Low 1/4: Parenthood

I've often thought of myself as having a strong paternal instinct. I'd rather not view myself as subject to biological drives, nor do I wish to believe it's a big egotrip to have a mini version of yourself. Regardless, there's something that makes me want to have a child... I think the video for Will Smith's Just the Two of Us brough it on. That's in an ideal and lovely world. We don't live in that world. I know I hate being born into this world, and I deeply resent being on a planet in which I have to prostitute myself to capitalists to stay alive. How can I possibly introduce a child to a planet which has received hardly any praise from my own blog?

Having a child in this economic system is a ticket to exploitation. Child labour was outlawed thus no more physical exploitation of the young. But adult labour is nice and legal, so get ready for a lifetime of debt (Or in Newspeak, mortgage - Old French for dead pledge). Indeed, this economy thrives on "credit" and debt - or, corrected for Newspeak, debt and debt.

From The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell, 1937:

At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her — her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that’ It isn't the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her — understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.

Based on notes from the middle of the night on 19/01/06 and a separate draft post from 08/01/06. Bobbing up and down, in and out of depression, like a buoy in thoroughly unpleasant seas.


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