cayde6ml

Sometimes I do think that you should have a license in order to have kids, as controversial as it sounds.

I'm glad we agree :)

I haven't gotten a vasectomy yet. I was scheduled to get it this month, but it was delayed to later this year. But thank you. And you seem cool.

I also am childfree, am getting a vasectomy in the next few months, and am also a borderline anti-natalist. I still think that bringing a person into the world is an inherently selfish act.

But after deep thought and growing over the past several years, I've come to realize some things and re-orient some of my beliefs and attitudes.

For one, I don't think that selfishness is inherently a bad thing. Selfishness is alot like sugar and potassium. You need a certain amount of it to function and fulfill your needs, but when it becomes too much and starts hurting you, others and the ecological and social environment is when it becomes a problem. Though other people constantly describe me as not being selfish at all and being almost saint-like, so take that for what you will.

I'm also developing a belief that is influenced by Taoism/Daoism, and also inspired by the video game series Destiny.

Almost everything in reality has Light and Darkness in it. But Light isn't inherently good, and Dark isn't inherently evil. This isn't to say that a perfect middle-ground exists or that the right answer is always perfectly in the middle, that is neoliberal centrist horseshit.

Most people would agree that murder is wrong. But killing someone in self-defense, protecting yourself or someone else, or preventing tragedy and suffering to save or improve the lives of thousands of people by killing an individual is perfectly reasonable and results in a "net good" in society.

Likewise, while many religions think of themselves as "purifying" humanity, they are merely committing unspeakable atrocities and enforcing oppression in the name of "goodness", such as Christian colonial missionaries or Buddhist soldiers that fought alongside the pedophile monks that China liberated Tibet from.

As back to my original point, having children is inherently selfish, since it places multiple sociological and psychological burdens on someone and robs them of their "peace of nonexistence" and forces almost guaranteed mortality on someone at some point in the future, you grant a sperm cell decades, (hopefully in the future, centuries) of life that they wouldn't experience otherwise out of the billions of other sperm cells.

Life is shitty, but after capitalism is overthrown, life will become much less shittier. Sometimes I wish my mother aborted me like she almost did, and other times I'm truly thankful to be alive, despite having BPD, autistic spectrum disorder and OCD.

If I was never born, of course I wouldn't consciously "know" it or have a frame of reference, but there would be so many beautiful colors and shades and hues I'd never see, wonderful smells, tasty food, orgasms, comfort, security, or entertainment I've ever feel, or knowledge I'd never know. Life can be what you make of it.

Even though I say that I "hate" kids sometimes, I don't truly hate them or wish ill on them. Kids can be spoiled brats, but they are still just little humans who are thrust into a shitty world against their consent without the proper know-how of basically anything, so of course they are annoying and gross and act-out, but its rarely anything that you can or should blame on them.

My heart also tears and becomes enraged at stories of child abuse and exploitation and suffering and murder. Nobody deserves any of that, especially children. They have decades they deserve to live out, not suffer for. Life is a beautiful thing, especially when we share it with other people stuck in our same mortal situation.

I hope I've given you food for thought at least.

I agree with your points, I think you're right in that I was speaking from more of an in-universe perspective, but I feel that admitting its from an in-universe perspective is unfair to a piece of fiction. I do tend to prefer Watsonian explanations over Doylist ones.

Most or at least many Batman fans have a love-hate relationship with TDKR. Not that it disproves your point. I think its an enjoyable story but its outdated and has some really shitty aspects to it.

I understand the sentiment and I realize that Transformers is unfortunately stamped with the marks of neoliberalism like most entertainment media, but in the comics and movies, Megatron 70 percent of the time is a douchebag megalomaniacal maniac that wants to destroy non-organic life or commit genocide of the autobots, despite his token occasional criticism of the autobots. It unfortunately makes sense for the autobots to tacitly tolerate working with the U.S. military.

I don't think the classical archetypical Batman is inherently right-wing, or should be considered right-wing. I grew up with multiple incarnations of Batman, and I find that those who claim Batman is "just" a billionaire who beats up poor people to be misunderstanding the crucial context and nuance, not arguing in good faith or missing the forest for the trees, even if I don't completely disagree with their arguments.

Many of Batman's villains themselves are/were capitalists, bourgeoisie or their enforcers and bootlickers and agents of them, namely Penguin, Simon Stagg that themselves treat the working class and poorer people as garbage and relentlessly exploit, manipulate or abuse them.

And while many of Batman's villains have extremely sorrowful mental issues, most of them are of the disgusting and vile and sadistically cruel mindset of "if I can't be happy, no one else can!" or "everything sucks, so I should be able to kill people!" and are straight up no-exaggeration irredeemable monsters, like Riddler, Mad Hatter, Joker, Calendar Man, Professor Pyg, Hush, Victor Zsasz.

For every working-class villain that's screwed over by capitalists like Mister Freeze, there are villains like Firefly.

Of course being a billionaire is disgusting and irresponsible, but those who criticize Batman for this don't have any real solutions, and just seem to be complaining for the sake of it. Is Batman supposed to give away billions of dollars to various aid organizations to feed, house and clothe the entire Gotham population? Is he supposed to become a revolutionary communist that tries to insert himself into the general population to overthrow the Gotham government so that way when Gotham becomes socialist, they can be invaded by the trillion-dollar U.S. military and their puppets?

In real-life, it costs billions of dollars a week for a city to operate in even just a week, and I don't see Batman ushering in a national communist revolution anytime soon.

There is plenty of criticism to be made of Batman and superheroes, but it always annoys me when the criticism is the same old surface level "rich white billionaire beats up poor people because he's sad and nuts"

I understand the statistics, but I'm skeptical of the idea that guns inherently make you and those around you less safe. I think discipline, peaceful conflict resolution skills and a healthy dose of reason mitigate the effects/risks of gun misuse.

I can't fault him for theorizing the atomic bomb. Its a weapon that can be used by anyone, and if it wasn't Einstein, its only a matter of time until someone else does it. Its better to get a jumpstart and protect the information, resources and weapons than to stick your fingers in your ears and do nothing, rather than let the capitalists and nazis get ahold of it first and maintain a monopoly.

I had this dream several years ago, and it was also right before I met my current Significant Other/Almost-Girlfriend.

I'm not a religious person and I think most spirituality is also bullshit, and I know that dreams are more likely to just be random machinations of your brain making sure its still alive and functioning, but I like to think this dream has some greater meaning or foreshadowing or prophetic purpose to my life and future.

My dream started when I was inside this massive building that looked like it was part shopping mall, part club, part neon cyberpunk city.

I was slightly professionally dressed up to go into this nightclub area, and this bouncer stood in my way. For some reason or another, I knew that I would meet someone in there that would be the most important person I've ever met, and would change the course of my life and the future of humanity and Earth itself, forever.

The bouncer wouldn't let me inside and started talking shit to me, and this is where my memory of what happened gets very fuzzy. I remember clocking the bourgeois cracker in his mouth and knocking the tar out of him, and then I was suddenly pursued by drones and dystopian police officers shooting at me with assault and electric and plasma rifles (also collapsible batons and tasers) with alarms blaring and the bouncer shouting and swearing bloody vengeance on me over the intercom. It was like a scene from Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, as I parkoured, slid, jumped, and bashed my way through the pigs and the building.

As I got out of the building, I was faced with a dark blue sky and shining stars, and I saw an empty motorcycle.

As I hopped on, a woman jumped on the cycle behind me and held tightly onto my back.

I floored it and we sped off, as she returned machine gun fire and middle fingers at the pigs, as we escaped as reinforcement vehicles showed up.

"Umm actually sweeety, context is bad. You brainwashed tankie!"

Reich-wing tool.