Trig Palin and his witness to life

"I'm assuming that Brendan doesn't have any children. If he did he wouldn't make dismissive comments about the satisfactions of home life. (I hope!) He basically doesn't know what he's talking about, in other words."

I'm assuming that Leo hasn't experienced a lot of foreign travel, and hasn't mastered a language other than English. If he had, he wouldn't make dismissive comments about the satisfaction of travel and connecting with other cultures. He basically doesn't know what he's talking about, in other words.

But the narcissism of the Moran Generation extends to their offspring, that their kids might be an extension of them with all of the control, molding and service that implies. Not only must the world serve their warped self image, but their children must be developed into a perfect reflection of that image.

Everyone molds their kids. Every decision any parent makes molds kids into the type of people their parents want them to be. There's no default state for kids - that's one reason humans are so adaptable and can live in virtually any environment. How is what you're advocating any different? You're teaching your kids your religious beliefs, you hope that they grow up to value the things that you value, and ultimately you want them to be happy and to be "good people." But everyone's understanding of what constitutes "happiness" and what path is most likely to lead to happiness is different, and the same goes double for what constitutes a "good person."

So, yes, I'm sure that if and when I have kid(s), my own values will have an impact on how I raise them. If you want to call that narcissism, fine, but I fail to see how it's any different from what anyone else does when they raise their kids.

Brendan, I would seriously question choosing a lifestyle that is so dependent on advanced technology (the transhumanism you mentioned before)

Your lifestyle is equally dependent on advanced technology. Self-sufficiency is pretty much an illusion with 6 billion + people on the planet. If the system goes down, we're all dead anyway. Might as well spend your life worrying about the planet getting hit by a rogue comet.

and a subversion of thousands of years of human social norms.

The nuclear family model people think of as the "norm" is really pretty recent. It's about 200 years old at most, and rose as an adaptation to early capitalism and the beginnings of industrialization. It began to die as industrialization itself began to die. Human social structure is fluid and always adapts to changing circumstances. The fact that religious conservatives resist this basic truth is probably a contributing factor to the much higher rates of family dysfunction in areas dominated by religious conservatives. Clinging to a system that no longer works will do that.

Besides, the basic hygeinic norms we practice in the developed world now are pretty radically different from the ones that prevailed before the advent of the germ theory of disease. Changing them worked out pretty well for us, I think. "Old" does not mean "useful."

The rest of your arguments are merely selfish and immature.

Right back at ya. I could just as easily say that your arguments are selfish in that you seem to be more interested in going down with the ship of a dying cultural form than giving your children the tools they will need to succeed in the world they will be living in. It's all about you and your entitlement to find validation and fulfillment through child-rearing, without giving any serious consideration to the question of whether you should be having kids at all. I could also say your arguments are immature in that you don't seem to have the perspective necessary to see that the values of the culture you're attached to are not eternal truths but rather situation-specific cultural adaptations. The analogy I could make would be to a child who hasn't yet realized that Mommy and Daddy are not invincible and are not always right. You inflate your values and your traditions into having some sort of transcendent cosmic significance they don't really have, because they're yours, in the same way a young child can't really understand that rest of the world doesn't see Bob and Mary as your omnipotent omnibenevolent MOMMY and DADDY. You can no more imagine a different social structure than the one you know existing without the sky falling in than a child can imagine being without his or her parents. I'm sure it's scary to really think about how big and diverse the world is, and how boundlessly adaptable humans are, and how utterly transitory and ultimately meaningless the cultural values you hold dear are, but coming to terms with that is the first sign of maturity.

Meditate on this: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." You dismiss the nobility of suffering or deprivation for "farcical authenticity," but is there room for nobility for any cause in your philosophy?

There's definitely a level of nobility in a person sacrificing in the name of what they sincerely believe is the betterment of others. However, compassion without wisdom is not only kind of tragic, but also useless at best and counterproductive at worst. Bush, for instance, will always talk about the strength of his convictions and his unwillingness to back down. That is admirable, in its way, but I generally admire someone who has smart ideas more than someone who has dumb ones, no matter how respectably they defend those ideas. I usually don't criticize conservative Christians for being hypocrites, for example, but rather for having bad ideas. Whether or not individual Christians walk the walk is a minor concern if the walk isn't actually doing them or anyone else any good.

The culture crunchy cons extol as great and noble is, in fact, broken. It no longer meets the needs and preferences of people in 21st century America at a cost they will usually regard as a worthwhile trade-off. If it works for you, great, just please don't get in the way of other people who are actually thriving in the new world that's emerging. My culture has no greater or lesser claim on objective truth than yours does, but mine provides me and a number of other people with measurable, tangible benefits in terms of standards of living.