He's an Indian dude who is suing his parents for giving birth to him. His name is Rafael Samuel, which doesn't sound very Indian, but his YouTube persona, Nihil Anand does. I've known a few Indians named Anand actually, and the Nihil might be because he's a nihilist and believes in nothing? Just guessing that one.
Nobody knows if China or India has the world's largest population. Most think China, but it's impossible to believe any statistics (or in my experience, much of anything at all) that comes out of China. As early as 2017, Time Magazine suggested that because of years of the One Child Policy in China, and nothing of the sort in India, China may have fallen to 2nd place back then. It's a victory that the above maniac, and I, believe should not be celebrated, but grieved.
He's definitely a troll using extreme comments like, "marriage is blackmail," "your parents had you instead of a toy or a dog," "your parents should support you your entire life," "you owe your parents nothing," "infertility is sexy," "blame the factory, not the product," "history keeps repeating because idiots keep reproducing," "parents are brainwashed into having children," and his stunt of suing his parents for giving birth to him, to get people arguing, fighting, and thinking. He's from Mumbai, a hugely overpopulated city, and maybe at 27, he's experiencing friends and family pressuring him into marriage and having children, but I wonder which is more responsible for his above statements.
I've lived in overcrowded cities like Beijing and Jakarta and the deluge of humanity is unrelenting day after day and one cannot remain unaffected by it. I don't know how many times I was stuck in traffic even after having left early for work in Jakarta, knowing I'd be late and knowing it would harm work relationships there. Can you imagine having a 1 or 2 hour period of work but knowing that included as much time as that or MORE in transit, virtually cutting your earnings in half? That's immeasurable stress. And while in the taxi, you have lots of time to think, nay fantasize, about just snapping your fingers and eliminating half of the people in the overpopulated country where you are. How glorious it would be! More jobs for everybody! Cleaner air, happier people, common courtesy, and lanes on the highway would just start opening up like magic! It sucks waiting in lineups for exactly everything, having little to no hope of actually SITTING on the sardine trains they call subways, glacially slow internet lines, more pollution, more poverty, more selfishness, more competition for E VRE THING... it's total misery. And that's exactly what Raphael believes. So his premise of, "what kind of parent would bring an innocent child into this kind of suffering?" may not be so crazy.
Now I know every time I broach this topic people consider the source and call bullshit or sour grapes and accuse me in their heads or to my face of just trying to justify my situation being unmarried and childless. But I've often thought about, and talked about reasons for childbirth. There are a few that have a tiny bit of merit, but maybe, in a world in which 4 kids are born every second, maybe it's time to start recalibrating some highly outdated thinking on this issue. Maybe it's getting a little bit irresponsible to be having kids for the many, MANY bad reasons that we do. And in a world where we are all very good at justifying our life choices, could it be the people who are having children who are the ones we should be calling bullshit on? Here's an intellectual clip on the topic (jump ahead to about the 1 minute mark):
Hahahaha! One of my all time favourite quotes from the Simpsons: "I've noticed your country is dangerously underpopulated." But the better quote for our purposes was, "The decision to have children is not to be made lightly. On the other hand, monkey see - monkey do." And later, Apu says he needs someone to float his body down the Ganges. Is Raphael right? Are the reasons Indians have for reproducing really dumb? Did 2.8 billion Indian parents have 1.4 billion kids for their pleasure?
I don't know about India, but here's a good graphic about why people want and don't want to have children. Presumably this is people all over the world, and as we know, countries vary in every category, and a lot of these categories have "it depends" qualifiers but it looks about right to me.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not against having kids. And I think some of the reasons against them are about as misguided as reasons FOR them. For instance, overpopulation. To be honest, the WORLD isn't really overpopulated. People are just gravitating to the cities and overpopulating those areas. So if you live in the country on a farm and you need some free labour, get busy makin' babies! You are not being irresponsible. Frankly, if you go down the list, the country is the best place to fulfill the majority of the common reasons for having kids. Start a family? Better and less lonely for country living but more inconvenient and expensive for city living. Give your kids a chance to enjoy existence? In my opinion, the country is also better. Give meaning to your life; mold another life; fix the mistakes of your parents; carry on the family name and values; social pressure... I'd say the country is best if these are your reasons. You get more freedom and less social pressure to do all of these things in the relative privacy of the country. But nobody lives in the country any more. So we're left with babies are cute; unconditional love; and nature. The first reason is the pet or toy reasoning. Grow the hell up! Your baby will! The second also could (and let's be honest, probably WILL) end as the kid grows up. Right about middle school in most cases love becomes conditional. The only really solid reason I see on the list is human biology. We ARE predisposed to multiply. So just look at the other side of the list and use a condom. Or move to the country. That's my feeling.
However, this was not my purpose for the blogpost. I was intrigued by some of the smaller details. Mostly, the religious, cultural and political aspects of having children and some of the other things to be considered that don't appear on that list. Let's tackle religion first. India is a great place to start. Generally Hindu but also the origin of Buddhist thinking. Hindus make up the majority of India and I think they are the targets for a lot of the shocking statements our friend Raphael made. Their purpose is to go forth and ADD people to the earth. Hindus actually have a prayer they call the Garbhadana that they say to encourage conception and fulfill their "parental OBLIGATIONS!" They are obligated to marry and have kids. Hence, the population problem. Raphael actually says that Indian people are hypocritical saying they need to do something about the problem and continuing with this religious tradition. I agree. But then again, I'm not a Hindu. Politically, I'm sure the businesses in India are doing all they can to encourage this religious observation since, like China, with such a huge market, it makes business super easy. And with the large workforce comes massive competition that makes business owners omnipotent and workers vulnerable to shit wages and treatment. Again like China.
Buddhists agree with Raphael that life is suffering. But they advocate the almost impossible life purpose of finding joy in your suffering. This makes me think of parents who all like to say, "Oh having kids is SO rewarding!" They too are trying to find joy in their suffering. Practicing Dhamma or Dharma or Tao or Dao is the goal of every Buddhist. It's the way of nature or the truth. When you reach a point of full understanding, you attain enlightenment. Then you don't have to come back to earth any more. The human realm is the best to practice Dhamma and obtain enlightenment. So in a way they are encouraging humans to go forth and SUBTRACT population from earth.
In the Bible after the flood, Noah told the animals to go forth and MULTIPLY. All but two snakes obeyed. Noah asked the snakes what was up and they said, "We can't multiply, we're adders." Christians believe they too, like the animals, are commanded by God to multiply. This is why businessmen and politicians who see babies as customers or consumers, very often pretend to be Christians. Jesus spoke more about the evils of greed and the lust for money than any other topic, yet it is seen as a virtue even amongst Christian businessmen/women and politicians. This has always baffled me.
Muhammed said, "Marry those who are loving and fertile, for I will be proud of your great numbers before the other nations." Muslims definitely favour numbers as a defence against enemies and are wary of "specious arguments" like overpopulation or birth control that try to reduce fertility. But if you think it's any more because they are trying to take over the world than, say, the Mormons, I'd have doubts about that.
I want to refer you back to the part of the Simpsons clip in which Apu states that he wants kids so that he'll have someone to float him down the Ganges. In many cultures there is a similar ethic, often non-religious, that requires parents to care for their children when they are too young to fend for themselves and children to care for their parents when they are too old to fend for themselves. I think that is beautiful. It's one of the only other reasons that I feel is partially legitimate for having children. This, our friend Raphael Samuel does NOT agree with. He suggests parents should care for their kids and PAY for them forever since it was the decision of the parents to bring the children into the world. There are actually some cultures, and I'm living in one, in which the exact opposite is practiced. Children are often held responsible, when they grow up, for expenses and suffering the parents endured while bringing them up. This I DON'T necessarily consider beautiful.
Here's a story about a dude from Myanmar who walked 7 days barefoot to escape into Bangladesh while carrying his parents in baskets! Beautiful! IF he did it out of love and gratitude. But if he did it out of social pressure and obligation, not so much.
"Nuoi con de nho," in Vietnamese means "raise your children to rely on them." In Korea it's customary to give your parents your first paycheck. Often parents have a sort of Keeping-up-with-the-Kims type of pressure they use comparing other family's kids and how much money they give their parents or how expensive the gifts other parents receive. I guess it's not much different than kids saying, "Well Tommy's Mom lets HIM play hockey," or "Tammy's Dad bought her an X-Box for Christmas." But then again, these are things said by kids. The parents should know better. If you have kids who are helping you, don't calculate what percentage of their paychecks they give you. This is something an adult should understand.
One last thing: As you know, I believe the powers that be in our world are doing everything they can to DIVIDE and conquer us regular people. Social inequalities are at their highest. The concentration of the majority of wealth, resources and power is in fewer hands than ever before in history. Things like caste, status, race, religion, culture, nationality, political party, overpopulation, lack of employment, business monopolies, private education, taxation and many other things are being used to keep people more individual and less unified. We are in increased competition and we are fast approaching, if not, in the midst of the age of automation in which we will lose jobs and money to machines. We need to unite as a global unit to make sure industry and politicians do what is right and adjust our cultures accordingly. This will require them to act counter-intuitively. The business mind rebels at the idea of giving. It rebels at the concept of paying higher wages for less work. After centuries of paying lower wages for more work and charging higher prices for the same product, the captains of industry will not automate at their expense, but at ours. In the new global value system "success" boils down to the capacity for manipulation. They will keep us placated through manipulation to enable themselves to extract the maximum profit from the maximum population until they are forced to change the business culture or there is global disaster. Having more children, whatever your reasons, will only make automation more difficult and global disaster more likely.
I'm just saying let's be smart about this.
In case you think Raphael is very different from you and his situation in India doesn't compare with your life at all, I think the most interesting thing about his story is that his parents are BOTH lawyers. That would likely put him in an upper caste in India, but I think his family might be less different than they are supposed to appear. His mother proved that she's probably a very good lawyer by winning the lawsuit in one sentence. She said, "I admire my son's temerity... and if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault." Probably followed by, "Oh that boy...tsk tsk tsk."
On camera when interviewed by the BBC News Kavita Karnad Samuel said she was proud of her son, but Raphael says she told him that if she had met him beforehand, she wouldn't have had him. LMAO! Like every Mother in the world! And here's a pic of young Raphael:
He DOES say a lot of bizarre things that make him sound like a looney, but he gets hits for his YouTube site. Enough hits to make money! So maybe he's crazy like a fox. Plus he IS drawing attention to a very real problem in India. And that is a good thing. I don't know about you but I'd bet the farm he's just a spoiled only child. Eh? He was probably a handful for his parents, but he can't be all that bad, he plays hockey!
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