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The Only Child

This nOde last updated July 16th, 2005 and is permanently morphing...
(6 Chicchan (Serpent) / 3 Xul (Dog) - 45/260 - 12.19.12.8.5)

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I was challenged by someone who said, "Well, you're always talking to these internal linkmushrooms. Why don't you ask them how to save the world?"    The next time I was stoned I asked, "How can we save the world?" And the mushroom said, "Each woman should bear only one natural child." It didn't hesitate for a moment.

spores from space...a microscopic trace? Terence McKenna

If every woman were to have but one natural child, the population of the earth would drop by 50% in the next 45 years. Without warfare, without migration, without artificially created epidemic diseases, or relocation and horror on a massive scale. Now, someone will say, "But how are you going to convince women in Bangladesh to limit their reproductive activity?" Good point, but a woman who has a child in Malibu -- that child will have 800 to 1000 times more negative impact on resources than a child born to a woman in Bangladesh. We're crazy to preach limited reproduction to women in the Third World when, if you convert one woman in Malibu to the idea of not having a child, it's like converting 1000 women in the back streets of Dakka. Now, this woman in Malibu is very probably college-educated, completely media-sophisticated, and open to all the arguments and styles of persuasion to which we are familiar. In other words, she's the easy person to convince. She doesn't argue that she is Hindu or Catholic and can't go along with it.

- internal linkTerence McKenna interviewed by Gracie & Zarkov for _Mondo 2000_


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internal linkYouth: Then every destructive act comes from responding to beauty?

Thomas: Ultimatey, yes.  but an act of destruction resulting from a craving that disregards the whole story and the vitality of the whole is the first link in the chain.  Destructive acts are linked through generations as one violence is transmitted and compounded into other violences.  These chains of misery can stretch through millions of years, binding up whole societies in torment.  In this way, needeless destruction is a response to evil that has been handed down.  Parents inflict their self-contempt upon their children in physical and psychic abuse, who in turn project their self-hatred onto others and their own children.  The earth suffers under the weight of accumulated misery and pathology, all of which has its ultimate source in acts of egocentric craving.  Think of all this suffering, not only human feeling but the torment in so many realms of the planet!  The magnitude of the Earth's adventure staggers the human internal linkimaginaton!

Youth: Is there no end to it?

Thomas: Each individual person has the power of participating in the transformation of the whole Earth.  The evil that reaches you after so many millions of years of existence can be absorbed and transformed.  You have the power to accept the suffering, to refuse to pass it on to another, to forgive, to end the needless torment, and, most of all, to transmute evil into energy for the vitality of the whole.

[...]

The human form of life can be considered the child of the Earth.  This is especially clear when we examine the anatomies of other primates.  The head of an infant chimpanzee resembles the head of an infant human in size and shape, but as the chimpanzee reaches adulthood, its head changes in significant ways.  The human head remains comparatively the same infant head, only larger.  In fact, the infant chimpanzee's head looks more like an adult human's head than its own future adult shape.  This dynamic, in which the qualities of the young are retained into mature stages, is called neoteny.  We can then begin to understand the human as an eternal child.  The first human types were young primates who never "left" their internal linkyouth.  The shapes of their juvenile bodies were retained into adulthood, as was their youthful behavior.  The great accomplishment of the human form, then, was the creation of a mature form of childhood, a form of life that, upon reaching adulthood, could continue to devote itself to a lifetime of adventurous play.

[...]

Think of the tremendous labor of all living forms to have finally arrived at you, the ultimate child of the planet.  They did their work; now you do yours! Plunge into the work of living as surprise become aware of itself.  You are the essence of surprise, the heart and core of internal linkplay.  Show yourself as truly as you can, and you will in that moment internal linkshine with the freedom and frolic and fecundity of creative play.

- _The Universe Is A internal linkGreen internal linkDragon_ atomjacked inventory cacheby Brian Swimme


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it seems to make sense.  the more education, the more options you have, the less likely you are to propagate biologically.  instead, we tend to want to propagate internal linkmemetically - putting "career" and "fame" (both sensing the inevitable internal linkimmortality to come)  ahead of the need to breed for economic gain (it made sense back in the day, but now in post-industrial internal linkinformation economics, we don't have to).  most people are boggled by the notion that i will never want to have children.  it offends my parents, it offends 'patriots', and it offends religious bigots.  it makes sense, because i am doing good by not having children.  i don't need to have children.  my sense of immortality is on another plane.  it is memetic.  i'm reliving the birthing internal linkprocess each and every day by being aware that every breath, every expressive notion, is a valued child of mine.  in return, my conscience is free of guilt, as i don't contribute to a problem that is plaguing our mother earth - overpopulation.  enough humans, more information. that doesn't mean that those giving birth to one child is doing anything evil.  just those that are giving birth to two or more. :)  i believe that this is shocking to think about now, but makes perfect sense and will be common sense within the next few years. the trick now is to convince the massive without forcing the issue (like China).  i believe we will arrive at this idea of our own free will...

I used to resent being an only child.  i wanted brothers and sisters to play with.  i wanted to feel safer... i now realized that genetically, my parents were caught in the middle of a zeitgeist.  for whatever reason, it made sense to stop after me.  i take it one step further - it begins... and ends... with me.- @Om* 12/29/01

another factor is the accusation of selfishness.  to not want to have a child, is not being selfish, in fact, quite the opposite.  i am a hedonist, in the sense that i want to experience pleasure and avoid pain (don't we all?), but to deny the notion that i will experience pleasure by NOT wanting or raising  a child is comparable to accusing someone of not participating in a vote.  if one is forced to vote, it is no longer democratic, it is fascism.  if one is judged by not having children for the pure pleasure of it, not only is it silly, it's hypocritical.  having children is the most selfish act you can imagine, especially now in this age.  to not give a choice in another being, another potentially conscious being, to inflict them into a world full of war and hate - that sounds pretty fucking selfish to me.  i have much more respect for women who stand strong and are able to go through the process of abortion as a choice.  it is a traumatic act, and a very unselfish one.  to terminate potentiality is not a crime, it is an act of love.   - @Om* 5/15/02


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Boards Of Canada - Music Has A Right To Children on Warp (1998) Hot Snakes - Suicide Invoice on Swami (2002)


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