Thursday, September 29, 2005

Cognitive dissonance

I'm increasingly blown away by human imaginativeness, creativitiy, and our odd ability to brainwash ourselves into holding contradictory viewpoints.

Take for example, these good folks at a recent peace rally in San Fran. You or I could never hope to convince them that the people they are making common cause with view them with disgust and contempt, and some would gladly butcher them like pigs given half a chance. Whereas the state they oppose actually accepts and tolerates their lifestyle choice.

Reminds me a bit of folks who trumpet a woman's right to choose and then lament the demographic timebomb that is ticking away right now, threatening our social safety net. Uh, anyone see the correlation? No babies now means no one to pay mom and pop's hefty medical and pension costs in two or three decades. Immigrants, you say? Ah, yes, lets go abroad and recruit an underclass of young labourers to support our aging baby-boomers and pay increasingly greater amounts into pension plans that will be depleted by the time they are old enough to use them. How very progressive of you!
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3 comments:

About me said...

If you take away the right to choose who do you think will start having more babies? Probably the much younger set of our population - who are not yet fully educated and are inexperienced. This would create situations where children are born into more precarious financial situations (actually creating MORE of a burden on our already overburdened social system). If those children are less well-off, then how will they be in any position to care for our "aging baby boomers"? Rahter, they would be exacerbating the problem! If you think that a woman's right to choose is creating demographic havoc, perhaps energies should be spent on discovering ways for men to give birth - that way we can all contribute, fair no? It would be entertaining to see how the face of birth control would change if men were suddenly having to risk their careers and financial freedom every time they had sex.

7:34 a.m.
James said...

I'm not even going to get into the logical fallacy inherent in some of Jojo's statements. I would simply refer you to the concept of
"argumentum ad metum".

Besides, where did I say anything about taking away "the right to choose"? I'm simply pointing out that the current progressive/liberal/feminist orthodoxy of "choosing" to not have kids (or having one kid late in life)logically leads to an undeniable demographic reality: a shrinking population.

Many post-Christian industrialized nations are attempting to deal with this reality through immigration, creating a whole set of other problems.

Simple statement of facts, really.

5:06 p.m.
About me said...

Oh sorry, I thought when you said "Reminds me a bit of folks who trumpet a woman's right to choose" you were talking about a woman's right to choose. Silly me. ;)

I get that you feel that people are foolish for wanting to choose and, in the same breath, worrying about the state of our aging population. I just think you're over-simplifying. The world is complex, as I'm sure you understand. It is made up of far more than two factors - hence the vast opportunities for cognitive dissonance.

If you're speaking purely demographically then, sure, there's trouble on the horizon. On the other hand, there are still a million reasons (some, wait for it... EMOTIONAL) to not have children, to delay having children and/or to reduce the population in general. So one could argue ad nauseum (oh, wait, I'm already there) about what's best.

I agree that something needs to be done (and immigration is only one way that Canada is attempting to deal with this - I doubt anyone would argue that it is the only way or that the solution shouldn't be multi-faceted). I'm sure the powers that be would LOVE for you to offer something up that would resolve the issue for them.

As for logical fallacies, emotion has a place in logical reasoning. The arguments I have made are not irrational or unrelated and, therefore, not fallacious (philosophy 101). The type of fallacy you are referring to would require me to make an unrelated emotional appeal to try to gain favour for my argument. I simply added the emotional (and very related) aspect to this argument.

OK, I threw in a bit of "what if" but that's hardly against the rules (whatever rules those might be...)

Let's just look at all the factors. That's all I'm saying.

Have a nice day :)

11:43 a.m.

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