as to how other members feel. I keep hearing on the news about how people are concerned about the environment etc etc. If one is so concerned, shouldn't they not have kids? Every human being on this planet is a drain on resources (some more, some less, but still a drain), and it is only getting worse. People are also selfish, so they are gonna pick their conveniences over someone else's life. I see people doing little lip service things and they claim they have helped the environment/community. and they will eat meat in the dinner with their 4 kids, and water their lawns. This just annoys me so much.


Just ranting.

Btw, I plan not to have kids ever and want to make sure that I do my part in ending my family line .

Opinon: I think it's an illusion that: "the earth cannot sustain a greatly increased population". I think with what we are now learning......as individuals....to better utilize our land and lead a "low eco-footprint' lifestyle......there will be plenty of room for more people. There are MILLIONS of acres of land that could easily support human life. I don't think additional kids is the problem. I DO think anyone choosing to have a child (or any other lifeform) that they cannot take care of is irresponsible.

-You are certainly correct that it does little good to fight for MACRO-type changes when a person is unwilling to make the MICRO-type changes and personal changes (like no longer eating meat....no longer using chemicals...etc.) that have such a strong impact on our health and our environment.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

I am pro environment, but I do not agree with not having children. I think you have to consider every alternative to supporting the environment. I also believe it's a personal choice whether or not to have kids and I always thought it was extreme to tell others they shouldn't in order to "save the environment". I respect where you're coming from, I just don't see it or feel it. It almost feels like desecrating the gift of life we're all living now.

I'm actually noticing quite the reverse. The little ones I'm coming in contact with, including my 2 year old nephew are enlightened, brilliant and have a lot to share with us. My God they are smart and full of love and light. He's already vegan,lol,he refuses to eat meat.

Peace.

Life style not population. you can take all six billon peoples on earth and put them side by side with 2 ft in between each and fit them all into Dade county Fla.
Ghadi said there is enough to meet mans needs but not his greed.
I think if we could get passed go and money, the earth could take care of 50 Billon. So it is life style that is killing our earth.
If there is to be a future it will be the children
We adults have not been looking out for that very well,
I feel change is coming in soon, We are the change and we are awakening (slowly but awakening )
PEACE TO THE COTTAGES, WAR ON THE CASTLES
riverhousebill

"PEACE TO THE COTTAGES, WAR ON THE CASTLES" that`s good.

People say there no enough resources for the growing population...haha... as I drive my car I look around and all I see lots of unused acres of fields with some cows on it and I ask why don`t we have here fruit tree orchards? all around the wold even I think is the same.
People are very creative (we can make paradise even out of a desert) if they need to find solutions, yet first we have to open our eyes and see through the illusion and the crisis made up by group of people in order to control.
It`s the inhuman human system that doesn`t work not the planet. The Universe provides.

We have decided to only have one child.



My website: The Coconut Chronicles

So, uh, who are you entrusting stewardship for the earth to when you die? Government...? Corporations...? And who is educating the people that will be taking over those venues, should you choose not to procreate?

I agree, it's all about lifestyle... and use of the resources that we have.

Water your lawn? Turn it into a garden! Grow some food. For every calorie of beef eaten, it takes 35 calories of energy to produce. The local movement is growing...

It's not about numbers... it's about the situation.

I am 44 and see no kids in my future,plus it will be the end of my family name unless my very withdrawn cousin,no 46,somehow manages to marry and have kids.
So,I guess count me in.
Brian

I was politically active when younger.

Now, instead of trying to change the world, I am changing myself.

Ghandi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

I am trying to do that.


Lee

[www.dhamma.org]

Most of the scarcity is deliberately created by humans to impose rationing and control in one way or another.

Wishing you vibrant health

I have five kids who were all raised in a community setting, and enstilled with a deep sense of love and care for the earth and all life. My older ones, ages 16, 19, 21 and 23, are all amazing, creative, intelligent, loving and caring people. My youngest daughter, who is 8, is simply angelic! They are spiritually awake beings who I know will have a positive impact in the world. In my opinion, raising awake children is vital for our future.

I also agree with David that there are plenty of potential resources available to take care of everyone on earth. As I see it, the problem is that most people don't seem to remember that that we're all one family circling the sun together. If more people woke up to that truth, taking care of everyone wouldn't be a problem. Just my opinion..

Imagine if all the greatest thinkers and doers in this world were focused on creating systems to care of everyone! No one would go without. It would be a utopian dream!

Yes. They say that we will never have a truly peaceful world until we have truly peaceful individuals, who absolutely refuse to go to war - including war with themselves!

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

I agree with Purenkind, in that raising awake children children is vital for our future, I have four, and mine are all much like hers (They are also similar in age --27,24,22,and 3). I also vehemently agree that if you are not willing and able to raise conscious people, you shouldn't have them..

A truly sustainable population would be somewhere between 500 million and 2 billion. Pre-agricultural level. If you don't believe we have been trashing the planet since then, even way back then, read Clive Ponting's A Green History of the World.

Making a bunch of mini-mes would be worse, not better. Even if they were really loving, caring vegans.

I am doing my part with zero.

Hearing talk about "not having kids because the earth can't support us" always deeply upsets me, but it takes me a while to get my thoughts together, so I would like to consolidate them now...

Caveat: I understand there are SO many personal factors involved with the decision to procreate: I am solely focusing on the "unsustainability of procreation" idea presented here. This is an outright attack on an idea, not any personal member here, or anyone who has chosen not to have kids for whatever OTHER reasons. But this one idea is completely flawed and I am burning with a rant!

And I really want to dig deep with this. I'm doubly shocked RAW VEGANS feel this way! (And at the same time, not really... raw seems to make us very sensitive to our environment.)

The planet cannot support this many people, PROVIDED the collective lifestyle does not change. Opting not to have children BECAUSE modern culture is unsustainable, is >>GIVING UP.<< MODERN CULTURE is clearly the problem here (and maybe some mistakes we've made in the past 12k years leading up to where we are now). To believe that procreation, rather than modern culture is the problem, you are implicitly stating the human species can no longer live in harmony with nature. It is a surrender to the circumstances we see now, abandoning all hope, energy, and will to focus on creating any other reality.

Sure, maybe CIVILIZATION is damned, but that is hardly how man lived most of his years in relation to the planet. (And maybe civilization can evolve, who knows?) Are you throwing the baby (MAN! YOU! YOUR SPECIES!) out with the bathwater (this sloppy mess we've found ourselves in now)? Mother Nature, despite the fact we've done more than just step on her toes, HASN'T done it yet. We still receive unyielding love from this earth that is our home. We are still showered with sunlight, plants still offer us the most delightful nourishment. If we're feeling guilty, unworthy--we need to deeply examine why. Why evict ourselves from a loving home? We need serious forgiveness, and healing. Apathy can be convenient, just like TV dinners can be convenient, but being aware and conscious like you are now, what IS the price of "convenience"?

And pause a moment to think about how much FILTH (chemicals, garbage, negative emotion, radiation) we're putting into the environment, and how all of these things very scientifically negatively impact fertility. (Did you ever see the movie Children of Men?) We could have this gift taken away from us. Count the blessings you have today. (HPV vaccine targeted at children makes me cringe particularly.)

Rather than changing and blessing the future WITH YOUR GIFT OF LIFE (can you think of any more powerful force for change, really?), you withhold the single most awesomely creative contribution to the world you can make. (Why?) To choose not to give life, because you believe there is no alternative to our behavior now--slashing and burning forests, waging wars to fuel our dirty cars, this depressive, mechanical nightmare--is not only morally accepting such conditions (this means you think it's OK!), it seeks to make them PERMANENT, because it has beaten the will from you to produce your own, radical, evolutionary change. There's so much that is horrible--but horrible enough to make me want to lay down the spirits of my children and my future (the world's future) out on the train tracks? To sacrifice the most powerful gift we have, to what--those plastic garbage patches out on the ocean?

What overwhelmed you so much that made you want to give up? Life is precious!

This subject struck a nerve because going raw made me want kids like crazy. I ate too many strawberries and realized that it is my GOD-GIVEN RIGHT to accept my role as woman and call forth future generations. It taught me the most important thing I seem to have forgotten: that life is precious. Before, even while vegan, I'm sure I sneered at toddlers and cursed "stupid people" for "breeding" all the time--but, I wasn't very happy then, and I certainly wasn't aware of these awesome forces inside my body... this awesome capacity to feel empathy with every living being inside my heart.

I think there has to be an immense pain stemming from awareness of the global crisis that would make a person disconnect to a point where they think it's okay/normal/healthy to refuse the gift of life.

It seems like a good thing to me if I can bring one more person into this world and raise them to think CONSCIOUSLY and COLLECTIVELY--that's where real planetary healing is going to happen; NOT by refusing to change destructive habits, and then spare excess waste by deciding not to bring mini-consumers into the world. Bring some mini-healers, mini-gardeners.

Hasn't raw shown you anything about how joyously and harmoniously humans CAN exist with nature?

And my god, if we ALL impart something other than twinkies and violence on TV to our children? What will be left? Eventually, everyone who didn't procreate will be dead.

I think there's something seriously perturbed within the human psyche if you can rationalize washing your hands of the situation by abstaining from procreation. We all have consciousness... we need to use it now, more than ever, and if you haven't given up on life ENTIRELY, I think consciousness will be what transforms the future.

/end rant... I think

I haven't given up on life

i value my own life

and i value the life of others as well

every animal species historically and generally, gauged the amount of resource they had with their mating patterns ... instinctually, they took an assesment of what was there and how many of their kind could be supported by it and their procreating behaviours mathematically reflected the amount of resource they had within their habitat.

i don't feel that the decision to not have kids necessarily equates to "giving up"

i feel that there is no dearth of the human population

and that the earth needs a break

in fact, i think the earth is literally CRYING (floods, tsunamis, hurricanes)

and SHAKING ( earthquakes) people off of its back in order to reach some sort of equillibrium

i agree that if we ALL proceeded to radically transform our lifestyles so that we were living

1. without cars
2. without heating
3. without air conditioning
4. without television,computers, radios,
5. without homes
etc. etc. and all of the earthly resources that are necessary to create just ONE of these items,

i don't see a problem with having more kids

but this is not the case and if EVERYONE decided to have kids during this state of "modernity", calamity would result

so, its fine that some wish to have kids

and it is DEFINETELY okay with me that some wish to NOT have kids

There are too many rats in the cage.

Of course I know it's not the population but the lifestyle. But how many people are going to live minimum impact lives? The current population with the lifestyle cannot be sustained. People talk about utopian lifestyles which are not going to happen, even if it happens, billions would have to die for such a major lifestyle shift.

I agree life is precious blah blah. But I am also aware that I mean nothing and add nothing positive to this world. Even as I type this I am using up resources. If I was living in a third world country, I would be using up less (but still finite, and rising) resources. I find it arrogant when people actually tell me that their kids are a gift to the world! No, thank you. The world is already overflowing with such "gifts".

Also, I cannot impose my views on kids and expect them to grow up thinking in a "utopian" manner. That is bad parenting and will not do it. My line is gonna end with me. So be it. The world is not losing anything. Of course, I am too selfish to kill myself .

Right. Can't change others though - only set a good example. If YOU are doing everything you can to family plan responsibly, then THAT's what the world needs now! RESPONSIBLE love sweet love. Heh..heh.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

Seems like a rather lonely philosophy to me...

My philosophy is that no man is an island. Although, I fully support your right not to have kids!

Sarah, who can't imagine life without her family!

Sarah
[goingbananasblog.com]

Maybe more of the people could live on the water kinda like the 1985 movie "Waterworld" where they rarely get off their boats. There's lots of room on the water. Or maybe some of the people could move off the planet into outer space ?

I dunno why but this:

"and want to make sure that I do my part in ending my family line ." (quote from the first post in the thread)

Makes me feel kinda sad!

This is how far we've come with the Global Warming Scarmongering.

i don't think the human race lineage will end any time soon