Life and Existence is a Burden

[AlexM]

You said unborn child in your post.

Unborn child can't make decision of course :)

 

[WhyIsLife56]

" The world is full of people that didn't mentally survive suffering, the psych hospitals are full to bursting and there are also plenty who didn't physically survive it, over a million people suicide every year. They should seriously be ashamed at exposing that suffering is good. If they think suffering is so wonderful tell them to go stand in molten lava."

From r/efilism and quoted by r/Nefirterri

 

[AlexM]

20 000 000 attempts per year

 

[WhyIsLife56]

20 000 000 attempts per year

It's a quote. Emphasis on the suffering part please.

 

[Mort]

The closest thing we are is to a virus we multiply consume and move on . Sum of the bugs die of but on the hole they still plenty of us to consume every thing around us . May be humanity is ment to die of if were are a virus it often gets wiped out by the host body but then again sum time the host body die to . Well they sum thing to think about o by the way happy new year :) LOL .

 

[WhyIsLife56]

The closest thing we are is to a virus we multiply consume and move on . Sum of the bugs die of but on the hole they still plenty of us to consume every thing around us . May be humanity is ment to die of if were are a virus it often gets wiped out by the host body but then again sum time the host body die to . Well they sum thing to think about o by the way happy new year :) LOL .

Humans are parasites. They got brains but they don't think.

 

[AlexM]

I think suffering much more 20 000 000. But we don't know before will be child happy or not, born person can decide it, if we steal this opportunity - we no better than people who keeps us alive

 

[WhyIsLife56]

On the "Most people are glad to be born" argument


"Did you "need" to be born? and what negative could come from never existing? To the latter, people will generally say - "I would have missed out on yada yada yada". My response - only the sentient can experience a "feeling of missing out". Also, you will die someday never knowing you had a life to begin with.

Whether or not someone is glad to be born is irrelevant. It still doesn't give them the ethical right to produce more need machines. There are millions (if not billions) of us who wish we had been swallowed. The world will "swallow" us all eventually."

From r/antinatalism quoted by r/-worldexploder-

 

[WhyIsLife56]

 

[WhyIsLife56]

Plants can also feel pain too.

Plants have been proven to feel pain.
When plants become injured or attacked, they respond by releasing a signal through their nervous system like cell which alerts them. When they are eaten by animals and such, they end up releasing their own stress hormone through this process. They also release chemicals that alert other plants nearby to increase their defenses. In other words, plants "scream" (releasing chemicals in defense) when they detect pain.
It is also known that plants are still alive even when made into a salad. Some studies mention that vegetables can actually hear and detect when they're being eaten.
They may not necessarily feel pain like humans and animals do but they can detect when they are being eaten, whenever they are being cut down etc.

"In the study, the researchers put caterpillars on Arabidopsis, a small, cabbage-like plant, and pointed a laser at a reflective section of the plant's surface. That way, they were able to measure the different ways the plant moved in response to a chewing caterpillar. Then, the scientists removed the caterpillar from the equation entirely and only played back recordings they'd made of the crunching caterpillar's vibrations. For another plant, they played back only silence.

After placing live caterpillars back on both sets of plants, the researchers found that the set that had been exposed to the caterpillar's feeding sounds produced more mustard oil, a chemical that's meant to fend off hungry critters."

 

[TheSoulless]

I love that you posted this. People really need to know about antinatalism and efilism. Ever since I discovered those two philosophies, my life has been somewhat clearer, generally. I haven't diverged from that path as I just can't think of any negatives to these philosophies.

There's a good chance that we have already met in the antinatalism sub, too

 

[WhyIsLife56]

I love that you posted this. People really need to know about antinatalism and efilism. Ever since I discovered those two philosophies, my life has been somewhat clearer, generally. I haven't diverged from that path as I just can't think of any negatives to these philosophies.

There's a good chance that we have already met in the antinatalism sub, too

I always knew something was amiss but everything became so clear ever since I discovered both terms :)

 

[notjustyetagain]

wow. i agree with just about everything you've written -- and written well! thank you so much for putting it out there. i'm sorry that this will be your last thread. :( one thing though...

Plants can also feel pain too. Plants have been proven to feel pain.

as a plant-pecking paranoiac, this frightens me. i'm scared to ask: where's the proof for this claim? plants are all i've got left to eat! :/ as far as i can tell...

reactions to damage via the mechanisms outlined in the source of the article you quoted -- which doesn't contain the words "pain" or "feel" -- doesn't imply the experience pain? of the four (known) mechanisms theorised to produce pain, it's my understanding that only nociceptive pain could apply to plants, but no plants are known to have nociceptors. even if they did, they lack the brain to turn nociceptive signals into experiences. what is the brain and nervous-system equivalent that plants possess in order to experience anything?

They may not necessarily feel pain like humans and animals do but they can detect when they are being eaten, whenever they are being cut down etc.

plants react to sound and touch, light, and smell... but if you're suggesting that they experience these reactions -- how? re "screaming" plants: plants emit gases as a reaction to damage, fair enough; i emit blood as a reaction to having my leg amputated. but if neither of us had the equivalent of a central nervous system and brain, why would either of us "scream"?

even this pro-plant proponent proposes that plants are powerless to ponder pain.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

wow. i agree with just about everything you've written -- and written well! thank you so much for putting it out there. i'm sorry that this will be your last thread. :( one thing though...

as a plant-pecking paranoiac, this frightens me. i'm scared to ask: where's the proof for this claim? plants are all i've got left to eat! :/ as far as i can tell...

reactions to damage via the mechanisms outlined in the source of the article you quoted -- which doesn't contain the words "pain" or "feel" -- doesn't imply the experience pain? of the four (known) mechanisms theorised to produce pain, it's my understanding that only nociceptive pain could apply to plants, but no plants are known to have nociceptors. even if they did, they lack the brain to turn nociceptive signals into experiences. what is the brain and nervous-system equivalent that plants possess in order to experience anything?

plants react to sound and touch, light, and smell... but if you're suggesting that they experience these reactions -- how? re "screaming" plants: plants emit gases as a reaction to damage, fair enough; i emit blood as a reaction to having my leg amputated. but if neither of us had the equivalent of a central nervous system and brain, why would either of us "scream"?

even this pro-plant proponent proposes that plants are powerless to ponder pain.

Think of it this way.
Plants can indeed feel, sense and smell. What I was trying to say is that plants "scream" as in they react to injury or being eaten even if they can't escape from it like animals and humans do.
Trying to hold human standards to plants wouldn't be fair to the plants. Animals can feel pain but they can't literally shout things like "it hurts!!" like humans do. It's the same thing with plants. It's better not to hold the same standards that humans have to plants or animals. (although humans and animals aren't all that different)

 

[WhyIsLife56]

wow. i agree with just about everything you've written -- and written well! thank you so much for putting it out there. i'm sorry that this will be your last thread. :( one thing though...

as a plant-pecking paranoiac, this frightens me. i'm scared to ask: where's the proof for this claim? plants are all i've got left to eat! :/ as far as i can tell...

There's an article that explains this in detail

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...plants-emitting-ultrasonic-squeals-180973716/

It explains that plants squeal as their defense reaction as well as possibly cutting their own "life force" from themselves.

 

[R_N]

Eat and be eaten. Life is truly a struggle. I seriously can't grasp how we are able do distract and deceive ourselves from the reality.

 

[OneBigBlur]

I came across this post on r/antinatalism courtesy of r/andreyloverofmythos and

I'd like to think this post sums up a lot of the horrors of life in detail.

*left out some personal info from original Reddit post

Is this video completely gone? I liked his written explanation but couldn't get the video to work.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

Is this video completely gone? I liked his written explanation but couldn't get the video to work.

Some of the videos got deleted by the user on YouTube apparently.
The one for the Dominion documentary still works though. It's a free documentary. You might want to mentally prepare yourself if you plan to watch it though.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

An excerpt from Every Cradle is a Grave by Sarah Perry (Living in the Epilogue)

The Story as a Cognitive Bias

"The essence of consciousness, says Antonio Damasio, is the internal narrative--the story one tells oneself about oneself, to project oneself into the past and the future, to connect meaningfully--has proven to be a very effective evolutionary strategy to ensure that organism acts to promote its own end.
Our evolutionary history ensures that we think in stories. Stories are so central to our thinking that it is hard to think about them.
Stories are extremely useful; as information hungry social creatures, we are as pleased to hear stories as dogs are to sniff the pee stains of other dogs. We love stories. We are stories. We think and remember in the form of stories. As Roger Schank puts it (in Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory), "I'm the end, all we have, machine or human, are stories and methods of finding and using those stories."
But stories are not real. They are constructs that we apply to the universe, but there is no story out in the universe. There is no "gist" or "point" to the universe, as stories have gists and points. We construct meaning to serve our evolutionarily-determined ends, and this is, I think the most central of all the cognitive biases."

 

[Pale Blue Dot]

I really like the post. I enjoyed reading it, It was really intriguing; What I especially liked is your the way how do you explain your thoughts... It was hella interesting lol Thanks for putting your thoughts outta here.

I think "life" itself is a pain. I mean, Whether there is any actual situation that is usually considered as "pain", recognizing oneself as a living organism, realizing one's consciousness, those kinda things could already consider as pain.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

I really like the post. I enjoyed reading it, It was really intriguing; What I especially liked is your the way how do you explain your thoughts... It was hella interesting lol Thanks for putting your thoughts outta here.

I think "life" itself is a pain. I mean, Whether there is any actual situation that is usually considered as "pain", recognizing oneself as a living organism, realizing one's conscious, those kinda things could already consider as pain.

Thanks for reading it.
Yeah consciousness is a burden indeed. Evolution should've never occurred at all.
Everything is pain for the existing.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

An excerpt from Every Cradle is a Grave by Sarah Perry

The Censorship of Suicide

"Suicide is tabooed in a unique and unfortunate way.
Wickersham (Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index) says there is a reluctance to talk about suicide, adding, "I would love to see more honest conversation about it."
Contrary to Wickersham's goal, "honest conversation" about suicide is suppressed in the media when a suicide occurs. This suppression is often based on well-intentioned but flawed "media guidelines" published by anti-suicide groups. In addition to the fact these guidelines promote the ethical position that suicide is wrong, I see two major problems with these guidelines: one, they promote myths about suicide as if they were facts; two, they increase the guilt of survivors by portraying suicide as preventable.
The "Media Guidelines for Suicide" on suicide.org advise reporters as follows:

• • Emphasize the number one cause for suicide
  • The number one cause for suicide is untreated depression.
  • And then indicate that depression is treatable, and thus anyone suffering from depression needs to receive IMMEDIATE help.

This, as we have seen, is contrary to the scientific studies, which show that depression only slightly increases the risk for suicide--a fact which in itself carried little weight, since suicidality is one of the possible criteria for diagnosing depression.
Even given a slight correlation between depression and suicide, it's overstating the case to say that depression causes suicide. It would be more accurate, but less satisfying, to say that the desire to die, coupled with the acquired ability to die, is the leading cause of suicide.
Other "media guidelines" offered by suicide.org range from silly and intrusive to Orwellian:

• Do not begin a television newscast with a suicide story.
• Do not place suicide stories on the cover of newspapers and magazines.
• Never portray suicide as heroic.
• Never say suicide "ended pain" or "ended suffering." Suicide CAUSES excruciating pain for suicide survivors.
• Also, people need to be alive to feel relief from pain. Suicide CAUSES pain.
• Do not use the terms "successful suicide" or "commited suicide." Use the term "died by suicide" instead.
• The term "committed suicide" is Not accurate and is VERY hurtful to those who have attempted suicide and to suicide survivors. Say "died by suicide."

The media guidelines proposed by suicide.org strictly fit my definition of "politically correct bullshit" : they express majority opinionin a manner unconcerned with truth, and have the function of a moral taboo to protect an important cultural narrative from negation."

This would explain a lot of the taboo on suicide.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

Reminds me of Aristotle's *The Wisdom of Silenus*:

"There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him. When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man. Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words: "O wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is -- to die soon.""

Taken from r/antinatalism by r/Don't_Ban_Me_Br0

I came across this quote today and it includes some antinatalism sentiment in it.
I like how it ends with saying that the best thing to do is to die soon. It implies that life isn't worth continuing at all.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

I would like to emphasize this quote. Self explanatory :)

 

[WhyIsLife56]

The definition of Efilism from the Urban Dictionary:

"EFILism (EFIL = LIFE spelled backwards) is a shorthand term for the philosophy of Sentio-centric and Sensory-centric Anti-natalism and Pro-mortalism. This philosophy deals with the most crucial objective truths concerning life in the universe:

Primarily, that DNA life is a replication script running off the power of physics, and has no logical reason to exist. And that DNA is also the proven creator of unjustifiable torture - not on any minor scale either. DNA has been causing mass torture for 100,000,000s of lives for 100,000,000s of years (and ongoing). Virtually, the only defense given for this, is the entire range of positive experience, which has been entirely concluded as a fallacy, in numerous ways. Beginning with the fact that the non-existence of life harms nobody, has zero problems in it or with it, and therefore has zero sane reason to go from "non-living" to "living". The fact that all forms of "positive experience" are just made out of fixing deprivation and avoiding harm, meaning positive experience is not even a "positive", it's just the undoing of negatives and fixing of negatives, at the risk of even worse negatives. And remember: at the continued risk of the worst possible negatives for life (try imagining Guantanamo Bay or a dictatorship, but in a high tech world that could prolong life by 500 years and enhance pain by 500 fold).

And ultimately: The fact that positive experience does not compensate for unjustifiable torture and harm. It does not wind back the clock, or in any way nullify victims of the DNA experiment. That is not an opinion, it is a verified indisputable fact: positive experience is not a time machine, and it is not an eraser. That alone is a killerblow to the notion that "positive experience" could even possibly justify the DNA life experiment. Never mind all the optimistic heaven-chasers, who fail to realize the exact future technology for high-tech extreme amusement chambers, could just as easily create high-tech extreme torture chambers. This future risk of synthetic/virtual torture and hell-simulators now brings us to the most grave topic ever discussed: How do we contain the life experiment and create a failsafe - before the cat is out of the bag?

Efilism logically applies to anything that could even potentially lead to this circumstance happening. Meaning plant life is also to be prevented. And it goes beyond even plant life."

This would ultimately be the most ethical conclusion to all of life and philosophy.

 

[BooGirl]

The definition of Efilism from the Urban Dictionary:

"EFILism (EFIL = LIFE spelled backwards) is a shorthand term for the philosophy of Sentio-centric and Sensory-centric Anti-natalism and Pro-mortalism. This philosophy deals with the most crucial objective truths concerning life in the universe:

Primarily, that DNA life is a replication script running off the power of physics, and has no logical reason to exist. And that DNA is also the proven creator of unjustifiable torture - not on any minor scale either. DNA has been causing mass torture for 100,000,000s of lives for 100,000,000s of years (and ongoing). Virtually, the only defense given for this, is the entire range of positive experience, which has been entirely concluded as a fallacy, in numerous ways. Beginning with the fact that the non-existence of life harms nobody, has zero problems in it or with it, and therefore has zero sane reason to go from "non-living" to "living". The fact that all forms of "positive experience" are just made out of fixing deprivation and avoiding harm, meaning positive experience is not even a "positive", it's just the undoing of negatives and fixing of negatives, at the risk of even worse negatives. And remember: at the continued risk of the worst possible negatives for life (try imagining Guantanamo Bay or a dictatorship, but in a high tech world that could prolong life by 500 years and enhance pain by 500 fold).

And ultimately: The fact that positive experience does not compensate for unjustifiable torture and harm. It does not wind back the clock, or in any way nullify victims of the DNA experiment. That is not an opinion, it is a verified indisputable fact: positive experience is not a time machine, and it is not an eraser. That alone is a killerblow to the notion that "positive experience" could even possibly justify the DNA life experiment. Never mind all the optimistic heaven-chasers, who fail to realize the exact future technology for high-tech extreme amusement chambers, could just as easily create high-tech extreme torture chambers. This future risk of synthetic/virtual torture and hell-simulators now brings us to the most grave topic ever discussed: How do we contain the life experiment and create a failsafe - before the cat is out of the bag?

Efilism logically applies to anything that could even potentially lead to this circumstance happening. Meaning plant life is also to be prevented. And it goes beyond even plant life."

This would ultimately be the most ethical conclusion to all of life and philosophy.

Fucking hell, I never even thought about that. Imagine some guy simulating thousands of people being tortured constantly. It's not entirely impossible.

 

[WhyIsLife56]

Fucking hell, I never even thought about that. Imagine some guy simulating thousands of people being tortured constantly. It's not entirely impossible.

Anything seems to be possible, considering the damage and suffering that this world has gone through and continuing to go through.

 

[BooGirl]

Anything seems to be possible, considering the damage and suffering that this world has gone through and continuing to go through.

So what's to be done?

 

[WhyIsLife56]

So what's to be done?

There's not much humans can do but the best for now is to spread the message or either hope for an asteroid to kill the whole universe. Or if there was a red button that could end it all.

 

[TAW122]

Excellent post @WhyIsLife56. I question my own existence at times in my life, like "why was I born?" and things like if I was never born, then all of the suffering (and pleasure) that I experience would not be there. I am single and I don't plan on having any kids or bringing in any sentient life into this world. The world is full of suffering and existence itself sucks so I am doing the Earth a favor by not bringing more humans into this world, let alone all the environmental and existential problems.

Speaking of antinatalism, the YouTuber Eye Doubt It has a few videos on the topic. Just recently, he has this video about antinatalism: