Discussion Antinatalism - Better Never Had Been

[esse_est_percipi]

You can essentially reason that its moral to breed the human race into extinction because some people get unwell

If people just stopped having children tomorrow and as a result the human race eventually died out, I don't see that as immoral or a bad thing.

 

[BipolarGuy]

If people just stopped having children tomorrow and as a result the human race eventually died out, I don't see that as immoral or a bad thing.

Do you think it would be a shame?

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Well if you're just saying that people should consider whether it's the best time in their lives to have children yet, or that it's probably best not if they're in absolute poverty, then I'd agree.

yes, this. And that additionally they should be made more aware of the range of illnesses and diseases human can fall victim to, and the stats to go with it.
Procreation should not be taken lightly at all, as with it comes the potential of creating a being who lives in hell.

 

[BipolarGuy]

yes, this. And that additionally they should be made more aware of the range of illnesses and diseases human can fall victim to, and the stats to go with it.
Procreation should not be taken lightly at all, as with it comes the potential of creating a being who lives in hell.

Statistics change over time.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

If people just stopped having children tomorrow and as a result the human race eventually died out, I don't see that as immoral or a bad thing.

Have you ever seen the 2007 movie Children of Men? It's based on a book I think and it's about a dystopia where no humans have been born for around 20 years. I don't remember all the details but it definitely was not good for all the humans.

As for animals and the rest of nature, there are plenty of animals today that still rely on us to be alive sure some of them only exist because of us but the same antinatalism arguments can still be extended to all living things after all. With or without human intervention, plenty of creatures will suffer their own daily grind of having to hunt for food or to escape being hunted and becoming food. Even though they can't think about morality doesn't that mean we should make them all no longer be allowed to bring suffering lives into the world too?

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Do you think it would be a shame?

I don't know.
I don't think that it was a shame that no human existed 5 billion years ago.
If it's all just sound and fury signifying nothing, then I don't think it would be a shame.
But I really don't know, my perspective and knowledge are very limited like for everyone else, so perhaps my opinion here is irrelevant.

Have you ever seen the 2007 movie Children of Men? It's based on a book I think and it's about a dystopia where no humans have been born for around 20 years. I don't remember all the details but it definitely was not good for all the humans.

As for animals and the rest of nature, there are plenty of animals today that still rely on us to be alive sure some of them only exist because of us but the same antinatalism arguments can still be extended to all living things after all. With or without human intervention, plenty of creatures will suffer their own daily grind of having to hunt for food or to escape being hunted and becoming food. Even though they can't think about morality doesn't that mean we should make them all no longer be allowed to bring suffering lives into the world too?

I've not seen that film. Was it not good for the humans because of the fact that humans had stopped being born?

Yes, the problem of suffering in nature for nonhuman animals is another issue.
If you logically push antinatalism to its limits, you would get to the point where it says even animal procreation should be stopped.
Although this would rest on a number of assumptions about the nature and levels of suffering and sentience/self awareness in the natural world which can never be properly gauged.
Arguably, nonhuman animal life in nature, although frequently brutal, bloody, painful, full of fear, is not permeated with the same kind of existential/psychological suffering that some humans experience in artificial societies and economic/political systems.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I've not seen that film. Was it not good for the humans because of the fact that humans had stopped being born?

People just lost a lot of hope and it led to worldwide chaos, a lack of all progress scientific or otherwise, an increasingly aging population that overfetishized youth and other problems.

Yes, the problem of suffering in nature for nonhuman animals is another issue.
If you logically push antinatalism to its limits, you would get to the point where it says even animal procreation should be stopped.
Although this would rest on a number of assumptions about the nature and levels of suffering and sentience/self awareness in the natural world which can never be properly gauged.
Arguably, nonhuman animal life in nature, although frequently brutal, bloody, painful, full of fear, is not permeated with the same kind of existential/psychological suffering that some humans experience in artificial societies and economic/political systems.

I would argue that even simple, single-celled organisms "suffer" in their own way. They may not feel pain existential or otherwise but clearly something within their DNA drives them to survive, reproduce, and adapt when they can't do succeed in those areas.

But maybe to prevent suffering in humans the only other way than killing them/not allowing anymore to be born would just be to render them too stupid to feel sad. I'm talking wiping out all civilization and bringing us back to even before we were able to use tools or fire. I don't know. Either way sounds like quite a harsh solution...

 

[hoping to lose hope]

Consider this if you are an antinatilist

Antinatilists Need to be aware, people will never stop reproduction and at most will spread awareness of the dire implications of giving birth.
Due to fairly recent historical events still present in the collective consciousness such as the Nazis, people will resist anything with a semblance to eugenics.
Reproduction will remain a right for all.

If we were to argue it should not be a right then we need to examine if it is even possible to enforce and without corruption which is inevitable when humans are involved.
Freedom is sacred to me so I am against restricting expression even through genetic propagation.

If antinatilist views were to be more than a mere fringe opinion and hold substantial weight that influenced policy change through a governing body than it is far from far fetched to see how the ethos may be subverted.
Those who adhere to antinatilism are presently only spreading awareness in hopes of persuading individuals not to replicate themselves.
What should be the other and perhaps more realistic aims we can hope to achieve?
We could try to minimize suffering as a whole for those who presently inhabit bodies.

To eliminate suffering of the living we would have to rely on changing the entire trajectory of society and advanced technology which only exists in imagination presently.
I find it absurd that not only is existing bad enough as it is but people are indoctrinated and forced to pay to play this terrible game called life by sacrificing a majority of their free time to secure a basic amount of resources for mere survival.
I agree that work provides a sense of purpose and ultimately a distraction from existing itself but the majority of people do not enjoy working.


One eerie conclusion of pessimistic antinatilist philosophy is as follows:
If you accept that life is more suffering than happiness you conclude giving birth to more conscious beings only to suffer is amoral.
When considering all the suffering of our descendants versus total possible suffering incurred on those presently alive, one can argue a forced extinction is moral for the human race even if in the process everyone had a torturous death.
Surely the total of current humanity suffering to the maximum potential is less than the future humanity suffering until natural extinction.
Should we then try to accelerate a nuclear apocalypse for the greater good?



We as an individual have the power to influence the populace by sowing seeds of deception.
watering untruths scattered within the crevices of global consciousness until they bloom,
disrupting the political landscape with daffodils of anarchy,
the mycelium of chaos feasting on people's fears and insecurities,
sprouting fungus all over the decaying corpse of the earth.


Is it not magical thinking of the end of time itself?
We have the power to cause unprecedented destruction using only symbols as weapons!

 

[mahakaliSS_MahaDurga]

@hoping to lose hope You lost me in the last paragraph.

 

[hoping to lose hope]

@hoping to lose hope You lost me in the last paragraph.

using memes of disinformation to accelerate nuclear war.

 

[mahakaliSS_MahaDurga]

using memes of disinformation to accelerate nuclear war.

Do you believe 4chan memed Trump into the White House 4 years ago?

 

[Intheo]

I would rather not have existed in the first place.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Antinatalism is far from backward thinking. It should actually be the starting point of the debate, rather than considered to be an 'extreme' position barely worthy of being platformed (david benatar even chooses not to appear publicly because of the social stigma attached to his ethical position, and because he ironically receives death threats from 'pro-lifers').

Usually the debate is framed in such a way that procreation is taken to be a given, the 'natural' or 'normal' or 'right' thing to do, and then it's up to the fringe philosopher or maverick bioethicist to challenge that basic and evident axiom with his subversive and 'nihilistic' arguments.

That perspective should be reversed. Non-existence is the norm, the universal background stage which is violently breached with procreation, and it should then be up to the pro-procreation people to justify and argue for bringing the new humanoids and other anthropoid goblins onto the foreground of that stage from the safety of the universal nothingness.
But what you will usually get rather than convincing arguments is platitudes, appeals to emotion, thought-terminating clichés, naturalistic fallacies, appeals to tradition or precedent, fallacies of induction, appeal to popularity, and arbitrary subjective preference statements.

I've yet to come across a single convincing argument for how it is a morally good thing to bring one more anthropomorphic thing onto the foreground at any future time, who currently, as part of the eternal background nothingness, does not exist.

But ultimately, it's a futile debate. Power will always win out against rationality and ethics, or rather "the rationality of the strongest will always win" to paraphrase lafontaine. Procreation is about sound economics (it's the economy, stupid), desire and narcissism, and philosophical and other game theoretic arguments against it are about as useful as throwing a pebble at a tidal wave.

 

[Sinkinshyp]

thank you, Yes, the last thing he would want is my current mental state. It's hard. I have no life without him. He was my heart and soul since i was 20 yrs old

 

[Puffinz]

I'm all for antinatalism. I've read Benatar's book and while I don't think the "every life is objectively terrible" holds any water for me, I see having children as gambling with their lives. First of all, most people are not qualified to raise children in the first place. They either don't have enough life experience, don't have enough money, don't like their partner that will be helping with raising the kid, are mentally unstable etc. However, I think that even if you're completely well prepared to have a child it's still a gamble. You have no way of knowing if that child will get cancer or be born with some genetic disease or mental disability that makes life very difficult and painful for them. People often don't think about the fact that a child will not be a child forever and will someday have to deal with all the problems of life. Maybe that child can't find a job and ends up homeless, maybe they join the army and die fighting for a country that couldn't care less about them, maybe they're molested as a kid and can't form meaningful relationships for the rest of their life. When you decide to have a child you sign them up for every possible life experience and it's impossible to know what harms or joys will come to them. So if you don't know what will happen to your child, I think it's unethical to bring them into existence because it's essentially gambling with another person's life without their consent. All that being said I realize that this view somewhat demonizes parents and I don't think that's right. Having offspring is one of the most powerful biological urges we have. Hating on parents accomplishes nothing and only makes them want to close themselves off from the idea of antinatalism. Once people become parents, they love their children and would do anything to make sure that they're happy and living the best life they can live. Most parents love their children more than they love themselves and would sacrifice themselves 100 times over for their children to be happy. Any antinatalist hating on parents shouldn't be able to call themselves an antinatalist because antinatalism is all about reducing pain for as many people as possible. Making someone feel bad for having children certainly doesn't do that. The last thing I want to say is that antinatalism will never catch on and it's mostly useless to argue with people about it. Having children is so biologically ingrained that convincing people not to have kids is sort-of like convincing people to commit suicide if they aren't suicidal. Basically impossible. It's also a philosophy that lends itself to having less people which means that people that subscribe to antinatalism will never teach their children this because they don't have children.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

David Benetar is a diamond in the rough honestly. I've been an antinatalist ever since I was first introduced to the philosophy on the original subreddit that this site was born from.

Not wanting to bring life into a world that will be barren in the era of an incoming mass extinction (not to mention the eventual heat death of the universe) is sound enough rationale to justify antinatalism, in addition to Benetar's arguments of asymmetry.

The zeitgeist of my generation is generally one of hopelessness, as we know that climate change will destroy the earth as we know it beyond repair. We may not be seeing the visible effects now, but scientists have been ringing the alarm for decades only for the warning to fall on deaf ears.

Climate change will be a cascade with many snowball effects. Once a blue ocean event happens, expect wet bulb temperatures in many equitorial countries. Such extreme conditions will make these areas virtually inhabitable. When the atmospheric patterns become unpredictable, large scale factory farming will become unviable in many places, as weather forecasts will no longer be accurate and all it takes is one bad frost/storm to wipe out your crops.

It blows my mind that people who follow climate science closely choose to have kids, putting the burden on their children's shoulders to try and fix a problem that is beyond the scope of human capabilities. Unborn children shouldn't be pawns for the revolution or the future Elon musk fanboyism fueled technocracy hellscape that may exist before global warming wipes us all out.

I love children, and if I wasn't ill I would love to adopt, but I cannot create a child in good consciousness knowing that I put them at risk for the same diseases that have beleaguered me for years, forced them to participate in the rat race, and brought them into this world knowing they will one day experience extesential crises and have to face their own death. Every cradle is a grave is another good AN work.

 

[Nexuno]

Well, it's not a choice and there's no way to agree or disagree: biological life is destined to cease, sooner or later, with or without consent. So yes, antinatalism makes sense. Not being born in the first place would be a great advantage (that's the aim of the major eastern religions, after all).