Competitive Breeding

Over at Feministing, a link to an NPR story about wealthy mothers who have lots of kids:

Given the incredibly high cost of raising children these days -- with housing, child care, camps, clothing, and college tuition -- big families are apparently now a status symbol.

The funny thing is that I'm pretty sure having lots of kids was a status symbol in lots and lots of indigenous cultures for a long time, since having kids was a way to ensure one had enough labor on hand to provide for the family - and therefore not starve. Here, the motivation appears to be ex-career women who need a competitive outlet.

We have come so very far, haven't we? It's almost like we've been socially regressing in these last, I don't know, six years.

Again:

Jurgen Habermas, a German philosopher, who once wrote that he fears that humanity is in trouble because while we've accumulated massive amounts of technical knowledge (I think he called it technical-rational) about how the world works, we're real short on other knowledge, what I would call wisdom. (Wisdom being primarily concerned with how we ought to live.)

Gaining the sort of knowledge that leads to wisdom requires, I think, a means-based outlook and a heavy emphasis on process. The United States has neither.