Unconceivable!
Come on, people. Stay in your damned lanes!
This reminds me of a song I heard on the radio back in the '80s. Actually more like spoken words backed by music, it was a man’s voice explaining all the great things about life that you would miss out on if you killed yourself. Been looking for that ever since, can’t seem to track it down…
Your argument doesn’t work if it’s only an allegory.
Again, they cannot be deprived of anything. But people who have already been born, can be deprived of all the things you mentioned.
Have you been reading David Benatar?
The logical argument for asymmetric utility is:
You are being deprived of a lot, though.
A child snuggling up to you as you read him books.
The look of joy and pride as they do something wonderful.
The feeling of absolute and unconditional love you get when you hold your baby for the first time.
Grandchildren
My kids have given me far more joy than sorrow. Sad you’ll never experience that.
Are you sure you’re ok with this decision? I’ve been of childbearing age for in excess of 25 years and have two kids to show for it. I can’t say I routinely spend any time thinking about my “unconceived” offspring. Yours seem to play on your mind.
I join the hordes in saying that your logic is incoherent. If you can take credit for sparing them from the bad, then you must equally take credit for depriving them of the good. Either neither can be considered, or both must be.
Which is not to say that the good outweighs the bad - perhaps it doesn’t! (Especially if you know you have a genetic disease that will cause all your children to burst into unquenchable flame upon taking their first breath.) But in doing this calculation you must take into account both sides rather than just ignoring the factors that oppose your preselected conclusion.
How about instead of saying I’ve “spared” them, we say I have refused to bring a person into a world where all the things I listed are a reality?
I know of Benatar, and his arguments. I don’t really agree with his methodology, but the conclusions he comes to are correct
What you did is between God and you, and you can not deprive ‘your’ unborne from life - nor have you saved them from any of those things, as that is between them and God and the plan for their lives. When your ‘unborne’ realize that you never had any power over them to deny them of life they will move on in their eternal journey.
This is legitimate, presuming you mean “I have considered all the possible good outcomes, and all the possible negative outcomes, and weighted each by probability and severity prior to summing them up, and based on the outcome of this assessment concluded that life isn’t worth living.”
Well, that or “Long waits at the DMV are the dealbreaker! No life that includes that could ever be worth living!!!”
The risk to advancing either argument, of course, is that the response might be “why are you still alive then?” Admittedly the statement that your DMV years are behind you would be a valid answer to that.
Every single one of your children is continually experiencing everything on that list.
And you have refused to bring a person into a world where all the good things are a reality. I’m not sure what your circumstances are, but 99% of my life is either happy or neutral. I would also wonder why you are here if your opinion is that life is literally not worth living.
Imagine a hypothetical waiting room for souls who may or may not get a chance to live in our world. You’re one of those souls. The world is described to you. Would you choose to exist?
How confident are you that your hypothetical children would have made the same choice as you?
It’s entirely possible that, if you had kids, they’d be as grateful as I am for the opportunity to pick wild blueberries and to snuggle and to smell a cooking steak and to swim and to read e.e. cummings and to love. The suffering of the world isn’t a small price to pay, but it’s a price worth paying, for existence.
It’s entirely possible they wouldn’t.
Choosing your own actions based on the actions of those who won’t ever exist is an absurdity. There are tons of reasons to have kids or not to have kids, but this nonsense is incoherent.
Besides, I’m guessing that the amount you would have to pay one of those hookers to have your kid would really cut into your Detroit retirement fund.
I looked at the list more closely, and most of it neither I nor my kids ever experienced. Some of the things are actually pleasurable. Getting good grades was not a torment for any of us. Neither was finding a mate. Nor is paying taxes - I know what I get back from them.
Finding jobs has not been all that difficult for us. Good times at work far outweigh bad times.
Some people are said to be miserable if someone, somewhere is having fun. You seem to think life is not worth living if someone, somewhere, is unhappy. Tsk.
You should make another list. This list should be the things you miss by not having kids. Sure kids can be a pain sometimes. The love you feel for them and get from them is worth more than the suffering. Not everyone should have kids, but don’t choose not to based on that list.
OP has obviously never experienced a good dump. Are you even human bro?