You keep saying that but it STILL isn’t true or at least you haven’t proven it true. The vast majority of people are willing to accept some suffering for the gain of all the joys of life.
Do you have any proof yet that the suffering experienced in life outbalances the joy in life? Because it really is kind of important to your philosophy. I mean if you feel that way, well, I empathize for you and I wish you could find joy in life to balance out the bad, but that doesn’t make it true except for your subjective experience.
But it is. It’s simply that to the person making the sacrifice, the positive feeling of doing the right thing outweighs the hardship caused by the sacrifice. That doesn’t somehow negate the sacrifice being made.
If you live in a country whose economy risks collapsing within the next generation due to abysmally low birth rates, then no. You are contributing to the maintenance of your society. If you and a few dozen other people survive an apocalyptic event and you need to repopulate the planet then no. You’re saving mankind from exctinction. If you’re some poor farmer living in an isolated rural area and your only option for acquiring assistance for farm work is to create little helpers then no. You’re just trying to survive.
But absent all the aforementioned circumstances, it is selfish. Just what are you satiating other than your desire to raise a mini me? What greater purpose does procreation serve if there isn’t a societal need for your ability to bear offspring? If you can afford to adopt, why not share your love and resources with an existing child who is without a home? That would benefit society as a whole.
It is selfish. But it is not necessarily a bad thing. Really, as long as you’re emotionally and financially stable enough for a child then it’s really no one’s business if you have children. We’re all selfish to some degree. Selfishness is only a problem when it hurts people.
Creating new people who are going to exist in poor conditions and suffer because you need free help on your farm is not selfish? It’s hard to imagine anything more selfish.
If it’s your only option (as opposed to merely being too cheap to hire someone to help you look after your farm when you can afford it), no it’s not selfish. This is literally how the human race has propagated itself for the most part, this is why up until recently (as in within the last hundred years) people typically had large families. A couple could not be successful in running and maintaining a household and sustenance for themselves without the aid of additional help, especially as they inevitably age out of their physical ability to handle the heavy work of farming.
Plus to whom would you pass on your property to? Rural communities would be ghost towns without farming families and they’re vital to our societies. Oh, and if humans throughout history thought like you we literally wouldn’t exist.
You sound like an anime villain who wants to kill everyone in order to eliminate suffering. Life needs to have pain it is that pain that motivates growth. If there was no pain there would be no pleasure.
The key point here is to deny any pain from occurring. The fact that war, disease, heartache, murder, and a host of other problems come so easily but pleasure does not is reason enough. Pain is easily available but joy is not. We are aware of our own impending death.
This link explains it, but it’s generally what I have been stating all along. As long as some suffering exists it’s better to not expose anyone to it any further by havinrg children.
I’m wonder if YOU have read the link you’re posting and understood what most people are saying.
Seems to me, most people are saying: dum vivimus vivamus
You’re wrong, by the way. My cite is the countless generations of people who’ve come before you. The overwhelming majority of whom have suffered far more than you, and the overwhelming majority of whom chose to live their lives without the obsessive self-indulgent whining and nihilism.
So, I’m not going to read your link, and it’s not cricket IMO to keep asking people to read it. If there are salient points there, paraphrase them or excerpt the important parts. If you can’t make your argument here, perhaps it’s not much of an argument.
And if people stop having children, today’s children will, in about seventy years, undergo unimaginable suffering. Encouraging universal child-free status is a monstrous act.
You keep saying that but it STILL doesn’t make it true. Joy is readily available in a multitude of ways that outbalances any misery.
Nope, we really don’t have to. That doesn’t sound like something that would bring much joy to my life so I’d rather avoid the suffering caused by of reading it.
Why don’t you try presenting some of the more compelling arguments?
You also haven’t proven that joy is readily available.
It’s still a simple fact that to live is to suffer, to be sentient is to suffer. It would be better to prevent such suffering if it’s in our power to do so, whether or not the cycle continues again isn’t the point. The point is that we as humans have a choice that animals don’t. The only way to truly minimize suffering is to stop reproducing. Anything else seems more like a band aid solution. Simply put, there is a logical reason to reproduce.
Those countless generations also had illogical reasons for reproducing, considering there is no logical reason to reproduce. They also likely believed in God and the afterlife, seems like we have to weave all these illusions and additional meaning just to make it worth to stick around. That seems rather defective.
It also a fallacy that because something was done in the past that we should do it now.
And again this is flawed all-or-nothing thinking. I’d ask you try again, but you’ll just repeat the same unsupported nonsense. The cycle continues around and around until one of us stops. Fortunately I have the good sense for that to be me.