Discontinued Lines
“Open borders” advocate Nicholas Decker shares his thoughts on totally progressive fatherhood:
So far, so good. If not exactly newsworthy. Perhaps a twist is coming, some needless contrivance.
Ah.
There we go. Not sure if watching is involved.
It seems we’re expected to follow Mr Decker’s lead, into that glorious tomorrow, where cuckoldry is ascendant, an ideal, and where fathers and their children are biologically disconnected and physically estranged. Because that always goes smoothly. No issues there. There follows a rather flattened understanding of genetics, and much convoluted fretting, but the gist is,
At which point, readers may be wondering if there’s something wrong with Mr Decker. I mean, some debilitating condition that he would rather not pass on.
I sense a looming but.
It strikes me as a little odd, in terms of hypothetical fatherhood, comparing one’s own as-yet-unknown potential in that regard against some entirely abstract ideal, the particulars of which remain unclear. Fatherhood, I’ve been told, more than once, is very much a process of discovery, and indeed self-discovery.
I’m reminded of the boastfully oblivious noises poked at here. From childless progressives who claimed to view any hypothetical parenting on their part, the birth of a child, as some arbitrary occurrence, unmoored from any biological inheritance or preceding events. Childless progressives who were seemingly unfamiliar with the strange pleasure of seeing one’s children develop the features and attributes of oneself, one’s partner, and various relatives.
However,
Bodes well.
He cares quite a lot about other people, you see. Just not his own family. Hence pursuing biological disconnection, the breaking of lineage and ancestry. At which point, any passing psychiatrists are welcome to chip in.
And then, of course, there’s the issue of whether biological connectedness might be statistically optimal in terms of parenting, engagement, avoiding neglect, and so forth. As available data would suggest. And which would seem to have bearing on any child’s odds of flourishing and happiness.
Needless to say, replies to Mr Decker on X have been lively:
And,
Mr Decker tells us he is “presently pursuing a PhD in Economics at George Mason University.” His interests include “reducing poverty… particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Update, via the comments:
Pst314 points out that Mr Decker has, not too long ago, been in the news.
Update 2:
From Mr Decker’s Substack, a reader’s comment:
So it makes me very happy to see you making this argument and owning it. But I’m also saddened to see so many people caring so much about their genetics being passed on – it feels selfish and it makes me feel like people don’t really care about the wellbeing of their offspring, despite claiming that they do.
With such levels of unrealism and contrivance, such practised not-noticing, it’s not altogether clear where one might begin.
We have arrived at the assumption that a primal, root-level motivation found across species is somehow absent in human beings – for no clearly stated reason – despite all appearance to the contrary, across continents and centuries, and despite the fact that human offspring are unusually dependent and require an uncommonly prolonged and costly investment by the parents.
Presumably, we should ignore studies confirming the correlation of parental investment and physical resemblance, i.e., relatedness, and the statistical preference among adoptive parents for children who could pass for their own biological offspring. Likewise, the lower aggregate levels of investment by stepfathers, noted many times.
And I’m guessing we’ll have to ignore the entire history of human courtship, a great deal of which has been geared towards ensuring genetic relatedness – and to avoiding cuckoldry. The cuckoldry that Mr Decker claims will somehow improve the world.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Clue.
It does suggest a theme.
Betting yes on that.
Kinda like a DIY eugenics enthusiast.
It’s weird, no doubt about it. The mentions of his family seem to indicate that he had that sort of upbringing which tends to instil trauma and encourage these kind of terrible ideas.
Man hands on misery to man,
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Larkin may have been just as misanthropic. But at least he was wittier than Mr Decker here.
It’s almost as if the goal were to be contrived and impractical, to make things more complicated and less likely to work. While affecting an obliviousness to certain everyday realities.
Which would, I think, fit a pattern we’ve seen before.
I’m just going to leave this here.
In case it should prove useful.
A near universal symptom of a disease we are all familiar with.
It would help (not really) if he even knew what he was on about.
I do believe they tried that in a troublesome European country back in the ’30s and ’40s, blond hair, blue eyes, and all that. It didn’t work out too well in the long run, but who is the arbiter of what is a “better” phenotype?
By his own logic (such as it is), if your family is loons then, as the twig is bent so grows the tree, so will be the luckless offspring.
…and now, the rest of the story…
Just spitballing here, but I am beginning to think he might have an inadequacy complex.
Even better, Social Justice Eugenics, a whole new endeavor.
Well, announcing that you “care quite a lot about other people” is, it seems to me, a somewhat odd thing to do. It does rather invite suspicion.
Today is the 25th anniversary of The Great Pigeon Murder.
But it’s not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon.
Computer says no.
Paging Mr. Huxley. Mr. Huxley to the white courtesy telephone, please.
What does his missus look like?
Asking for a friend.
We see what you did there.
That’s one of your best.
Thank you. The error being highlighted does seem to underpin many other progressive misconceptions. There’s a fundamental wrongheadedness about it.
I heartily approve of his decision not to procreate.
This is the first sensible thing I’ve heard from a “progressive” in more than a decade, they should do much more of this.
It’s always the midwits…
Nicholas Decker has been in the news before.
So, another psychologically broken leftist.
[ Hands out paper bags for any sudden fits of gasping. ]
wth is this guy on about? Why all the needless complications, involving third parties? Just go to a sperm bank, have wife/female partner make a withdrawal, pay the fee, and go home. Sheesh – it’s like he wants to make it as complicated and messy as possible – like it’s some kind of humiliation fetish. He says he dated a man, now wants kids with a hopefully willing female partner, is he afraid he can’t get it up with a woman? Is there some kind of bi polycule in the story somewhere? Usually it’s some neurotic woman writing the story about her stable of misfits.
Mr. Decker ought to just join that group featured here awhile back, of the pregnant “poly” woman and her weird group of men who all were going to raise the kid as theirs. Whatever happened to that train wreck? Seems as though one of the men ended up in jail for child abuse. It wasn’t utopia, that’s for sure.
someone else, who I consider to be genetically better than me
Out: it’s progressive to say it’s impossible and monstrous to claim any one person is quote-unquote “better” than any other person, especially on a genetic basis
In: this guy
[ Post updated. ]
Children generally want to know where they came from – i.e., from whom – their parents, grandparents, their biological origins. Needless denial of this sense of continuity – or clouding the issue in the name of some modish politics – doesn’t strike me as likely to improve their lives.
As bgates notes, it’s terrible to admit to things like differences in IQ, attractiveness, physical fitness, etc. But it is also obvious to everyone that some people are smarter, prettier, stronger, meaner, lazier, etc and their offspring are more likely than not to inherit those traits.
Because he’s a leftist pursuing a PhD?
Perhaps it is my failing, but I would find it impossible to treat children not mine as if they were mine. I know, lots of kids need adopting. But it is not the same. And yes, I have kids.
Now if only he’d give up on his PhD and get a job serving coffee.
The last thing we need is another leftist dispensing bad economic advice.
It may be the last thing we need but just try stopping them.
I was about to give some genuine thought to this guys argument and then realized I was just being tricked into taking it seriously. So embarrassing. How many of the argumentative responses do we suppose were also written by him?
I understand that this is indeed a serious issue in the adoptee community. Adoptees often find they are treated differently by adoptive parents. At the very least it’s important to be open and honest about this – so potential adoptive parents are aware of this as an issue going in to what will be a lifelong relationship.
You’re not wrong. It all sounds highly theoretical on his part.
If his partner does seriously decide to have kids with him at some point, I can easily imagine her telling him, ‘don’t be a dickhead, we’re having kids, you’re the father’.
Tell me again why conservatives aren’t lazy, worthless shits who fail, time and time and time again to get their lazy, worthless asses to the polls:
Assuming that ALL 16,316 votes came from Republicans, that would mean that 2/3 of the GOP is apparently too bloody stupid and uninformed to know that an election was happening. This in the very same district in which Mar-a-Lago is located. 2/3 failed. And that’s assuming none of the NPA’s voted for the Republican.
I came to think of this because I have dated a man before. If we were to have children – and to actually create new children, not simply rearrange who has them – it would have to be through a surrogate. Only one of us could be genetically the father. We would have to choose who. The choice was obvious, though – it should of course be him. The children to come would have a better life if they were more like him, than if they were more like me.
I don’t think a woman would be involved longer than 9 months in his scheme.
From Mr Decker’s Substack, a reader’s comment:
With such levels of unrealism and contrivance, among our supposed brightest, where do you even begin?
And so we arrive at the assumption that a primal, root-level motivation found across species is somehow absent in human beings – for no clearly stated reason – despite all appearance to the contrary, and despite the fact that human offspring are unusually dependent and require an unusually prolonged and costly investment by the parents.
And we should presumably ignore the studies confirming the correlation of parental investment and physical resemblance, i.e., relatedness, and the statistical preference among adoptive parents for children who could pass for their own biological offspring. Likewise, the lower aggregate levels of investment by stepfathers, noted many times.
And we’ll presumably have to ignore the entire history of human courtship, a great deal of which has been geared towards ensuring genetic relatedness – and to avoiding cuckoldry. The cuckoldry that Mr Decker claims will somehow improve the world.
How else to, umm, assure the process?
[ Post updated again. ]
In other news, a reply of note:
I believe the word is pith.
Also, pronouns in bio. Obviously.
Not caring about our culture being passed on is another thing progressives
advocatedemand.He clearly belongs to a personality type that is infatuated with theory while devaluing and disparaging the real world–a failing* which is extremely common in academia and essentially universal among leftists.
* And by failing I mean grave personality defect.
That devotion to theory I mentioned–fictitious, fabulous theory concocted to satisfy defective desires and with no grounding in reality.
Children generally want to know where they came from – i.e., from whom – their parents, grandparents, their biological origins. Needless denial of this sense of continuity – or clouding the issue in the name of some modish politics – doesn’t strike me as likely to improve their lives.
This is true. I recall reading how Elton John and his husband arranged their sons through surrogacy, with California allowing one to be Parent A and the other to be Parent B on the children’s birth certificates – no mention of the mother. Notwithtsanding the intentional circumstances of at least one elderly parent (equally guilty are men like Al Pacino, Mick Jagger, and Robert deNiro), I wonder what John and Furnish will tell their sons when the boys have questions about their lineage.
To quote Robert Heinlein: “My mother was a test tube, my father was a knife.”
Apropos aphorism: Nature bats last.
Setting aside appearance, if the child has a markedly different temperament or IQ, for instance, and has no idea why, there can be a disconnect, a sense of alienation, of not fitting in. Which is not an obvious feature of making children “better off,” or of “something… everyone should do.”
Because it’s not about logic and reason. It’s about what gets repeated most often and with the most force. Verbal, legal, physical force.
In other news from Blighty, “I forgot”, and what to wear is a conundrum.
I believe the term is asymmetrical multiculturalism.
Very much related.
See also.