Ours is a world where second-hand smoke in parks and on beaches tilts people into hand-wringing concern over the possible repercussions for their health.
Today’s is world wherein quitting smoking with the help of expensive and possibly quite dangerous pharmaceutical products has been elevated to the status of a heroic act, while wounded US military personnel sent home from Iraq get told they owe the government money for not seeing through their tour of duty. It’s a world where a puff of cigarette smoke is environmentally dangerous, while jetting to DIsneyland is almost a civil right with environmental consequences that can be safely ignored.
It is in this insane world that some nutty, self-absorbed women and couples have managed to garner press attention for trumpeting their sterilization operations as small, quietly heroic contributions towards saving the planet.
Now, reproductive freedom is not the issue here. Irrespective of one’s views on that — and many of us adamantly support it — it seems weirdly delusional for anyone to imagine that their individual decision not to reproduce will lead to a better, cleaner world. Nothing wrong with not having children. Lots of people make that choice. Indeed, the ones who have the power to make that choice (and they’re making it in population-slashing numbers) are from a minority group: wealthy people in the West. "Wealthy" is accurate here, because most people in the West are wealthy, by world standards.
The two of you don’t want children, and you cringe when friends or relatives disapprove. You are so conformist, so soft-bellied, that you need to invent a politically correct, face-saving excuse for a choice that is yours alone to make. You can’t stand up and simply make your choice, even when you’re in the company of record numbers of people making a similar one. No, you’ve got to convince yourselves that you’re doing something with redeeming social value according to the cant of last week’s newspaper editorial.
Yikes. This is the psychology of overly-cushioned, narcissistic, indifferently educated, uncritical, alienated idiots. You’ll stop smoking not for your own reasons, but because you’re told to. You’ll cut your caloric intake in response to government’s intimidation campaigns. You’d believe public health "authorities" if they and their media fools told you that under-cooked cabbage causes ingrown toenails and that those with ingrown toenails shouldn’t be hired because they eat too much cabbage.
You’re not saving the planet. You’re just being unbelievably irritatating to a number of fellow human beings that you share it with. Maybe you should take up smoking. It might help clear your heads.
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