Do you know of anyone who fits this description, and has decided to blame his parents for existence?
In your original post, you described a lifetime of torture inflicted by a knife wielding maniac. Are you honestly saying that if you were the maniac’s victim, you’d blame your parents?
Let us assume that the parents live in a country where the probability that the child will live a hellish life (poverty, disease, pain, rapists everywhere, etc) is high. Let’s say 50%. Is it immoral for the parent to create the child?
Imagine if Hell is real and it’s the worst experience imaginable but people can still create babies there. Isn’t it immoral to force someone to bear that experience?
The parent IS responsible in some way because they created the child while knowing that the child CAN technically undergo excruciating amounts of pain.
At the time you wrote this, “half the responses” was one post, since all the responses were just two posts.
I’d say you’re over-fretting, rather than over-thinking, since your line of thought doesn’t really go anywhere. So life is harsh and limited? Thanks for the insight. What, if anything, can you further infer to awe us with?
The purpose of life is to continue. We have children because if we didn’t, there would be no more Human race. We have the right to have children just as every other species has the right to procreate. This is not a moral choice, it is a biological imperative. We cannot determine the fate of our children just as we cannot pre-determine their personality. We can only give them the opportunity to live, and hope for the best.
Why do we not refute your statement? I have, in every single post. You’re the one who isn’t listening.
I don’t think everyone pulls this, I think pulling the absolute reverse is just as common. “NOTHING I DO MATTERS. I’M A TINY INSIGNIFICANT SPEC IN AN ENDLESS VOID. WHY SHOULD I GET A JOB WHEN WE’RE ALL GOING TO JUST DIE ANYWAY!?” I still suffer from this a little. I know people who have gotten good jobs or into good grad schools because of their silly blogs that nobody reads because it “shows initiative” or whatever. Why don’t I make a blog about cool things I’m interested in? “There’s a billion blogs on this topic, what am I going to say that a million people haven’t already?” While, objectively, that’s true I kind of have figured out that I’m discounting that I can say old things in new ways that people will identify will, or help them understand things in a new way. I mean, 98% of my posts probably won’t do that for anybody, but just because a million billion people have had the same thought doesn’t mean that articulating that thought is worthless. Just focus on the message and don’t delude yourself into thinking your work is unique. I mean, unless you’re talking about your cutting edge doctoral work or prove P=NP or something, then you might get a little bit of a pass.
Overall, both viewpoints are rather extreme. While I’d say the “futility” one is perhaps a bit smarter and more nuanced (or maybe that’s hubris since that was my particular quirk), they’re both about equally productive and come off equally laughable to people who went through that phase at one point and got over it.
So who decides what the acceptable odds are to gamble with a child’s life? If the odds of excruciating pain is 50%, is that too high? What about 20%? What about 0.1% What about 0.0000001%? When is it too high and when is it too low?
Who precisely do you see as enslaving you? Your parents? Society?
Of course you do. Nobody believes that we are obliged to live our lives in such a way that there can not be even a chance that our action will impinge on any single other person’s well-being. Not only is that insane, it’s impossible.
Even you accept this as being true, as evidenced by the fact that you have posted this subject here.
You must know that posting this sort of material has the capacity to make people feel depressed or angry. Right? I mean, you’re not so self-absorbed that you didn’t realise that posting material of the sort in your OP has a chance of making at least one reader unhappy. Right?
And yet, realising that posting such material has a chance of making at least one reader unhappy, you posted it anyway.
Therefore, you took a gamble with the well-being of every single person who reads this thread. Your actions made every single reader of this thread prone to pain.
So you clearly accept that you have a right to gamble with someone elses well being? QED.
So that resolves the only debate topic in this thrread.
Got any more? Maybe something that can;t be irrefutably resolved with a minute’s introspection?
Because in life, there are colossal amounts of happiness that can inflict anybody regardless of how negative or neglectful their parents are. It IS possible. I just don’t understand how people are okay with blindly taking the risk that a child not experience that.
This argument has been put to you by several other posters, and your sole response seems to be that there is more pain than happiness. Well, prove it! The fact that almost nobody ever commits suicide seems to rather refute the idea that a majority of people find non-existence preferable to existence.
But you clearly don’t have any problem at all gambling with somebody else’s well being. You posted material in this thread that you knew had a chance of affecting someone else’s well being. You presumably drive a car, knowing that there is a chance that you could run over a pedestrian. You use a computer, knowing that the carbon emissions your are producing have a chance of drowning a child.
You do things constantly that consist of gambling with somebody else’s well being. So don’t expect us to believe that you have some sort of problem with that, when it is utterly inonsistent with your actions.
Imagine that you didn’t invent impossible situations as a tool of debate and then slam others for not surrendering to your brilliance.
Imagine that you actually read other people’s responses as just that - responses; and didn’t outright dismiss them as flippant, snarky or stupid.
In most situations similar to the one you describe, the parents don’t really have much choice in the matter. That’s biology.
What if Chemical A was acid glue and Chemical B was Hitler?
(1) Pain and pleasure are asymmetrical. They don’t cancel each other out. For instance, take the act of flying over a city and dropping large chunks of expensive rock. Some people will benefit and get rich (+) but others will get maimed and badly hurt (-). The act is thus immoral. We have an obligation to make sure that our actions don’t cause pain. Intent has no place here.
(2) This is the ironic part. If I drive a car and horribly injure somebody, I am held responsible. I will be arrested, I will be punished, I will get in trouble for my actions. If I have a child and I take a risk and gamble with his life and he ends up undergoing tons of pain, I don’t get in even a bit of trouble. What’s up with that?
It’s complicated, and involves a lot of multidimensional calculus. You’ll get the booklet before you or your partner gets pregnant.
Good question. Why don’t you tell us the answer?
You drive a car I assume? Or at least don’t have any philosophical objection to driving one some day?
And you do realise that there is a chance, every time that car is driven, that it will strike a child and cause them excruciating pain, kill them, or leave them crippled and in pain for the rest of their life? Right?
So how *did *you decide what the acceptable odds were to gamble with a child’s life? If the odds of excruciating pain is 50%, was that too high? What about 20%? What about 0.1% What about 0.0000001%? When did it become sufficiently low that you gave yourself permission to drive a car, knowing that there was a probability that it would leave a child in excruciating pain?
You presumably have the answer to this question, because you presumably have no problem with driving a car, and you don’t agonise over it the way you agonise over having children.
So you must have resolved the question of when the risk of leaving a child in excruciating pain due to a car accident became acceptable.
So please, share the answer with us and tell us how you arrived at that answer.
No, it’s not ironic. Hurt someone and you’re responsible. Create someone who gets hurt later by someone else? You’re not responsible. It’s not very complicated.
Think about it with inanimate objects- suppose you create an intricate and beautiful sculpture. Three months later, while it’s on display at the museum, someone breaks in and vandalizes it. Are you responsible in any way for the damage to the sculpture? No.
OP wants to be the next Steven King. OP needs to get over the TL;DR stage and learn to write prose that actually engages the reader. I give the OP 1/10, where the average self-published work rates a 3/10. OP needs to up their game, and post less crappy crap. This review could have been more honest and useful, but the OP was posted in GD, rather than the Pit.
I don’t drive a car, for starters.
I answered the question. Driving a car forces you to assume responsibility for your actions. You willingly take the risk and if something does happen, as you mentioned, you get in trouble with the law. You can land in jail or in some cases be charged with murder and get executed.
What astonishes me is why the same aspect of morality doesn’t apply to having kids. What’s the difference?
Example: I have a kid and I’m well aware he can undergo tons of pain. He ends up hating life, undergoes tons of pain, blah blah. I’m not in any trouble. I haven’t done anything wrong.
I drive a car and I’m well aware that I can hit someone and make them undergo tons of pain. I hit someone and he undergoes tons of pain, blah blah. I get arrested, charged, and raped in prison. I did something wrong.
What in the world are you thinking here? Why don’t you take a tour of the Shiner’s Hospital, of the Ronald McDonald House, or Vanderbilt’s Burn Center? What makes you think parents don’t suffer when their kids do? The worst possible pain I can imagine is my 13 month old sick, in pain, dying, suffering from an incurable disease, suffering through the pain and nausea of chemo, or suffering the injuries of being hit by a self-absorbed teenager who doesn’t know how good she has it.
Did you do something wrong when you turned the car on?
So if I create somebody, knowing VERY WELL that there is a 99% chance that they will lead a very crappy and painful life, I shouldn’t be responsible, right?
How did you come to this number?