Discussion Birth- From the perspective of the baby

[BlueWidow]

Since I've been on this forum, I've started thinking a lot about life and death and birth.

I've come to the conclusion that @WhyIsLife56 is correct and we, as a species or human race, would all just be better off if we had never existed.

I began thinking about the process of birth from the perspective of the baby. I believe if we all had consciousness of our birth that could be the end of human life. Consider it from the perspective of the baby and what it would be like if we could all remember what it was like to be born.

Here you are in nothingness, no awareness. Suddenly out of nowhere, you're plucked up and forcibly shoved into a womb. You continue to grow in a fluid filled sac until you can barely fit into it anymore. Then you are forced down a long canal that you also don't really fit into. A doctor is using cold metal forceps to turn you if you're not in the right position.

Then the actual birth occurs and I'm sure that's the most horrific part. There's a blinding light that I'm sure is very painful for the baby, and it's probably freezing, and you've got all these people staring at you. And if you can't breathe, the first thing they do is slap you. They cut the umbilical cord, essentially severing you from your mother. They clean you off and put you on a metal scale. If you're a preemie, you get all sorts of tubes and wires stuck into and out of you throughout your body.
And another one of the most horrific parts to me is that if you're a male, it is perfectly tolerable in Western society for them to circumcise you, or essentially cut pieces of your penis off. In other societies it's also tolerated to mutilate female genitalia, as well.

I realize I'm describing a very simplistic version of it because I have no memory of it and I also have no children, so I don't know what it's like to be pregnant or give birth.
I am also not a gynecologist or an obstetrician. There may be others on this forum that are much more knowledgeable than me about the process of
birth that would have more insight into the details of the process.

My point is that I think the newborns are probably screaming because they're probably saying, "What the fuck did you just do to me?! Why the hell didn't you just leave me where I was?!". I can't imagine how traumatic it is for the newborn to go through the process of being born. I have a feeling the reason we all don't remember it is because, if we did, it would be so traumatic for all of us that no one would ever have another baby again and the human race would go extinct. It's somehow built into the system that we forget so that we can keep perpetuating ourselves and producing more humans. But that perpetuation seems to be completely mindless and meaningless to me. What is the end goal? What is the point?

Any comments are welcome. I would also just like to say that this forum has caused me to start thinking of things in ways that I never would have before. I think that's a good thing. Many of your threads, comments, and questions have made me think of things in ways I never would have before. There are so many intelligent and insightful people here who dare to ask questions and express thoughts and go deeper than the most people ever do during their entire lives. Perhaps that's part of the reason why we're all here. We dare to notice what's around us and point it out and discuss it, while others block it out and ignore it so they can continue on in blissful ignorance.
I feel very privileged to be among you all.

 

[Backwood_tilt]

It's somehow built into the system that we forget so that we can keep perpetuating ourselves and producing more humans. But that perpetuation seems to be completely mindless and meaningless to me. What is the end goal? What is the point?

I think the point of life is just to live in these moments. Then the moments fade, and we do too. If we get too caught up thining about the very short span of time we are all individually around for, it becomes easier to start questioning that purpose.

I don't think we are able to factor in whether or not that life is going to be good or not. So yeah, it does seem kind of meaningless if youre just suffering, but i can't help but have the greatest admiration for those that are doing it and doing it well. Those who are making a positive impact on the people around them and maybe further out, through the good that they do. That seems super meaningful to me, personally.

If i had kids i would do it for them, if i had a partner i would do it for her.... all just to live and be present in life's moments - the good and the bad. We're all just here for the ride, i guess.

 

[Carina]

From different classes, they've all blurred into one thought now honestly, there was a thing that do you remember the "grey aliens", the blobs that had big eyes and heads, with long slender arms? Apparently that's actually how babies see humans when they're born. We have no memory of this, none at all, but still part of us has some memory of it as we still have a memory of these "aliens" in our brains.

Part of our brains are still like called "reptilian" in classes, as their traits are still that, and just built off of. So it's quite possible that we have some basic memories of things that happened as like 'templates' (not a lot, as we can't really form memories at those times as far as we know), but perhaps we actually can picture nothing, maybe we can view nonexistence, but the part of our brain that knows this isn't a conscious part, rather something that is outside our consciousness, but maybe like a subconscious to our subconscious where only it can detect it.

It may be why there's a survival instinct, maybe that part of the brain views nonexistence as darkness with mumbles and roars and then pain along what you described. Maybe childbirth is the only reason we have a survival instinct, because we viewed the womb as an imprint as 'nonexistance' and birth was 'pain' on the non-developed brain. But we really won't know. Well, no... we really won't. We die, there will be nothingness and we'd have no clue because we're gone, or there will be something, and we won't be able to tell people here with certainty.

 

[BlueWidow]

I think the point of life is just to live in these moments. Then the moments fade, and we do too. If we get too caught up thining about the very short span of time we are all individually around for, it becomes easier to start questioning that purpose.

I don't think we are able to factor in whether or not that life is going to be good or not. So yeah, it does seem kind of meaningless if youre just suffering, but i can't help but have the greatest admiration for those that are doing it and doing it well. Those who are making a positive impact on the people around them and maybe further out, through the good that they do. That seems super meaningful to me, personally.

If i had kids i would do it for them, if i had a partner i would do it for her.... all just to live and be present in life's moments - the good and the bad. We're all just here for the ride, i guess.

I'm not talking about for the moment though, I'm talking about in the grand scheme of things why are we all here. As someone pointed out, before you were born nobody knew you, so you weren't missed because you didn't exist yet. For a brief period after you die, you may be missed by people who are still alive who knew you, but at some point all of those people are also going to die and then you're going to be completely forgotten, unless you're famous for some reason.
99% of the human race has been completely forgotten about because they never did anything prominent to be remembered for. How many caveman do you remember? How many people from the 1400s and 1500s do you remember? Eventually we all die and we're forgotten. In the year 2525, no one is going to remember any of us that exist now. Our lives won't have mattered at all, again unless we did something that made us famous. And these days even that is questionable. I'm not sure the Kardashians are going to be remembered in 2525 either, even though they're famous now. It's that whole Andy Warhol thing. In fact, the people of 2525 may look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

 

[Epsilon0]

How many caveman do you remember? How many people from the 1400s and 1500s do you remember? Eventually we all die and we're forgotten.


I thought about this too. To me it is comforting to know there will eventually be no trace left whatsoever of my existence.

 

[BlueWidow]

How many caveman do you remember? How many people from the 1400s and 1500s do you remember? Eventually we all die and we're forgotten.


I thought about this too. To me it is comforting to know there will eventually be no trace left whatsoever of my existence.

Actually I find that comforting as well. I don't understand why there are so many people out there who have a desire to be remembered. I have the opposite desire. I don't want anyone to ever know I existed.

 

[Nemeshisu]

Actually I find that comforting as well. I don't understand why there are so many people out there who have a desire to be remembered. I have the opposite desire. I don't want anyone to ever know I existed.

I find such a desire as irrational too. But remember that "normal" people don't think too much that it won't matter how they are remembered by others, they seem to be deceived by their own instincts. I think that this concern comes from most basic human instinct of not wanting to die. Such people want to become immortal as memories in others, but they don't seem to realize that it's irrational. People even if are remembered by others, they are only remembered as empty shells: He did X, He wrote X book, He painted X painting etc. without much emotional context. It's only a pseudo-immortality though. No one really cares too much in the end. People will only care if it benefits or harms them in any way. They will be proud that they had famous relative in their family. Or be ashamed that their grandfather was a war criminal and may even be shamed by others for it. But in few million years, after everything turns to dust, will even that matter?

It's natural that one that no longer fears death, doesn't care about such pseudo-immortality. I think that it is better to be forgotten, because it won't matter in the end anyway.

 

[Backwood_tilt]

I'm talking about in the grand scheme of things why are we all here

we just have this genetic programming to live and reproduce, i think that's basically it :\

 

[Polly]

I think the point of life is just to live in these moments. Then the moments fade, and we do too

Beautifully said.

 

[TAW122]

Excellent post @BlueWidow. As far as your questions, I suppose life is really meaningless (from a nihilist's pov and also my own -- being an atheist myself). Humans procreate because there is a biological imperative (not that it is rational by any stretch) to do so and propagate the human race. It's just like that with many other species of animals and we oftenly (most humans) don't question or examine it, but rather accept it as something natural and something that is to be done. Some may even claim that the biological imperative to reproduce is the meaning of life, but I digress...

As for forgetting about the past humans and what not, yes I think that is true, in fact, I believe even a generation from now, nobody will really remember much of the 70's, 80's, or even 90's (my generation - millennials) if any, except for certain important dates in history. As for 2525, I don't know if the human race would still be around or whether we would still exist by then (natural disasters, nuclear war, climate change, and more other problems in today's world). Suppose though if we did, yes, we few people would even remember much of the 21st-25th century. In the 26th century, the world would have been really different.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Birth is the first trauma. Maybe others precede it in the womb, but unless we're delivered via cesarian, birth is a whopper of a trauma. All warm and floaty, then forced via squeezing for hours, maybe days, and we don't know what the fuck is going on.

We are born suffering and born into suffering.

Being a kid is hard. Being an adolescent is hard. Being an adult is hard. Growing old is hard. Being old is hard. Dying is usually hard.

We need connection to others, and we are often hard on each other.

We are hardwired to become dissatisfied once we are satisfied. Our emotions prepare us for and propel us to next actions. Rest and peace are fleeting. Life compels us to create more life and to keep living.

Fuck the big bang. Fuck carbon.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

Honestly, I wasn't going to come back to this forum at all but reading your post, I couldn't help myself. @BlueWidow I've also seen your post about not knowing what Antinatalism and Efilism until I came here.

There were other posts/threads about antinatalism and efilism but they never lasted long due to the fact that they were all titled with antinatalism and also because those people are no longer here anymore.

So I had the spread the philosophy under a different title hence my thread. :)

I love most of everyone's posts on this thread as well

Humans and humanity as a whole deserve extinction. This world should've never existed but I think humans, especially, deserve extinction.

Thanks for mentioning me in your thread post

 

[BlueWidow]

Honestly, I wasn't going to come back to this forum at all but reading your post, I couldn't help myself. @BlueWidow I've also seen your post about not knowing what Antinatalism and Efilism until I came here.

There were other posts/threads about antinatalism and efilism but they never lasted long due to the fact that they were all titled with antinatalism and also because those people are no longer here anymore.

So I had the spread the philosophy under a different title hence my thread. :)

I love most of everyone's posts on this thread as well ❤

Humans and humanity as a whole deserve extinction. This world should've never existed but I think humans, especially, deserve extinction.

Thanks for mentioning me in your thread post ❤

I found your thread titled Existence is a Burden & bookmarked it. I'm going to read through the whole thing again. My ctb date is most likely getting really close too, but I thought I'd continue to explore this topic as long as I'm here. It's actually giving me a lot of comfort knowing that everything is just going to cease to exist. I'm also happy that I won't be aware of what's going to happen after I leave because I'm being forced to leave a lot of things undone because of my health issues. I just don't have the energy to wrap up all the things that I really wanted to wrap up. But I could spend the next five years here and still not get it all wrapped up so, I'm just leaving it to my husband's family. I don't have a specific date in mind, but I intend to be gone by the middle of February. I was actually hoping to be gone by now, but all the people on the Kitchen Sink thread have helped me to stick around longer. But I have to go soon because things are starting to close in on me again. I have everything ready and all I need is that little push, which I can feel is coming.
Anyway, thank you for all the postings you've done and for spreading antinatalism and efilism around this site. They are very interesting philosophies. I wish I had discovered them sooner. As I said, I have held a lot of similar beliefs for a long time now, but I had no idea there was a name for the philosophy.
I'm going to go through as many of them as I can before I leave here.
I hope I get to speak with you again before you leave. I'll be looking out for you.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

I'm not talking about for the moment though, I'm talking about in the grand scheme of things why are we all here. As someone pointed out, before you were born nobody knew you, so you weren't missed because you didn't exist yet. For a brief period after you die, you may be missed by people who are still alive who knew you, but at some point all of those people are also going to die and then you're going to be completely forgotten, unless you're famous for some reason.
99% of the human race has been completely forgotten about because they never did anything prominent to be remembered for. How many caveman do you remember? How many people from the 1400s and 1500s do you remember? Eventually we all die and we're forgotten. In the year 2525, no one is going to remember any of us that exist now. Our lives won't have mattered at all, again unless we did something that made us famous. And these days even that is questionable. I'm not sure the Kardashians are going to be remembered in 2525 either, even though they're famous now. It's that whole Andy Warhol thing. In fact, the people of 2525 may look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

This. @BlueWidow Your post really puts things in perspective. I need to keep rereading your post until it sinks in ." In the year 2525, no one is going to remember any of us that exist now. Our lives won't have mattered at all. " I would say in even in 150 years from now who is going to care anyone alive now even existed. There might be some blurb about someone famous but will that be the essence of who that person was?

 

[Lethe]

Good thread. Birth is indeed the first trauma, and that trauma is supposedly still buried deep in the unconscious mind when you're an adult (I haven't studied psychology in depth, so I'm not sure how true that is). I've heard stories about someone getting their umbilical cord wrapped around their neck during birth, and that repressed trauma came back to the surface when they took psychedelic drugs.

I've been reading about Efilism as well, and I was thinking it may be one of the solutions to the Fermi Paradox. The paradox of course states that, despite the high probability for the universe to be teeming with intelligent civilizations, we've yet to encounter any. This may be because once a civilization reaching a sufficiently high level of consciousness, it overrides its biological instinct to reproduce and instead elects to end itself in order to end suffering. Food for thought I guess.

 

[BlueWidow]

Good thread. Birth is indeed the first trauma, and that trauma is supposedly still buried deep in the unconscious mind when you're an adult (I haven't studied psychology in depth, so I'm not sure how true that is). I've heard stories about someone getting their umbilical cord wrapped around their neck during birth, and that repressed trauma came back to the surface when they took psychedelic drugs.

I've been reading about Efilism as well, and I was thinking it may be one of the solutions to the Fermi Paradox. The paradox of course states that, despite the high probability for the universe to be teeming with intelligent civilizations, we've yet to encounter any. This may be because once a civilization reaching a sufficiently high level of consciousness, it overrides its biological instinct to reproduce and instead elects to end itself in order to end suffering. Food for thought I guess.

That's interesting that psychedelic drugs can bring that stuff back. I'm not surprised by that and I'm also not surprised that the government is not letting people take psychedelic drugs, possibly that's one of the reasons. They don't want people remembering things.
And I agree about your birth being buried in your mind somewhere. I can't imagine you go through all that severe trauma of being born and it is just forgotten about and it goes out of your brain. It must remain buried somewhere in there.
The Fermi Paradox sounds very interesting as well. And it makes perfect sense to me.

 

[k75]

Birth is traumatic, but we're made not to remember it. I would argue it's equally traumatic for the mother, maybe a little more so because they are capable of processing the experience. However, our minds do this weird thing where the majority of people get kind of an amnesia about all of the unpleasant stuff that happens. That's why people can stand to have more than one baby, because they don't remember exactly how awful it was.

If it helps any, they don't really slap newborns anymore. Just suction out their mouths and noses and rub them.

I don't like arguments about whether or not we should exist, so I'm not touching that. Regardless of which side is right, life exists and we are.

 

[BlueWidow]

Birth is traumatic, but we're made not to remember it. I would argue it's equally traumatic for the mother, maybe a little more so because they are capable of processing the experience. However, our minds do this weird thing where the majority of people get kind of an amnesia about all of the unpleasant stuff that happens. That's why people can stand to have more than one baby, because they don't remember exactly how awful it was.

If it helps any, they don't really slap newborns anymore. Just suction out their mouths and noses and rub them.

I don't like arguments about whether or not we should exist, so I'm not touching that. Regardless of which side is right, life exists and we are.

I'm glad to hear that they don't slap the newborns anymore.
I'm sure you're right that it is equally as traumatic for the mother. The difference is the mother had a choice to have a baby. The baby had no choice in being born.

 

[k75]

The difference is the mother had a choice to have a baby. The baby had no choice in being born.

I really don't want to debate it too much, so I shouldn't even be responding LOL but we don't really know if it was a choice or not. We just don't know. How could we?

If it's possible the baby/soul/whatever did not choose to exist, it's also possible it did choose to exist and there's just no consciousness of it anymore.

Just like we don't know if there's an afterlife or not. A living thing cannot know this for a fact.

The only thing we know for certain is life does exist, and we are full of it whether we wanted it or not.

Please don't think I'm shitting on your beliefs, because I'm not. Just tossing an unpopular alternative the mix. I believe there's no way to really get these answers at all. We're all just making guesses and assumptions.

 

[BlueWidow]

I really don't want to debate it too much, so I shouldn't even be responding LOL but we don't really know if it was a choice or not. We just don't know. How could we?

If it's possible the baby/soul/whatever did not choose to exist, it's also possible it did choose to exist and there's just no consciousness of it anymore.

Just like we don't know if there's an afterlife or not. A living thing cannot know this for a fact.

The only thing we know for certain is life does exist, and we are full of it whether we wanted it or not.

Please don't think I'm shitting on your beliefs, because I'm not. Just tossing an unpopular alternative the mix. I believe there's no way to really get these answers at all. We're all just making guesses and assumptions.

Yes, I have absolutely no way of knowing whether anybody chose to exist or not either, nor do I have any way of knowing what's going to happen after we leave this existence and I've stated that many times on this forum.
However, this particular post is from a particular perspective. I didn't post it because I wanted to argue with people. I just posted it because I've been reading about all the stuff and I just wanted to express an opinion. And you know what they say about opinions.

 

[k75]

Yes, I have absolutely no way of knowing whether anybody chose to exist or not either, nor do I have any way of knowing what's going to happen after we leave this existence and I've stated that many times on this forum.
However, this particular post is from a particular perspective. I didn't post it because I wanted to argue with people. I just posted it because I've been reading about all the stuff and I just wanted to express an opinion. And you know what they say about opinions.

I hope you didn't think anything I said was an attack at you, because it wasn't. I understand why you posted, and I think it's a good conversation.

 

[BlueWidow]

I hope you didn't think anything I said was an attack at you, because it wasn't. I understand why you posted, and I think it's a good conversation.

No, I just thought it was an interesting perspective and one that I had never considered before. I just thought it might be interesting for other people to consider as well.

 

[JustVisiting]

I found your thread titled Existence is a Burden & bookmarked it. I'm going to read through the whole thing again. My ctb date is most likely getting really close too, but I thought I'd continue to explore this topic as long as I'm here. It's actually giving me a lot of comfort knowing that everything is just going to cease to exist. I'm also happy that I won't be aware of what's going to happen after I leave because I'm being forced to leave a lot of things undone because of my health issues. I just don't have the energy to wrap up all the things that I really wanted to wrap up. But I could spend the next five years here and still not get it all wrapped up so, I'm just leaving it to my husband's family. I don't have a specific date in mind, but I intend to be gone by the middle of February. I was actually hoping to be gone by now, but all the people on the Kitchen Sink thread have helped me to stick around longer. But I have to go soon because things are starting to close in on me again. I have everything ready and all I need is that little push, which I can feel is coming.
Anyway, thank you for all the postings you've done and for spreading antinatalism and efilism around this site. They are very interesting philosophies. I wish I had discovered them sooner. As I said, I have held a lot of similar beliefs for a long time now, but I had no idea there was a name for the philosophy.
I'm going to go through as many of them as I can before I leave here.
I hope I get to speak with you again before you leave. I'll be looking out for you.

@WhyIsLife56 Must find that thread. I've also taken a deep dive into antinatalism thanks to you and like @BlueWidow I've often pondered this but didn't know the name of it. Thank you

 

[Deleted-User-0]

These words are from my favourite book "Better never to have been":

He argued that since we do not regret the period of non-existence before we came into being, we should not regret the non-existence that follows our lives.
My view allows the possibility that suicide may more often be rational and may even be more rational than continuing to exist. This is because it may be an irrational love for life that keeps many people alive when their lives have actually become so bad that ceasing to exist would be better. This is the view expressed by the old woman in Voltaire's Candide:

A hundred times I wished to kill myself, but my love of life persisted. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of the most fatal of our faults.

For what could be more stupid than to go on carrying a burden that we always long to lay down? To loathe, and yet cling to, existence? In short, to cherish the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten our hearts?