True Detective was tough to watch at times because of Cohle’s mere existence. You can’t miss what a tortured soul he was and all that he did not have. Good show, high drama, incredible story, one of the best live-action scenes I’ve ever seen…not a good place to absorb lessons in life though.
So, 99% of us should stop having children because life is unhappy, and let’s let the Earth’s population plummet down to a “happy” 500,000 inhabitants or something like that, with a happier life. Am I understanding this right Machinaforce? Not misrepresenting?
Since we’re sharing blurbs or summaries or what-have-you, here’s the description offered of the book I linked to a few posts back:
*"Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl’s theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos (“meaning”)-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl’s death in 1997, Man’s Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a “book that made a difference in your life” found Man’s Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America."*
As an Auschwitz survivor, I think Frankl knows of what he speaks when he refers to “suffering”.
Dum vivimus, vivamus.
This is silly. “You’re not really happy - you just think you are” is a meaningless statement.
Regards,
Shodan
Actually the research I found was that humans are more biased towards negative events than positive. The salience of negative events and views are stronger. It’s why a bad day or moment can ruin the next one or how trust is so fragile (so much good but it just takes a few bad things to ruin it).
From what I have read around the internet his logic isn’t that airtight and his sources seem selective rather than general.
But the part about the world having a great deal of suffering is true. The response to not have further children is the opportunity to reduce further suffering.
Well… I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
What research would this be?
If I was a poor person in a third world country, perhaps I’d agree (and perhaps not, I don’t wish to speak for them.) But living large in a first world country, my children are experiencing a life where the good parts far exceed the “suffering.” No one escapes all suffering, of course, but on balance, life is fun and interesting.
Which argues against the anti-natalist position - even with that bias, most people think the good parts of their lives outweigh the bad parts, and they expect that this will also be true for their children.
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But the part about the world having a great deal of suffering is true. The response to not have further children is the opportunity to reduce further suffering.
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And also to reduce a significantly larger amount of happiness.
Do the math. There is X amount of suffering in the world, and Y amount of happiness. Y - X > 0.
Regards,
Shodan
But the point is that as long as we are alive we cause others suffering eventually. Living things prey off of other living things in order to live, it seems like a cycle of suffering.
I just don’t get how everyone could have read the same things I did (I provided links) and still think otherwise.
Tragedy and suffering is a part of life, yes. It’s NOT THE ONLY PART. Majority of people find joy, love, friendship, purpose, meaning and hope in spite of all the challenges they face.
You’re head’s not right, son. Get the help you so desperately need. You might find you’ll start to feel differently. At the very least, you might start to understand why virtually nobody except your cherry picked sources agree with your nihilism.
I think you have to understand that it’s quite futile to argue with the majority people about topics like this.
Human behaviour is not at all rational in many cases. It’s probably not rational to live a life when you know that the negative experiences will outweigh the good. There are people alive right now who know almost for a certainty that they fall into this category but they will continue to have kids.
The majority of people can be (and have been) wrong before. Using them as a barometer for what to do is pretty poor. I find the majority of people that aren’t bothered by nihilism haven’t fully grasped what it means, philosophy tends to be far removed from most people’s lives. If it were widely believed because it was true then I would buy your response but you say it’s true because most people believe it (which is the wrong response and an appeal to the bandwagon).
It’s just the realization that to live is to suffer (a la Buddhism). That every living thing that exists visits suffering on another living thing in some way. It makes it hard to reject antinatalism when you learn that. Would it be better if life didn’t exist at all? Then there would be no suffering in existence. Try as I might I can’t find a logical reason for life to continue and that scares me. Scares me that they might be right and that life is just a net negative for all things involved. It makes all the efforts we do to solve our problems seem like window dressing when the only actual solution would seem to be death. Then there would be no struggle and no one to suffer. It’s hard to beat logic like that. Even birthing new people exposes them to the terror of dying, while never being prevents that.
Topics like this are going to surface in the public eventually and they will call into question everything we call progress and all we hold dear.
This thread is TL;DR … so maybe this has been covered already …
Isn’t the OP the same as the premise of the movie Idiocracy?
The OP’s premise is basically “Life sucks, why bother” as far as I can tell.
If moral nihilism is true, anti-natalism is false.
Popular anti-natalist arguments generally divide into consent, pessimist philosophy, or utilitarianism (Benatar’s asymmetry).
The consent angle strikes me as formidable, especially since consent based ethics is so popular now, but I don’t see it come up in natalism arguments much for either side. It’s usually considered wrong to use other people as ends. This is about the consent of the unborn, but one can imagine another scenario. If humanity were on the brink of extinction and there were only a few women left and they refused to have children then anti-natalists would support their decision. Pro-natalists would face quite the dilemma.
The OP probably won’t find most arguments against Benatar’s asymmetry persuasive, especially ones that bite the bullet about real people’s suffering being equal to the unborn’s lack of pleasure. That descends into repugnant conclusion arguments. Cabrera’s argument against the asymmetry (PDF) is often cited, though Cabrera himself is an anti-natalist due to his negative ethics (which falls under pessimist philosophy, I think).
Another asymmetry is that chronic pain exists, but chronic pleasure doesn’t. Wireheads don’t exist yet, and I don’t think most people would argue being one would be desirable.
I don’t think most people believe that a failure to commit a positive action is equivalent to committing a negative action. Quite the opposite, usually people treat negative actions as tainting or undoing everything good. A doctor who cures thousands of people is a hero, unless he tortures and kills someone for fun, then he’s evil. Those who say yeah that was bad but he did a lot of good would be denounced as apologists.
Anti-natalism is the ultimate civil disobedience against God. It’s interesting how pro-natalist arguments resemble religious commands to multiply, which I suppose springs from the biological imperative.
Some pro-natalist logic reminds me of when pro-lifers ask pro-choicers how they would feel if their mother aborted them.
One pro-natal argument is that utilitarianism is reductive and there’s more to human life than pleasure/pain, and that pain can often be a route to growth and contentment. Or that being alive is, if nothing else, interesting. Even if it ends in misery at least you got to ride along.
If the human race continues to breed and expand, particularly into space, there’s a good chance there will be future atrocities of unimaginable scale. These could be prevented by voluntarily extinction.
It’s funny to me that if anti-natalists don’t breed then the genes for accepting anti-natalist arguments will be selected against. This reminds me of how religious fundamentalists don’t believe in evolution, yet have many more children than secularists.
Under a natalist framework, having children can be argued to be immoral if there are already existing children who could be adopted. It’s selfish because the parents are asserting that continuing their genetic line is the most important consideration.
As is common in anti-natalist threads outside of philosophy forums, a lot of pro-natalists here sling insults instead of debating. The OP has been called depressed, suicidal, and mentally ill.
That’s the usual response. But the thing is that I don’t know what to do here. I mean I didn’t plan on having kids either way (for reasons not listed here). But this makes me question whether or not life is worth living. Some people say yes, some say no. If logic says no then does that mean I should kill myself? How do I interact with the rest of the world that isn’t aware of this?
Since you seem troubled, I will give you my logical counterargument to the argument you seem to be discussing here.
Argument: Existence is worse than nonexistence because any suffering is worse than no suffering.
Counterargument: I can equally say that existence is better than nonexistence because any pleasure is better than no pleasure. Independently, both statements are equally valid, but any attempt to reconcile them would require you to quantify both suffering and pleasure - which doesn’t seem to be possible. This means that neither argument -that suffering invalidates existence or that pleasure validates it- can be considered sound. And since it’s impossible to determine which of suffering and pleasure tip the scale further, it’s impossible to determine whether life is ‘better’ than nonexistence. Which means that you shouldn’t bother attempting to quantify the value of life or base decisions off of it - you should instead stick to the status quo. If you’re already alive you might as well keep living; if you have no other reasons to have/not have kids, do whatever seems most convenient at the time.
This argument is based on my position as an atheist - it assumes that new babies come from nothing (cognitively speaking) and that when people die they cease to exist (cognitively speaking). If you are not an atheist, things get hella confusing because dying isn’t necessarily an end, and because failing to give birth to someone doesn’t necessary mean they don’t already exist somewhere with an existing ability to suffer. And, given that many gods are described as being complete and total assholes, killing yourself might just result in you being sentenced to an existence with more suffering than life. So yeah, not such a great option there.
Oh, and if you think that your life is so obviously and blatantly full of suffering that it can’t possibly be balanced by current or anticipated pleasure, then please seek help. Depression is relatively treatable nowadays, I hear.