I don’t think that ‘it’s transient’ makes pain any less bad. Suppose someone kidnapped you, put you through agonizing torture and then erased your memory. Supposed they did this repeatedly. Would that be immoral behavior ?
As I see it, pain in itself is bad because it feels bad. Feeling bad is enough. Yes, it’s a necessary evil given how we are made, but it’s still an evil.
Only materialists could consider such a thing possible. Spiritual people know life is eternal.
I believe people are about as happy as they want to be.
Abe Lincoln
If, I had a magical crystal ball that would allow me to see into the future and I knew that out of 100 hypothetical future people, 1 would go to hell and 99 to heaven, I’d still consider it preferable that these 100 people never exist in the first place. If Hell is as bad as the Bible seems to imply, nothing could justify inflicting an eternity of torment on someone. “The Worm shall not die, and the fire shall never be quenched” sounds very very VERY bad to me. In fact, I can’t even add enough “verys” here because it’s infinitely bad. Jesus himself said if your right arm causes you to sin, it is better to cut it off than to sin and be sent to hell. From my understanding, the ratio of people going to hell in the real world would be MUCH higher than 1%, in fact a MAJORITY of people in this world don’t believe in Jesus, so it seems like most people would be going to hell.
The Christian notion of hell is actually what ultimately turned me away from the faith. I simply couldn’t tolerate the notion that we have a Creator who supposedly loves us but would make people suffer forever for not believing in him, especially when there’s not direct evidence he even exists. It’s not like any rational person would choose Hell if they KNEW it was a reality. Why would God play this sort of game with us?
It’s true this is an obstacle, but since you are sorting of adding up net pain v net gain to arrive at a conclusion, you should admit equally that it’s an obstacle to the joy of having a life to have never been born. The calculus at hand then becomes the number of folks who would end their lives against the number who would retain it. If it were the case that the majority of a given cohort of lives are miserable, you can make a strong case for that cohort to avoid procreating. If I knew the world was going to become hellishly hot in the next few years and there would be widespread misery, perhaps I should not procreate. If I know there’s a good chance my child will not make it out of the ghetto, or that I can’t afford decent care, or that I lived in Ceausescu’s Romania, perhaps I shouldn’t procreate. This is quite a different argument from proscribing all human procreation.
In many parts of the real world, death from suicide, accidental death, and death from assorted natural consequnces is seldom accompanied by sentiments on the part of the survivors that it would have been better had the person never been born. Again, the real world has voted with its feet: it’s overwhelmingly better–on average–to have lived than to not have lived.
I bring up suicide because it removes the argument that one cannot eliminate one’s own pain. If your argument is instead that part of the calculation should be the pain a death causes others, I suggest attending more deaths or attending more funerals. The nearly universal consensus is gratefulness for the individual’s life. I believe this to be genuine for the most part, and I believe a poll inquiring whether the convenience of not having to mourn would outweigh the convenience of the individual having never lived would come down conclusively on the side of a net gain that the individual existed.
I was specifically refting the argument of the OP, which is based on the premise that non-existent pain is somehow different than non-existent pleasure.
Some people find the quest for meaning to be fulfilling and worth the pain. Ultimately they have the evolutionary advantage because they won’t rationalize themselves into a genetic dead end.
I’ve noticed that many people are highly antagonistic to the idea that life has meaning at all.
For many of us that meaning is found in the process of family.
My response is that peoples assessments of how well their lives are going is incorrect. Strong evolutionary forces have caused us to put a positive face on things, and ignore how much of our lives are actually predominated by negative mental states. I look at peoples insistance on how good their lives are the same way I look at a kidnap victim who has developed Stockhold Syndrome, or a slave who insists that that they are happy being enslaved. It’s an (understandable under the circumstances) psychological defense mechanism.
Even in the course of what we would consider an ordinary day, we face hunger, thirst, and boredom (negative mental states). Our day to day strivings are just a continuous treadmill to keep negative mental states at bay.
I’ve found the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer to be highly influential in forming my views. His essay “On The Sufferings Of The World” in particular. In his view, suffering is all that exists independently. Happiness is merely a temporary relief from negative mental states.
I always love the idea that you know better than other people how happy they are.
Blalron, all your arguments are subject to reversal. How do you know that they’re not 180 degress off? Maybe people really are naturally happy and it’s the people who think they’re unhappy who are wrong.
Well we are assaulted with images telling us that being happy is a paramout value in our lives. There is an imperative to enjoy plastered on every commercial and billboard. When people ask, “How are you?”, generally it is considered bad form to answer honestly, instead you have presupplied answers, "Doing Good, “I’m fine, how are you?”, “Can’t complain”
“How are you?”
“Well I’ve been constipated for days and my teenager daughter has turned into an unholy cunt. My wife feels guilty about it so defends her every nasty little behavior. I think that at a certain age, ‘It’s a phase’ doesn’t cut it anymore. But there we are no? How are you doing?”
There is truth to what you say. We are assulted with approximately 600 pieces of advertising every day, most of it with pictures of people having fun while using whatever product is being hawked.
We have been trained to think money, fame, happiness are goals of life, but they are not. I think self-satisfaction is a better goal, living a life that is successful to you, not necessarily to others. Anyone can be self-confident, feel good about themselves and others no matter what economic conditions they live in. All we have to do is let-go of our demands on life for ourselves and others. Detachment it is sometimes called.
Incidentally, your favorite flavor of ice cream is pork and brussel sprouts. Don’t bother denying it: I know you’re just incorrectly assessing your own emotions.
Ah, I see. Instead of finding it remarkably wonderful that we can be satisfied being alive despite an assortment of negative things, in service of anti-natalism we are going to unilaterally paste weltschmerz on everyone and thus make the argument more robust that they would be better off having never been born. Nevermind their opinion.
Surely the only decent thing to do is to kill all humanity and end their suffering.
If you find such a nonsensical approach persuasive, I’m uninterested in trying to talk you out of it. Their are plenty of surly pessimists in addition to Schopenhauer up with whom you can curl to find what modicum of superficial solace you may in this wretched and unhappy world. I’m gonna go have a beer with some friends.
David Benatar is apparently a tool.
I don’t know if there is a technical term for this, but I am basically calling it a load of bullshit disguised as a logical proof. And it is wrong.
Pain may be bad and pleasure may be good, however they are not mutually exclusive. For example, I may take pleasure in causing pain. Or some degree of pain (going to the gym for example) may be required to enjoy a greater amount of pleasure (ie not being a fatass).
Also the absense of pain or pleasure if there is no one around isn’t good or bad. It isn’t anything.
That would be because most people find that whatever moments of joy and happiness they experience outways the periods of negativity between them
I tend to agree with Chief Pedant in suggesting that Schopenhauer just needs to get out more, make some friends, drink a few beers, and learn how to have fun. While he doubtlessly has some intellectual heft, his argument doesn’t really defend pessimism, but rather just repeats the claim many times. His claims don’t stand up when you think about them:
That just is not true. Happiness and satisfaction generally occur when something positive is experienced, acquired, or achieved. His statement is completely groundless.
Again untrue. I can think of many instances where pleasure came out of the blue, completely unanticipated.
Meaningless. I’m a human being. What does this prattling about animals have to do with me?
Schopenhauer apparently feels this way himself, and I’m certainly not going to lecture him on what happens in his own mind. He has no right to project his own flaws onto the rest of the human race.
Another unjustified statement. It’s true that most people work. (Labor is a synonym for work, so I guess he’s right about that one too.) As for worry or trouble, he can’t win those. Worry is optional; some people choose to worry and others don’t. Trouble occurs, but does not dominate our whole life long.
You get the point. Proof by repetition ad nauseum is not a valid proof technique.
Evolutionary forces can only affect our genes, not the content of our thoughts. Of course it’s been theorized that we have genes that makes us think certain things, but extensive research has yet to actually find any of these genes.
Speak for yourself. In the course of an ordinary day, I do not face hunger, thirst, or boredom. Moreover, on those occasions when I do feel a little bit of gnawing appetite, it is not really an unpleasant sensation, and it enhances the experience of preparing and eating food.
As for boredom, I no longer believe in it. I can recall that in my atheist days I was often bored. Now that I am a Christian, I have learned to appreciate the marvels of God’s creation everywhere and at all times. Now at times I am still sad, at times I am dejected, and sometimes I am furious, but I have never been bored since my conversion.
The bottom line, as others have said, is that you don’t get to choose what other people feel. Projecting your own attitudes onto others is not sound thinking, and it never has been.
Why don’t the people who think humanity is better of dead lead by example?
Or am I only the one-millionth person to ask?
Only the umpteenth person to ask. I really wish some of these radical extinctionists would setup a foundation to record suicides for the cause, they could endow it with their funds in their wills. That would get a lot of publicity.
I am all for people who don’t appreciate life giving it up.
I, on the other hand, would prefer to see them growing up.