[nostrademons]

I'm a millennial with kids. I've been predicting that the world ends in nuclear holocaust for the last 15-20 years or so, since I was a teenager. My wife and I had the "If the future is going to be as bad as you predict, why bring someone new into this world?" conversation before we chose to have kids.

The simple reason is that if we don't, we lose by default. Survival is the Great Game, the one that has been going on throughout history and will continue to go on for as long as life continues to exist. In the U.S. we've been lucky enough to not need to play the game for the last 3 generations or so, with survival basically assured, and so a lot of people have forgotten how to play. In its absence, we've made up a lot of other games, like "Will I get more karma on Hacker News?" or "Will I get promoted at work?" or "Will I get rich by picking the right cryptocurrency?" But it's worth remembering that these are games, on some level their results don't matter (certainly not if there's a nuclear holocaust), and we may be once again called on to play the Great Game again.

So I just try to be grateful that I don't have to play the survival game right now, while keeping perspective and remembering that that can change in an eyeblink, and trying to keep my wits and skills sharp enough that I could pick it up again if needed.