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Notes -
I agreed with you yesterday on needing to have more compassion towards anti-vaxxers (despite disagreeing with them). And I'm going to disagree with you today about needing more compassion for people who are lonely or anxious about politics.
I'm not worried about people who don't want kids not having them. More power to them.
I am exceptionally worried about people who are lacklove and lonely becoming depressed, atomized, and suicidal, because I care about human flourishing and I couldn't give one iota of a damn about what what "evolution thinks" should happen to them.
There's an intense sneering involved in what you're saying there that I find, well, inhuman. Maybe even evil. I'm going to be honest with you: what you've said strikes me as the sort of thing I'd expect a rogue AI or alien or demonic creature trying to maximize suffering would say.
Because it just so happens that some who walk the earth with us are one of these organisms that are "unable to reproduce... and rightly so." I'm not just talking about the young men who will remain lonely if this movement takes off, but about the young women themselves, people who are clearly neurotic and anxious and scared and desperately need someone to tell them that it's going to be ok, and hatred and resentment will just drive them deeper into loneliness and sorrow. There is nothing "right" about people being lonely, depressed, and terrified because their social environment has distorted their view of reality.
It's rather odd that you'd write:
just as we're discussing people who desperately need to hear that exact message. If you can make a difference in people's minds by saying this with regards to one worry, it stands to reason you can make a difference in the minds of the people under discussion -- and therefore perhaps there is something "you could have done as an individual to make a difference either way."
I'm reminded a little about that famous quote from Alexander Pope: "Whatever is, is right," that Leibnitzian saying that we live in the best of all possible worlds. And I'm going to counter you with the view that not only the 4B people but the Christian people and the Muslim people and the new Atheist people and the progressive people and the conservative people disagree with you, and they disagree with you profoundly, at the core of their being. This world is fallen, less than it could be. And I take hope in the fact that, despite our disagreements, many people believe that we are not beholden to the origin of our nature or the vicissitudes of evolution as to the outcome of our existence.
I didn't use the word "compassion" in the posts I wrote about vaccines, and that's not what I was asking for anyway. I was asking for understanding - an understanding of the conditions and values that cause people to do what they do and think what they think - but that's different from compassion.
No there isn't.
It's just a fact that some people are more fit for biological reproduction than others. But I don't think that evolutionary fitness is tied in any direct sense to your ultimate moral worth. Some of the greatest men to ever live (Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, etc) had no children.
Nature is dumb; it is opinionated, certainly, but you can decide for yourself how seriously you want to take its opinions. The appropriate response, upon learning that you are defective according to nature, isn't "ah, I am defective, all hope is lost". The appropriate response is "very well, I am defective. I accept this designation. But now what? What can this defective organism accomplish? You might be surprised at the answer."
I'm not sure Nature has an opinion on who reproduces. That's what the phrase "fitness landscape" is for. The fitness landscape can change. It seems like you're trying to abdicate value judgements. It's fine if you don't care who reproduces, but this kind of appeal to nature shouldn't persuade anyone.
If two demons are fighting over to change the fitness landscape, you wouldn't care?
(After re-reading my post, I see I am making essentially a "postmodern"/subjectivist argument, kinda)
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Fair enough. Yet compassion is the more excellent way.
Let us review what you wrote:
Those are judgments based upon moral worth.
I’d also add that you were quite literally saying “it’s not happening, and it’s a good thing.”
You’ve attempted to retreat to the Bailey, by saying you were only descriptively stating “nature’s judgment” as “an objective fact”, but the motte is right there for all to see. You were clearly describing these things in terms of what is good and deserved. “It deserves to” is a moral claim of moral desert.
As it so happens, saying “you are defective, and it is good and desirable that fewer people like you exist in the future” is sneering, and is a moral judgment. If you think it is not so, I find your perspective quite perplexing indeed.
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