. . . is gardening. Remember, God made the garden of Eden and put people in it to keep it and tend it? Even if you don't believe that story, you know gardening goes WAY back. You might debate that we were hunter-gatherers long ago, but for the sake of argument, I'm going to say that hunting is a sport.
I've been spending hours weeding and planting for this year's crop of vegetable favorites. I think it's amazing that food grows right out of the ground!! Think about it. We didn't create the seeds. We didn't create the soil. (Well, I do compost bio-waste to IMPROVE the soil, but I made neither.) All we do is put the soil and seeds together, and let sun, rain and time take its course. That requires planning. And patience. The most productive gardens also require maintenance . . . weeding, moisture monitoring and additional water when needed. They also need to be guarded from pests such as insects and squirrels.
A garden is a good metaphor for life. We're lucky (or blessed) to be born where we are . . .in this country, this soil. You're equally lucky if you have good parents and good genes . . . the seeds. What you plant in your garden is up to you. How much you grow depends on how much you plant, and how productive your garden is depends on how well you tend it and protect it. In addition to good soil and seed, it takes hard work and patience to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
I think a lot of us are impatient. We're an instant-gratification society. We don't want to wait for results, we don't even like waiting on a microwave meal! We've done a disservice to our children to not teach them the value of hard work and delayed gratification.
We must work hard, save, invest for the future and be patient. We want to enjoy all that life has to offer, NOW. We think we're entitled. If we can't pay for it now, we'll charge it to the credit card!
The same things are true for a country and an economy. If we spend all that we have "enjoying" life now, and we don't plant and work for the future, there will be no crops. If we don't invest in education, there will be no scientists, doctors, and nurses. If we don't invest in young businesses, there will be no next-generation Microsofts or I-phones. If we don't plant the seeds of the next generation, literally, there will be no next generation . . . to pay the nations' credit cards (deficits and unfunded liabilities for pensions, Social Security, and Medicare.)
Let's stop charging up the nations' credit cards. The next generation can't pay 80% taxes, especially because there are going to be fewer of them than there are of us. Unless we start growing more of them. Forget the world's oldest profession, what's the world's oldest past-time? Oh wait, we now can have the recreation without the procreation. Too bad for us. Or should I say, too bad for them?
_______________________
Picture link here.
Posts
I will rectify this by having 14 babies.
ReplyDeleteGotta do my part, right? XD
Jamie, if you just have four, you'll be doing almost three times what most people do. The "average" American family has what, 1.6 children? That's less than one per parent.
ReplyDeleteI did a calculation on just the "Worley" family's fertility from Grandmother and Grandpa. If we keep up the rate of fertility decline in just that family, in three generations, there will be no more descendants.
That overpopulation stuff is all hokey. You can bet I'm gonna have/adopt all the kids I can afford to take care of... and maybe just one more past that, if God's got the grace to give me for it. :)
ReplyDeleteIt's the double combination of birth control and abortion that's done this to us, eh? 'cause it's not like people are having less sex...
Jamie, if you had two dozen kids, you wouldn't make a dent in the population implosion. The best we can teach our kids at this point is to work hard and not expect to have as much as we did, because the burden of government debt is going to take so much more from them.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's a combination of birth control and abortion that's caused it. Just in the US, we've aborted over 50 MILLION babies since Roe v. Wade. It's a holocaust of the preborn. Even if people don't believe that, they should recognize the additional GDP we've lost (see my first blog). If even half of those babies were now grown and of average productivity, our economy would have gained more than a trillion dollars in GDP per YEAR.
You speak of birth control as if it's a bad thing. It wasn't invented as a form of population control, but as a way of giving women some form of control over their lives.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as having children is concerned, I feel that it is overall a positive thing we humans have evolved to the point that we generally have children because we love them and want to raise them and take care of them with no ulterior motives. It kind of makes me cringe to hear people talking of "producing future consumers" for the sake of our economy.
I think Becky hit the nail on the head when she said the best we can do is teach our kids not to expect too much. The future (of a large aging population supported by a smaller one) is pretty much set in stone at this point and our economy will just have to adapt. And it will. It may not be pretty, but it will adapt.
I do speak of birth control as a bad thing, because I think in most cases it is. It encourages the idea that sex can be consequence free: which it can't, without surgery. Condoms burst. Spermicides fail. Women forget to take the pill. Birth control's current use is born out of a culture of pleasure-seeking, consequence-shunning people who are all about instant gratification and want nothing to do with responsibility. Unless these women were being raped, in which case there was much more going on, they already had ways to control their lives. It wasn't purely that--rather, it was about control without self-control.
ReplyDeleteThe human body can survive without sex. It's not like food, where you'll shrivel up and die without it. Yeah, sexual urges are natural, and it's not healthy to completely ignore one's sexuality, but our sex drives are not the unstoppable force our culture would have us think they are. A little prudence can go a long way. Of course, society doesn't help anymore, what with sex-charged ads, lack of chaperoning, sexualization of children, etc. etc.
I hear you about the loving kids thing, and think it's awful for people to have kids just to put 'em to work (or just unfortunate if necessary). I want a lot of kids because I know I have a lot of love in me. But the reason we Americans are not having as many kids is because we on average DON'T love kids anymore. Here's our selfish, materialist culture again... kids cost money, kids are work, kids can be annoying and high-maintenance. So people just plain don't have them. And often when they do, they are single children, sometimes designer babies treated more like dolls than human beings; wish fulfillment, gene continuation.
okay I know that I am making plenty of huge, sweeping generalizations, which I hate, so I apologize. But birth control has many MAJOR cons which most people ignore or dismiss without a thought. That's not good for any side of an argument.