When I said ‘How far back would the accusation go.’ I meant: who are we looking to place blame on the cruelty of coerced “life”? Our parents? Our grandparents? The chain goes all the way back to the first spark of life, however it began. I was trying to make the point that life created itself. There is no one with whom to place the blame. We can choose to stop procreating based on philosophy, but to ignore that the desire to have children is largely instinctual is to overlook your (and others) humanity.
When I said that awareness is the universe’s way of appreciating itself, I was merely trying to put a seemingly contradictory notion into plain english. Of course the universe is an indifferent entity. But we are not. How is this so? WHY is there something rather than nothing, when an indifferent, unaware universe came into existence before we did? Like Liberal said, thinking about it becomes circular.
Believe it or not, I see your point. An indifferent universe begat life that is aware of itself. This life endures cruelty upon agonizing cruelty, ad infinitum. Why continue? Why go on with this pointless agony? How could you think about passing this horrible birthright onto yet another conscience soul? It’s your prerogative to decide that. But to assume that for the rest of humanity is an arrogant stance. For a lot of us (yes, i know, you hate that word) the desire to keep on living is very strong. You might say it’s the fear of death (the unknown). I say it’s the fear of non-existance (for me, a rather knowable experience… just like it was before i was born). Now that I’m here, I’m extremely grateful. I try and relish the experience as much as possible. In all this talk of cruelty, we forget about pleasure. Merely existing is pleasure enough. Perhaps the greatest cruelty of all is the apprehension and anticipation of our impending non-existence. But to place that cruelty on the shoulders of procreation is to misappropriate the issue. Knowing that I won’t exist after I die, maybe I can take some peace in that. I’m simply going back to whence I came.
Also, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. There are ways to minimize our perceived cruelty. It could be that it’s merely an “engineering” problem. Maybe someday humanity will conquer. Don’t tell me when enough is enough. It’s still too early (if ever) to tell.
As for the implication that you didn’t believe any of us were seriously thinking the matter over, maybe I was too quick to judge your true intentions when you said, “What do you THINK”. I realize it was in response to posts that were egging the matter a bit. To me, I felt that by that point in the thread, the true intentions for this debate was not to argue what seemed the ‘greatest human cruelty’, but rather to discuss whether or not humanity deserves to continue.