The Mallet of Loving Correction Part 14

And then you might say, "there's no point in teaching them about the business because if they go the commercial publis.h.i.+ng route they'll have agents." To which I would say, wow, really? "Other people will handle the dirty money part" is a response that a) shows a certain amount of sn.o.bbery, b) sets up a writer to be dependent on others because she is ignorant of the particulars of her own business. You know how every year you hear about an actor or musician who has been screwed by his accountant or business manager? That's what happens when you don't pay attention-or more relevantly don't have the knowledge to pay attention.

To be clear, I don't want to paint literary agents, et al as suspicious and shady characters; I have two literary agents (one for fiction and one for non-fiction) and they are super-smart and do a great job for me, and I'm glad they do their job and leave me to do mine, which is writing. But you know what? Part of the reason I know they're doing a good job is because I know my own business, which makes it easier for me to know what they are doing. It also means they know that they can discuss business with me on a realistic and sensible level. Beyond that, not everyone has an agent, or (alas) a good one if they have one.

Finally, you may say "We don't have anyone on our faculty who can/wants to teach that course." Well, presuming that your university doesn't have a business or law school on campus, from whom you might borrow an appropriate professor every now and again, I can't help but notice that adjunct professors are very popular in academia these days, and I'm guessing that maybe you could find someone. Try a working agent, maybe. Point is, if you wanted to offer this cla.s.s, you could.

There is no reason not to offer a cla.s.s on this stuff. And maybe students will choose not to take that cla.s.s. But if that's the case, at least then it's all on them. Your students are all presumably adults and are responsible for their own actions, to be sure. But if you're not giving them the tools to know when a huckster is hucking in their direction, if they get hulled, some of that's on you.

Speaking of which, let me now turn my attention away from the MFA writing programs and to the writing grad students themselves: Dudes. Learn about the industry, already, before you sign a contract. Otherwise you're going to get shaved by the first jacka.s.s who waves a publis.h.i.+ng deal in your face. Yes, I know, you're smart and clever and you write really well. You know what, your belief in your intelligence and your cleverness and your writing ability as a proxy for knowing everything you need to know about the world is exactly what's going to get you screwed. Because being smart and clever and writing well has nothing to do with the backend business of the publis.h.i.+ng industry or reading a contract knowledgeably and dispa.s.sionately. Think about those MFA students who are now slaving away for Frey on the worst contract just about anyone in publis.h.i.+ng has ever seen. I'm pretty sure they all think they are smart and clever and write well, too.

If your MFA program doesn't have a cla.s.s on contracts and the publis.h.i.+ng industry, ask for one. Because, Jesus, you're spending enough for your education. You might want to get some practical knowledge out of it as well. If it can't or won't offer that cla.s.s to you, a) complain and b) seek out that information. The writers' organization to which I belong, SFWA, sponsors Writer Beware, which offers some of the basics about avoiding scams and bad practices, and has an informational area which includes sample contracts. Other writers' organizations also have information for you, and most bookstores will have sections on writing and the business of writing. Find that information, learn it, and use it before you have anything to do with anyone trying to make a deal with you.

But why you should have to pay extra for this essential bit of education, or search for it outside your writing program, mind you, positively baffles me.

Osama, Obama, and Us May

2.

2011.

And now, some further thoughts on the death of Osama bin Laden.

* In a very practical sense, bin Laden's death doesn't change anything, particularly in the short run. He's been on the run for years, al Qaeda is designed to be decentralized, the scope of our military operations in the Middle East far exceed the boundaries of bin Laden's group. Today we still have troops in Afghanistan, and their job there will not be any easier today than it was yesterday. The Middle East itself is not the same region it was a decade ago; it seems to have developed a home-grown taste for democracy. So on and so forth.

But in an existential and psychological sense bin Laden's death makes a huge difference. Dude's been out there for years, and the fact The Most Powerful Country in the World couldn't get to him was an overarching narrative frame for much of what else the US did in the last decade. But in the end we did get to him, and the frame has changed. No longer was the US engaged in a futile pursuit of a man who killed thousands of our citizens and would die of renal failure far out of its reach; now the US engaged in a ceaseless pursuit, and in the end bin Laden received a form of justice from his actions, i.e., an American bullet in (or as seems likely more accurate, through) the brain that conceived of 9/11.

Changing the frame from "hapless" to "implacable" means something to us as Americans and also, I expect, means something to others as well, particularly for the folks for whom "bin Laden is laughing at the US" was part of their worldview. What effect the existential impact of bin Laden's death will have on the practical life of the US and the rest of the world over the long term is something we'll get to find out in the coming months and years. No matter what, however, bin Laden will still be dead, and that has a cathartic, and I optimistically suspect in the long run useful, finality all its own.

* In the immediate aftermath of Obama's announcement of bin Laden's death last night I saw some folks on my Twitter feed note that it was too bad we killed him rather than captured him and put him on trial. I would have been happy with that as an outcome, but I can't say that I would have been happier with that outcome than what actually happened. Bin Laden killed in a firefight with US operatives, none of whom were killed? All right then. No complaints on this end and good shooting.

There would have been some pleasure in seeing him in the dock, being confronted with his crimes, ably represented by the best defense his money could buy, getting buried by the evidence, and then kept in a tiny cell for as long as we could keep him alive. But inasmuch as I expect that bin Laden was akin to the types who maintain that a fringe on a court flag means it's a court of the admiralty and therefore can't try them for tax evasion-and was perfectly happy to have murdered lots of innocents in any event-this works too. I don't imagine bin Laden was hoping to spend many days in a courtroom, either. In this one thing I don't feel it to have been much of an imposition to oblige him.

* The fact that a closet Muslim socialist WHO ISN'T EVEN AN AMERICAN is the one who gave the order to kill the bogeyman who has haunted the US for a decade will be a terribly inconvenient fact for a lot of folks. Well, let it be. If only for a moment, it serves to remind us that the job of a president is a serious one, while the job of tearing down a president can be done by morons, and often is. This definitely puts Obama's birther jabs at Donald Trump over the weekend at the White House correspondent's dinner in a whole new context; as someone else has noted, Obama's not a guy you want to play poker with, because he's got the straightest face in the business.

People are already speculating what this means for Obama in 2012. I think it means that any rumblings about a Democratic primary challenge are now done. It also makes it more difficult for the GOP to paint him as Carter II: The Quickening, although of course they certainly will try to do so; they can't help themselves, and I think at this point the Democrats would invite them to keep trying. In a larger sense, if the economy falters Obama will still be vulnerable in his quest for a second term. But if it's coming along, then 2012 won't be a happy presidential election cycle for the GOP. Dude had bin Laden killed. Kind of hard to top.

Oscar and Me Mar

3.

2010.

Because the Oscars are coming up, I dug out of the archives this story I wrote for the Was.h.i.+ngton Post about ten years ago, about when I borrowed my friend's Oscar statuette. Enjoy.

Oscar and Me Some time ago, I needed an Oscar-(Why? Does it matter? If you thought you could legally get hold of an Academy Award, wouldn't you? Now, then)-and as it happened, I knew where to find one. My friend Pam Wallace had picked one up for writing a little film called "Witness." I asked if I might borrow it. Sure, she said; she trusts me, and besides, she knows where I live.

Hours later, the Oscar was mine, wrapped in a beach towel and stuffed into the trunk of my car. I'd hit the brakes, there'd be a soft thunk as the Oscar hit its head on the tire jack. It would be the first of many indignities that Oscar would suffer in his three days with me. As you might imagine, having an Oscar, even for just three days, is an educational experience. Here's what I learned.

1. Oscars Are Heavy. An Oscar weighs about 8 1/2 pounds, about as much as a newborn baby, and people react to both much the same way-they hold them gently with both hands, stare at them lovingly and pray they don't accidentally drop them. The side effect of this weight is that one gets physically tired of handling an Oscar; hold one too long and your arm cramps. A friend of mine once said to me, "Man, if I had an Oscar, I'd wear it around my neck." This is inadvisable. In addition to Oscar being the ugliest neckwear since disco medallions, your neck would develop such a crick.

You'd think the heft of the Oscar would underscore the solid Midwestern craftsmans.h.i.+p that goes into making the things (they're made in Chicago by R.S. Owens & Co.), but the fact of the matter is...

2. Oscars Are Kind of Flimsy. Flick the base with your finger, and it resonates with a static-like buzz reminiscent of an AM transistor radio. This is truly disappointing; you'd think the most coveted trophy in the world would have a st.u.r.dier base. In fact, up until 1945, it was made out of Belgian marble. I suppose they thought that after the ravages of war, taking marble from the Belgians would seem kind of mean. De-marbleized, today's Oscars are notably top-heavy, which I expect leads to a lot of unintentional drops and falls. Pam's Oscar, in fact, has a chip gouged out of its forehead from such a calamity. You can peer right in and see what pa.s.ses for Oscar's brains. Which leads to the next Oscar discovery...

3. Oscars Aren't Golden All the Way Through. It's something of a shock to examine Oscar's insides and find they are made of the same britannia metal (90 percent tin, 10 percent antimony) that goes into making flatware. Your fork is Oscar's cousin. In a way it's entirely appropriate to have the symbol of Hollywood be base metal innards covered with a thin golden coating. But, you know, whatever. An Oscar is still an Oscar. In a world where the vast majority of humanity couldn't tell the difference between a Pulitzer Prize and the Best of Show ribbon given to hogs at a county fair (the difference: Best of Show winners get stud fees), the Oscar is immediately recognized, admired and coveted. How recognized? How coveted? Consider the following...

4. Everyone Has an Oscar Acceptance Speech. Every single person I handed the Oscar to did the same thing: Placed the Oscar at a tilt-one hand mid-statue, the other cradling the bottom of the base-looked to the middle distance (where the television cameras would be) and said, "I'd like to thank the academy for this award..." It's positively Pavlovian.

This makes sense. The only time most of us actually see an Oscar is when someone's just won it. There's no other context. You don't see them in people's yards, like lawn gnomes. They aren't photographed visiting the Grand Canyon or Yosemite. They're not in a book t.i.tled "Where's Oscar?"

Oscars exist solely to be followed by a speech. Not to make one would be to violate the fundamental laws of the universe. The Academy Award that people see themselves winning is a personality test in itself. The vain "win" Best Actor or Best Actress; the control freaks, Best Director; the frustrated intellectuals, Best Screenplay. Pa.s.sive-aggressives choose supporting actor categories. No one ever pretends to be the producer; no one knows what producers do. No one ever pretends to win the minor categories either, like sound effects editing or art direction. Everyone knows that after 30 seconds, these people are cut off by the orchestra conductor.

Everyone wants an Oscar, but what do you do when you get one? For everything it represents (fame, fortune, a real chance that you will get to date someone like Gwyneth Paltrow), ultimately the Oscar itself is nothing more than an art deco tchotchke. Perhaps this is the cause of the final Oscar discovery...

5. People Who Have Oscars Are Far Less Impressed With Them Than People Who Don't. Hollywood is rife with stories of Oscar winners using their statuettes as doorstops, to prop up tables or to smash bugs (or budding screenwriters) crawling around their desks. Jodie Foster was told by her local video store staff that if she won the Oscar for "The Silence of the Lambs" and brought it in for them to look at, she'd get a free rental. She did, and did, and did. Even my friend Pam treats her Oscar with something less than total reverence. When it's not being borrowed by goofball pals, it's covered by a gorilla puppet her son made in elementary school.

You could argue this is a sort of protective false humility, since the only thing Hollywood likes less than someone without an Oscar is someone who wins one and gloats (henceforth to be known as "James Cameron Syndrome"). There's something to this, but there's also just the fact that even the extraordinary becomes boring after a while. I stand testament to this-the first day I had the Oscar in the house, I stared at it like a graven image. The second day I got used to it. The third day I was using it as a paperweight. Which precipitated the following exchange between me and my wife: Wife: Where'd you put the phone bill?

Me: I dunno. Did you check under the Oscar?

G.o.d, I loved saying that.

A Pa.s.sing Thought Jul

28.

2010.

I now have in my possession a pocket-sized computer which, when I speak a question to it ("Who is the author of Kraken?" "Who was the fourteenth president of the United States?" "What is the name of John Scalzi's cat?") provides me an answer in just a few seconds. If I take a picture of something, the same pocket computer will a.n.a.lyze the photo and tell me what I'm looking at. Oh, and it makes phone calls, too. Among other things.

None of that is the cool part. The cool part is, when I speak a question to my pocket computer and it gives me a bad answer, I get annoyed. Because here in the future, when I talk to my pocket computer, I expect it to get the answer right the first time.

I think I've said before that one of the neat things about getting older is that you really do become aware just how much things change. To be more specific about it, as you get older, at some point you cross an arbitrary line and are aware that you are now living in the future. I'm not precisely sure when it was I crossed my own arbitrary Future Line, but I'll tell you what, I'm well past it now.

That is all. Carry on.

The Paul Ryan Pick Aug

11.

2012.

Two things: 1. It's really the best Romney could do. If it sounds like faint praise, well, it is, but the fault is neither Romney's nor Ryan's. It's the GOP's, because its current bench of viable national players is pretty thin at this point. I mean, I looked at the list of VP prospectives and, with the exception of the possible positive optics of Marco Rubio, didn't see a whole lot of there there. Pawlenty? Portman? I'm just going to go over here and take a nap. Governors Christie, McDonnell and Jindal are probably happy to sit out 2012 and prep for 2016 instead (or 2020, if it actually rolls that way), and other than that, who really is there for the GOP?

Some folks hinted toward Condi Rice, who, to be honest, I think would probably be an excellent VP. But she's got the stink of the Bush Administration still on her, and anyway, the fact that she's not safely married off to a man would probably freak out a lot of the GOP base. Given the field of whackjobs and dimwits that contested against Romney in the primaries, he couldn't reasonably expect to tap one of them and not scare away every independent voter in the land (the one exception to this, Jon Huntsman, is a fellow LDS Church member, and I'm pretty sure an all-LDS ticket would sorely test those across the political spectrum for whom all they know of the LDS Church is what they saw on Big Love and that Broadway musical). So no love there.

With Ryan, Romney does himself no damage with GOP voters, and indeed quite the opposite: Ryan is well-liked in the party in general and also in Was.h.i.+ngton (where as I understand it even people who don't share his politics find him to be a pleasant fellow to work with and be around). He has no major personal skeletons in the closet, and has solid conservative credentials. As the House Budget Committee chairman, and the author of a number of proposed budget plans, he is what pa.s.ses for a serious thinker in the Republican Party these days. Ryan can help deliver Wisconsin to Romney, which is 10 electoral votes he's going to need, and I suspect the thinking is that he might be able to put other parts of the Midwest into play as well, including Ohio, which right now is leaning Obama. And it signals to GOP voters that Romney-former Governor of the gayest commonwealth in the Union, who socialized medicine while he was in office there-is solidly behind the current conservative blueprints for the future of America. After all, Ryan is the architect of those blueprints, and those blueprints really do offer a solid contrast against what Obama has to offer (Romney maintains he is going to put together his own budget plan rather than run on Ryan's, and I wish him the best of luck convincing anyone of that).

So, yes, Ryan really is the best Romney could have done. Now a substantial number of GOP voters will be voting for him (or at least for the ticket), rather than simply against Obama.

2. Ryan is the fellow that Obama's used as a rope-a-dope punching bag at least a couple of times now because of his economic plans, and if you're under the impression Obama's not going to do it again, bigger and better than ever before, just you wait. There's also the question of whether Ryan does anything to bring in independent and undecided voters in any way. I don't think he does directly because generally speaking VP candidates don't really do that except possibly in their own state, and he'll only do it indirectly if voters twig to his economic plans, which will now be pressed to the forefront. That's going to be a matter of selling, and of selling a vision that someone else (read: Obama and all the SuperPACs on his side of the divide) will be spending the next three months punching at, hard.

It's going to be a challenge, in part because I suspect there's a growing belief that the rich aren't in fact holy job creators, nor would it invoke the end times if they were taxed a bit more, and partly because at the end of the day Obama is like Clinton and Reagan before him: A charismatic leader blessed with a leaden opponent. Nor is Ryan much help in that department. He may be likable but he's not exactly charismatic; he comes across as the overly earnest sort who really believes what he believes and is sad and hurt when you don't believe it with him. I suspect Biden is going to eat him alive in their debate. And in any event, even if Ryan had the charisma of Brad Pitt, he's still not the fellow in the big chair; that's Romney. Romney's biggest problem is still Romney.

On a personal level, while I believe that Ryan is the best Romney could do under the circ.u.mstances, I think this suggests something not very good about the circ.u.mstances. I don't think Ryan rises to Newt Gingrich levels of "a dumb person's idea of a smart person," but I have to admit being flummoxed by the amount of regard the GOP and conservatives have for his economic blueprints. Ryan has publicly distanced himself from Ayn Rand, whom he reportedly admired, which I think speaks well of him (if you consider Ayn Rand a serious political thinker rather than a philosophical and economic dilettante with a flair for potboilery prose, you get put into the "hasn't quite grown up" category in my brain). His economic thinking, however, still bears the smudgy marks of the pseudo-objectivist doctrine that modern conservatives have, with its belief in the inherent malignancy of government and the inerrancy of private enterprise. His economic plans strike me as naive at best and disingenuously meretricious at worst. That they are now the guiding star for the GOP's plans for the US makes me want to get the lot of them into a doctor's office to see if they are, as a cla.s.s, suffering from hypoxia. Ryan would be the first into the examination room. I don't doubt his sincerity, but I do doubt his good sense.

That said, I don't see Ryan's brand of economic thinking going anywhere anytime soon. More to the point, there's nothing about Paul Ryan being elevated to Vice Presidential candidate that is anything but good for Ryan. If Romney wins, then quite obviously Ryan is going to have a nearly clear path to put his economic vision into effect. If Romney loses, no one in the GOP is going to blame Ryan or his economic plans for it; everyone will blame Romney for being a weak candidate and his team for not selling Ryan's economic plan to the nation the way it should be been sold. Ryan goes back to the House (he doesn't have to give up his seat unless Romney wins) a tragic conservative hero and positions himself, and his economic plan, for 2016. There's not a whole lot of downside to this for Ryan.

At least on paper. It'll be interesting to see how it works out for him, and for us, in the real world.

Peak Gingrich Dec

19.

2011.

Talking Points Memo notes that Newt Gingrich's poll numbers peaked a few days ago and now seem on a decline of the sort one sees on rollercoasters or cliffs. I'd personally like to think it was because Gingrich blathered stupidly about how he'd arrest federal judges whose rulings he didn't like; there is a word for the sort of leader who responds to the Const.i.tutionally-approved concept of the independent judicial branch by threatening its members with arrest, and it's not "president."

But that's only a specific case of a more general issue with Gingrich, which I imagine the GOP electorate is now remembering about him: Gingrich, bless his heart, can only give a stab at being a statesman in brief, isolated bursts. Then his Gingrichosity s.h.i.+nes through, he decouples prudence from his pie hole, and he starts doing the 68-year-old poltiwonk version of a college freshman midnight bull session, only in public and in front of cameras, and without someone there to say "whoa, duuuude, you're getting pretty out there" before pa.s.sing over the bong to mellow him out. He just can't shut up.

It's not just that he can't shut up. It's that Gingrich is also apparently incapable of distinguis.h.i.+ng which of his ideas are reasonable, and which ones have been beamed in straight from a transmitter located on a high mountain deep in the heart of FrothyLand. It's not that Gingrich doesn't have some good ideas in his head. He does. The problem is they share s.p.a.ce with some absolutely terrifying ideas. When Gingrich prepares to hork an idea out of his mouth, he doesn't roll it around first to see if it tastes bad. He just spits it out, and there it is, on the carpet, Gingrich looking at you in that way he has, the way that says yet another brilliant thought from the mind of Newt. You're welcome. And then the idea rears up, hisses at you, and tries to mate, horribly, with your shoe.

This is why, should Gingrich buck the current trend and gain the GOP nomination, the absolute worst thing he could do is have a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with President Obama. Seriously: an hour to ninety minutes of raw, unscripted, uninterrupted Gingrich? There is no limit to the size of the hole that man will dig for himself, all the while thinking how dazzling he's being. And there's Obama, grinning his a.s.s off, letting Gingrich dig, waiting for his turn. If we know anything about Obama, it's that he knows how to stay focused and on message. He'd do just fine in a long form debate; you might not like the policies he espouses but you can bet he'd promulgate them in a safe and sane-sounding way, which, to anyone not already in the Gingrich camp, and with the fort.i.tude to withstand an entire three-hour debate, would be all he would need. Obama might bore you, but he wouldn't scare you.

Dear Newt: Obama would love to do a Lincoln-Douglas debate with you. He would love it more than candy. But it looks like he won't get that chance.

Mind you, Gingrich's essential Gingrichosity is not the only reason he's trending down at the moment. The scads of negative ads his opponents are targeting at him are doing their fair share as well, and as I understand it Gingrich's campaign is cash-poor enough that responding to those ads has not been something he's been about to afford much of (he did just make an ad buy in Iowa, but it's small compared to the ad buys of Romney and Perry). Even so, I don't think Gingrich being Gingrich helps him any.

He can draw this out a while (and make no mistake that the Democrats would love for him to do that, as long as humanly possible) but at the end of the day the reason I suspect we've hit and pa.s.sed the Peak Gingrich moment is because ultimately Gingrich reminds people of someone who is an unpleasant showoff. The person he's reminding them of is possibly him.

Procreation Mar

31.

2009.

M asks: If we procreate, we doom civilization through overpopulation and depletion of resources. If we don't procreate, we doom civilization through exacerbating an aging population. What's a potentially procreative person to do?

I don't think it's as bad as that, personally.

For one thing, personally speaking I don't think an aging population is a civilization killer, if for no other reason than that in a relatively short period of time the problem of an aging population solves itself (think about it for a minute and you'll figure out how). Nor do I think that in theory an intelligently-handled reduction in population (via natural attrition through old age, to be very clear about that) would be a horrible thing; the problem is I wouldn't expect it to be particularly well-managed, and indeed in the places where the populations are aging and the birthrates are declining there seems to be bit of confusion on how to handle the issue.

On the other side of the coin, while personally I think seven billion people is more people than the planet actually needs to have on it, there's no reason why we couldn't manage ten billion or fourteen billion or even 25 billion-if again the population was managed in a way that we don't abuse or overtax our planetary resources. This would mean drastically changing how people lived, driving down their overal energy and resource use, vastly improving their reuse and recycling processes, changing how they eat and generally getting them to keep from killing the s.h.i.+t out of each other. But again, the issue isn't whether it's theoretically possible but whether people would do what's required to make it happen.

Or to put it another way: the issue isn't how many people the planet has; the issue is how the people who are on it (however many there are at any given point) handle their resource management and way of living. And in point of fact we do a really c.r.a.ppy job of it overall. For one thing, resources are highly unevenly distributed (said the guy living in the country that consumes 25% of the world's energy while having only 5% of the world's population); for another thing, the lifestyles, desires and goals of the people of the whole world are too heterogeneous to make coordinated and evenly distributed resource management possible-which is a nice way of saying that your average American likes his big house and all his toys and doesn't want to ditch them all to live a lifestyle resembling that of, oh, your average Kyrgyzstani (additionally, one suspects the average Kyrgyzstani would like to live like the average American, given the choice, which complicates matters).

This is actually something I think about a fair amount. Truth to be told, I personally have far more c.r.a.p than I need and most of the time even want (thanks to being a packrat), and I live in a house with more s.p.a.ce than I or my family use, on land we don't really do anything with. I suspect strongly we could downsize-in terms of what we have and use-by a rather substantial amount before we felt a real change in our overall quality of life, and we could downsize rather substantially more than that before it became actually uncomfortable. This is relevant to the question at hand because in either case of a declining or rising population, a downsizing in things is likely to be a long-term result. In any event: I think the population issue really is a stalking horse for resource issues; those are what I worry about in the long run.

Nevertheless. As regards procreating, my thought on the matter is that if you are procreatively inclined but are worried about a growing population, have one kid; if you're worried about a declining population, have two. Here in the US, the "replacement rate"-that is, the number of births required to counteract the number of people the nation loses from death, is 2.1 kids per fertile woman, so having two is doing your part, and you can a.s.sume other people having more, combined with the US immigration rate, will keep our overall population from decline. In other countries your replacement mileage may vary, but one or two is a reasonable rule of thumb here.

I wouldn't worry personally about whether having even the one will send the overall world population spiralling into some sort of Malthusian nightmare, as US/Western world births are an overall drop in the bucket in terms of worldwide population growth, i.e., when the worldwide famine hits, it won't be your fault for having a kid (it might be your fault for driving an SUV, however, to go back to the resource issue). But if you are worried about that but still want to have kids, well, you know: It's called adoption, and in general I think it's a very cool thing, and encourage you to go that route. And if you don't want any kids at all, then don't have 'em, of course. Kids are a good way to have a complete life, but you know what, there are other ways to a complete life that don't include them, too.

But overall, unless you're having a dozen or so children, and they're having a dozen (and so on), however many children you're having is not really going to make a difference in whether civilization collapses. What will make a difference is how you (and the rest of us) manage the resources we have. The irony is, if civilization collapses, chances are very good the birthrate will go up as well. It's what would happen after that which would likely const.i.tute the tragedy. So, you know. Let's work on that resource thing.

Portrait of a Closet Introvert May

31.