Screw My Offspring

Humans are behaving in a bizarrely self-destructive way. A normal animal will happily sacrifice its life to ensure the survival of its offspring. Even a spider, salmon or an octopus will do this. Humans used to do that, but for some reason they have stopped. They happily destroy the environment in hundreds of ways, knowing full well the damage will make life very difficult or perhaps impossible for their descendants. All they seem to value is short term personal financial gain and often not even personal gain, just financial gain of some corporate third party. From a Darwinian point of view, this is a fatal defect.

What happened? Here is one hypothesis: Grandparents used to live in extended families with their grandchildren. People used to become grandparents at a much younger age. They bonded strongly with their grandchildren by caring for them. Today, with the rise of nuclear families, grandparents have relatively no interaction with their grandchildren other that phone calls and emailed photos. They don’t bond properly. In non-technological societies, your social standing as a grandparent is determined by the size and health of your collection of grandchildren. They are also your financial support system.

Grandparents have ceased to be primarily concerned with the long term survival of their grandchildren. They focus mainly on immediate personal needs. Advertising encourages this new pathological value system. Even in technological societies, grandparents are the ones who primarily make the decisions in business and government. The disruption of the natural family structure of our species has made grandparents lose their concern for future generations and become Republicans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)