I've decided to respond to this, because it seems to express confusions I've myself had, and illuminates something about the nature of inner conflict. (This thread written assuming someone has read the post, though you're welcome to read my framing first) zenrants.substack.com/p/dear-son
Inner conflict in a letter to a child one chooses not to have
19 tweets · September 2021 · 135 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
I want to start by saying that I have tremendous respect for the author, @AlfieriJamie, for the courage to share such intimate thinking with the world ❤️🔥 Seriously. Revealing oneself in process and in detail helps others find clarity, whether in resonance or in dissonance 💞
Like the author, and like @dthorson who shared this post, I've also struggled with making sense of where having a kid fits in with uhhh the urgent global everything situation. For me it was "I don't want a distraction from xrisk" plus roughly this:😅
And I respect whatever decisions people decide to make on this front. There are no right answers here. Yet... something about the vibe/tone in this piece creates a response in my body of disturbance & disgust. The piece reads... like a dark ritual, sacrificing something vital.
I first wrote in my notes when I read it: > It feels like an act of violence to speak to this son he's choosing to not instantiate > (says some part of my gut) I'd now clarify: "to speak 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘺 to this son he's asserting that he won't instantiate".
In the language below, of "ritually sacrificing the child", it feels to my body that the child is... not laid to rest, but still suffering on the altar of this man's indecision and turmoil.
There's a place for heroic sacrifice, but it has a totally different energy. True resolve comes from conflict being *resolved*. This piece of writing looks to me like someone trying desperately to convince himself.
He speaks with a conviction that doesn't match his own self-recognition as a "deluded fool". He's trying to convince himself; in so doing, he's cutting himself off from what else he knows.
If the kid were laid to rest, he'd feel peace and clarity and determination to save the world on service of everyone else's children, or something. He might have even written to such a child instead—a real child, not born of him but the living recipient of his fatherly energy 👑
Maybe not—who am I to say? Sometimes one writes letters that one never sends, in order to let go, and that was clearly the attempt here. But those are usually about the past, when someone has died or a relationship has ended. Not about a decision that could still be re-made.
Some of what I'm saying here is specific to this one author, but I have some sense that this attitude is supported by the "cult" he feels he must join. Partially just priors. Partially because when I was at a BioEmotive retreat at MAPLE in 2019, most residents seemed desperate.
But *particularly* my sense here is because of a specific story about MAPLE's founder that suggests that > the principle at its root is “disregard what you want in favor of what Must Be Done” (source: facebook.com/caroline.f.hub…)
This suggests that for all of its beauty—and there is deep beauty to what MAPLE is doing—there's a basic organizing principle that is going to keep people compartmentalized and make it hard for them to actually maturely & sanely engage with the meaning crisis & xrisks.
I don't know what the answer is, but I'd feel a lot more optimistic about the organization if it found a way to transform & untangle that organizing principle. Perhaps some way that Soryu could go be a mendicant and someone else could step in who more integratedly wants the job.
On the original content level: "if you think conscientious people shouldn't have children, you're saying the world should be inherited by unconscientious people (memetically and/or genetically)" It's an obviously self-defeating strategy under how evolution actually works.
Can raising children be in service to solving xrisk/meaning/enlightenment? I think for some people, it's going to have to be. We can't build a eutopia out of dissociated sacrifice. Others may integratedly discern that in this lifetime they don't want kids, on balance. Legit.
I personally don't think that Alf, who wrote this letter, has achieved that level of integrated clarity, but that doesn't mean I can confidently predict what the resolution ultimately should be. I just don't want him or others to confuse his present declaration with integration.
I wish him & others the best of luck at finding clarity on how to organize their one wild and precious life in the face of enormous pressures in conflicting directions. It's rarely easy but as far as I can tell it's always in some sense possible and nearly always worth it.
If you want to read more of my thinking about common confusions regarding "committing" as a strategy, check out this 🧵👇 Feel free to ask Qs or share experiences that seem to contradict what I'm saying! That's how we deepen collective understanding 👁️👁️