Today's Final Jeopardy answer was the Golden Horden, a very famous group in the 1200s and 1300s functioning in the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. A common misconception, the Golden Horde wasn't led by Genghis Khan or Kublai Khan, it was established AFTER the split of the Mongol Empire by a descendant of Genghis (aren't we all?) Batu Khan. How easy was it to just spread out over a whole continent and claim large swaths of land back in the day? They apparently made it out to the Urals, the Caspian Sea and even the Black Sea.
The Golden Horde reminds me of that saying that half of Asia (or is it China) can claim to be some percentage of descendant from Genghis Khan (I might be one too! Never confirmed with 23andme or heritage.com or anything, don't have the official stamp). He is well known along with Nick Cannon as one of the most prolific progenitors in the history of the world. How was it that easy for him? Well, I assume he had children with a lot of different women, something that would be frowned upon today (although not unheard of) and he must have just had a different mindset about it: Be fruitful and multiply, as they say, although Genghis Khan probably never saw the Bible in his life. No, I believe Genghis Khan believed in the old saying of the more sons the better and better to conquer other countries with. It was just different back then, the world was unclaimed, open to anyone, and you just needed to be the fiercest and most ambitious to succeed. Nowadays, the world is mapped out, your life is mostly pre-determined based on who your parents were, what your intelligence is, where you began life (with exceptions of course). But my point is that sense of conquering the world is gone, or at least needing many children to conquer the world, that you succeeded at life if you hae many many children, the more the merrier. People at least in the United States (and certainly not a bunch of Asian countries) think like that anymore- it's just the financial cost of raising kids and the double-whammy of the opportunity cost of spending the rest of your life indentured to your child(ren) that really daunts potential parents, including MJ and me.
In South Korea it is really an extinction event: adults are just not having kids anymore. More than Covid-19, more than AI, more than aging population, it's the No. 1 issue for the country: people just don't want to have kids anymore, so in 50 years South Korea's population is going to shrink drastically, and then likely THOSE kids will not want to have kids neither, and then......who knows what will happen to "Daehan Minguk," as the Koreans call themselves. I don't blame them; I really don't. This weekend in Boston I hung out with old college friends, none of whom had kids and had the time and freedom to go to Boston, and none of the old college friends with kids were able to make the trip. It's kind of epitome of having kids: you're stuff with the kids for the foreseeable future, and as MJ puts it so ominously sometimes, FOREVER. As much as I want kids and have decided on at least having one child (to test it out, like I'm sampling a dessert or something) it's really the biggest plunge you can take in the oceans of the unknown: more than a mortgage, more than marriage, more than a career. Having kids is a lifelong pledge that you can't get out of: delinquancy, divorce, and quitting are solutions for backint out of the previous 3. I can think of a bunch of reasons right now off the top of my head why NOT to have kids: extra mouth to feed, kids nowadays have access to smartphones which make them dumb, uncertain future of the world, loss of free time where I already have a hectic enough life as it is, concerns about bullying if my kid gets bullied like I did when I was a kid, etc., etc. These are not trivial concerns, and I wish it was just clear sailing.
Yet, as much as those concerns damper the possibility of parenthood, I'm still hoping for the best for the latest attempt by MJ and I to join the ranks of parents. I don't want a Golden Horde, I just want one Golden Baby! Who needs a Horde, that one baby can conquer the world!
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