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November 12, 2012

I believe western civilization to be in the middle of a profound transition.
The change I’m referring to is the move from thinking of ourselves primarily
as supporters of society to being direct contributors to it. Put
differently, it’s the transition from being parents to being individuals.

Defining One’s Identity

Nothing defines one more than being a parent. It is today, by nearly any
account, the most important role one can have in life. And for a strong
reason: it’s a massive undertaking with profound implications in both
success and failure.

This being true, it’s unsurprising that it usually encompasses one’s entire
existence. Parents–or at least good parents–structure their entire
lives around ensuring that their offspring are at least as well off as they
are.

A parent’s days, months, and years are planned based on achieving this goal,
and to the extent that this charge is taken seriously the parent doesn’t
just ignore their own interests, but actually supplants them with the
interests of their children.

Where one will live, what career to have, where to vacation, how to spend
your free time–these are all chosen not by what the parent would like to do
as an individual, but what is best for their kids. This is accepted as noble
in our society, as I would agree it should be.

What goes unnoticed, however, is how extreme of a choice is actually made
when someone decides to have children. Rather than being just an individual
taking on a new responsibility to be added to his list of priorities, it
can–and I argue should–be considered a fundamental change of identity.

It’s a designation change, and perhaps the most important one that can be
made. It’s declaring that your goal is no longer to affect the world
directly, but to instead ensure that your children are empowered to do so in
your stead. It’s sacrificing yourself as an individual in order to become a
creator of individuals.

Another View of Women’s Rights

Interestingly, this perspective greatly illuminates the discussion of
women’s rights.

Women are, almost indisputably, more “parent” than men are. This is true for
a number of obvious and no so obvious reasons, with the fact that women
spend nine months physically bonded to their children being primary among
them. Perhaps second would be the fact that men are designed to produce high
numbers of offspring in a rather flippant fashion.

We still search for all the reasons why women are more dedicated to
parenthood than men, but the data show it to be true. It’s so obvious as to
be uninteresting, but what is worth exploration is how this translates to
real-world outcomes.

In deductive form:

1. The more parental one is the more dedicated they are to their children’s
   pursuits rather than their own.

2. Those who are dedicated to their own pursuits less than those of others
   are less likely to achieve as individuals.

3. Those who do not achieve as individuals are less likely to be recognized
   and respected by others and by history.

4. Women are more parental, and therefore are less individual, and
   therefore are less likely to achieve as individuals and be recognized
   and respected by others and by history.

In short, women have achieved less throughout history, and continue to
achieve less today, because they have choose in far higher numbers to make
the primary sacrifice in life: that of being a supporter of people instead
of a person.

When you set aside ambition and the drive to create as an individual you
also set aside your chances to individually mark the world, and this results
in you and those like you (women) being less respected in a world all about
individual achievement.

There are many other dimensions to this problem, but none is as descriptive
as the violent distinction between individual and supporter. Individuals
produce unique ideas and create new things, and supporters (parents:women)
produce people who do those things.

Men simply started being individuals before women did, and in many parts of
the world they are still largely considered the only individuals even today.
This lag is the primary reason for women being less respected, and any place
you find the ailment of women being inferior you should look for a lack of
female individuality or the perception thereof.

A Human Problem

The gender perspective is interesting, but it’s truly only a datapoint in
this discussion. The issue to address is human advancement, not that
of just men or women.

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My argument is that this will come in the form of a massive human shift from
being enablers to being producers. From being technical to being artistic.
From being parents to being individuals.

The greatest gains here can clearly be made with women because in so many
societies they are still faceless placeholders without identities who will
hopefully produce a man into the world. Getting women out of that
predicament would improve creativity and idea production for roughly half of
our 6 billion.

But the problem is much more grave than this, as most men are not free
either, i.e. the bar for matching their male counterparts is still
depressingly low.

The reasons for this are two-fold:

1. Even in advanced or affluent societies far too many in the middle and
   upper-middle classes are focused purely on slogging through a corporate
   job in order to (supposedly) make life better for their children. They
   don’t think as individuals. They don’t focus on creation as their
   primary goal. They have sacrificed their individuality for parenthood.

2. In poorer and less advanced societies the choice isn’t even there. In
   these places the options have been chosen for the parents: they are
   purely supporters of their families because 100% of their effort
   must be made in order to have a chance of survival. This is the
   model humans came from, and it’s why it’s so built into us now.

It’s interesting to notice that in the richer households throughout the
world a new model of parenthood is becoming prominent: that of the parent
continuing to be an individual while much of the parenting is offloaded onto
others.

This should be expected. As education and awareness increase, so too should
the recognition of the drive to create as an individual. And with wealth
comes the ability to, in significant degrees, have both.

People know that the rich are doing this, but people don’t realize precisely
what’s happening when they do. It’s imperative that we identify it for what
it is: the claiming of individuality and creativity as primary desires in
those who have the option.

Under this model they still enjoy parenthood, but they do so with the
ability to go on about their own lives as individuals while their children
are still cared for. I have no data, or even any formed ideas, on whether
this produces good children, but my first glance says that it can.

The Future

1. As our civilization matures through education and quality of life, we
   will continue to migrate from a “by default” parenting approach to a
   world in which individual creative achievement is primary.

2. Women, who throughout time have been far more parental than men will
   continue the gains they’ve made in becoming individuals, and will
   eventually enjoy the same ‘identity resolution’ as men–which will be
   much higher than it is today for either men or women.

3. Human reproduction will come to be taken extremely seriously, as will
   the responsibility of becoming one who raises children. Those who do
   this will do so explicitly through a formal declaration of status change
   from individual to parent, and they will be celebrated and honored for
   their choice.

4. An entire class of child-rearers will flourish for parents who want to
   have children but do not want to change their status from that of
   individual. These parents will be able to function as individuals while
   still fulfilling their duties to their children through supplemental
   help.

5. Both true parents and these supplemental trainers of children will be
   highly respected and will achieve something like individual recognition
   through the proxied achievements of the children they helped create.

6. A draft could even become possible whereby society chooses qualified
   individuals to become parents. The news would be received in two ways:
   as the end of individuality and therefore distressing, but also as a
   wonderful opportunity to give back to society through support and
   creation of a new life.

In short, our future has us realizing the primitive way in which we
currently view human identity and reproduction. It will address this by
recognizing the importance of human identity as crucial to happiness and by
placing the highest possible standard on anyone wishing to bring a child
into our world.

Notes

1 This is one of the most interesting illusions in society–that parents work
their dull jobs so that their children won’t have to do so themselves. What
happens in reality is that the parents who hate their jobs/lives go on to
groom their kids to have the exact same desires and goals. And thus they end
up settling into a corporate rut exactly as their parents did and then have
kids themselves with the promise that they’ll endure the mediocrity so that
their parents won’t have to. And the cycle continues.