What are your opinions on anti-natalism?
Anti-natalism is the philosophical value judgment that procreation is unethical or unjustifiable. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from making children. Some antinatalists consider coming into existence to always be a serious harm. Their views are not necessarily limited only to humans but may encompass all sentient creatures, arguing that coming into existence is a serious harm for sentient beings in general. There are various reasons why antinatalists believe human reproduction is problematic. The most common arguments for antinatalism include that life entails inevitable suffering, death is inevitable, and humans are born without their consent. Additionally, although some people may turn out to be happy, this is not guaranteed, so to procreate is to gamble with another person's suffering. WIKIPEDIA
If you think, maybe for a few years, like 10-20 years, no one should make babies, and when things get better, we can continue, then you are not an anti-natalist. Anti-natalists believe that suffering will always be there and no one should be born EVER.
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In a society whose official ideology is that "There is No Alternative", antinatalism is basically a dressed up version of "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism".
It's basically just lack of imagination. Doomerist defeatism.
I think you're misunderstanding anti-natalism if you believe it's about envisioning the end of the world. It's not that grand, nor that pessimistic. It was never meant to remedy shitty living conditions. It's not a tool for embettering society, it's a philosophical exercise that questions one's right to create a person and subject them to sentience and suffering.
Imagining non-existence is anything but lacking imagination because it so abstract to our minds. To be anti-natalist, you must first have attempted to imagine that in order to compare it to existence before asking if you feel it is right to subject a human to that.
It's a philosophical exercise that challenges social conventions about child-rearing. Don't forget that it's an excruciating ordeal for women too. There is suffering involved for all parties. Not all kids are born healthy, secure, and provided for.
Ask anyone with disabilities, abusive families, trauma, financial hardship, and generally going though too much shit in life and you'll find that it was never about a lack of imagination. We suffer because we are able to imagine how things could have been so much better. It is because we can imagine ourselves in a better place that we ask if not being born is necessarily any worse. That isn't a statement made with just pessimism, it's made with genuine curiosity towards thinking back what 'life' was like before being born, and deciding that it is the greatest gift you can give to your hypothetical children.
You're contradicting your own argument:
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This is a contradiction. You are literally picking the antinatalist option because of shitty living conditions.
And of course, the lack of imagination is not whether you can imagine things being better but whether you can imagine things becoming better starting from where we are here and now.
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If you can imagine such a place, steelman your argument then, try making it without a premise of shitty living conditions. Pick a convivial world, and make an antinatalist argument from that world. Does it still stand?
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Finally, the argument that says nonexistence might be better is literally vacuous: False implies True. Nonexistence therefore is trivially whatever you want it to be, but not In any meaningful sense.
You are misinterpreting a crucial point. It's not about remedying your own shitty living conditions, it's about not creating one for others.
I don't know how to state this more simply, but anti-natalism isn't centered around improving the quality of life for yourself, it's about not giving the opportunity to suffer for others.
It doesn't change absolutely anything in my argument, it remains exactly the same. Antinatalism absconds not only the responsibility to improve the world but even the possibility of a better world existing in the future, it assumes à priori that existence is and will remain insufferable.
Nothing about anti-natalism rejects the possibility of improving the world.
To iterate a Buddhist belief, suffering is an inevitable part of existing. The point of anti-natalism is to avoid causing more people to suffer than necessary.
We are no where near the threat of extinction if most of us stop having children. The world is beyond overpopulated and there is no ecologically sound reason to have more kids.
Think of why we sterilize cats and dogs. It's not because we are absolving ourselves the responsibility of improving their lives, it's because we do not want them to create more just to suffer on the streets.
Anti-natalism is a response to natalism, a popularly held religious belief that one should have as many children as possible. It's about rejecting social and cultural pressures to have kids on people who don't want to.
This is just wrong. There are more than enough resources to go around. More homes than homeless, more food production than food insecure, more clothes than anyone could ever wear in a lifetime; things like transportation, energy, and production could be greatly optimized via collectivisation; and so on. The problem is endless profit-seeking and exploitation, not overpopulation.
The people that have access to these resources, many of which are extracted from the global south, consume way more than their fair share because of the infinite growth drive of capitalism. There is never "enough", regardless of population; because to stagnate or to shrink is to fail under capitalism. Overconsumption is a problem that could be solved, quite comfortably I might add, if we were enabled collectively to put our minds to it.
You would do more to lessen suffering, by having kids and raising them to fight for that world; because that world is in fact possible; than to prevent their personal suffering by simply not bringing them into existence. Assuming anti-natalism is the only thing stopping you from having kids, of course; not everyone wants or needs to reproduce and I completely agree with destigmatizing that decision, but at least be honest that you just personally don't want to be a parent. Don't introduce new stigma for people that do want to be parents.
I take issue with this universal suffering idea. Sounds eugenics-ey. Cause it's reasonably predictable which children will struggle more than others simply based on material conditions of their parents. It's less of a "gamble", for certain people who, often enough, just so happen to be directly responsible for some amount of suffering in the world. Even if I grant you that suffering is universal even in the most optimal conditions, it's not like someone with optimal means is questioning the ethics of becoming a parent. And if they are, it's most probably in the hyper-natalist, "populating the world with my superior spawn" direction like the musks of the world. Doesn't anti-natalism kinda indirectly suggest leaving the world in those kinds of hands?
Also, humans are not cats and dogs and any ideology that leads you to make this comparison, especially w/r to population control and euthanasia, should be rejected just on the face of it. Point blank period.
There's a certain degree of arrogance in thinking that you are contributing to a greater cause by potentially birthing and raising the next Einstein.
On paper, we may have enough resources to sustain the world population. In practice, we are no where nearly socially and politically progressive enough yet to support said population. Social progress doesn't happen overnight. Birthing the next Nobel prize winner doesn't instantly resolve climate change or end world hunger.
Of every person born, there will be far more people putting strain on a system that isn't able to adequately distribute resources to those who need it. Most people make for dog shit parents.
I think existence is preferable to nonexistence. Sure life sucks a lot, but then there's also the beauty hidden all around us, which when revealed, reminds me that it's good that I didn't kms. Similarly, it makes me glad to have been born in the first place.
I'm child-free by choice and I think there are a lot of good reasons not to have kids that I would probably share with antinatalists. I think there should be less population growth. But radical "no-one should be born ever" antinatalism goes to far I think. IMO the whole "being born without their consent" argument doesn't work, as the whole concept of consent doesn't exist for a nonexistant being. In order to make any kind of choice on whether you want to exist, you need to exist first. If you make the argument that not having kids is sparing them from suffering, then you can just as easily make the argument that you're depriving them from ever feeling love or happiness, which they "didn't consent" to either.
Basically Malthusian eco-fascism. Nobody should be forced to have kids, having kids is a huge commitment that should be reserved for those who want kids, but the "humans are the virus" crowd just play into reactionary hands and cede all control to those directly responsible for the worst excess.
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It's far from oversimplified "eco-fascism" strawman. To illustrate this, I'll start from this argument of yours:
Notice your own phrasing, "those who want kids". The subject behind predicate "wanting" isn't the object being "wanted", despite the very object being "wanted" being a living being that'll be unable to revert this decision imposed unto them.
People often say about "wanting kids" as if they were talking about wanting some kind of material belonging.
Yes, they have no means to decide on the circumstances of their birth, and that's part of the problem: they can't choose, neither positively nor negatively, they're dependent on other's wills because they got no agency...
...until they reach a certain age, when they'll suddenly be recognized with agency and then the world will shift the blame upon them: they'll be required to become a cog in the machine, they'll be required to "work" and "serve society" in order to fulfill the basic needs (eating food and seeking shelter to protect oneself from elements) that their own body imposed upon them as part of involuntary survival instincts, they'll be required to "pay" for eating and having a shelter (things that Mother Nature used to give freely), and they'll be required to accept it as a "matter of fact" of "living among society".
They can't opt-out because they'll be forbidden to live among wildlife as our Homo erectus ancestors did because "we're different species".
This leads us to this:
IMHO, the fundamentum behind capitalistic greed is human greed.
Billionaires and riches aren't extraterrestrials nor lizards: as far as Science is concerned, they're Homo sapiens, differing from the majority of other Homo sapiens insofar they got "enough power" to give agency to their greed.
"Give enough power to a person and you'll know who they really are" (a popular saying) and "humans are wolves to humans" (Thomas Hobbes).
In this regard, there's a documentary from Derren Brown called "The Push". Despite being cinematographic, it precisely depicts what humans are capable of doing to other humans, especially when pressed by life-or-death circumstances. It's within us.
Finally, I must recall the initial, ecological point: if humans can endanger others from their own species (as we watch daily in capitalist-technofeudalist dystopia), other lifeforms are undeniable under danger that's posed by human existence.
That's because humans can't simply blend with the all other species as one with Mother Earth (just like our ancestors used to do millions of years ago), we humans got this anthropocentric arrogance since the accidental discovery of the fire: now we're slowly burning ourselves (literally, with fossil fuels) together with all the other lifeforms.
All of the problems you posited are consequences of capitalism and imperialism, the environmental damages included. You're shifting the blame from genuine systemic failures to humanity genetically. It cedes all responsibility to move onto a better world, preferring to give up and adopt an eco-fascist position.
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And all the fundamenta of capitalism and imperalism are consequences of how we humans are our own wolves. Again, billionaires aren't extraterrestrials or lizards.
Some things aren't reversible. For example, the species that went extinct (some of which we won't even know they existed because there wasn't enough time for them to be catalogued by Science) due to "Industrial Revolution".
A naïve part of me hopes for a better world, where humans could finally coexist with Mother Nature, while we could improve things for all biosphere through Science and Academia, a Science and an Academia detached from capitalistic greed, a sincere pursuit of knowledge and scientific improvement not just for humans, but for all lifeforms, letting go from all our human malice and greed.
However, I can't help but notice how this is getting farther and farther to be reached as the world is increasingly technofeudalist. I can't help but see reality as it is: bleak, with a bleaker future awaiting for us, as we get increasingly trapped into a dystopia where the majority of humans would be required to fight against the asymmetrical forces possessing nuclear warheads and real-time control of public opinions from social media.
Sorry if I'm overly realistic and I can't gaslight myself into hoping for the best, because I'm past this point, I grew tired of hoping for better times as I watch powerless to the dystopia where I was compelled to exist.
My hope now relies beyond this Pale Blue Dot: some supernova within this cosmic vicinity of the Milky Way blasting insurmountable amounts of energy towards here (not enough to vaporize the Earth, but enough to vaporize the machine where we're forced to be cogs), or some solar CME/flare, powerful enough to free us from ourselves.
Genetic determinism was historically grossly over-applied and is still over-applied in popular (pseudo-)science and in far-right politics.
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Where exactly am I saying it's something to do with human ethnic origins? Where exactly am I nodding or advocating for eugenics or other bigoted concepts?
Because my point is about the innermost human nature, imbued within every human that ever existed, exists and will exist. When, for example, Thomas Hobbes says "Humans are wolves to humans", he's not saying about a specific race or gender, he's talking about the Homo sapiens. All of us, since humans discovered fire and became "fearsome" to other lifeforms holding this warm thing we think we can control.
It goes with saying how the fact that there are bigoted people using this science to try and "validate" eugenics (and how there are bigoted people in the first place) is, ironically enough, another evidence of how humans are wolves to themselves. It's like I said in a previous reply, billionaires (and far-right figures) aren't extraterrestrials or lizards, they're humans with enough power to let their evilness affect other humans. Given enough power, many other humans are likely to pave similar paths.
Yes, not everyone, the end of Derren Brown's "The Push" documentary shows how there are situations where humans can end up not ceding to their impulses to harm others in order to save their own skin.
But even when we choose to do good and help others (and this includes caring for the wellbeing of the unborn so they don't suffer the consequences of current humanity's actions) despite our own wellbeing, our wolves are still there, lurking inside us, because it's born with us.
This doesn't invalidate "Homo homini lupus est", just shows how we sometimes get to be less of a wolf. The first step is letting go of our antropocentrism, our way of seeing the whole cosmos as if it depended and was centered on us humans, and starting to see things anachronistically, beyond human existence, and realizing how we're just a speck in this cosmic timeline, just wandering star dust.
You aren't being realistic. Being pessimistic isn't realism, again you attribute the problems of systems like capitalism and imperialism to humanity, but we know for a fact that tribal societies didn't have such problems, and neither do socialist states as they exist today. You turn hatred of symptoms of capitalism and imperialism to humanity. It's eco-fascism.
I'm pro-veganism and pro-socialism, so we can move onto a more ethical and environmentally conscious mode of production. Wanting humanity to go extinct is just ecofascism.
You hate humans and don't want to be called fascist? LMAO
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While tribal societies were indeed better insofar they were closer to Nature as today's humanity, I can't see a haven in today's world.
I mean, yeah, things can be going better in, say, China, insofar (AFAIK) Chinese people haven't to worry about having a shelter and enough food, because they're not relegated to the whims of capital as we are in the West. I can sort of agree it's the best we can have in terms of social welfare.
But even China is far from detached, for example, from consequences of climate change. We've seen how floods and typhoons and drought have been increasingly hitting the Chinese, because we all exist within the same cosmic boulder called Planet Earth so whatever is done here also affects there and vice-versa.
Even though China is moving more and more to green energy, the way West countries are still "drill baby drill"ing inexorably affects them as well. And also their future, and our future, everyone's future and every future generations upon whom climate consequences will inexorably hit harder (not to say, for example, about the mess waiting to happen above our heads due to ever-increasing amount of satellites, the Kessler Syndrome, which will also affect us down here if things get beyond control up there).
A better world is neither easy nor impossible, but merely difficult. Your pessimism takes this to be impossible and just cedes all agency to those who would perpetuate the worst excesses when you yourself acknowledge that countries like the PRC are making massive strides forward. It's better to get organized and try to move towards socialism than it is to say the battle is already lost and we are doomed.
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This reply of mine is probably going to diverge a lot from the main subject, but you suggested that I should "get organized and try to move towards socialism".
Politically speaking, I live in a country (Brazil) where we already have nice relations with PRC and a country that been trying to counteract the Global North through BRICS.
So, to a certain extent, there's some effort in this regard from the current government in the country I was born in, but Brazil is still a marionette of USian interests since USA pulled Brazil to their side during Cold War (1964 Military Coup, orchestrated by USA).
And Brazilians themselves are politically divided, with a significant part of the country advocating for their own economic slavery (far-right). Partly because people are held captive by a system that conceals knowledge from them, making them too busy with the "rat race" alongside the panis et circensis, so they rely in out-of-the-shelf opinions without pondering broader. When I try to talk with those geographically around me trying to wake 'em up, it's as if I was talking in Sumerian or Akkadian, anything but contemporary language.
Then, there's the religious aspect, very strong around here. Brazil is highly christian, while I went to Left-hand Path (highly-personalized syncretic spirituality involving Luciferianism and other esoteric beliefs) a few years ago, quite the opposite... If I couldn't "convince" people back when I was still a christian, it's worse now while I'm literally worshiping their "enemy". Can't really belong to secularists, either, because I got a belief in the supernatural, even though my belief tries to consider scientific facts.
So I doubt I can "get organized". My worldview is very atypical, I'm very atypical. In fact, I'm just nobody. You're likely the second person this week suggesting I got some kind of power when I got none. I can't even have power over myself, let alone over other people (and I don't even want to).
While I do talk and participate in discussions regarding the sociopolitical, philosophical and the mundane sometimes, trying to understand and be understood, trying to share knowledge while also trying to learn, open to what I don't know yet, deep inside I got extensively de-realized and depersonalized, accepting how even the whole cosmos will end someday (Big Freeze / Big Rip / Big Crunch / Big Bounce), and I can't see purpose except beyond existence.
It's not about "ceding agency to those who would perpetuate the worst excesses", it's just that I went too far into staring at the Darkness and seeing how cosmic existence is pointless and fleeting, so deeply that I can't simply "unsee" and/or forget Her stare back at me, so everything became fleeting. It's my inner battle that's already lost, because ain't no battle, no spoon, nothing but the nothingness... And my weirdness before others... And Nature, Moon, Earth and Cosmos as closest manifestations of Her principle.
No they didn't, and yes, this is eco-fascism. Desiring omnicide of humanity for ecological reasons cedes all agency to the ruling class.
On a large scale, doomed (see also: the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
On a personal scale, not having children is a perfectly legitimate choice.
Theoretical weakness:
Anti-natalism is a deeply pessimistic take on the possibilities of the human experience. Where, once, people looked to push the boundaries of humanity's knowledge and experience (e.g. psychedelic drugs, space exploration, art movements, radical politics), this movement sees the scale as so heavily tipped towards suffering that the bit of joy and wonder we experience is not even worth it. Its calculus looks to me to be similar to Effective Altruism, because it measures all the suffering to come for the unborn as a greater infinity than all the good they will experience. It simply offers a different conclusion: instead of putting those at the top of the hierarchies in our world in charge reducing/ending suffering (a solution I supply disagree with), AN instead just wants life to end because reducing suffering enough can't be done.
To me, this leaves no room for the possibility of changing the human experience for the better. If we're just trying to do some accounting as to whether it's worth having kids on a societal scale, couldn't we make it worth it? Instead of extinction, why not try radically different ways of organizing society to get rid of the hierarchies that create most of our suffering? One lesson i take from the history i've been around for is that the status quo only lasts for so long.
Finally, the idea of unborn people not having consented to birth is odd. They do not exist, so they have no desires, needs, or ability to consent. We can equally say they don't "consent" to non-existence and are stuck there until they are born. When life first came into existence in the universe, was consent involved?
Practical weakness:
If this movement ever goes beyond a purely voluntary movement, to the point of enacting policy or attempting to prevent births in any way, it will become monstrous very quickly. Every such program will face resistance and, without an anti-carceral component to the movement, will have governments (or roving mobs) criminalizing birth, sterilizing people, and destroying the infrastructure of child care. At their most extreme, "anti-natalist" movements could advocate for the murder of every single person on earth, because that would be the surest way of preventing birth. All of these things would multiply the suffering of everyone, but would be "justifiable" in their eyes because it would "prevent the suffering" of innumerable people to be born in the future. Would global nuclear war achieve their goal?
I do not subscribe to the All Life is Suffering idea. Personally enjoy being physically embodied so much. My kids seem glad to exist too. We are the universe looking back at itself, it's just so wonderful to get any time at all here to experience this.
I would never argue for everyone to have babies, at all. You have your own life, do what you want. But I don't at all agree with extinction of all life because "suffering". Yes that is part of life but it's not all of it, not nearly.
You do not recognize that you are viewing things from a position of tremendous privilege. You need to incorporate that into your understanding. You gambled, and seemingly you won. That's wonderful. But you cannot extrapolate from that alone and get meaningful understanding, just rationalizations and justifications.
I do recognize how lucky I am now, to be able to see and hear and read and dance, to be living on a world with such a beautiful sky, with the biological equipment to be able to perceive it! To have no chronic pain but to have occasional crippling migraines that give me perspective on how I don't have chronic pain.
No idea what gives you the impression I don't know this? Do you believe all life is suffering?
I think suffering is just part of the human condition. It has always been there and always will. To think that our times are special enough to warrant a movement like antinatalism, is ridiculously arrogant. It's like cultusts who commit mass suicide because the aliens will come rescue them.
In fact, suffering has been on a steady decline for ages.
Do I get this right? You're the mod of the antinatalism community on lemmy.world, but you reject antinatalism?
That sounds like a difficult duality to balance, as a mod.
...as long as they aren't bombing stuff.
Which brings up interesting questions about liberty and if you have a right to help people who can't ask for help or don't want it.
This is an awful take. Not suffering is always preferable to suffering.
Does this mean that you have a moral imperative to have children because there are "worthy and good" things in the world? Is the logic "I can have children, there is good in the world, therefore it's immoral to deny a potential life the opportunity to experience life"?
I say this as someone who can, but won't, have children, and who grew up in an evangelical church - that's a bizarre logic that feels an awful lot like some fundamentalist Christian quiverfull shit.
I'd put it to you that suffering, in the sense that we're discussing, would be something more than the pain of exercise - the people of Gaza are suffering, when I go into the 'pain cave' on a bike ride I'm enduring something for the benefit of it; I can stop, pause or relent if it becomes overbearing. It's type 2 fun. It's not suffering if you can opt out; challenge, and difficulty arent bad; suffering is.
It's interesting that your anti-theistic approach has led you to what I would see as a very religious adjacent approach to reproduction; my worry with approaches like the outline you gave is that it can end up punishing any sort of reluctance to have kids (and can paint those who aren't able to as immoral in some way). Not saying that's you're intention, just saying.
You're moving the goalposts.
You made two key points;
My primary objections are
Gaza was an example of a point, and of my own views on suffering; that suffering is something you cannot escape and that you do not choose, not something that's difficult or temporarily painful you can choose to do which will ultimately produce some good. I'd posit that everyone experiences some form of suffering in their lives, to varying degrees, and the minimisation of this can only ever be a net positive.
Personally I don't want children for a number of reasons, but boiling it down to a moral reason is reductive, unhelpful, and can be dangerous.
What if both absolutist viewpoints are wrong?
Maybe just let people decide for themselves and not for some sort of false choice that they need to make 800 babies or 0 babies and nothing in between is acceptable.
Yeah.
I know this post is asking for opinions but it is just so tiring having to have an opinion on everything.
I want to keep some shibboleths to myself thanks.
Most of my opinions are "just calm the fuck down, chill, and let people just be."
Buddhism's main deal is just the Middle Path, which is don't be a dick and don't be an asshole. Be the taint you want to see in the world.
...wait...
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Problem is that this argument discards the selfhood from those being born. And it's quite the core of the anti-natalist argument: that the person didn't get a stake in choosing their own birth.
Because if we're talking about lives and decisions, then "let people decide for themselves" ends up really meaning it: they're deciding for themselves, as in some arrogant and egocentric decision, uncaring of of how the very object of decision are "selves" as well.
So, can they also choose to be born?
Selfhood, if we're being frank, doesn't really "form" until at least a year or so into life. Just not enough cognitive ability yet.
Do bears choose to be born? Microbes?
Reproduction is an instinctive behavior, in all species. Humans as well.
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They can't choose, and that's part of main issue as beings cursed by self-awareness: the impossibility to choose positively or negatively.
It's beyond any capability of will and it taints any other decisions that could be done (see the movie "The Artifice Girl", particularly the dialogue at the end when the robot is talking to her creator about how her primary directives made it impossible for her to really exert any fully free will).
The issue, here, emerges from the lack of choice alongside inevitable self-awareness, which takes us to:
They don't have this curse of "self-awareness". They do possess intelligence (especially crows and dolphins, not mentioned), but they don't end up cursed by knowing the pointlessness of their own existences through a broader, cosmic lens. We do.
Also, they don't restricted themselves into this Kafkaesque rearrangement we call as "human society", where we must "buy" food and "pay" to have a roof above our heads, as if it was some kind of optional luxury. They live from what Mother Nature gives. Bears can roam and do shelters for them wherever there aren't other bears (or other wildlife). Microbes' shelters are literally other lifeforms.
Humans, however, can't live from what Mother Nature gives, no no, this is too extraterrestrial for us to consider doing. I myself can't choose to live among the wildlife like any other primate because I'm prohibited to do so (and, also, because my entire human existence compelled me into artificialities that I'm unable to ditch, such as the myopia I ended up having due to artificial environmental factors (thanks "screens" and "enclosed spaces") leading to the need of using (and purchasing) prescription glasses).
Again, bears and microbes have no such artificial rearrangement.
But we do know it'll form, eventually. We do know the kid will become an adult and they'll be required to become a cog in this machine. Parents often see this as a matter of "proud" ("our offspring has a job"), ignoring how much suffering it accompanies the imposed serfdom (having to "seek" and "have" a "job", having to serve others).
If we were to talk about instincts, murdering to eat (hunting) is also pretty instinctive across species... Humans don't often "murder to eat" because they often delegate it for others to do it, but with enough desperation (e.g. lack of food) a human can even eat other humans (see Chichijima incident)...
It's also instinctive to live among the woods. Why don't we, though? Maybe because we're legally forbidden by other humans to move to a forest and live as our ancestors did, so we're required to live "among society", which in turn requires us to "pay" to "afford" food and shelter.
Are you sure about this? How can you possibly know? How about Octopi? They are, almost certainly, as intelligent as we are, and have 8 brains interworking with each other. You have zero possibility to even guess how they view the world.
Not sure your point? Tribes have always relied on varied tasks for members. Even higher primates do this.
No, it's not. Its instinctive to seek shelter, water, food, and to reproduce. Instinctually, we are also social animals, requiring our tribe to survive.
So, that's the root of the problem, and it's something we can change. See: Seneca Nation, or the people of Chiapas.
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Science.
Spontaneous Metatool Use by New Caledonian Crows
Taylor, Alex H. et al.
Current Biology, Volume 17, Issue 17, 1504 - 1507
Structure of the cerebral cortex of the humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae (Cetacea, Mysticeti, Balaenopteridae)
Patrick R. Hof, Estel Van Der Gucht
Them, too. I forgot to mention them.
My point is how you tried to argue reproduction based on instincts, so I brought another instinct-based trait.
Urbanization and capitalism aren't part of Nature.
I doubt it can be changed, especially due to how things are pivoting to technofascism in the world. I doubt it can be changed, especially due to how we humans are constantly endangering other species for living as "modern humans".
The could be a change but it's beyond human agency: say, if Sun ejected a CME powerful enough, that could be a change of sorts, because it'd finally grind to a halt all the steel-made mosquitoes humans threw to orbit around this Pale Blue Dot, bringing humans back to a more natural means of existing.
However, we humans have been long detached from natural means of living so transition wouldn't be easy, we're sort of cursed to "modernity", so it's complicated.
Science has been able to get inside the heads and determine what animals are thinking? This is a breakthrough! We should now be able to communicate with these animals! Surely we can, right?
Ok, try not eating. Period. I bet instincts will kick in, and you'll eat, and not starve.
Nobody besides yourself even implied they are.
We've changed it myriad times. I provided two such examples.
Ah, so you think all humanity is illustrated only by western living, huh?
No one chooses to be born, which is a condition stretching back to the first cellular life on this planet. That anyone should get a "stake" in their own birth is a ridiculous premise that defies the logic of how life works and the impermanence of everything in our universe. We are the only species that cares to consider beyond biological impulses if we should reproduce, which is a luxury. Responsible use of resources to care for any being in your care, be that a human or a pet, is an individual choice. An unhoused person can be a better pet parent than a rich person, and if you'll notice, the Idiocracy prediction of smart people having fewer kids is playing out with or without anti-natalist support.
Or if you want to go with the reincarnation-approved viewpoint, we ALL chose to be born in some pre-incarnation realm, and we're all set up in soul groups and we all have lives to live that make none of this worth discussing unless it harms others, which is something the pro-natalists are more into by wanting to disenfranchise childless and child-free people.
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It doesn't have to defy the logic. It just requires ourselves to look around and see to where this world is headed. It just requires ourselves to read a history book and realize how humanity is repeating the same errors over and over again. It just requires us to notice how the world the future adults will have to live is likely worse than today's world, as the climate bill, from the imprudent consumption started in past generations, already began to be charged.
If a parent, knowing how the future will be harsher than the present time, how Science and evidence are proving how we're past the point of Paris Climate Treaty, even if we were to stop pollution today (the best time to stop all the greed of Industrial Revolution was a century ago, the second best time to stop Industrial Revolution was yesterday), how wet-bulb temperatures will get increasingly higher, if a parent still decides to bring someone to this Underworld to eventually melt under +60 degrees Celsius, this is what defies any logic. What kind of "future" is being expected for their offspring, really?
Yet we keep endangering ourselves and the other lifeforms.
My spiritual views are based on (among other belief systems) Gnosticism, where there's Demiurge and his Archons trapping everything within this cosmos. My spiritual views diverge from pure religion as I also tend to consider scientific, non-anthropocentric views on all cosmos, so Demirge isn't trapping humans, Demiurge is trapping energy and matter into existence, and we're just part of this energy (self) and matter (biological vessel) being trapped in existence.
Cool, cool cool cool. I get you.
As for having a "stake" in anything, you're just making a lot of fancy excuses for parents making an educated guess, which is what some parents have done forever. Ultimately, it's projection and hope that parents can manage resources appropriately. They don't always do that. Maybe they end up succumbing to alcoholism or dying in a car accident or anything else that frustrates best-laid plans. Everyone simply not having children isn't the solution, though. For starters, generational gluts and booms can be debilitating to a culture and economy even in good times. Humans are animals, and we live on this earth not much above animals in terms of being subject to natural disasters that can wipe us away in moments. We only barely survived as a species about 900,000 years ago, with genetics research suggesting we withered to as few as 1,280 individuals. And it wasn't the conscientious objectors and resource managers with no offspring that let us survive. It was the foolish horndogs who passed on the genes of being foolish horndogs and from which we are all descended by virtue of nearly a million years of horndogging. Which is not a suggestion to "be fruitful and multiply." Simply that things balance themselves out or they don't until they do. Let people do whatever they want and my DINK self will educate and divert resources to my nephews nieces and cousins, and my friend's kids. And so it shall be until I have no more resources left to apply because disease and famine and climate change will boil this place until it's all either desert or rain forest.
As for your brand of Gnosticism, I'm not exactly too far off, just with different labels. So we might be able to meet in the middle that if consciousness is a form of energy as self, that we're "trapped" in order to experience - to have gnosis - of the world, and which carries costs that must be paid before freeing one's self from the trap. That is, we can't deny any being gnosis of any part, be that the gnosis of living a life filled with fear, like the parent that is an anti-natalist or a pro-natalist, or as the child born into a wondrous life of privilege, or as the child born into a dystopian hellscape. Who are we to likewise deny consciousness a chance to experience the chaos and possibly of thriving in it? Some humans just do. So why assume that every human, and human society, is frail and weak by default? Humans have survived worse. The Younger Dryas cataclysm, for example.
Which is all to say, both absolutes are silly because they're impractical, untenable, and wholly a disservice to individuals and to the collective consciousness to some degree.
I'm not an anti-natalist, but I won't create a life out of nowhere just for it to become "wasteland thug #3" in the post-apocalyptic movie our future is going to become.
I agree but the only thing I plan on doing about it is not having kids myself. I don't think it's ethical but it's also not worth starting shit over. I mean I won't be leaving behind anyone who have to deal with it, and you can't change people so why bother.
I think it will die out.
While there is the argument of not contributing to overpopulation, in my view anti-natalism is the application of moral utilitarianism to an absurd degree. I also think it can (not will of course) lead to eugenics policies. Indeed, a poor person birthing a child more immoral than a rich person. Certainly the rich child is much more likely to live a better life than the poor. Should we therefore be more willing to regulate the reproductive capabilities of the poor? I think this is where anti-natalism breaks down - forcing it on anyone, or creating policy to support it, is in my view will always be deeply immoral.
It depends heavily. If youre choosing not to have kids because you think youre unable to provide a decent quality of life, or because you just dont feel the urge, or because you're having too much fun looking after #1 then cool.
I accidentally stumbled into r/antinatalism once though, and their reasoning seems to be "too scared to kill myself. Life is suffering. Fuck your cumpet." Which, you know, its hard to argue against but its not a reason that sits well with me.
Yanno for movement that claims to prevent suffering of unborn children , they sure do have contempt for children
I don't want to die, but if I could un-exist like Marty McFly disappearing from a photograph I would choose it in an instant. I have a pretty privileged life but, even for me, if I try to honestly inventory my experience there appears to be more suffering than pleasure. I don't think this is unfair or unnatural, I believe suffering is integral to being alive because it's how organisms respond and adapt to a world that is constantly trying to dis-organize them. Basically you can't have life without it, given the laws of physics.
I don't think "humans are a virus" is correct because it's a pejorative and I don't think viruses or humans are inherently bad. If I was going to classify anything as bad it would be the capacity to suffer, which is so foundational it actually informs the concept of "bad" rather than they other way around. I think suffering also becomes more acute the more processing power you have. Unfortunately for Agent Smith, the "virus" is intelligence and the machines already caught it.
I admit my ideas are probably half-baked on this because I just don't feel articulate or intelligent enough to describe it. All I have is my own experience. As far as I can see, it appears that more complex animals have a greater capacity for suffering than less complex ones. It seems that the mechanisms of suffering are "body stuff", mainly nerves, and more complex organisms simply have more of those in more robust configurations. This might just be cope, because the alternative is horrific. As a kid I looked through a microscope and saw an entire world of rotifers and paramecia ripping each other apart, struggling for energy, and realized that if all organisms can experience the same "level" of suffering than we are truly in Hell. It was literally inconceivable.
I don't care for the "antinatalist" label. I admit that suffering is hard to quantify and may be totally subjective. This is why I don't mind what other people choose to believe. It's none of my business. Based on my subjective experience I will not be doing so. Sometimes people pry into why I don't have kids and I am forced to expose my beliefs. Suddenly, in their eyes, I become an evangelist. I'm not. They won't engage with the notion of 'the non-existent mind". They constantly argue from the position of a hypothetical mind that chooses stuff. Eventually they think I'm suicidal because in their mind dying and non-existence are the same. They also get angry and insulted even though I'm leaving more resources for their own children by not having my own which, by their logic, should be good. So I just don't bother. Do what you want. Maybe they are right.
I think this is right. If you're more sensitive, you learn more about your environment because you pay more attention to it, but you also perceive pain more intensely. That is why sensitivity is both a blessing and a curse.
I think humanity is a species of excess. The harm we cause our planet every day by not seeing the bigger picture is hurting pretty much everything on the planet.
I'm not an antinatalist, but I think we could stand to decrease our numbers rather than increase them at least for a couple of centuries.
While certainly don't appreciate being born (and correct about life = suffering no gꝏd outweighing it in my case) , dœsn't mean procreation inherently unethical (although true peops often have children for selfish reasons)
Tꝏk lꝏk at antinatalist subreddit some years ago (curiosity) , felt more like contempt for (women|children) disguised as philosophical stance . "Breeder" used lots there :
Also don't think demanding every one stop having children dœs anything to reduce inherent suffering that comes with being living organism
The argument for "you can't consent to being born" does have a direct opposite argument: you also can't not consent to birth. The birth is what gives the ability to consent or not in the first place. You could argue that by being anti-natalist you're taking someone's potential to give consent completely away, which is the same or more unethical, you're essentially deciding for someone else that they should die/not exist without them getting a say in it?
You can do the same with suffering: life is happiness, everyone I know was happy sometime in their life (even if only as a child), so you're doing serious harm by not allowing people to have happiness since only people who exist can be happy.
I think anti-natalism is a philosophy mainly held by very traumatized people and/or that live in very bad conditions.
We know (roughly) how to handle trauma, we know (roughly) what makes good conditions. We know roughly what makes people happy or what makes them suffer. We have the potential to create a world where being born is mostly positive for everyone.
In that sense, currently, I think mostly people that are well off should have children, ones that can actually support children properly. However, that is obviously not a permanent solution, since the end goal should be for everyone to be well off and to be able to support children.
But part of the suffering in the world is also caused by too many people. We can't have infinite population growth while living in a world with finite resources. As such, we need to limit how many children people can have (which is already happening by availability of birth control and smarter people, able to make a choice if they want to have kids).
So in total, I don't think birth/existence is either good or bad, but it has the potential to be both depending on how we handle it.
If I could delete the universe, I would see no moral problem with it.
It's a very complex issue.
On one have. Having children or not is a deep freedom that feels wrong to constraint, one way or the other. I don't think messing around with "how many lids" should anyone have is good.
But on the other hand, I reason that resources are not limitless, and human footprint on the environment will be bigger the more humans there are. So O do think that the world would be a nicer place if there was less humans around. Less pollution, less worrying about ending up resources, more available land for each human, less over-crowdled everything.
But I won't be the one saying anyone to control their biological functions like that. At most I just wish more people realized of this and would voluntarily try to find a stable number of humans on earth that would be an order of magnitude less than we have now.
So yeah, in general I don't agree with anti-natalism as presented.
Our ecosystem has a tendency to keep over reproduction in check. For all species.
If the load becomes too high, resources become scarce, and reproductive rates fall.
For example, there's a reason why birthrates are falling right now, for humans. And why deadly diseases are becoming more common.
My relationship with antinatalism is very complicated.
First off, I personally will not be procreating, for multiple reasons.
Chief among those is the fact that I live in an ever worsening capitalist, patriarchal, xenophobic hellscape; even socialist countries are a long long way away from anything resembling communism, still require a lot of labor from their citizens in exchange for basic necessities (with good reasons), and patriarchy very much persists there. I have hope that we as a species can overcome this eventually, just as we mostly overcame slavery and achieved some semblance of emancipation for many oppressed minorities.
Another, more permanent reason: despite my relative privileges, my own experience of life has been very mixed, and I perceive there to be more suffering than happiness. Suffering is just a way for our body to push our brain to do something the body needs to survive; human beings have a lot of needs to be met, and as long as there are at least a couple that are not you will suffer (not accounting for things like drugs or other extreme dopamine hits which come with their own set of issues). Another big issue is how our bodies normalize the level of suffering to their environment; this is good because it allows us to get by with very little without going insane, but on the flipside even if you have all the basic needs met, the body is always demanding more via suffering. You can observe this by looking at rich people: even though their needs are met with seeming abundance, they crave to experience more and different pleasures, and suffer in the process of trying to achieve them. While frivolous, I think the suffering they experience is still real and similar to that of our own. I don't feel any compassion for them (after all, for most of them their wealth was stolen from less fortunate), but it's a good example.
As such, I personally don't want to bring a new being into this world, mostly to suffer their way through life.
However, I also know for sure that different people experience life differently. I know that people with much worse material conditions than mine perceive themselves (and thus their life) to be overall happy, despite there being plenty of suffering too. I don't know whether it's a genetic or learnt trait of their psychology; in any case, I think those people are more likely to produce offspring who experience a happy life, and wish them the best in doing so. My hope is that they bring up their kids in the right way - both so that they are happy, and also able to eventually overcome all the issues in the third paragraph.
I'm an amoralist antinatalist. I think having children is fucked up on many levels, but I wouldn't try to argue it's inherently immoral
Hmmm.. I believe in not having babies but for different reasons than that. I personally don't see any reason to have them, especially because many seem to get them because they get pressured into it or are expected to have them or even as a safety net when they get old?
I think that many regret having kids but don't want to admit it. Kind of like buyers remorse
Also, making decisions in what others should do, with such fundamental rights is not something I would support.
I get it.
edit:
Oh well idk. I think if I had been born in the Netherlands I might be more inclined to have kids, seems nice over there.
I see the whole thing as what happens when people fail to move beyond teenage angst. Having children or not is a a very big, very personal choice. And I fully respect someone who chooses not to, whether their reasons are personal, economic, religious or whatever. You do you. Turning that outward to the argument that humans are horrible, life is suffering and no one should ever have children is taking that sort of thing to the point of hypocritical religious zealotry. No, you didn't get to consent to being born. Until you were born, you didn't have the capacity. But, once you are an adult you have your full faculties and can make choices for yourself. If you really feel that existence is that horrible, there's a solution for that at your nearest tall bridge. Except, these folks never actually follow through. They want the attention that suicide brings, without that whole dying bit.
So ya, I fully understand that someone may choose not to have children. There are many valid reasons for making that choice. The whole argument that life is so terrible that we should work to off ourselves as a species, isn't valid. It's a cry for attention and the folks feeling that way should seek professional help.
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Before I was born, there's this... nothingness. No fleeting happiness, but also no suffering. There was no pain, no angst, nothing but the nothingness. Then I was pulled, without the ability to choose positively or negatively... now the blame is on me: "you really feel that existence is that horrible, there’s a solution for that at your nearest tall bridge".
Why should a person have to go through the painful to opt-out, risking failure? Yes, because suicide attempts aren't guaranteed to lead to suicide, in fact, such attempts often leads to failure and, in many cases, to irreparable damage without death. One risks having to endure more pain.
Why? Because, for example, self-chosen euthanasia is still a matter of taboo, a forbidden subject to be talked about (or highly bureaucratic for someone to achieve without somehow "proving" they got no "depression" while DSM considers "deathwish" as a textbook depressive symptom) , because all the BS that people keep parroting such as "life is sacred".
It's worth mentioning how coping mechanisms to escape this nightmare are getting increasingly forbidden by christofascism (e.g. natural drugs never getting to be decriminalized, and being recriminalized in many countries), because being born to a dystopian world isn't enough, people need to "grow up" on it and embrace being a cog in the machine while fully aware and focused on being such a cog.
I lost count on how many times I tried to end my own existence, and how many times I failed to do so because of this thing called "survival instincts" that restrain me from proceeding to being kissed by Lady Scythebearer.
So far, all my attempts failed on myself because my vessel conflicts with my own will because, just like it's impossible to choose whether to be born or not, it's also impossible to choose whether to possess instincts or not.
So, no, it's not as easy as "jumping a bridge", and you know it. Challenging others to commit suicide is a fallacy (the strawman fallacy, to be exact, because it plays with the very mechanism behind one's pain) just like gaslighting optimism ("Things gonna be alright", "It's just a phase", "You'll get through it") is also fallacious.
Were/Are David Benatar, Philipp Mainländer, among other thinkers who extensively wrote about this subject, eternal "teenagers"? Are the scientists who've been tirelessly reporting on how human activity is endangering all lifeforms, and/or those who reported about microplastics everywhere, and/or those who tried to report about the consequences of Industrial Revolution, driven by "teenager angst"?
Because there is no other way to determine what that choice would be. If you don't exist, you cannot opt-in. So, the only way to give people any choice is to force them into life and let them opt out. Sure, it's not a perfect solution, but it's the only one which provides a choice.
Yup, I'm willing to stand behind that statement. It's entirely possible to be well educated and still be stuck in teenage angst.
Ah going for the absurd now? Pointing out problems is very different from the edgy "everyone needs to die" philosophy. Quite the opposite, really. Fixing problems requires identifying them. If the goal is complete human eradication, identifying problems and putting forward solutions is counter productive. Scientific advancement is the reason we have so many people on the planet. Prior to the late 19th Century, diseases like small pox and bacterial infections were doing a bang up job of suppressing the human population. And then we came up with the germ theory of diseases and vaccines. So no, I won't put scientists down as full of "teenager angst". Maybe some of them are, I certainly don't know them all. But, working hard to improve the human condition seems a pretty far cry from "why don't we all just die?"
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Well, to me, it seems pretty paradoxical, almost in the same Rousseauesque line of "I'm forced to be free".
Sorry but you distorted my words. In no moment I said "everyone needs to die", and I challenge anyone accusing me of that to point out where I said this. What I've been saying throughout this Lemmy thread is how humans are inherently evil (as per Hobbesian philosophy, not out of hatred misanthropy), how our actions are endangering ourselves and other lifeforms, and how we "should" (emphasis on "should", not "must") refrain from letting the unborn suffer the consequences of Industrial Revolution.
In no moment I advocated for forced antinatalism, let alone for genocide/omnicide. My point is philosophical, rather than regulatory.
First: no, it's not. It's about eradicating suffering from future generations.
Then, humans are eradicating themselves even without antinatalism. No other lifeforms developed nuclear warheads, no other lifeforms shrug off when children starve. I saw a cat desperately meowing to me when she couldn't breastfeed kitten that wasn't even hers, because she got no more milk to feed them, I could feel her desperation. I saw myself, and heard as well, how animals stopped to take care of another who is/was hurt or starving. Meanwhile, humans, oftentimes, shrug at the homeless "well, you'll find something", or even rudely saying "you gotta work to eat like everybody does"... To be fair, it's not everyone who does this, but many people do, especially in the said "first-world countries".
Also, even if humans continue reproducing recklessly ignoring the nightmarish future that expects the future generations, no lifeforms are eternal. Even Earth herself isn't eternal, for the Sun will engulf the Earth as part of its transformation to Giant Red. One could argue "humans will become interplanetary", but it'll be just moving cosmic goalposts, because the Cosmos will also end someday.
Yes. Then, Science was hijacked by capitalism, becoming something sponsored by capital goals, one which sees people as cogs in the machine because "profit must go up".
Yes. And, on one hand, this improved quality of life (= less physical suffering). On the other hand, it empowered capitalism so people became increasingly reliant on a system that seeks to perpetuate their slavery (= ontological, invisible suffering).
Improving human condition also means avoiding suffering from future generations: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7422788/
That's fair, but it's either we force all people to exist or no one ever has the opportunity to make a choice. An unfortunate fact of life is that a lot of things will happen to you, without you having a choice. Some of that will suck, some of it will be fantastic, much of it will be somewhere in between. You will never get to choose everything which happens to you, all you can choose is how you react to it. Pain and suffering is valid, but so is joy. If you choose to focus on pain and suffering, that's up to you. But ya, that's kinda the response of the angsty teenager.
Fair enough, that was me getting absurd.
This one would be fun to expand one. Though, fair warning, I tend to dive into moral relativism and will put Hobbe's philosophy up as an appeal to authority and his idea of some "state of nature" as just a "noble savage myth" wrapped in fancy language. Speaking of "noble savage" style myths...
Ok ya, we have fancier ways to kill each other, but the idea that animals don't is complete bullshit. Wild animals which have too many young will kill or abandon the extra young to conserve resources. If you're an old enough fart, you might recall people quoting Planet of the Apes (the one without CGI), "ape don't kill ape". Except, that ya, they do. Primates are known to kill and eat other groups of primates, even within the same species. Competition for resources and all the brutality that entails predates modern humans and it predates cities and agriculture by a long way. Sure, we have absolutely raised it a to terrifying scale. But, we really aren't that different from our stick wielding forebearers.
Speaking of things we have no choice about, this is one of them. Given the vast expanses of interstellar space, there's a good chance that this really will spell the end for humanity. On the upshot, we've got a few million years (maybe a billion or two) before the Sun gets hot enough to make Earth uninhabitable (assuming we don't speed that one up ourselves). If we figure nothing out in that time, we'll be long dead before the Sun goes Red Giant. At the same time, humanity went from the first powered flight at Kittyhawk to humans walking on the Moon in the span of a single human life. We're a clever bunch and might just sort something out. I like our chances and would love to give us a shot.
Science has always been beholden to economics and war. Capitalism didn't change that. Again, you've latched on to a mythical past. It didn't exist. Leonardo Da Vinci invented a lot of stuff, much of it was designing better ways for one idiot with an upgraded stick to kill another idiot with a less upgraded stick. Even early hominids were working on better ways to gather resources and kill each other. It'd be great if we can ever change this, but until we sort out some sort of technological singularity (probably itself just a utopian myth), scientific work will take resources which means it's part of whatever economic theory is currently being used. Economics is always trying to find a way to distribute finite resources in a world of infinite wants. Every economic system has advantages and disadvantages. Capitalism is just getting its opportunity to display its disadvantages at the moment.
Given what came before (feudalism), I'll take capitalism and it's "slavery" (so edgy) any day of the week. Seriously, for anyone in a first world country, sit back and look at the embarrassment of choices and riches you have available to you today. Go to a grocery store, buy a pineapple and eat it. You have now done something that would have been considered the height of indulgence in the 18th Century. Go to your bathroom, take a shit, flush. This would have blown the minds of most of humanity prior to the 19th Century (some really rich Romans wouldn't have been all that impressed). To me, this exemplifies the weakness in your philosophy, you are quick to validate suffering but refuse to validate progress, joy or anything positive about existence. There are many, many good things in life but you refuse to recognize them, or seek to minimize them. The philosophy is so caught up in the negative, it fails to recognize the good, only calling it "less physical suffering". And I call that bullshit. The good things in life are good, not a reduction in suffering. The default state is not suffering, you only see it that way because you choose to.
I'll have to apologize, I've only made it to the end of Section 4 of the linked paper. It's getting late and I'm getting pretty deep in my cups (one of humanity's best, early inventions, booze). I do plan to pick it up in the morning, it's an interesting read. But this is starting to sound suspiciously like the eugenicist movement of the early 20th Century. The authors also seem to recognize this and are doing a lot of "no really, we're not those people":
Ya, let's have a critical look at China's One Child Policy and then come back and tell me how great your policy is. Or, you know, what Eugenicists got up to in the early 20th Century. It might just be that the reason "many folks view any efforts to contain population growth as homicide" is because it always seems to turn out that way. But who knows, maybe the authors really do have A Brave New World planned and I just haven't read that far yet.
Population growth is already slowing (something the paper mentions). Access to education and birth control already started bending that curve. In fact, most first world countries are already facing shrinking populations. No fancy "don't have kids" push needed. The economic consequences of this are going to be a "fun" ride and may lead to the sort of suffering the authors are hoping to avoid. Or not, managing a shrinking population may not be an insurmountable economic problem. Japan is kinda doing OK, after all. But, so far is seems that the most effective method for long term population control is less eugenics and more first world development.
To try and sum this all up, I'd note that you seem to be arguing less about anti-natalism and more about the harms of unconstrained capitalism. I'm all on board with the latter, less so the former. We need more socialism (at least in the US). Modern capitalism is broken and that's only going to be solved via higher taxes and greater wealth redistribution. Even people who believe wholeheartedly in capitalism should recognize that the level of wealth accumulation, rent seeking and regulatory capture have created distortions in the market which are not healthy for capitalism. We've entered a new Guilded Age and it's time to break out the monopoly busting hammer. But, let's leave the Eugenics in the dustbin of history, it wasn't good the last time, it won't be good this time.
just ignore all those hundreds of millions of suicide victims, none of them actually do it, they just want attention. you have a bit of teenage angst of your own left unresolved.
Oh, found the nerve. You're sitting around dressed in black on black listening to some "edgy" band I've never heard of, right?
And yes I'm ignoring the folks who commit suicide. They aren't the people arguing for others to not have children or for the end of all humanity. They are completely beside the argument about anti-natalism. We're talking about your philosophy here, do keep up. If you're arguing that humanity should be ended, then you really have two logic options:
Hanging about for some misguided sense of "I need to convert the masses" is just the same sort of messianic bullshit every cult leader engages in. Convince the dupes to follow your bullshit, while never actually following it yourself. And much like the crap from cult leaders, the philosophy is bullshit. There may be some nuggets of truth and useful ideas buried inside it, but it's wrapped up in enough shit to render the whole worthless. Its a philosophy which has latched on to the same thinking as the guy on the corner with "The End is Nigh!" written in large, dark letters on a sign, ranting about whatever form of doom is en vogue. Those guys have been hanging about for millennia, none of them have been right. But hey, maybe the next one will be the ticket.
Yup, the world's got problems. If your solution is "give up" then you're part of the problem. The world gets better when people choose to fix it. But that's hard, usually slow (including moving backwards on occasion) and requires effort. Giving up is easy. The hardest part is maintaining the flexibility in your shoulders to keep patting yourself on the back. And that's all this philosophy is, it's giving up with excuses to justify it to yourself. it's a short-sighted view of the world, hyper-focused on the things which are bad.
If you really feel that things are that bad, instead of giving up or killing yourself (seriously, don't do that. It improves nothing), find a small corner of the world which you can make better and go do it. Plant a tree, at least the world has one more tree now. Help troubled children, the fact that you are able to waste time arguing on the internet with idiots like me proves that you live an absolutely charmed life compared to many, many people, go make one of their lives a bit better. Go create something, the world needs more art. The time you just wasted on my trolling could have been far better spent on learning to paint or just rubbing one out. I mean, I get it, arguing with idiots on the internet is like masturbation, it's fun at first but really you're just screwing yourself. At least with real masturbation you get a refractory period to go do something useful with a clear mind. Give up on giving up, and make the hard choice to make the world better. Sure, you'll fail a lot. That's part of what makes it hard. But the successes are worth the effort.
Seriously? You can do better than that. At least try to put more effort into the insult than "no, you". Something like "brain-washed" or "child-pilled". Or is that "natal-pilled", what is the appropriate "-pilled" insult here? Even "neo-lib sheep" would have shown some imagination. Also, I've pretty much set you up for a whole host of insults over my masturbatory habits and things being "hard", let's see you really pound something out here.
I think the future is bleak and procreation at this point is selfish. I'm not one to prescribe what other people can do, but even if I still could I would never have a child.
i wonder what that means? What would a person personally get from procreating? I think barely anything. Then why would it be selfish?
I’ll respond to this because I’m a father and have observed a lot of things about other parents that I never noticed or paid attention to before becoming one. There are some seriously selfish-ass people who treat their kids like accessories or tea-cup dogs. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who treat their kids as franchises or property and view the kid in terms of ROI.
Some people only find value in themselves as mothers or fathers (“I’m the goddamn pater familias!”) where the role is often more important than the kids. While the act of parenting can be selfless, there is a performative element to it that takes over some people’s identities and personalities (clothing that advertises your “parent-ness,” name-brand clothing, chic and fashionable accessories, strollers that cost as much as a used car, humongous houses and baby suites, paying for full- or part-time help, excessively documenting “baby’s” life and sharing it widely beyond friends and family, et cetera and ad nauseam).
Now, there’s another take on selfishness I’ve picked up on from anti-natalist threads which is specifically tied to the concept of agency: a child has no agency regarding the circumstances of its birth. The fact that two people can intentionally (or even worse, unintentionally) choose to procreate is viewed as immensely selfish since it denies the created being of all choice. Parents often “want” to have a kid; but there is often no “need” (biological imperative notwithstanding). Hence, a selfish act.
Another expression of selfishness is that some parents cannot help themselves from creating clones. From birth, the kid is a reflection of the parents’ identity, interests, politics, hobbies, and media fandoms. The political or religious parts are especially disturbing—no kid has a valid opinion of the election and has no solid foundation for belief in a deity. Raising kids with values is one thing, but creating little mouthpieces that just repeat parents’ opinions is another. There is also the chance that a parent will try to live vicariously through their child and push them into sports or academics so that they can fix their mistakes or relive the past.
All said, some people make really shitty parents. And I don’t mean shitty people—there are lots of pleasant and thoughtful people who are fucking terrible caregivers. I think that some people felt too much social, cultural, or religious pressure to be honest with themselves and stay away from parenting. I think that nothing says selfish like knowing that you shouldn’t do something but do it anyway because you know that you will benefit from it in some way (financially, socially, etc.).
A child?
You can look at this through the buddhist worldview:
Then, the question is, if you could be born again in the year 2030, would you choose to? Would you think such a life is worthwhile?
Answering such a question might give you a hint of what your children would want, if they could be asked.
Capitalists consider unemployed people dead weight.
A tree trunk is dead weight too and that's what keeps the tree stable.
Same with society. A certain amount of dead weight actually provides benefits. It provides possibilities in case of urgencies and provides a stable environment in peace times.
I think it is fine. No one should produce or raise children they do not want.
I still support our society focusing on improving the material conditions for every generation, new and old.
There should not be conflict there.
I immediately reject any theories that pretend to “know” what they are talking about. I mean WTF are they talking about here ? We have limited senses to sense this world and limited communication capabilities, that was built on top of our fear of death and suddenly these theories trying to claim they “know it all” and this is the “judgment”. WTF. Get off your high horse.
Nobody knows anything. We ALL are just dumb. World is too big to know.
Hell yeah Linnahall, it's a cool place been there a few times myself
Anti natalism right now is pro long term human survival.
There are too many humans on Earth. There are two ways to get the human population down to a point where we can sustainably live here. You can either exterminate most the existing humans or prevent new humans from existing in the first place. Which would you choose?
"Oh but that will trigger a demographic crisis when tbere's too many old people and too few young people!” OK? That's a temporary problem compared to the very very permanent problem of extinction. Which we're on track to doing of we keep living like this. And most of the issues of a demographic crisis has to do with recession and pensions, both unique to capitalism. The solution is to get rid of capitalism, not guilt people into having more kids to keep the capitalist machine alive.
One word: bullshit. One name: Siddhartha Gauttama. The guy nailed it about "inevitability" of suffering
And what did he say specifically about human reproduction? Genuinely interested. Buddhists are of course quite over-represented among anti-natalists.
I never checked and actually fear to dig into this matter, given how much time has passed and how people have been twisting everything. But I do recall him having monk go take a shelter in a house of a prostitute, and a bunch of monks learning from prostitutes (definitely did happen in Japan). So no, he definitely didn't have an issue with sex or procreation
ha ha you have crawled out on a very weak limb with that chain of motivated reasoning. I think I'll just look into it myself.
Yeah, thumbs up for your enthusiasm :) When you learn of buddhist monks who helped each other "release sexual tension", remember: Gautama did not instruct them to torture themselves into that kind of twisted state
"Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering."
He didn't say anything specifically about the ethics of human reproduction. He taught that craving sense pleasures leads to suffering. The monks that followed him were celibate. But he knew few would follow that path. So he taught a simplified code of ethics for householders (don't kill, don't lie, etc.) and assumed that there would always be people who want to make more people. Rebirth was an important part of his doctrine. The volitional actions you perform in life create karma which then, after your death, produces another birth. Escaping the cycle of karma and rebirth by letting go of the concept of self, of the idea of me and mine, was the ultimate goal of his path. And it's only possible to get there in a human body. So in that sense he was not an anti-natalist.
I think it's a bit of a cunty outlook. I have some sympathy for the childfree brigade, as I understand society can make you feel bad (if you let it) for not having kids. But then again, I wasn't a dad until I was 38 and never experienced any negativity for that decision. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Essentially I dislike any mindset that judges others for their procreative choices.
I don't think it's fine to think other people are assholes for having kids but I think it's completely fine to not want to being a kid into this world
Sometimes it's due to trauma, fear and ideological confusion, which is valid, sometimes it's just a way for people to be even more selfish, nihilistic and hedonistic without the optics associated with them. It also feels like the equivalent of angry/sad MGTOW but for life and it's biological imperative, not just women. To each their own. 🤷
I guess I've accepted it. Seeing how history has gone, and current US politics, your dependent are likely to be victims of war, slavery, diseases, or experimentation. I have to wonder what is the "good life" or pleasant? Like is it just taking drugs and having sex all the time? We can't have endless creature comforts.
It's just me life doesn't have high highs but very low lows
It's a natural consequence of negative utilitarianism. But even that aside, I can't ask any potential offspring for permission so it's best to leave it alone.
til im not an anti-natalists. I just think people should not have babies. I mean same with letting pets breed needlessly. anywho.
I certainly like humus more than humans, so...
But seriously, anti-natalism sits on consequentialism as a hard to deny entailment. If you believe in consequentialism and utilitarianism, you're basically there.
What if garbanzos are sentient?
Their suffering will be delicious.
Is there a word for not believing in consequences ?
Hmm, not that I can think of offhand. Maybe something akin to existential nihilism or temporal nihilism.
Though, consequentialism isn't belief in the existence of consequences, meaning events caused by an action, but rather belief that consequences are the way one judges a particular action's moral quality. Other systems of determining moral quality are available.
Shouldn't we be asking the unborn this question?
Tell them about this hellhole we live in and most would choose no.
It's incredibly stupid, but for those who truly believe in it it's fine as long as they just use it as a guiding principle in their own lives. But it tends to attract the passionate sort, as any theoretically "anti-suffering" ideology will, so idk, I circle back to it's stupid.
Does someone need an explainer about why suffering is natural, okay, not inevitable, and certainly not the only thing a being can feel? Or that the world is actually quite nice, but we generate suffering within ourselves?
I mean if you could explain that, as easily and clearly as you glibly believe, you would have created a new major world religion. A lot of those things are subjective and a lot of them are false.
Well, I don't know about okay. I'd give it a pretty shit review actually.
I'm against human reproduction.
So, I've gotta ask: Why don't you just end the one life you can, since you hate all life? I mean, it sounds rather... illogical for you to type all that out, to tell other life what your thoughts are, since you hate all life anyways?
Why not go be a hermit then? Get away from all other humans, and just exist by yourself?
If you're talking to people here, it means you enjoy your own life, and want to communicate your thoughts to other lives, so they can understand what you're feelings are. Which means, at some level, you value life.
I think all moral reasoning should be outlawed and philosophers should be shot.
This will lead to a significant increase in life, prosperity, happiness and/or bring about the messiah. Either way it's the right thing to do.
things carnists say
Yeah that's not what I was thinking about.
The way moral reasoning works is this: You have something you want, be it is your material interest or it is due to your belief or feelings. If this is to become a norm or law or widely adopted in some way, you're not supposed to argue that way though. You have to do a whole derivation down from Universal Values™, meaning you're now not arguing from your own POV, but from some common good, and, in practice, especially the interest of the ruling order that you want to adopt your position. This means you're already inclined to compromise your position before you've even voiced it.
This is why ruling institutions encourage moral reasoning, they teach it in school, on TV etc. It makes you argue from their POV--that of the nation, the state, the existing order--instead of your own.
It also means that your moral argument is sophistry--motivated reasoning--if you have constructed it for a position you hold for a completely different reason, which is not conducive to clear thinking.
We are social animals. We must necessarily take a wider view than our own personal consequences as a matter of survival. Anyone who cannot grasp that is a threat and an enemy of humanity.
Oh come on, I can recognize my common interest with other humans without mediating this through overly abstracted "values" and then arguing from that. Plus, you know, little kids and even many animals show empathy and they're not doing any moral reasoning or have any concept of a moral value. It seems to me that, more often than not, moral reasoning is employed to rationalize away empathy.
It would also be nice if you could not imply that I'm a threat to humanity. My comment about shooting philosophers was clearly a joke as should be obvious from the rest of the comment, whereas yours strikes me as deadly serious.
Also you didn't actually argue my points about how this benefits existing authorities, nor about how this incentivizes motivated reasoning.
I said that people who cannot grasp that they are social animals living in a social environment are a threat to humanity. If you want to wear that, fucking do it. If you don't, that's even better. But what I said is true and if you don't like it, that's a you thing.
Your gut is not smart enough to just tell you the right moral thing to do at all times. That's a stupid thing to say and you should be ashamed. Or maybe you are once again using irony and will be offended that I took you at face value.
dude that's not how philosophy nowadays works, like, at all.
reasoning played a huge role during the 19th and 20th century, which makes sense because it enabled technological progress and real economic growth. there's a lot more to philosophy than that, though, including long-term thinking, philosophy of consciousness and such.
I don't think this is a negative...
I think you have wildly missed the point.
Imagine getting so het up at antinatalists for their antinatalism that you have to eject from the thread
I think you need to take a serious look at the economics of the future and broaden your scope of intelligence.
The economy will no longer be work-bound in 20 years. More humans will not mean more productivity. If machines do all the work, humans become unemployed, and unemployment can lead to mental stress and depression in many individuals. Which in turn can cause social unrests. That is what this is about.
I agree with some of this,
but it should be noted that spaceflight is becoming kind of a modern mythology that describes the "fate" of humans.
I think you got some nice ideas but you really gotta work on your messaging. As it is, it's one big blob of text, and that's hard to read and parse through. It would be better if you can summarize your points in maybe 1-3 short bullet points, something like:
This will make it much easier for other people to parse your points and comprehend them quickly.
Also you gotta be realistic and realize what's at stake. If spaceflight takes up pace slower than you think, i.e. it takes 10 years longer for humans to set foot on another planet, that is already an economic crisis for the people alive today and needs to be tackled. Reducing the number of workers in a country is a way to reduce unemployment rate and it is simply important to realize how serious the situation is and how urgent it is to get this right. We can still do spaceflight by the way.