a father may be what you want to think you are as a whole if you're a good father, or a bad father who likes to pity himself, but wishing don't make it so.
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posted
Human beings are social animals. By taking then entirely out of that context and trying to find who they are alone, the answer, save for the exceptions, wouldn't amount to much.
You can measure a person by how they treat children and animals.
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