Richard Stallman

 

-- Richard Stallman

I decided not to have children. My family was full of tension and anger, and then I noticed that many others were too. Such a family life was in no way attractive. When older, often I saw parents rebuke their children for playing with me, or even in my vicinity, assuming it would bother me — without waiting to see if I objected. Rebuking those children had become an ingrained, automatic habit. To see this made me sad for them, but I knew I would be the same as a parent. I would not be able cope with a frequently crying baby without becoming upset and angry.
Of course, many people tell themselves, "That happens to others, but I am better than they; I will get it right." Obviously, most of them are mistaken. I did not suppose that I would succeed in human relationships where most people fail.
Most fathers in the US have to work very hard to get money for their children. I did not want a life of running on a treadmill, doing whatever people with money would tell me to do.
A large fraction of US fathers eventually get divorced, and subsequently rarely see the children for whom they are spending most of their time scrabbling for money. What a futile life! But even those who are not yet divorced see their children little, since they are so busy at work.
I am convinced I made a wise personal decision in avoiding this. But I was not the only one that benefitted from it. Everyone did. Not having children is an important contribution to humanity. My decision probably reduced the 2050 population by 5 to 10 people.
Overpopulation is a tremendous danger to civilization and the ecosphere. It makes every human-caused ecological problem bigger. Population growth has slowed but not stopped. The human population is expected to grow by 2 or 3 billion by 2050, and it is not clear how to find water and food for all those people. Population growth also increases the difficulty of curbing global heating.
Thus, the decision about having children is, for most people, the most important decision in their lives about how they will affect humanity's resource footprint in the future. (Nina Paley said it graphically.)
That decision enabled me to contribute something else: to launch GNU and the free software movement. Having no dependents, I could dedicate myself to what seemed right rather than to whatever someone with money wanted me to do. If you are reading this page, it is because that decision enabled me to make contributions to humanity that people appreciate.
I therefore urge you to do as I did, and have no children. I don't wish that nobody had any children; I don't want humanity to disappear. But there is no risk of that; for the numbers I could hope to influence, the influence is for the good.
Some make the absurd argument that population decline is the real danger. In 50 years, they claim, everyone will have a comfortable life, so they may have few children (as tends to happen in developed societies today), and the human population could decline. If this went on for millenia, humanity might disappear. Is that a real possibility?
First of all, it disregards the tremendous disaster that global heating and destruction of the natural world are leading towards. 30 years from now, large parts of humanity will probably find it hard to get water or food, let alone contraception. It is unlikely we will provide most of humanity with a decent European-style life with the current world population. So there is little chance, in that world, of population decrease because everyone is comfortable.
Supposing we avoid the disaster and eliminate poverty, 50 years later we might reach a stage where everyone prefers a small family. However, 50 years after that we will probably have greatly extended the human life span. That means a much smaller number of births per adult per year would be enough to maintain a stable population. The danger of overpopulation might even return.
The first hurdle is to avoid the disaster. Having no children will help, and it will free you to do something else that will help.
Copyright 2012 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.