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Notes -
Briefly on procreation, the population crisis, homelessness, and foster care:
I'd like to have children for pro-social reasons. I believe that failing to give back to the world when it has given so much to you is somewhat of a metaphysical thievery. My position isn't that everyone needs to have children, but I have contempt for old men who fail to plant trees whose shade they won't enjoy, especially when they have plenty of land and seeds. It's a narcissistic and hedonistic rot.
I'll focus on the word have, though, because my partner and I are not particularly well-positioned to have biological children. I feel that the base urges we have to literally procreate are just that - base urges. I am not Genghis Khan. There are 7 billion people on Earth, and cosmically my specific genetics are not even a footnote within a footnote in the story of humans. My siblings and cousins have me covered anyway when it comes to the genetic progeny of our bloodline, anyway. While the concept of creating something so awesome from almost nothing is romantic, it strikes me a bit as a novelty when put into a modern global context.
The factoid that I always try to bring up concerning homelessness in the US is that, depending on the source you cite, between ~30% and 50% of every homeless adult spent time in the foster care system. Like many social programs, the issues lie with the "cliff": when foster children turn 18 they age out of the system overnight. In 2025, it's a near impossibility to support oneself at age 18 entirely independently, especially if you're struggling to graduate high school or obtain a GED. To be a bit cliche, 22 is the new 18 (and 26 is the new 22, according to health insurers). It seems like, if you were to try to provide better than the "median" fostering experience, you would go a long way by simply supporting the foster child to age 22 instead of age 18.
To connect the dots, adoption and / or fostering seems to be a great way for this old man to plant trees, especially if biological children are completely ruled out. There is undeniably a population crisis and replacement rate is an issue, but from a (gross?) utilitarian perspective the population crisis is about productive members of society. Adopting and / or fostering well kills two birds with one stone: it reduces the population that is at-risk for homelessness, and creates more productive members of society.
So, I know a couple that tried to do a good thing. They adopted a young ghetto boy as an infant, removed him from all the bad influences that afflicted his community, and raised him in a middle-upper class environment with the best private schools, institutions and cultural guidance western civilization could provide.
The boy has terrorized that poor family for over a decade now with no signs of relenting. If this were a nature versus nurture debate, nurture is in a fetal position, ribs kicked in, begging for death as nature relentless curb stomps her.
It's all well and good to want to plant seeds, and failing to plant your own, nurture what you can find. Just make sure you aren't nurturing some virulent invasive species that will leave the land barren.
The substance of your post is fine, as a counterpoint to the OP, though it is a bit low on effort.
I am generally pretty skeptical about "dog whistle" verbiage but presumably by "young ghetto boy" you don't mean to suggest that the infant was a Polish Jew. Yet even to this point you could at least plausibly insist that you are engaging in pure description, that the child's parents were indeed from a "ghetto," etc.
But, uh...
This tips the balance toward heat rather than light, with a side of failing to write like everyone is reading and you want to include them in the conversation. You might regard it as impossible to include such people in "the conversation," and even then you should write as though you want to include them in the conversation, because presumably you think the world would be a better place if it were possible.
This is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. That means shady thinking is allowed! But you need to keep the heat to a level proportionate with your effort, evidence, and empathy.
You know, I've been debating about this post of mine. Because everyone has reacted like I wrote the blacks should be exterminated. And I'm sitting here going "Adoption came up, I told a story about the sheer pants shitting horror I've seen a family go through, that was the metaphor in play". Because I really do know a family that adopted a young ghetto infant out of Washington DC. That's just the story I have on hand. And obviously everyone had a reaction to it.
At best, the disconnect as near as I can tell is that "the garden" in my metaphor is that guys family. Not the entirety of humanity. And the family in question, were it a garden, is absolutely being terrorized by a virulent invasive species that they've invited into their home. The husband is utterly checked out and retreated into his work, the wife is medicated (both rx and self) just to get through each day and each fresh hell their adoptive son puts them through. Their younger biological children are clearly neglected and struggling. For a year every day I pulled up beside their van, waiting to pick up my daughter who was in the same school as their biological daughter, I'd overhear the mom on the phone on the verge of a panic attack coping with the nightmare of their existence, or talking her husband down from the same.
I don't know strong enough words to translate that experience to this "garden" metaphor that was in play. A cuckoo bird leaving it's eggs in another birds nest, for them to starve that poor bird's actual children and push them out of the nest may have been a more direct metaphor for what I see happening, but a garden had already been brought up.
So I'm sitting here baffled that the post I felt was fairly neutral, and made no sweeping statements about any groups, but was a cautionary tale about who you choose to add to your family when it is a choice, caught so much flak.
But it goes back to... I mean... people know. I have made sweeping statements. At one point I might have fought the accusation that I'm racist, because I honestly didn't think I was. But those days are long over. Too much has happened.
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