[QUOTE=Polerius]
Can someone who is against the argument in the OP respond to the above?
I’d be interested how their view antinatalism translates to the scenario above.
BTW, maybe the last point could have been
[ul]
[li]You can push a button and force someone to come to this party against their will. Or you can decide not to push the button.[/li][/ul]
[/QUOTE]
In your scenario people can either have fun or suffer. How about if some of the people at this party are making other people’s life better? What about if they are producing wonderful music or art? The upside of life is a lot more than just dancing.
Plus, it is possible to do everything you can to ensure that the person you invite to the party does not suffer. Does that change the equation?
[QUOTE=Polerius]
BTW, the argument, posed in various forms in this thread, of “If you don’t like it here, then why don’t you kill yourself then?” is utterly stupid.
The instinct to not die is so strong that it can easily override any rationalization that life can be miserable.
[/QUOTE]
Why is it stupid? It seems to me that it is logically impossible to find a person who truly thinks life is not worth living, because such a person would already be dead.
Therefore, the alternative explanation is that the person who argues that life isn’t worth living doesn’t truly believe that. And the likely explanation for why they make that argument is that they get some sort of enjoyment out of making other people miserable.
It isn’t complicated. Do you truly wish you’d never been born? If you don’t like living here, the door’s thataway. There are thousands of painless methods of suicide. The simple fact that you haven’t availed yourself of one of these methods is proof that one part of your brain can’t quite convince the other parts that life truly isn’t worth living.
BTW, the argument, posed in various forms in this thread, of “If you don’t like it here, then why don’t you kill yourself then?” is utterly stupid.
The instinct to not die is so strong that it can easily override any rationalization that life can be miserable.
[/QUOTE]
You’re saying that the “kill yourself” solution is not practical, not that it is stupid. If you had a button to end your life painlessly and quickly, or could discorporate, why not use it to prevent your future suffering?
That you probably wouldn’t just indicates that we’ve evolved for life, not death.
Do you agree that there is a moral imperative to prevent all suffering?
Oh, and by the way, I have no problem whatsoever if people who think having children is immoral don’t have children. If you don’t want kids, then I fully and completely support your choice. I’m not going to try to talk you into it. There are enough half-hearted and crappy parents out there, we don’t need to convince doom-mongering pessimists to increase that number.
And the people who accuse childless people of being “selfish” are kind of silly. If those childless people are so selfish, then they aren’t the kind of people who should have children anyway! If someone accuses you of being selfish for not having kids, the best response is, “You’re right. I am selfish. That’s why I shouldn’t have kids. You’ve convinced me!”
[QUOTE=Polerius]
Can someone who is against the argument in the OP respond to the above?
I’d be interested how their view antinatalism translates to the scenario above.
BTW, maybe the last point could have been
[ul]
[li]You can push a button and force someone to come to this party against their will. Or you can decide not to push the button.[/li][/ul]
[/QUOTE] Alessan has already responded back in post #22.
the problem with defending ideas like Antinatalism is like a wet blanket at a party; if you dislike it so much, why don’t you just leave?
[QUOTE=Polerius]
Consider the following scenario
[ul]
[li]You wake up and find yourself at a party.[/li][li]You don’t remember how you got there, and there are no windows to see outside the room.[/li][li]People in the room are dancing and having fun[/li][li]Some people, however, will suddenly feel a huge pain and have to stop dancing for a while, but eventually they return to dancing[/li][li]Every once in a while, some thugs will come and punch the living shit out of someone. The person recovers after some time, and resumes dancing.[/li][li]A small number of people will start to feel pain, but will not get better, and for the rest of the party will sit there and watch the rest dance and have fun[/li][li]Every few minutes, darkness envelopes one of the people dancing and he vanishes. Nobody knows what happens to these people or where they go.[/li][li]You, personally, have not felt much pain yet, and have spent most of the time dancing, but there is no guarantee of how much pain is to come.[/li][li]You find a cell phone and you remember that you have a friend. You can call them to invite them to come to this party. Or you can decide not to invite them.[/li][/ul]
What do you do?
[/QUOTE]
Interesting analogy. But in order for it to be a really good analogy, you have to assume that life is (metaphorically) a party, the whole purpose of which is to dance and have fun. Which leaves out many of the things that major world religions and philosophies believe to be purposes to life, like helping others, achieving/accomplishing something, personal growth, or preparation for what comes after this life.
Actually I and many others do believe that the major purpose of life is to dance and have fun. Moreover, most people do that and have always done that without any trouble. Self-indulgent nonsense of the sort Marshmallow gives us is quite rare. Essentially it’s a way for a person to claim to be better than everyone else, though few say so as directly as he or she does.
[QUOTE=Polerius]
Consider the following scenario
[ul]
[li]You wake up and find yourself at a party.[/li][li]You don’t remember how you got there, and there are no windows to see outside the room.[/li][li]People in the room are dancing and having fun[/li][li]Some people, however, will suddenly feel a huge pain and have to stop dancing for a while, but eventually they return to dancing[/li][li]Every once in a while, some thugs will come and punch the living shit out of someone. The person recovers after some time, and resumes dancing.[/li][li]A small number of people will start to feel pain, but will not get better, and for the rest of the party will sit there and watch the rest dance and have fun[/li][li]Every few minutes, darkness envelopes one of the people dancing and he vanishes. Nobody knows what happens to these people or where they go.[/li][li]You, personally, have not felt much pain yet, and have spent most of the time dancing, but there is no guarantee of how much pain is to come.[/li][li]You find a cell phone and you remember that you have a friend. You can call them to invite them to come to this party. Or you can decide not to invite them.[/li][/ul]
What do you do?
[/QUOTE]
If you consider “exsisting” being at the party you’d have to amend the last item to: “In the adjacent room you have a friend who is in a vegitative coma. You have the opportunity to wake them up and have them join you at the party or you can leave them in a coma. What do you do?”
I used to think life was all suffering and misery…
Then I had my kids.
Now when I tell them to go to bed early, stop playing those damned video games, go outside and play or brush their teeth they tell me how life is all suffering and misery. Now I’m happy
Seriously though, this kind thinking doesn’t work because, as you see here in microcosom, most people to subscribe to the therory that life is all suffering and so horrible that birth is “Inflicting” life on others. Sure, you believe life is all gloom doom and rotten apple cores not everyone does.
I have had 3 kids. Why? I enjoy sharing life with them.
I enjoy sharing knowledge watching them get excited over things that have become common place with me over time. I enjoy sharing my life and love with these new people and enjoy the bonds we have that are unlike any relationship I have experienced before.
Yeah I guess it is slightly selfish, but I also have the hopes that their lives are not suffering and hopelessness.
You may not agree with my choice but I don’t care. you have the choice not to continue humanity feel free to do your part and end your line, just don’t tell me how I should act and expect me to be persuaded when I don’t see the world as you do.
The old quotes “Tis better to have loved and lost rather than not to have loved at all” and “A life not lived is not worth living” seem to apply here.
A life lived is full of ups and downs, tragedies and miracles, pains and joys, loves and losses. It’s that yin and yang thing that makes life interesting.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
The rate of increase is declining, but we are overpopulated if we want the rest of the world to have a decent standard of living, not just the West. The impact of China and India on oil prices shows this pretty well. Stopping reproducing for a few decades isn’t the answer - cutting the number of kids to replacement levels or below would work a lot better. Much of the world is unemployed, underemployed, or working on subsistence farming. A decrease in population which would allow these people to have better jobs would be a big plus. We should do it before famine or plague does it for us.
[/QUOTE]
Well the people living on subsistance farming are tending to use the land very inefficiently. Nigeria for instance is making a big push toward corporate farming to help make it a breadbasket in Africa. As we all know when Zimbabwe pushed the corporate farms out it resulted in a famine. A decent standard of living however, is much less than what Americans believe they need. Also, we are judging such criteria based on the levels of consumption in an industrial society. We don’t know how material will be managed in post-industrial societies quite yet. How that pans out will determine what the eco-system can actually bear. Right now there is a huge amount of inefficient waste that may be mitigated by future technology, just as we are far less polluting pound for pound today than in the 60s. No lakes are catching on fire in America these days.
Anyway, I think this is the only real argument to be made for antinatalism. The moralistic argument as presented in the OP is rank nonsense. Morals are devoid of meaning if they result in the extinction of the human race, as morality exists only within a human ontology. I just wish more antinatalists would put their money where their mouth is and reduce the suffering of the world and their drain on its resources proactively.
Morality is a human construct. Antinatalism isn’t moral, immoral, or amoral. It is anti-moral. The end result of antinatalism isn’t greater morality. It’s the extinction of the human race, and, by extension, the extinction of morality as well.
Well, anti-natalism only threatens the survival of the human race if more than 5 people in the world believe in it. Even if millions and millions of people all over the world become anti-natalists, it doesn’t mean squat, because we won’t even notice the decline in the birth rate, and if we do, we’ll probably think it’s a good thing.
Heck, even if a billion people all over the world got themselves fixed on the grounds that life isn’t worth living, that would be a GOOD thing. Because while the current demographic trends are looking good, we still have 6 billion people on this globe, and that’s a heck of a lot of people. If we could cut the projected peak of 9 billion to 8 billion that would be a blessing.
And of course, anti-natalism is one of those philosophies that, if successful, turn themselves into failures. When all the anti-natalists die of old age, who’s left? The natalists. There’s a reason that most people on earth want to live and have families, and that’s because every one of their ancestors had at least one child, going back hundreds of millions of years. That’s a lot of natural selection for pro-natality.
[QUOTE=mswas]
Well the people living on subsistance farming are tending to use the land very inefficiently. Nigeria for instance is making a big push toward corporate farming to help make it a breadbasket in Africa. As we all know when Zimbabwe pushed the corporate farms out it resulted in a famine. A decent standard of living however, is much less than what Americans believe they need. Also, we are judging such criteria based on the levels of consumption in an industrial society. We don’t know how material will be managed in post-industrial societies quite yet. How that pans out will determine what the eco-system can actually bear. Right now there is a huge amount of inefficient waste that may be mitigated by future technology, just as we are far less polluting pound for pound today than in the 60s. No lakes are catching on fire in America these days.
[/quote]
Clearly man has survived for tens of thousands of years with a lower standard of living than what we have. But the only way, long term, to ensure peace is equality of opportunity in the world. At whatever level that is, it is going to include a lot of people living better and using more resources than they do today.
While corporate farms are good for food production, they tend to push out the existing subsistence farmers, who go to cities. Without a good economy to absorb them, they become unemployed and live in shantytowns, and are even a bigger problem than when on the farm.Fewer people, less of a problem.
Even that isn’t a real argument for it. For ZPG, perhaps, but not antinatalism. I agree with your point on morality. Even the blog linked to in the OP didn’t claim that the nonexistence of humans would cause there to be no suffering, since animals impose suffering on each other quite nicely even if we’re not around.
And of course, anti-natalism is one of those philosophies that, if successful, turn themselves into failures. When all the anti-natalists die of old age, who’s left? The natalists. There’s a reason that most people on earth want to live and have families, and that’s because every one of their ancestors had at least one child, going back hundreds of millions of years. That’s a lot of natural selection for pro-natality.
[/QUOTE]
The danger of antinatalism is not that those who believe in it stop having kids - it is that to uphold their so-called moral imperative they feel it is in their rights to prevent anyone else from having kids in order to reduce suffering. Absolutist philosophies are dangerous, religious or secular.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
The danger of antinatalism is not that those who believe in it stop having kids - it is that to uphold their so-called moral imperative they feel it is in their rights to prevent anyone else from having kids in order to reduce suffering. Absolutist philosophies are dangerous, religious or secular.
[/QUOTE]
Well, we saw what happened to the Cathars. Very few things will incite the ‘breeders’ to a frenzy like a cohesive antinatalist movement.
The OP’s agument collapses because it reverses quite easily - life is full of the potential for both suffering and pleasure, in virtually all cases. Ergo, by refraining having children you cannot be certain you are not depriving them of more pleasure than you are saving them from pain, which dismantles the argument.
People (like, apparently, the OP) who think (in most cases erronously) that any offspring they have will have such dire lives that they will not prefer life over death, can just refrain themselves from having children. And, if you should happen to be uncertain, you can always take solace in the fact that any children you do have will be able to decide for themselves and have the option of killing themselves at any time they theymselves feel that the party is no fun anymore.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
The OP’s agument collapses because it reverses quite easily - life is full of the potential for both suffering and pleasure, in virtually all cases. Ergo, by refraining having children you cannot be certain you are not depriving them of more pleasure than you are saving them from pain, which dismantles the argument.
People (like, apparently, the OP) who think (in most cases erronously) that any offspring they have will have such dire lives that they will not prefer life over death, can just refrain themselves from having children. And, if you should happen to be uncertain, you can always take solace in the fact that any children you do have will be able to decide for themselves and have the option of killing themselves at any time they theymselves feel that the party is no fun anymore.
[/QUOTE]
Read item 1 in the OP. This seems to be an absolutist argument against permitting any suffering. It would be very different if the point was just not having children if their expected suffering was greater than their happiness. I think that could be a supportable proposition. That decision could only be made by the prospective parents. The OP is saying that no one should have children, no matter how much pleasure they might be expected to have, since there will be suffering with it.
Speaking of the pain/pleasure balance, this argument is even clearer when we bring in classical monotheistic religions which have a hell/heaven paradigm. I am personally an atheist, but if there really is a hell where unbelievers like me suffer for all time then antinatalism is even more urgent: by not giving birth to new generations we are preventing infinite suffering. Even if you are in the right religion and believe the correct things to get into the everlasting paradise it is always possible your offspring will disagree, stray, and be punished. Why risk it?
Those imploring me to put a bullet in my head are missing the point: I’m already here. I’ve decided for a variety of reasons that I enjoy living, for now anyway. I can easily imagine scenarios where I wouldn’t want to live anymore, although it would be questionable for a whole host of reasons if I would or could actually kill myself instead of just going along. But this is all beside the point. It would be quite presumptuous for me to therefore utter some trite phrase like “life is good” and then gamble with someone else’s money at the casino.
Especially since, as far as humanity goes, everyone posting here is extraordinarily privileged and pampered.
There is a clear asymmetry with the pleasure/pain relationship when speaking of people who don’t exist. Many speak as if not giving birth to these “people” means they are being deprived of life’s wonders. Well, they aren’t, because they don’t exist. But bringing them into existence ensures they will suffer, to some extent or another.
Even if we concoct an impossible ledger of some hypothetical ideal person who has 99% pleasure and 1% suffering through his entire life, the argument holds. If he’s not born no one will miss the pleasure, so why risk the suffering? Why do it? Even if it’s a 100% pleasuredome somehow, why?
I understand this feeling because I have it as well, surely via some biological imperative. However, imagine if a sizable asteroid impacts the Earth tomorrow and humanity is wiped out of existence.
Now imagine the alternative: humanity spreads out from the Earth and colonizes the entire galaxy. Imagine the trillions of lives stretching out billions and billions of years into the future until the heat death of the universe. Imagine the countless wars and disasters which lie in wake for our ancestors. Why should we simply go along with this? We could all prevent it. They wouldn’t miss out on anything because, well, they don’t exist yet.
One could argue that having a child in a war torn sub-Saharan African nation is wrong because the chances of this child going through unspeakable horrors is far higher than that of, say, a rich, loving couple living in Japan.
However, this sweet loving rich couple’s child will suffer. Much less than most African children, perhaps, but the suffering will be there all the same. They will grow old, become sick, die, and sow even more suffering on those left behind. The question is, why would that original couple go through with it? They could simply live their lives together and enjoy each other’s company without going through the risk.
[QUOTE=shijinn]
the OP’s idea of logic is very dangerous and immoral. you should not make decisions for other people without them having any say in it. if you fear suffering so much, deal with it yourself. let other people deal with it in their own way.
[/quote]
This sounds correct to me: don’t make decisions for other people without them having any say in it. Quite right. So don’t have children.
[QUOTE=panache45]
I hope the people who believe this crap actually practice what they preach. It will be a better world.
[/QUOTE]
Why would it be a better world? I am simply arguing the merits of a position over the internet which has no possibility of ever coming true. As I said in the OP, depending on who I end up marrying it is questionable if even I will follow it.
I disagree because these examples involve consent between sapient beings. Antinatalism is talking about messing with something that is only a dream of someone that can eventually make decisions. And once they’re here it’s too late.
Of course, the true logical end to this line of thinking is that the most moral action humanity could do would be to nuclear firebomb the Earth such that the biosphere is ruined forever. Humans and animals would stop suffering on this planet, forever. By the time evolution kicks in again to produce macro-organisms the Sun will be dying and it will be too late.
No, because I do not believe in giving easy excuses to imperialists who wish to invade and conquer and kill. But also, it is physically impossible even if we were all angels. I think asking the average person to do their best to prevent actively causing harm to one another is about as good as things will get as a position, but even that doesn’t work out very well in real life. As a random example, although nations locked in brutal war may forge a ceasefire treaty men will never stop raping, abusing, and killing women.
[QUOTE=marshmallow]
This sounds correct to me: don’t make decisions for other people without them having any say in it. Quite right.
[/QUOTE]
Heh. I make decisions for other people all the time where they don’t have a say in it. When another person lacks the capacity to make a rational decision on his own behalf, the only moral course of action is to make the decision for him.
Would you allow a small child to play in traffic? Would you allow an elderly widow to sign away her life savings to a swindler?
Refusing to act does not absolve you of responsibility for the consequences of your inaction.
