>/By foreswearing children you do everyone a favour *except* yourself. It's
>/as if you were on a soccer team and decided that 11 men a side was unfair
>/to the other teams, and so took yourself out of the game, leaving only 10
>/men on your team.
>
>This is only true if you want to have children. You're not doing your
>genes a favor by not having kids, but you may well be doing yourself a
>favor.
"Madness is hereditary. We get it from our kids." :-)
>I would much rather propagate myself than my genes.
I'm not sure I understand you. I was speaking in terms of the ideas
raised by Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene. It contains a persuasive
argument that we're really just highly evolved gene-propagation systems.
Of course, this only applies as a general rule - anyone can find specific
examples of people who have elected out of the game. They don't
invalidate Dawkins' theory though.
John
----------------------------------------------------------------------
John Steele Foresight Technology, Inc.
john_steele@fsti.com http://www.fsti.com/
(817) 731-4444 Sales: sales@fsti.com
Tech Support: support@fsti.com