In the old days, having kids was a no-brainer. You needed help on the farm, and there was no birth control anyways. But these days? It’s sticky. At least in my mind.
I’ve often thought that having a baby in this era of environmental degradation was somehow “immoral.” Why bring another soul onto this sinking and overcrowded ship, another soul who will further contribute their ecological footprint?
Photos like this, of buildings in Hong-Kong, made me not want to contribute any more babies to the world:
I drew this cartoon:
Looking back on this cartoon, I think that I was writing from the self-hating human perspective, seeing humanity as a “cancer on the planet.” From this lens, it’s only natural that I would look at myself, and any hypothetical offspring, as cancers too.
I think it’s time to investigate this thinking. It has been operating sneakily in the background of my mind long enough.
The psychologist Carol Dweck wrote about “fixed” and “growth” mindsets. Here’s how I interpret these mindsets:
A fixed mindset says: “this is how things are, and that’s how they will always be.”
A growth mindset says: “this is how things are, and they can change.”
A growth mindset has a sense of possibility, while a fixed mindset has a sense of stagnation.
I think that the “self-hating human” perspective reflects a fixed mindset, a belief that humans are, and will always be, a cancer on the planet.
What if humanity was not one “fixed” thing, but could change, could re-invent itself?
From the growth mindset, human babies are not doomed to fill the pre-determined role of “polluter.” They could change tack. They could become inventors of green technologies, writers of words that shift perspectives, architects of structures that allow us to be light on the land, and feel in balance with nature…
The potential for wise co-creation with nature is well expressed in traditional cultures around the world, such as the villages of rural Japan, the hill towns of southern Italy, or the countrysides of England and Ireland. When we see such places, something deep within us awakens. They remind us that other ways of living on the earth are possible.
We humans carry a powerful machine between our ears. And we need to be careful, very careful, with the stories that we let in there, because these stories dictate our behavior in powerful ways. To use a common metaphor, we have a powerful computer, but we need to be intentional with the software that we install.
Let the wrong story into our minds and we can become seriously depressed or even violent. We can give up our freedom and our sense of possibility. A story can be an inspiration, but it can also be a prison.
In a podcast about The Baby Question, Britt Wray talks about how she decided to have a baby. She came to the epiphany that not having a baby felt like buying into fear, and having a baby felt like choosing hope. Admittedly, this is just one person’s perspective. The Baby Question is nuanced and very, very personal. But there is room now, in my mind’s stories, to see the possibility of having babies AND caring deeply about the environment.
It seems to me that humanity is not going into voluntary human extinction mode anytime soon. Many babies are being born, and they will be born for many years to come. They are the future. We can think of them as the future’s polluters, or as the builders of a more beautiful world. The choice is ours.
P.S. This is a blog post of my previous thinking on The Baby Question, from which I took the above cartoon.