No, you're a fool if you truly believe this. Every generation has had some form of this feeling. Imagine considering having children during WW1, or WW2, or during Vietnam or Korea? Then after that we had McCarthyism and the Cold War - all seemingly hopeless days. Yet there is still so much beauty in the world, and there is so much that makes life worth living.
My son will turn 2 in a few months. It's tough being a parent, but it is entirely worth it. You cannot give into myopia - every time I hear him laugh, I am reminded that there is good in the world and it is worth fighting for. He will have his own challenges to face in life, but it is our job as a society to equip him, and all of the next generation, with the tools they need to succeed.
I'm troubled about the future, but you cannot make that stop you from striving for better days. As Marcus Aurelius said, never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
I've been re-reading the Lord of the Rings lately, and there is a lot there on this topic, but I always think back to Sam. We all should be so lucky to have a friend like that, but what he says when all hope seems to be lost is truly striking:
"It's like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
Tolkien wrote this after his experiences fighting in The Somme. If he could find hope and found the courage to keep striving for better days, then so should we.
I don't think I would have brought a new person into the world during any of the other time periods you mention either.
That’s fair, and not an unreasonable choice. What I can’t get over is people acting like that’s the only reasonable choice, and that people who have children are idiots.
Just look around in this thread and you’ll see some smug ass attitudes. It kind of reminds me of those 14 year old kids who feel immensely smart because they’re atheist, you know?
I didn’t say people who have children are idiots. I just think it’s immoral
Ok lol, my point remains exactly the same and I think your viewpoint is incredibly reductive.
You really think it’s ethical to bring another human into this world?
I don’t think it’s objectively and clearly unethical, so I think your claim that it is is wrong.
Why do you think it's not?
The only way to experience suffering is to be alive. The only way to be born is without consent
So? The only way to contribute to community is to be alive. The only way to feel joy is to be alive.
Consent doesn't make sense for a nonexistant being.
Is the joy worth the pain? What if they don't want to contribute to a community? Can you guarantee the joy will outweigh the pain? What gives you the right to will another being into existence?
If the being will become conscious and self aware, why doesn't their consent matter?
Is the joy worth the pain?
Is the pain justifying withholding joy?
What if they don't want to contribute to a community?
Humans are a social species. That's like asking: "What if it doesn't want to drink?"
Can you guarantee the joy will outweigh the pain?
Since when are we modeling everything we do on guaranteed knowledge?
What gives you the right to will another being into existence?
Rights aren't given. They're negotiated. I negotiate the right with the person that conceives the child with me.
If the being will become conscious and self aware, why doesn't their consent matter?
Consent doesn't matter for hypothetical futures.
I don't believe you won this. I'm not siding with the person you're discussing this topic with, but they made better moral arguments.
Your supposition that consent can morally come from two seperate human beings, despite the potential condemnation of the new human, is inherently flawed. The same logic could be used to excuse a huge variety of cruelties. Giving someone something (even life itself), does not inherently grant the donors agency over that life.
For example, if a terrible disease that brings pain and very early death is genetically passed on by one person that decides knowingly to have a child, and the child is born with that disease, one could easily make the argument that it was immoral for that individual to have a child, instead of adopting.
You yourself said they are not yet existent, so really is joy being "withheld"? That doesn't work in your framework, I think.
Just because a human exists does not mean they fall neatly into a category where they innately love "contributing to a community". We're not apes, well most of us :p
rights are negotiated
You only mentioned the rights of the parents (in a strangely cold and transactional way btw lol). What of the child's rights? They must negotiate with you for them after their nonconsensual birth?
Consent doesn't matter for hypothetical futures
It's not hypothetical--a child is born. They live and experience. You're in a paradoxical state where consent doesn't matter because the kid doesn't exist, yet they necessarily must exist to experience the joy you mention
What if you bring a child into the world that's born with a major, incurable defect?
Life is not always full of joy, in fact, for many it's devoid of it. I think really good points are being made here against children.
I don't believe it's necessarily immoral to have kids, but I DO think it's a serious grey area. It's emphatically not the positive action society makes it out to be.
What if you bring a child into the world that's born with a major, incurable defect?
What's your point? That disabled people's lives aren't worth anything? 🤨
Life is not always full of joy, in fact, for many it's devoid of it.
ummm, source? O.o
Also: live can be better, you know. Just because life sucks for some today, doesn't mean it can't improve in the future. That's simply a defeatist stance.
I think really good points are being made here against children.
I've yet to see one, tbh.
I don't believe it's necessarily immoral to have kids, but I DO think it's a serious grey area.
I think, the question alone shows a misunderstanding of existence: not everything can be cathegorized into "good" and "bad".
I really appreciate this point of view. I don't strongly find myself on either side of the isle here, but I think you are making stronger points than those supporting the mainstream opinion that procreation is essential and important.
The argument against you seems to be "but there have been worse times to have kids, and people still had them." That is emphatically not a good argument.
I think I have a fairly cynical view that reproduction is primarily a selfish act based solely on our biological drive to continue our species. I've pondered for a long time, and I fail to see a more logical conclusion than that.
Life is tough and there are no guarantees. Rolling the dice by having a kid seems like a messed up thing to do imo.
That said, I would adopt a child or children. That's a better way to ensure you are putting kindness and hope into the world where it's needed, rather than creating another vessel for pain from whole cloth.
You're awfully judgy for someone who doesn't like other people judging you for having kids.
Just let people have a difference of opinion to you. It's okay if some people look down on your choices. This is inevitable in life.
I don’t even have kids lol
Calling people out for being condescending is not the same as being condescending. This reeks of the same mentality that people who unironically say hating racists makes you hateful and therefore just as bad as racists have.
I’d say you can find things that make life worth living if you’re already here. But if someone's not "here", why drag someone you're supposed to love the
most into this mess when we can’t even properly look after the children that are already here.
I’m not anti-child - I’d consider adopting if it didn’t cost like $20k. I’m anti-new child for myself, and yeah I get sad when I see other people have kids, especially now. It's like having another kid when you lived in the middle of the dust bowl and people were actively dying from starvation and the dust. Probably not the best time to have kids, similar to now. They just couldn't easily make the choice to not have kids back then.
There are tons of arguments in favour of having kids like what if they cure cancer etc.
However, for myself, I truly believe there will be an ecological collapse due to climate change if not during my lifetime, in the immediate next generation. And we’re still not doing enough. I don’t want to flee natural disasters with a child in tow. One of best things you can do for the climate is not have kids. I'm privileged enough to make that choice so I did, but it's not my only reason. You got late stage capitalism and the accelerating concentration of resources with the hyper wealthy, war / nuclear war, and the fact that pregnancy is one of most risky things I can medically do. Social media, the toxic drug supply, the rise of fascism (again), microplastics in literally fucking everything. I don't even think we'll have social healthcare or social security in Canada by the time I die because they're gutting our programs so badly.
I get that people have a strong reaction to their choices being called immoral. Morality looks different for everyone. However, the counterargument of "Well I have children and they're great and bring me so much joy etc" falls on deaf ears, because it truly does not sound like joy to me and when I say I am anti-child for myself I am telling you that. It's like trying to convince someone skydiving is the greatest thing - some people love it, but not my cup of tea. It is so foreign to me that whenever I hear parents say this it feels like they are trying to convince themselves that they made the right choice.
Have you watched Idiocracy? I consider myself a smart guy, and having children is my way to fight against the world getting stupider.
Also, it is a joy. Yeah, it's expensive, and yeah, it's a ton of work. But it's like working on a very big project that you know you'll be proud of when it's done. I didn't understand it before because I only experienced other people's children, but it's different with your own children in a way that's hard to explain.
What I don't get is, why not just adopt? Instead of creating more potential for misery, why not reduce it while still being able to enjoy parenthood?
It’s usually exceptionally expensive, especially considering insurance won’t be any help.
What I don’t get is why people pretend fostering isn’t even an option!
Idiocracy is eugenics propaganda. People don't get dumber because of their genes but because of worse education.
Like the other commenter said, adopt if you want to improve the world (and not just your own life), but that's harder without the biological attachment that comes from your own kids.
(Not trying to be rude btw, just noting generally my thoughts)
I don't want to have kids simply because I'm miserable and never consented to being born. I am not suicidal but I would have rather not been born in the first place.
Most people grow up happier than me, so I can't really make a philosophical argument out of my own experience. All the best to you and your family!
I would rather not have been born in the first place
This is called being passively suicidal
Well said.
I'd have to disagree from the angle that, you cannot philoshpy your way out of ecology. If you actually look at a population graph for any species which experiences a massive spike in birthrates, and what comes for them afterwards, you would probably come to a conclusion that the rate at which we've been producing kids is very unsustainable, and while we probably shouldn't tell people not to have kids completely we should probably begin to consider how to transition towards more sustainable population numbers. A given ecosystem can only sustain so much of one species before it begins to break down. Our Eco system is the entire world and it is very much breaking down as we hit record temperatures year after year. There were lights at ends of tunnels during every war as they've always like, ended with a winning side that could rebuild/regrow, and even ecological collapses have been recovered from by humans but we're not going to get to be the humans that recover, and it doesn't look like our kids will be either. So, if we want to have kinda okay lives we should maybe consider minimizing the impact from what is about to happen, and also not bringing children into a world that has pretty much no chance of being better for them than it was for us.
You're conflating population growth with capitalistic and exploitative growth. the fact that we're destroying our ecology does have little to do with the population and everything to do with capitalist overextraction.
The capitalists would extract less if they had fewer workers and not as many people to sell stuff to.
are u serious?
I’m being a little snide but yeah supply and demand right? If the population reduces it impacts the demand for products and also the supply of workers.
Capitalists aren’t going to stop ruining the earth out of the goodness of their hearts or anything.
I get that less workers would mean more power to the workers, but avoiding having kids to limit the supply of workers seems, idk, fucking weird and also weirdly passive?
You can protest, join a union, start a workers co-op or organise in different ways, but that takes effort. Or you could not have kids, which takes less effort than having kids, and say it’s praxis? Idk, to me this feels like packaging your own personal choice as a grand political stand, as if you would jump at the opportunity to have kids if we lived in a socialist society.
Also, to counter your point, historically a lot of protest and unrest came from a dissatisfied populace with not enough job opportunities. So by that logic you should just pop out kids so they’ll be a part of the revolution. I don’t believe this, to be clear, but I mention it as a way to illustrate that basing your decision to have kids on how it will affect the supply and demand of labour is really fucking weird, and also not even something with a predictable outcome.
Oh my heavens no it’s not the only reason not to have kids and it’s not even factor #1 for me as a reason to not. Just one factor among many.
But this part of the thread started with a claim, as I understood it, that population growth wasn’t the problem - that the problem was instead capitalistic exploitation.
I’m just pointing out that limiting one could solve the other. Because I don’t think the oligarchs who rule the world will ever let us protest/unrest in a meaningful way again. People are kept just comfortable enough with fast food, Starbucks, entertainment, etc and just tired enough from selling labour that the vast majority of people wouldn’t care or engage with any sort of meaningful reform to the system.
We can’t even get people to engage in not electing King Fascist (US) and far-right populist Milhouse (Canada). For what reason??? Our other alternatives are middling, one is too old and in Canada I think they’re just tired of the tone and the tone deafness of our current guy. Seems like pretty lame excuses peddled by media that is owned by the very same oligarchs who stand to benefit the most from far right governments. The recent news in the UK and France makes it sting a little less, I guess.
How bad are we prepared to let things get? It’s gonna have to get pretty ugly at a local level for any meaningful change to happen.
I get what you’re saying, but it just feels incredibly (and needlessly) defeatist to me.
Socialism would no doubt increase the planets carrying capacity for humans, but not make it limitless. It is also nowhere near close to being implemented so I am assessing the world that we have, not the one I'd like it to be. Also, even if we did away with capitalism tomorrow we'd probably still need to discuss reasonable population growth and come up with a reasonable estimate for our planet's carrying capacity which could be weighed against quality of life, human happiness, etc as we transition our economy away from late stage capitalism.
I'd argue that it's more likely that capitalism is abolished tomorrow than any government having a proposed solution to population control that's not fundamentally evil.
I wouldn't. Really all post industrial countries need to do is stop trying to directly insentivize having kids and maybe provide access to free/low cost contraceptives. I think that's a lot easier than having socialism implemented in enough countries for it to matter.
Maybe Santa will bring that to you next Christmas, if you're a good Femcowboy. /s
I agree that having kids can be awesome, but the idea it's foolish to see it as a waste of time is shitty as well. OP is perfectly reasonable to find it terrible, because for many people, it is. People are less happy after having children on average, as alien and counterintuitive as it may seem to you. It's a spectrum, with many people actually being happier, or at least more content with their life after. However, many people don't.
The problem is that people make the mistake of seeing children as a means rather than an end. If they knew the truth, that raising children is the end goal for a parent rather than a step to something else, they wouldn't want to do it. Those people shouldn't be mislead. If you won't get satisfaction out of nurturing your kid, it's better for both you and your potential offspring that you live your own life. The kid might grow up and love life, but both of you will suffer for it.
Someone else, someone who really wants to change diapers and deal with tantrums to see a human grow, can raise the next generation just fine. If you want to pass on genes or whatever, but see no purpose beyond that, then have someone adopt them and be on your way. It'd be a win-win for us both.
OP is claiming having children is wrong, in other words that people who have children are wrong. They’re not saying that it’s not for them but might be the right choice for others, but rather that their own choice is the right one.
Life is a painful mess, no matter what you do, you can't guarantee that your child won't have the most horrid existence imaginable, rolling the dice on someone else's life due to your own selfish need to procreate is what they're saying is wrong. I regret that my mom had me, life has been a living hell, nothing short of her not having me would have changed that.
Your life is a painful mess and you’re generalising that to everyone. I’m sorry you’re unhappy about your life, but that really isn’t an argument about other people having children.
Life can be painful, it can be beautiful, it can be dull or exciting, or anything in between. It’s not inherently negative or positive, as you’re claiming.
The point is lost on you. I genuinely hope your kid has a good life, but I personally would never gamble someone else's life for my own selfish wants, and I can't reconcile others decisions to do so either.
But you’re basing that on your own negative experiences in life, and you’re acting like they’re objective and universal.
Also, by that logic you shouldn’t do anything that could potentially cascade into making someone else unhappy, which would be absolutely debilitating.
Don’t get me wrong, I get that you should think twice, thrice and even more about having kids, especially if you’re not in a position to give them a good life and/or if you have certain heritable issues. But your overall position seems overly negative and, idk, somewhat misanthropic? In your worldview humanity should just stop existing because people can be unhappy in life. It’s overly reductive and negative to me.
Everybody is basing their opinions on their own experience.
I find it hilarious that you can argue your own experience is any different.
To better explain the argument: they are not saying "it's 50:50 the child will suffer", they mean "there is obviously a non-zero chance that children will suffer", which is absolutely true. It's up to the individual to consider their situation (money, time, temper, parental knowledge, genetic diseases etc) to gauge how much more may their children have it worse than average.
And I would say that many children do indeed suffer, and many don't have the conditions that I personally would consider ideal.
But having a child is always on their respective parents. Morality won't change their minds.
They’re saying life is miserable, I’m saying it’s not inherently miserable. Like, that’s not a subjective take lol.
Also, what about my comment made it seem like they said it was 50/50? And even if I thought that’s what they said, how does that invalidate my argument?
Even in my comment I acknowledge there are multiple reasons not to have children, so I really don’t understand what you’re arguing against.
And OP is wrong to claim that. Both of your gut feelings about what is correct for you are valid, but you're both talking past each other emotionally. Your comment sounded condescending to me, and I actually wish I could have kids.
I've always loved that Samwise Gamgee line. Makes me tear up every time I read it.
Ah yes, it's not the billionaires, corrupt politicians and massive industry inefficiency that's causing our problems, it's children!!!
I swear to God, reading stupidity from people I expect to be on my side of the political divide hurts especially bad.
More like yes those are the problems and children are not the answer to those problems.
I'm not sure where they got the impression anyone was blaming children unless they are intentionally being obtuse to attack ideas they disagree with. Similar to people who screech "you hate dogs!?!" when you complain about shitty dog owners.
It’s humanity that causes problems
When an invasive species is destroying an ecosystem, what do you do?
I’m not advocating for any policy, I’m just saying people shouldn’t have children. It’s unethical.
I personally can think of several solutions to the climate crisis less drastic than humanity becoming extinct
Not necessarily extinct, but definitely less populous
That's a policy.
Why would you expect a random person on Lemmy to be on your side?
But without infinite growth how can we feed the capitalistic engine with more souls?
Just think of all them empty mines, sad and alone, only wanting to be filled with the sound of children coughing themselves to death from black lung.
People have children because they want to, not for growth. In a relatively stable society most people don't even have many children...
"If I didn't have children, who'd take care of me when I get old?"
"If we didn't have children, who'd work for our pensions and keep society running when we retire?"
"I want to live a happy life after I retire, and you (young people) are obliged to provide that."
Real words I heard.
A lot of people have kids mostly for future-proofing themselves.
India: "I need many children to support my everyday life and me when I'm old."
Germany: "wtf are children?"
(A bit exaggerated of course, but should illustrate your point.)
Access to opportunities and birth control drop birthrates.
Lots and lots of poor countries have large populations because poor parents are hoping many children can work. Also lack of access to birth control and far right groups insisting children are a religious necessity.
I'm sure that big bad capitalists will be sad of you not having kids and spending all your time and money on movies, games, traveling, ...
What money?
Lol, I'm not far-left but I do love comments like these.
It's important to note that capitalism is far from the only major exploitative system in the world. This said, I'm part of that particular system, and yes... It truly does feel like we're just cogs in an ever-hungry, broken system.
It's fine if you don't want kids for yourself, but antinatalism as an ideology is only a few steps away from ecofascism.
correct. i would have no problem if this post and the subsequent comments defending it didn’t use the words “wrong” and “immoral.” but they do and that’s fascist territory.
Lmao, no it’s not
"Nuh uh"
It is discussed with those words because it has been transformed into an ethical question. It is a personal freedom, but it can be asked how ethically correct or incorrect that action is aside from our current laws or [cultural/social] morality.
It's about wonder, ponder. I think that's always important, even for things that seem taboo at first.
I guess each person has a different approach to antinatalism. I don’t want to bring children into the world because unlike many people who outright lie, I do not think it will bring me joy. I’m also scared that if I bring a child into this world and it will suffer as much as I currently do, I won’t be able to live with the blame.
Antinatalism isn't just a personal decision to not have kids, it's an ideological belief that having kids is morally wrong.
This is an overgeneralisation which completely misses the nuance. Antinatalism does not postulate that it's morally wrong to procreate, only that it is morally wrong to bring another human consciousness into a soup of suffering, which... yeah, kinda'! I mean, is the world not presently a soup of suffering, with extra helpings on the way?
Personally, I doubt most people who subscribe to Antinatalism would do so if society weren't literally a hell hole right now.
if "a soup of suffering" means "life/the world" u just said "its not that its morally wrong to give birth, but that its morally wrong to give birth"? :p
The world as it is now, yes. But this is far from the only option, thus the world is not an inevitable soup of suffering. So, no.
Unless you're both an antinatalist and a philosophical pessimist and believe that the world will always be that soup. But yeah, that's not the case for all antinatalists. A friend of mine calls himself a "temporary antinatalist".
True. I guess the distinction, though semantically redundant, seems to be contextually necessary nowadays...
The problem with that argument is that the world has ALWAYS been a terrible place for the vast majority of people to live, at least since the industrial revolution and arguably since the agricultural revolution. The now vanishing middle class, an artifact of post war economic boom, was about the only time ever it was "morally right" to have a child because chances were very good that they would lead a life of even less suffering than their parents. I chose not to have kids because I agree that the world is headed in a bad direction, but more so because of my financial situation as a working class person, and my mental health as a result of a decade working check to check. If I were in the situation my parents were when I was born, I truly think the equation would work out differently.
I have to disagree with the idea that the world has always been a terrible place. Actually building upon what you've said subsequently, the world itself isn't terrible, it's just a rock with some moss and critters on it, the systems we've created for ourselves are terrible. That's exactly the nuance to which I was referring in my initial comment, Antinatalism isn't universally applicable to all existing and potential existential contexts.
I'm not antinatalist, but I am in favor of voluntary human extinction.
Crazy take: people get to choose if they have children.
I wish I got to choose if my parents had children.
... without being judged for it, I hope?
I wish they did but the governments are intent on taking that choice away
Yes... But should they get that choice?
If I could wave a magic wand, I'd make it so every 12 year old that could make sperm (trans, cis, whatever) gets a reversible vasectomy automatically. Then, if/when they ever want and plan for starting a family, they can take the class on childhood development and how to be a good parent who raises not shitty humans. If they pass, great! They get to undo the vasectomy and try for a family. If not, oh well, no one wanted to have to support your shitty kids in the first place.
I have no idea how something like this could ever actually be implemented in a fair way... Hense the need for the magic wand
How about we fix the fucking society, so raising children isn't so fucking volatile instead of thinking up some wand of eugenics +2?
Well, yeah, that would be the best way to go... I'd still think people should have to pass a class before they're allowed to be responsible for another human beings entire life
I don't trust state insitutions enough for that not to turnsinto yet another way to screw over the poor.
Certainly not as long as the corporations are in control of the government
Weirdo
Guilty
Ah, genocidal eugenics, there you are. How I didn't miss you.
Neither of those words apply here.
They do, in fact.
Nah... Not sure what you think those words mean, but no one's talking about genetics or the eradication of a race of people.
Ah of course, my mistake.
Eugenics certainly couldn't be checks notes deciding who can have kids, and humans arent checks notes people.
Absolutely ridiculous. Imagine actually being pro genocide.
Yes. Ultimately, the reason we should let people choose isn't to prevent people who would be bad parents from becoming parents. That's an issue that couldn't be solved directly, but could be indirectly addressed by providing comprehensive sex ed. The real reason we should let people choose is so people aren't forced to do or not do something they don't or do want. People may choose the wrong option for themselves and regret it, but outside forces aren't going to know what they want better than they will.
Magical thought experiments can often mislead, as ethics cannot exist outside of our uncertain, unmagical reality.
But in this case the "wrong option" means a human being will suffer terribly (assuming we're talking about parents who wouldn't pass the test)... Do we not ethically owe it to children/humanity to take some level of precautions against allowing them to grow up in hell?
We do owe them protection, but not only do we owe ourselves reproductive rights, there are other ways to protect those children. We can give people the knowledge and resources to be better parents while taking kids away from those that still suck. How many parents largely suck because of poverty? How many never got the chance to learn how to parent or what the experience will be like?
Of course. You can, and it’s your right to do so. But that doesn’t mean it’s ethical.
Antinatalism is the first law of robotics, reduced to absurdity. It answers the question by forgetting why you asked it in the first place.
Yes, it does eliminate human suffering. However, it does so in the same way that a bullet to the head cures a headache.
Yeah, a nuclear exchange would be a faster way of achieving what antinatalists would achieve if they got their way.
you do understand that the joker is in the wrong here, right? like in this scene he's a mentally i'll man saying that killing people is funny.
if you genuinely believe that existence has an inherent negative value then i strongly suggest you seek help, and i don't mean that to be facetious. antinatalism is depression turned into a moral philosophy, it posits itself as a solution to suffering by offering an unrealizable future, but really it's an excuse to not even attempt to make the world better.
Memes are generally divorced from their original source.
This format is only used to show the creator has a controversial idea.
antinatalism is depression turned into a moral philosophy
Not necessarily. Antinatalism and other pessimistic points of view can be held by non-depressed people. On the internet, it seems like psychological pessimism is the same as philosophical pessimism as many depressed people do adopt these points of view and flood the forums. Adding to that, they often abandon their philosophical pessimism when their depression lifts, leaving a testimony that it is true: only depressed people defend these ideas. But we need only an example of a person that is not depressed and still values antinatalism on its own to demonstrate that your statement is not the case, and I think I might be that example. Many other examples might be found in universities. I hope one day we get a formal social study so that I do not have to give anecdotal "evidence" and personal information.
Now, I'd add to defend those I know that are indeed depressed, we should be debating and trying to refute the philosophy itself. Even if depression is leading them into these kinds of thoughts, we cannot say that this disproves their ideas. Many brilliant discoveries and inventions were reached in what we classify as pathological states. The manic researcher and crafter is an archetype for a reason (e.g., mad scientist, mad artist), and we have not fewer examples of depressed people that made valuable work, such as author F. Dostoevsky. There are two books that are coming to my mind that explain why (specifically) mood disorders are pathological but still let people do great things: A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illnesses and Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. So, as I was saying, the fact that someone is clinically depressed does not inform us about how true or how solid their ideas might be. Discrediting them just because they suffer from depression would be an ad hominem, and, in the moral part, ableism. We need to listen to/read their ideas and discuss the ideas instead.
it posits itself as a solution to suffering by offering an unrealizable future
This is a very misunderstood part of antinatalism. Almost no antinatalist is utopic in their views, that is, few antinatalists think that the point must be to cease all reproduction and that antinatalism fails if they don't. That would be an ideal scenario; there's no suffering without existence, but that is a dream. There are no goals for many antinatalists, just the idea that bringing children into this world is not ethically correct. They might follow antinatalism and not have children or adopt, but not preach much about it because they know practically no one will listen. I, for instance, bring this problem to people that might have not thought about it before. If they go ahead and have children, I'd still think that was not correct, but well, nothing to do but to help take care of this new life. It can be as pragmatic as that.
but really it's an excuse to not even attempt to make the world better.
No. In my case, I try to help in other ways. This right here is an example as I'm trying to broaden the discussion around these topics in a healthy way because I know Reddit has sadly damaged these debates with a lot of insults and bad attitudes from many sides. They insult people, so these people go to their subreddit and insult them back... It is not a good way to first learn about these topics, and many are learning what antinatalism is first on Reddit. I hope Lemmy will be slightly better.
Anyway, I also try to better the world in the ways I can. Still, as a person that values philosophical pessimism, I think we are only saving lives from a neverending fire, or giving palliatives for an incurable disease. I enjoy my life and I try to help others enjoy theirs as much as this existence lets us.
If anything, philosophies around negative utilitarianism, preference utilitarianism, overall pessimism, etc. tend to respect others a lot and value their suffering negatively. That's usually their point. Suffering is not a "necessary side for pleasure" or "a trial from which we gain something" or "something not that bad" or any explanation different cultures have given. Suffering is bad; in a better world, it wouldn't exist like this. It is tragic, but it is reality, so we must face it and combat suffering as best as we can. I'd say these ethical paths inspire protection of others more than others less centered on sentience.
Finally, it is good advice to seek professional help, but not on the sole basis of someone being an antinatalist. If our OP here is depressed, I do recommend visiting a professional.
when i say that it's depression turned into philosophy i mean it in the sense that it is a philosophy that will inevitably lead to depression, or at the very least a skewed world view (think you'll see a red car and you're going to spot a lot of red cars, think existence is suffering and you'll probably focus on suffering a lot).
interesting breakdown tho, i'm glad that you still have hope. i dislike antinatalism and similar philosophies mostry due to their "doomerism" and belief that experiences are somehow cumulative
Oh! That's a complicated consequence, yes. I cannot lie and say that studying sad things won't ever make one sad. It's... hard.
I don't think it is a rule that it is going to warp one's vision, but I've seen people getting depressed and definitely biased when studying philosophical pessimism. It seems like something that only happens in jokes or memes, but no, reading Arthur Schopenhauer or whoever can be dangerous if one is already vulnerable to depression, isolation, etc.
I definitely advise discretion. And it's not because they're dark monsters, monks of death dressed in black robes. There's nothing too morbid about the books; that's probably just the myth time has created around them. In reality, their danger is just pondering on dark aspects of life that can be disheartening if one is not prepared. Even when the reading is for high school or university, or for curiosity, I think these authors should be picked with an open mind and a serene "heart".
Thank you for reading and answering.
It's absolutely fine if you don't want to have kids
I don't agree with the Antinatalist idea that having children is immoral. Or that Antinatalism reduces suffering.
If I'm incorrect please elaborate
/> Pulls existence from the void into this mortal coil
/> Questions how not doing so could have prevented suffering
Pulls existence from the void
This point is highly dependent on whether or not you believe there is some sort of soul or existence before birth. I cannot argue on this point since this is pure belief, so I will accept your view for the sake of the discussion
Questions how not doing so could have prevented suffering
You could say it prevents suffering, but it also prevents Joy, Love, Friendship. Sure it also prevents Sadness and Grief and so on. It prevents everything by way of not giving life a chance.
If you think you cannot provide a happy life to your children then it's perfectly valid to not want children. But it's egoistic to think that other people should not have kids because of your own world view.
Many Antinatalists believe that life in the current world is filled with so much suffering that it's not worth being born.
But that's like... Your opinion man! Let people make their own choices
Important distinction: Only one side is using "belief", and that is the one that has subscribed or invented themselves the idea of life before or after death. Zero evidence supports this. I'm not saying it does or does not exist, but it's a weak point to bring up.
You could just as easily invent the idea of children being literally us, reborn, to justify their creation. Or that children are literal currency in the after-life market. Conversly, what if taking lives gives us points? Maybe the Vikings had it right.
As for your second point, I think it's the first strong natalistic argument I've seen here! I don't agree with it any more than I agree with the antinatalism folks, but I appreciate the optimistic counter to all of the pessimistic points being made here.
In the end, I guess I remain of the opinion that this area of life (like countless others) is a gray area. I don't see either extreme as logically moral or immoral without more information being applied on a, case-by-case basis
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I'm enjoying playing devil's advocate here, however. People who justify having children as some sort of gift to the world are far less reasonable, and the arguments being made here by those types are exhausting.
I can diffuse just about every comment like this here with a simple word: "adoption".
I agree that bringing life into the world is morally bad. I also agree that eating other animals is morally bad, as is killing, always. However, that does not mean we should not do these things at times. You just need to understand that you are still committing an immoral act for personal gain. There is no such thing as a perfectly moral existence, as the world is a cruel place which cares little about morality and often forces you to be immoral. You should instead work towards being as moral as in out can when you can, and accept that sometimes morality is out of your hands.
In the case of the child: you are bringing a human consciousness kicking and screaming into this world you know to be dangerous and cruel. That is immoral, and you did it either by failing precaution, or out of personal want or instinct. I think to repent, you are morally obligated to give that child a good life at minimum and ideally the best life you can. You are beholden to them until they can live on their own happily, and you are obligated to help them even after that. I also think that if that child resents how you've cared for them, you have no grounds to hold that against them, as you were the one that forced them into this world.
If you cannot do the above, you are should reconsider whether you are fit to have a child.
It is also arguable that to do justice without injustice, the only option is to adopt or guide another person who has no one providing things they need, and I don't think this kindness should be limited to children but children are the most vulnerable.
What a bunch of cringe edgy antinatalist nonsense. Think about the future, if you don't have kids, who are we gonna feed to the machine a few decades from now?
Who feeds the machine now, it's you so why are you even around
Antinatalism is reactionary and incorrect.
Need dragon slayers in the time dragons.
Suffering is inherent to the human condition. Is it okay to undertake actions that cause people suffering?
What makes something okay? Who decides what is okay and what is not okay?
I'm taking an utilitarian approach. Suffering should be avoided, and happiness maximized. Bringing another being into existence guarantees suffering, with a chance of creating happiness. That is not a gamble you should take on behalf of another being.
Is the potential (or guarantee) for suffering greater than the potential for joy? You also have to account for the joy of the person and the joy they create. I believe the potential for expected joy exceeds the guarantee of suffering.
What previous status quo are antinatalists trying to return to? "Reactionary" is just the left wing equivalent of "woke".
I suppose the previous status quo that anti-natalists want to return to is before the evolution of intelligent life. Word is still out on whether it's immoral for single-celled organisms to reproduce.
touch grass
especially when I see what kind of people choose to have kids
Then you're leaving the future to them.
And the suffering that they cause.
Such a doomer mindset
If noone is cultivating and passing on positive culture, it's not making the chances of reducing suffering any better is my point.
ETA: I am not, to be clear, trying to say that having children is, in itself, a morally/ethically good thing. Generally, it is neutral but may be otherwise depending on one's situation. Choosing whether or not to have children is a personal choice - what's right for one might not be for another. Declaring others morally/ethically wrong for having children is myopic and likely a result of projecting one's experience into others.
In addition, antinatalism is bordering on eco-fascism, which is not ok. It seems most commonly expressed to make one feel superior while not putting in effort to effect positive change, like anti-electoralism/accelerationism.
Adoption. Community building. Helping the disenfranchised.
These are all methods of bettering the future without pumping another child into this world. And arguably, they're morally better than having a child.
I didn't know these where mutually exclusive.
You were the one who implied that, by saying that not having children leaves it up to those who will.
Have you or are you planning to adopt a child?
They’re not making a choice. They’re anti-choice.
I think most people simply don’t appreciate what having a child is and what a massive responsibility it is. Bringing another human being into this world is a gift, one that you should be expected to nurture and love no matter what.
The problem is that many believe that a child is simply an extension of oneself and can be manipulated and contorted into whatever the parent wants. A child is not you, a child is not a free workforce, or laborer. Too many people who do not truly understand what they are bringing into this world are parents and thats why theres so many flawed individuals.
I think most people shouldnt have children and especially right now with the way the worlds headed but to say having children is completely wrong is immensely stupid.
(in addition i myself am abstaining from having children because i dont want the responsibility and i find the lil shits annoying.)
I think most people simply don’t appreciate what having a child is and what a massive responsibility it is.
I think you're talking out of your own ass, if you believe that most parents don't know all that.
mmmmm no id say youre talking out of your own ass.
Many parents when you truly get down to it seem to think the most important part of being a parent is spreading their genes and maintaining a bloodline.
I truly mean it when I say most parents dont realize how profound having a kid truly is. Otherwise i truly believe people take longer before having kid when it comes to finding another person to raise a kid with, considering what mental illnesses, or diseases that lurk in your dna.
I also think abortion wouldnt be that much of an issue if people consider when its truly the right time to raise a child.
So nah suck it brah.
Many parents when you truly get down to it seem to think the most important part of being a parent is spreading their genes and maintaining a bloodline.
WTF are you talking about? I don't know a single parent that does that.
I'll have to play the "you're no parent, so you simply have no idea card" here, since it's obviously like that.
As a parent, I thought I had an idea. Nope, still surprised. And I wanted the kid and have means to support them.
Yeah, most parents-to-be don't, since it's simply inconceivable, really.
From my experience,I personally agree with that sentiment. A lot of parents and parents to be put a lot on their kids that doesn’t need to be there, many don’t understand how much work it will be, and a lot put in much less work than they should.
It sounds like you are or would be an engaged parent to know it’s a lot of work to raise a little individual, but there are many people from many backgrounds.
That's simply something, no parent would say, so yeah: talking out of their asses galore down here.
So how about we fix the society as to that not only übermenschen can get children and born children have the resource of an intact social safety-net? Maybe that would be preferable to childless asses shaming parents whose situations they have no access to?
Most of the time, it's a lack of resources that disables parents to properly care for their kids. Try to be a supportive parent if you work 3 jobs to make ends meet.
You quoted the part where they said most people, but you're replying as if they said most parents.
Anyway, you'd hope people who don't know all that would learn better after the kid comes out, but I know some people don't. I can name two off the top of my head.
You quoted the part where they said most people, but you're replying as if they said most parents.
Hey, if they didn't mean most parents, then the first part of the sentence didn't apply.
I believed this once, but then I went to therapy. People have thrived under way worse conditions.
I'm more worried about the reefs thriving
Me too
Then not having kids is one of the best things you can do.
I am not willing to sacrifice having children. It's an integral part of life for me. Killing myself would probably be good for the climate as well.
Less good than not having children. But we are all free to make our own choices, but I don't think that you can seriously hold both "I care about the environment" and "I'm choosing to bring life into the world and damage the environment" ideas in your head without a lot of hypocrisy.
I know you may think, my one kid won't have such a big impact on the environment, but when 7 billion think that, the problem is exponential.
To be human is to hold contradicting understandings of reality in equal measure. The amount of people who hate the idea of animal cruelty (or environmental destruction for that matter), yet still consume animal products is astronomical.
The environment will never be saved by trying to convince people to not have kids. It's a biological staple of existence stretching back billions of years, and we as a species will never give that up.
Having children gives us a species a more personal stake in the planet's future, and it would be better to focus our energies on that angle instead of demonizing people who agree with you 95% of the time.
gross
I agree. The thought of bringing a child into the world in our current political and economical landscape would be gross.
hahaha it’s funny because you twisted my words to mean the opposite good one 😂😂😂
Minus the emojis, this statement would be great antihumor (not a disagreement with your point, I just love antihumor).
antihumor + emojis = a good antidote for unkind trolling in my experience :)
One of the problems with the historical Christian system, particularly in the US, is that its predicated on people living in the same place and going to the same church intergenerationally. As people are forced to migrate in order to find employment, they become untethered from their heritage church sites and the attendant communities that added real value to church membership.
The hyper-capitalization of the modern American Protestant movement hasn't helped, either. Very hard for the Southern Baptists to maintain participation when GenX, Millennial, and Zoomer cohorts no longer want to live in these heavily religious communities. They move to areas that don't have these highly active and Christian-dense neighborhoods. They fall out of the hyper-religious social circles. And they lose touch with the media and culture that ultimately drive these religious groups insane.
Meanwhile, the low housing prices and the increasingly finance and tech focused economic sectors are bringing in large numbers of religiously rivalrous migrant populations. The most common new religious constructions in the US are Mosques thanks to a large influx of Arab, Persian, and East African migrants. And because migrant populations and religious builders love cheap land, they're often showing up in and around declining Christian communities.
If you're out living in LA or Tampa or Houston and you're wondering why folks in Peoria, Indiana or Chattanooga, Tennessee or Tulsa, Oklahoma are losing their fucking minds over the super-scary illegal immigrant / Radical Islamic invasion, this is a big reason why. Their kids are all leaving for the coasts while lots of unseasonably tan people are showing up to take their place.
That... actually makes a lot of sense. Couldn't figure out why America, the land of immigrants, was so hostile to new people but now I can see why a poor old conservative feeling abandoned and surrounded by confusing things might think Trump actually makes sense.
As long as you're keeping it to your own life not trying to encourage genocide via antinatalist policy then you do you.
This. I don't have children and don't think its a good idea do to what humanity is doing to the planet, regardless of which element of humanity is to blame, but my other family members have children as do my friends and neighbors. Im not going to proselytize to them or encourage society to disallow it. I may not want it subsidized though, but even that there is often times no choice. For example while people may be bad for the planet in general, ignorant people is worse, so im gonnna want education funded and that same thing plays out for a lot of things.
The subsidies have an ontological value in that they improve the quality of life for the child. So removing subsidies will actively perpetuate and increase the very systemic issues that many antinatalists care about in the first place. You address this too, I'm just expressing agreement that simply removing chiodcare subsidies is not ethically simple even for staunch antinatalists.
In general governments ought to be working to support the people they represent. To me it seems an antinatalist who's goal is to reduce suffering would want to introduce things like a basic income or some such to improve the quality of life of those who do exist, not further take from those who have yet to be.
Yup. education, healthcare, basic income, carless cities, improved energy efficiency and usage of the cleanest sources. Im down.
Something that no one has discussed in this highly enlightened conversation here is the issue of consent. A person cannot consent to being born. Full stop. I don't know of a way around that besides ignoring it.
A person cannot consent to being born
But they also can't request it. What do you do for the people who don't exist yet that desire existence?
I should note that I have gone around the local NICU and requested all the children present to indicate a desire to stop existing. None of them agreed. Many of them were struggling mightily to continue to exist. A few even yelled at me for asking the question. I'll admit its a small sample size, but hard to argue with a 100% existence endorsement.
Fuck me that's the best counter point I have heard so far. Thanks!
(In case you really work at a NICU: thank you so much for your work.)
My adopted son was born premature, and I'm currently doing a daily sabbatical to check on him. By all rights, he shouldn't be alive. One of the brighter moments of being an American right now is standing in a room full of babies whose lives hinge on our willingness to fund Medicaid. Every one of these beds is costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours to maintain. And people are dedicating their entire careers to bringing early newborns off the brink of death.
Its put a whole new spin on the ideas of natalism and anti-natalism. So easy to see some chud troll on the internet saying we should pull the plug, because none of these kids "consented" to keep breathing. But then you've got rooms full of compassion and care and joy, as these medical workers weenie all these little guys and girls into the world with the power of modern medicine. Stunning and majestic. The NICU Ward should be on the god damned American Flag. Its a testament to our greatness.
Just to clarify, I'm not advocating for any baby to be taken off life support, that's a pretty abhorrent thing to accuse me of, if that's what you meant.
I work in critical care and routinely bring people back from the brink of death. With a living being, unless otherwise stated, their consent to life saving treatment is implied, and I'm happy to give it.
Philosophically, I'm just not convinced that there is such a thing as an implied consent to "make me exist when I don't exist already".
That's just how evolution works- something that already exists and is driven to stay alive is more likely to pass on its genetics than something that is not driven to stay alive. This fact has nothing to do with the philosophy of consenting to exist in the first place.
Edit: missed your first question. Something that does not exist cannot desire.
But how can something that doesn't exist have the capability of consent being violated?
Because the typical standard of consent is that in order to do something to someone, you should have informed consent. If you cannot obtain that, then you do not do the thing. Something that does not exist cannot give informed consent, therefore you should not do the thing.
I knowhow consent works, but existence is the precondition for anything constent-related, including violationg consent.
Non-interference is a good default position to have, but we are capable of acting on behalf of others when we have a certain threshold of confidence for what they would want in a situation. Otherwise, we would consider it wrong to give CPR to an unconscious person.
When it comes to life, people overwhelmingly prefer to continue existing when they have the power to choose. So it makes sense for us to presume that a hypothetical person would choose to be born given the opportunity.
This fact has nothing to do with the philosophy of consenting to exist
If living organisms are predisposed to prefer existence, this would imply existence is an inherently preferable state.
Something that does not exist cannot desire.
Prove it
If living organisms are predisposed to prefer existence, this would imply existence is an inherently preferable state.
It usually is- to a living organism, which is not what we're talking about.
Prove it
Come on bro you can't be serious about this.
😂 Made my day
If we are to assume that every non-existent person desires to exist, and that we have the obligation to not block this, then we should be having children whenever possible as to not block anyone.
Let's visualize this. If I decide to wait for another partner and a certain age, the humans that I could create with my current sexual partner in these years are screaming to be born and I'm ignoring them. I'm not letting Laura or Ignacio be born, and over them I'm preferring Óscar who will be born in 2028 of a different father. Am I doing something morally incorrect at negating Laura's and Ignacio's right to be? If so, as I said, you agree we have the obligation of having children whenever possible and we better start now you and me and everyone else reading. If not, if we don't have this obligation, then there's no problem if I skip Laura this year, Ignacio the next and Óscar and others later. Unless you want to save this by saying some people deserve to come into existence more than others, but I already say I won't agree with that.
Other people would argue in a different way. There are people who would say that even if we create good by bringing people that do consent retrospectively, we also harm forcing life into people that wouldn't and don't want life. And even if the proportion is absurd, not harming is always the priority over giving pleasure. This is the idea behind negative utilitarianism and other ethical paradigms. This also has been studied by philosopher David Benatar who reframed it, and now that's called "Benatar asymmetry" (but the question is older than him).
I hope my English does not betray my explanation...
If we are to assume that every non-existent person desires to exist, and that we have the obligation to not block this, then we should be having children whenever possible as to not block anyone.
Sure. This is the philosophical counterpoint to the "Nobody consented to exist so it is unethnical to bring anyone into the world". You spin it to argue everyone has a right to exist and you end up with some sort of neoliberal spin on the Quiverfull movement.
There are people who would say that even if we create good by bringing people that do consent retrospectively, we also harm forcing life into people that wouldn’t and don’t want life.
You're assuming objective standards for "good" and "harm" that aren't a given. And you're still ultimately dictating a choice on behalf of other people - both people who are being born and people who are doing the birthing. I mean, ffs, how do you even approach the idea of consent while intruding on two people in the act of coitus? "Stop nutting! You're violating the potential rights of a potential person!" is a thing you get to say only when you've disregarded the actual rights of an actual person.
not harming is always the priority over giving pleasure
That's a personal ideal, not a functional standard. In practice, people routinely engage in socially harmful practices for the sake of personal pleasure. And that goes well beyond sex. Let me know when we abolish the cruise line industry and then maybe you can come back and discuss chopping off everyone's balls for the sake of potentially existent people.
now that’s called “Benatar asymmetry”
The theory is rooted in the perspective that pain is bad. But even this isn't an objective standard.
Nothing is objective to our knowledge and nothing is a given, that's the point. I was not trying to declare those things as truths but trying to explain that there is room to consider them (e.g., to consider that little pain weighs more than enormous pleasure). I cited a philosopher who does, but there are many others. Those are the topics relevant to this discussion.
Antinatalism is not a negative attitude towards sex nor children.
People are free, free enough to create life. The antinatalist wonders if the people creating it have the right to do so, if it hurts in some way (and who), and if we should continue to do so. The answers are very different even among antinatalists. The only thing they have in common is that they do not approve ethically of creating new [human] lives. You can take out the square brackets for some.
And... that's it. I understand if many here believe that procreating is morally neutral or good, but I think there is validity in questioning it or in believing that it is morally incorrect. We all have our reasons and nobody ultimately knows.
Nothing is objective to our knowledge
Horrible news for physicists
Don't worry. Good physicists know it as they study epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of physics, among other things.
The problem I have with your argument is that it could easily be used to justify rape. A person who is incapable of giving consent is also incapable of requesting things, so does that make it okay to just assume consent?
It means that the original argument of consent to life is invalid. Consent isn't possible until life. It's a great philosophical problem but not one with a known solution.
Another note on the original post, their argument could also be used to justify going through the NICU and killing every newborn. So there's a clear 'pro life' bias going on here, with acts that bring more life being seen as good, regardless of consent. Wouldn't a more reasoned approach be to maintain, keep those who are alive, alive, and those not yet existing, unexisting? Forcing a being across the border is bad, regardless of direction.
Do you consider all heterosexual sex a form of rape?
For general rape, the victim is typically capable of giving consent but chooses not to, meaning we know the rapist is violating them. For situations where the victim is incapable of consenting, it is true that we are assuming a position for them. As a society, we have observed that being made to have sex in a vulnerable position is a negative experience, so it makes sense to extrapolate they would be opposed if they were capable of choosing.
For life, the observation is different. Once people have the power to knowingly "opt out" of existing, they rarely do. Most people instead prefer existing and consider it to be positive. So we should assume a hypothetical person would also choose to be born when acting on their behalf.
What's consent to a being that doesn't exist?
Nothing, unless they start existing.
So, how does the concept make any sense? Can I get consent from an angel, too?
I'm not sure what your point is here
My point is that the whole premise of "consent for existing" is bogus.
And how does that relate to angels?
They don't exist either.
We agree there
When you force it into existence, literally everything
I fail to see how the mere concept makes sense right now. That's the same flawed logic as longtermists use.
If my understanding of longtermism is correct, it's more of a function of utilitarianism. If one wants to do the most good for the most people, then it makes some amount of sense to focus on the far future where presumably there will be more people.
Their consent is irrelevant, which is kind of the opposite of what I'm saying, which is that consent is relevant.
It's the other side of the same coin. They both argue about the well-being/bad-being of hypothetical humans. It's bogus, either way.
I think you make a great point. Have you read about the problems with "person-affecting views"? It's admittedly a bit harder to grasp, but doesn't seem less problematic to me.
Nope
Highly recommend. It's easy to dismiss as weird bullshit initially but enlightening when you put in the effort to understand.
To be clear, I am no longer strongly convinced of or against person affecting views and take both seriously.
I'm not sure if I should feel sad for you, or envious.
To be so certain of your own point of view and take pride in not taking other ideas seriously. It must give some sense of calm but at the same time, you miss out on so much.
I won't ask or recommend you anything though, I read the thing.
Enjoy your wall staring. Let's hope it will make the world a better place.
Dude, get off your high horse. If I read every little thing some rando on the internet threw at me, I would never leave the toilet!
I don't find these EA thought experiments interesting. That's no reason to try to shame me for it.
I'm not consenting to paying taxes. Doew that mesn dobby is free now?
Technically, sure. You are free to go live in the woods, off grid, somewhere. Or you are free to violate this particular social contract and deal with the consequences.
That's legally not possible. Every piece of land belongs to someone already, either a private entity or a government. You might be able to live somewhere in a forest, but you're at the mercy of the entity that owns the land you live on.
You could technically live in the ocean, but I'm no fish lol
You can volunteer yo not pay taxes. Move to some place without and renounce your citizenship. If I recall correctly Saudi Arabia doesn't have a great deal of personal taxes.
Taxes are how currency gets its value. So if you plan to stop using taxed currencies, then sure.
With all due respect but that might be the worst take I've heard this week.
A currencies value is determined by the economy behind it. There's a reason why countries with lots of exports have a strong currency, while countries that don't are weaker in comparison.
Obviously, it's not the sole reason - economy is complex. But taxes have no role in a currencies value.
I mean I know there's no way to obtain that consent, but I did let my parents know that they should have just gotten the abortion since the condom ripped.
I wasn't planned, and I shouldn't have been born into that family. None of them were ready or cared to be ready or even cared to be with each other as they almost immediately split after my birth.
One thing I'll literally NEVER understand are the women on dating sites with literal newborns... What the actual fuck?
How long do you think women should wait to date after giving birth?
Any advanced society should be able to acknowledge that population growth must not outpace the available resources. Or else there will be Bad Times For All
There are more houses/apartments than people.
There is more food going to the trash than what we need.
It's not that we have a lot of people. The problem is the greed of a few and the complacency/idiocy of the rest.
Yeah, having kids probably reduced my household resource consumption, compared to the dual income no kid lifestyle that my wife and I had before kids.
Population growth is so far disconnected from resource consumption, because people's resource consumption does not resemble a bell curve. A private jet produces more CO2 in an hour (about 2 tonnes) than the average Indian produces in a year (about 1.9 tonnes).
The poor people having children aren't destroying the planet. Rich people, childless or not, are. (And yes, I acknowledge that I fall under the "rich" category here.)
I don't know you, but you probably don't fall on the category of "rich" in my mind.
Richer than an Indian farmer. Ok. I'm also rich then. I live in a house (not mine) and don't go hungry.
I don't even consider billionaires on the scale.....that is just an afront on humanity and shouldn't exist.
I think my personal resource consumption, if scaled up to the world population, would be devastating. That's what I mean by categorizing myself in the "rich." I might not be a billionaire, but I'm far, far above the global average, and still significantly above the national average for my nation.
I was a mild antinatalist for a while. Personally wanted kids, but felt the world was too broken to pass to a new generation that didn't ask for it.
And then -- I know this sounds dumb, but whatever -- I played Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Parenthood in a time of armageddon is a central theme, and it's not subtle about it. Every story element is named in a way that alludes to either parenthood or annihilation. The overarching plot describes the moral challenges of...
::: spoiler spoiler
...planning a next generation of humans to rise from the ashes, thousands of years after the previous generation went extinct. They died to an AI catastrophe, but it works just as well as an allegory for climate change.
Is it ethical to even subject a new generation to this, knowing what we know about how we fucked things up? If we're gonna try, do we have a duty to put in a kill switch in case things go off the rails again?
Obviously, the game sides firmly with the new humans, but it doesn't dismiss these questions out-of-hand, and it's okay with ambiguity and hypocrisy even on the part of Project Zero Dawn's chief architect.
I consider myself staunchly antinatalist. Almost nobody I see in the world day-to-day should have children. Hell, working in retail I've come to understand how few people deserve life in general. And then those shitty people have shitty kids.
But I feel like I love as deeply as I hate. When I do meet actually decent people, it makes me feel very happy. It's just not often enough.
I’ve come to understand how few people deserve life in general
This honestly made me laugh. Again, fair.
It should do more than that, I should hope!
, working in retail I've come to understand how few people deserve life in general.
Hope you don't hurt falling from that highest of horses
Buddy needs to go touch some grass
That's fair.
Cats tend to land on their feet.
That's an output of the system, cat thing. Systems can be changed.
That's just misanthropy.
Hell, working in retail I’ve come to understand how few people deserve life in general.
How full of yourself you are.
It's only encouraged because if people stop having children, it breaks the system, an utterly shit system which apparently can't be fixed fast enough if people stop having children so we better go full speed ahead on a the most moronically large scale sunk cost calamity that is going to hit us like a brick wall along with all the other things piling up.
if people stop having children, it breaks the system
The overriding fear I've seen is that not enough white children are being born. And as the definition and context of whiteness shifts, this inspires varying degrees of alarm and hatred. A big part of the current Israel/Palestine conflict stems from the demographically older and more infertile Israelis believing they need to cap the younger and more virile Palestinian population by any means necessary (including the current genocide).
So it isn't even that "people stop having children", but the "right" people not having the "correct" kind of children.
we better go full speed ahead on a the most moronically large scale sunk cost calamity that is going to hit us like a brick wall
Sort of the dirty secret about climate change is that its got nothing to do with population size. Enormous amounts of natural resources and carbon emissions are being produced by vanishingly small portions of the population. The whole AI project has been a fossil fuel hog. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consumed phenomenal volumes of material for the benefit of an infinitesimal sliver of the planet's residents. Reliance on disposable plastics and love of enormous cars has nothing to do with the number of children we've been having.
Anti-natalism is completely divorced from ecological sustainability. In many ways, it is rooted in this delusion that we're all living in these remote rural settings with an infinite frontier to exploit forever. And that mentality emerges most forcefully in places that don't have these dense urban populations.
I love how your second quote literally and purposely leaves off the last part so you can fuel your argument better. Some people don't need to be misinformed, they do it to themselves!
Overpopulation is not "anti-natalism", overpopulation is literally a known and measured problem of biological populations, but some people like to make-believe that it doesn't apply to humans. Cue "but population really is falling (except not really because we keep bringing immigration from places with lower quality of life and then complain when ours continues to be lowered)" when it itself is an indication that we are reaching the limits and yet are still trying to push past them.
As an aside, lol at new labels like "anti-natalism" showing up that stereotype arguments launched against them, it reminds me of how the GQP has adopted their "woke"-ness label just because it gave them a term to band things that had existed for ages under. I'm sure "antinatalism" will serve as well - not blaming you for it, just realized the term was being paraded around and that it will work out just about as well as "woke".
Yes, I'm sure the consequences would be horrible if we stopped, but that's the thing, being already in a shit load of trouble if you pull out is sort of a prerequisite of sunk cost fallacies.
Yes, common objections are that the economy could crash or that humanity could go extinct. I don't think these are good objections, and I have different reasons. It seems like a bad "an end justifies the means" way of thinking sometimes.
Honestly, the economic crash one is weird. The logic is that we must sacrifice our present and immediate future (that happens to be millions of lives) so that other lives are better (supposedly). Huh? It reminds me of the argument I heard against prohibiting animals in circuses. They argue that the animals that were in the circuses at the time would be slaughtered or abandoned, so their logic was allowing more and more years of animals suffering inside the circuses. What? Yes, the change definitely hurt, but it was possible both to fight against their slaughter and abandonment, and to get rid of that abuse forever. If we decrease in population, of course it will be difficult, but we can find ways to face the difficulties while we get into a better system. We cannot preserve capitalism just because we are afraid of hard times, when capitalism itself is hurting us.
The extinction one is different. We won't get to that point, but even if we did, it would be a free decision of humanity that is hurting no one else. That's the intuition they probably have: that those humans would be hurting the ones that do not exist yet, but I already commented about that reasoning. I don't think there's harm against the non-existant. Our end is possibly inevitable because the habitable Universe seems to have an end. If we decide to fight it, that's okay as long as we do it ethically. But if we collectively decide to end it all, I respect it as long as it's done ethically too. Anyway, as I said, this is mere imagination as I do not see humanity (in the big numbers we now are) never ever choosing this path together. We will be here for some time.
How about don't have kids so you can work more and more flexible hours on demand in aspiration of a fabricated idea of a career
Stupid people have the most kids, that's how you know the world is full of idiots.
Ocassionaly though you meet a really nice humble person that will make you think positive towards people again atleast for a while... Even better if you carry their torch and continue with those good vibes towards others. Gives you that touch of there's genuinely good people still out there. Its refreshing.
If only bad people have children, what will happen?
Your answer lies in the classic 2006 film "Idiocracy"
Kind of my point
Who cares, I'll be dead.
Well, you don't, but to answer your question: all the other, alive people.
I'm not a fan of utalitarianism myelf, so this might be wrong;
this sounds like utalitarianism - as the action you did cause other suffering.
then in your moral philosophy, are all actions that cause suffering (and joy, and all other feelings a human can experience) morally wrong?
Is then not dating, f.ex Morally wrong?
Or is it the impossibility of consent?
Yes, a child is unable to consent to being born. Just as we are all unable to consent to the world being created, or nature's whims.
I cannot consent to a state on the other side of the world making policies, but I can still react and do things about it.
Is it morally wrong to let animals have children?
If one animal species is harming an ecosystem then I don't see how it's morally wrong to limit their reproduction.
Usually, a better way to help an ecosystem balance itself is to reintroduce predators or similarly.
the deer population in yellowstone was destroying the soil, this was solved by reintroducing wolves.
there's a big difference between this, and f.ex castrating a lot of the deer, or going on a shooting spree.
It also goes with the assumption that the ecosystem is either outside the moral spectrum, or morally good.
What's f.ex mean?
A guess, but “for example”? That’s how I’m reading it, anyway.
It's the norwegian / danish way of writing e.g
"for example"
There's also antinatalism from a deontological perspective.
But, from the negative utilitarianists I've known and seen, I've found an intense debate about the animal reproduction question. Some say antinatalism should include non-human animals and any other sentient being; some say it's a human-only matter. I do not have an opinion.
this comment section is a hell of a ride, but i'll just state what seems to be a pretty significant thing that everyone just merrily sails past:
Y'all remember that saying of "it takes a village to raise a child"? That's why modern parenting sucks, we don't tend to have villages to help raise our children anymore.
We're not meant to raise kids with maybe at best our partner and some assistance from their grandparents and kindergarden/school, we're meant to share that load and responsibility among like at least a dozen people and kids are meant to constantly have access to other kids to play with and collectively learn what boundaries are.
I'm old and out of touch... What's with this "rule" memes?
Sooo back on reddit...
There is r/196. The rule of the sub is that if you visited it, you have to post a meme before you leave. These people are just following the rule.
Thank you. I've been subscribed to this sub for months and didn't know a damn thing just that it consistently produced amusing content. Please proceed you glorious bastards.
Thanks kind stranger
They also required “rule” somewhere in the title
r/195's 1 rule was if you visit this subreddit, you must post before you leave.
Now you have to send weekly nudes to the mods too. :(
It's funny to think that modern humans have been around for tens of thousands of years but we're only ~80 years of infertility away from global extinction.
80 years of total infertility across billions of people. Even 99.9% infertility would still leave millions of people. Extinction isn't coming anytime soon.
Ignore or assume we fix socioeconomics, environment, etc.;
Is having a child moral given the child cannot consent to being born?
(Not offering any opinion or trying to lead towards any answer)
The child can still consider taking the one-way exit as soon as it is able to make such considerations and thereby gets a choice.
You could ask in a similar manner:
Wouldn't it be immoral to disallow this decision making process by leaving the child no choice by not having it?
Asking for consent of an unborn is paradoxial and inherently impossible. It's almost like asking a plant whether it consents into being planted and eaten afterwards. It has no agency. Is it immoral though to plant it and eat it anyway?
Having a child is similar. Get it, let it grow and develop its agency. Then it can decide for itself.
So the answer boils down to kill yourself when you turn 18 bud? That seems like incredibly callous and unnecessary pain for all involved.
Consent 101: If you’re unsure about whether or not someone would consent, the answer is no. And since we can’t ask the unborn, people who don’t want kids assume the answer is no.
That seems like incredibly callous and unnecessary pain for all involved.
Which is - at least to some extent - a culturally formed perception. We know cultures where suicide was not frowned upon nor was seen as an inherently bad thing. For example:
Harakiri / Seppuku: ritual suicide commited by Samurais (and later officers during WWII) (lazily taken from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku ) as a way to restore or uphold their or their families' honour.
Ättestupa, sites with cliff-like rock formations in Sweden where old people threw themselves off in order to not burden their community. (There are quite a number of examples regarding such kinds of senicides in different cultures. Currently this is also a topic regarding assisted suicide for (old) people who are severly ill with no realistic hopes of improvement.)
This proves that it can be possible to embrace such decisions of mature adolescents, be it for life or against it.
Consent 101: If you’re unsure about whether or not someone would consent, the answer is no. And since we can’t ask the unborn, people who don’t want kids assume the answer is no.
We can turn this easily around: If you're unsure whether someone would consent to not being born, the answer is no and therefore they should be born.
But more importantly, to ask that question at all is already built on a erroneous premise, in my opinion: The unborn child has no sufficient agency to form an opinion about this question. It is therefore pointless to ask it. The ability to make such decisions comes with time and maturity of the child. Until this level is reached, you could also deny plants and even stones their existence because you are not able to ask them whether they want to exist at all. They have about the same level of agency as an unborn child.
If you're unsure wether someone would consent to not having sex, the answer is no. Therefore... If someone is unconscious it's okay, or even morally necessary, to have sex with them in order to not deprive them of a decision they don't have the agency to make themselves?
Put like that, it's of course not a conclusion which feels right. Which is interesting and which I would explain by the "greater goods" which are relevant in such considerations.
In your example, the greater good is an autonomy about one's own body and what happens to it in presence of other people. An issue which we've developed understanding and respect for one's individual will.
In the context of natalism however, there are different goods at play depending on how you look at them:
Antinatalism: "creating new humans is wrong, because they have guaranteed suffering. Allowing that will cause unneccessary suffering."
Pronatalism: "Creating new humans is okay, because their life can be joyful (and/or brings me joy). Denying that robs the possible being from this experience." (Depending on who you ask, it might not even be necessary to be joyful, as the experience of life is already seen as valuable by itself.)
In other words: Antinatalism's greater good: preventing suffering. Pronatalisms greater good: allowing joy and the experience of life.
But again, asking for consent here is pointless, as I've detailed before. If you want to have sex with someone who is unconcious, they are able to form on opinion about that before the incident, possibly during the incident and directly after the incident. In other words, they have agency about this. With unborns it is different: they don't exist and have no agency prior or during the incident of being born. They develop this ability during their childhood. Then you can ask. Without such a capacity I don't see any value in moral evaluations. Because to me, this is currently almost similar to asking a stone whether it wants to exist in this universe.
Yeah I just don’t think having a kid under the premise “well you can kill yourself later” is a really great argument. And they’re not really letting us kill ourselves humanely anyway - Medical Assistance in Dying laws are still incredibly restrictive and they actively prosecute people who sell alternatives.
Just because I find joy in life I can’t force that on other people. We all have different perspectives.
I look at it like joy is not guaranteed. The only thing that is guaranteed through life is suffering and death.
I don’t need to have kids for survival and we have too many people already. Why guarantee suffering in another person.
And they’re not really letting us kill ourselves humanely anyway - Medical Assistance in Dying laws are still incredibly restrictive and they actively prosecute people who sell alternatives.
Which is an important practial limiation of course. But I'm currently discussing this on the level of the underlying ethical principle, less on the level of practical implications, because the latter could possibly be changed by forming an appropriate mindset in our society.
Just because I find joy in life I can’t force that on other people. We all have different perspectives.
I look at it like joy is not guaranteed. The only thing that is guaranteed through life is suffering and death.
[...] Why guarantee suffering in another person.
Sure, but would it be equally okay to deny someone their shot at joy? Even without (much) joy, some might see the suffering as part of their journey, a part of the experience of life which they could still prefer to not being born at all. We never know until we can ask and expect an answer to that question.
I don’t need to have kids for survival and we have too many people already.
And it's totally okay for me if these are your reasons for not having children. I agree with a multitude of reasons why someone want's to be childless. So I hope you don't get me wrong here. I don't give a fuck whether someone wants or doesn't want children. It's their life and their decision regardless of their reasons. I just find the topic of natalism interesting from a philosophical point of view.
And that's why you should never pull an unconscious person out of a fire. QED.
I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. In the Canadian medical system consent to save an unconscious person’s life is pretty automatic.
We’re talking about consent to opt in to be born, which is completely different.
Death is far scarier than having never been born. I went through sooooo much torment thinking about death and if I should make today the day. I have PTSD from years of that. This is not a fair exit.
I understand that. It's a very scary feeling for most. (btw: If you really feel like this damaged you, I hope you've considered therapy.)
However, if someone decides they don't want to be alive (and we can ensure that this decision is made of "sound mind" (whatever that might look like)) I can imagine that they might get used to the idea of death and ending it.
I got used to the feeling, but it never stopped hurting. I'm a lot better now, but still need to address the lingering effects.
I mean.. with all the negativity in this thread, every single person here is consenting to be alive every single day. While there are a number who choose an early exit, the vast vast statistical majority overwhelmingly consent to live another day every day. With such stats I feel like it's fine to assume the default status is consent in this context.
Plus, speaking of morals, we're just dumb little apes. You give us too much credit if you think we can fight the greatest biological urge of all life over something we've completely invented in our minds : morals, and the morals of the unborn is like double hypothetical.
Death is scary, not wanting to die is not the same as wanting to live. I would've rather not been born during about 1/3 of my life, it's only now that I'm finding any substantial (though inconsistent) enjoyment from life.
"by waking up today, you consent to continue existing, and acknowledge the suffering it brings. Do you wish to continue?”
[yes] [yes]
no the fuck I do not. If I had a magicall button that would let me stop existing without the risk of damaging my neck and spending the rest of my life incapacitated but alive, and it didn't cause trauma to the people around me, I would have pressed it fucking years ago.
vast statistical majority overwhelmingly consent to live
what disgusting mental acrobatics
I would say it isn’t
Oh boy, you guys are gonna love the global pension fund crash then!
Which shouldn't be a problem, but with how abjectly you guys reject AI and automation, it is gonna be a problem
Yeah, as if automation was never used to cut jobs in order to enrich the wealthy class and the working class didn't get any of the benefits. /s
Cool I guess we'll all just die then.
We sure will.
Valuing children only for the monetary value they will contribute is a very good way of producing unhappy children which in my view is pretty immoral. It's also pretty close to viewing humans as capital and that's problematic in it's own right
It's not the only value but you do you
At the level of humanity as a species we are born to reproduce, like every other living thing.
I don't care about the species, I care about the people. If someone doesn't want to reproduce, it's better for both them and the species that they don't. People only reproducing when they personally get something out of it will eventually make future generations enjoy it more. Forcing it just promotes suffering, perpetuating the cycle of unhappy parents in the long run.
This whole idea of caring about furthering our "species" is eugenics anyways. My genes make me want to be a parent, but I understand that the genes themselves don't matter for shit. I'm planning to have kids because I will enjoy raising them and helping them live full lives. If someone doesn't share this desire, I'm not gonna force my preference onto them.
Freedom and treating humans with dignity does that very job of eugenics better than the eugenics notion of pressuring people to be parents. There's no Darwinian excuse for being shitty to other people. Just be good.
There's no Darwinian excuse for being shitty to other people.
Exactly. There's even an evolutionary reason to be good to other people, as described by Pjotr Kropotkin in "Mutual Aid".
No, you're a fool if you truly believe this. Every generation has had some form of this feeling. Imagine considering having children during WW1, or WW2, or during Vietnam or Korea? Then after that we had McCarthyism and the Cold War - all seemingly hopeless days. Yet there is still so much beauty in the world, and there is so much that makes life worth living.
My son will turn 2 in a few months. It's tough being a parent, but it is entirely worth it. You cannot give into myopia - every time I hear him laugh, I am reminded that there is good in the world and it is worth fighting for. He will have his own challenges to face in life, but it is our job as a society to equip him, and all of the next generation, with the tools they need to succeed.
I'm troubled about the future, but you cannot make that stop you from striving for better days. As Marcus Aurelius said, never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
I've been re-reading the Lord of the Rings lately, and there is a lot there on this topic, but I always think back to Sam. We all should be so lucky to have a friend like that, but what he says when all hope seems to be lost is truly striking:
"It's like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
Tolkien wrote this after his experiences fighting in The Somme. If he could find hope and found the courage to keep striving for better days, then so should we.
I don't think I would have brought a new person into the world during any of the other time periods you mention either.
That’s fair, and not an unreasonable choice. What I can’t get over is people acting like that’s the only reasonable choice, and that people who have children are idiots.
Just look around in this thread and you’ll see some smug ass attitudes. It kind of reminds me of those 14 year old kids who feel immensely smart because they’re atheist, you know?
I didn’t say people who have children are idiots. I just think it’s immoral
Ok lol, my point remains exactly the same and I think your viewpoint is incredibly reductive.
You really think it’s ethical to bring another human into this world?
I don’t think it’s objectively and clearly unethical, so I think your claim that it is is wrong.
Why do you think it's not?
The only way to experience suffering is to be alive. The only way to be born is without consent
So? The only way to contribute to community is to be alive. The only way to feel joy is to be alive.
Consent doesn't make sense for a nonexistant being.
Is the joy worth the pain? What if they don't want to contribute to a community? Can you guarantee the joy will outweigh the pain? What gives you the right to will another being into existence?
If the being will become conscious and self aware, why doesn't their consent matter?
Is the pain justifying withholding joy?
Humans are a social species. That's like asking: "What if it doesn't want to drink?"
Since when are we modeling everything we do on guaranteed knowledge?
Rights aren't given. They're negotiated. I negotiate the right with the person that conceives the child with me.
Consent doesn't matter for hypothetical futures.
I don't believe you won this. I'm not siding with the person you're discussing this topic with, but they made better moral arguments.
Your supposition that consent can morally come from two seperate human beings, despite the potential condemnation of the new human, is inherently flawed. The same logic could be used to excuse a huge variety of cruelties. Giving someone something (even life itself), does not inherently grant the donors agency over that life.
For example, if a terrible disease that brings pain and very early death is genetically passed on by one person that decides knowingly to have a child, and the child is born with that disease, one could easily make the argument that it was immoral for that individual to have a child, instead of adopting.
You yourself said they are not yet existent, so really is joy being "withheld"? That doesn't work in your framework, I think.
Just because a human exists does not mean they fall neatly into a category where they innately love "contributing to a community". We're not apes, well most of us :p
You only mentioned the rights of the parents (in a strangely cold and transactional way btw lol). What of the child's rights? They must negotiate with you for them after their nonconsensual birth?
It's not hypothetical--a child is born. They live and experience. You're in a paradoxical state where consent doesn't matter because the kid doesn't exist, yet they necessarily must exist to experience the joy you mention
What if you bring a child into the world that's born with a major, incurable defect?
Life is not always full of joy, in fact, for many it's devoid of it. I think really good points are being made here against children.
I don't believe it's necessarily immoral to have kids, but I DO think it's a serious grey area. It's emphatically not the positive action society makes it out to be.
What's your point? That disabled people's lives aren't worth anything? 🤨
ummm, source? O.o
Also: live can be better, you know. Just because life sucks for some today, doesn't mean it can't improve in the future. That's simply a defeatist stance.
I've yet to see one, tbh.
I think, the question alone shows a misunderstanding of existence: not everything can be cathegorized into "good" and "bad".
I really appreciate this point of view. I don't strongly find myself on either side of the isle here, but I think you are making stronger points than those supporting the mainstream opinion that procreation is essential and important.
The argument against you seems to be "but there have been worse times to have kids, and people still had them." That is emphatically not a good argument.
I think I have a fairly cynical view that reproduction is primarily a selfish act based solely on our biological drive to continue our species. I've pondered for a long time, and I fail to see a more logical conclusion than that.
Life is tough and there are no guarantees. Rolling the dice by having a kid seems like a messed up thing to do imo.
That said, I would adopt a child or children. That's a better way to ensure you are putting kindness and hope into the world where it's needed, rather than creating another vessel for pain from whole cloth.
Obviously yes
You're awfully judgy for someone who doesn't like other people judging you for having kids.
Just let people have a difference of opinion to you. It's okay if some people look down on your choices. This is inevitable in life.
I’d say you can find things that make life worth living if you’re already here. But if someone's not "here", why drag someone you're supposed to love the most into this mess when we can’t even properly look after the children that are already here.
I’m not anti-child - I’d consider adopting if it didn’t cost like $20k. I’m anti-new child for myself, and yeah I get sad when I see other people have kids, especially now. It's like having another kid when you lived in the middle of the dust bowl and people were actively dying from starvation and the dust. Probably not the best time to have kids, similar to now. They just couldn't easily make the choice to not have kids back then.
There are tons of arguments in favour of having kids like what if they cure cancer etc.
However, for myself, I truly believe there will be an ecological collapse due to climate change if not during my lifetime, in the immediate next generation. And we’re still not doing enough. I don’t want to flee natural disasters with a child in tow. One of best things you can do for the climate is not have kids. I'm privileged enough to make that choice so I did, but it's not my only reason. You got late stage capitalism and the accelerating concentration of resources with the hyper wealthy, war / nuclear war, and the fact that pregnancy is one of most risky things I can medically do. Social media, the toxic drug supply, the rise of fascism (again), microplastics in literally fucking everything. I don't even think we'll have social healthcare or social security in Canada by the time I die because they're gutting our programs so badly.
I get that people have a strong reaction to their choices being called immoral. Morality looks different for everyone. However, the counterargument of "Well I have children and they're great and bring me so much joy etc" falls on deaf ears, because it truly does not sound like joy to me and when I say I am anti-child for myself I am telling you that. It's like trying to convince someone skydiving is the greatest thing - some people love it, but not my cup of tea. It is so foreign to me that whenever I hear parents say this it feels like they are trying to convince themselves that they made the right choice.
Have you watched Idiocracy? I consider myself a smart guy, and having children is my way to fight against the world getting stupider.
Also, it is a joy. Yeah, it's expensive, and yeah, it's a ton of work. But it's like working on a very big project that you know you'll be proud of when it's done. I didn't understand it before because I only experienced other people's children, but it's different with your own children in a way that's hard to explain.
What I don't get is, why not just adopt? Instead of creating more potential for misery, why not reduce it while still being able to enjoy parenthood?
It’s usually exceptionally expensive, especially considering insurance won’t be any help.
What I don’t get is why people pretend fostering isn’t even an option!
Idiocracy is eugenics propaganda. People don't get dumber because of their genes but because of worse education.
Like the other commenter said, adopt if you want to improve the world (and not just your own life), but that's harder without the biological attachment that comes from your own kids.
(Not trying to be rude btw, just noting generally my thoughts)
I don't want to have kids simply because I'm miserable and never consented to being born. I am not suicidal but I would have rather not been born in the first place.
Most people grow up happier than me, so I can't really make a philosophical argument out of my own experience. All the best to you and your family!
This is called being passively suicidal
Well said.
I'd have to disagree from the angle that, you cannot philoshpy your way out of ecology. If you actually look at a population graph for any species which experiences a massive spike in birthrates, and what comes for them afterwards, you would probably come to a conclusion that the rate at which we've been producing kids is very unsustainable, and while we probably shouldn't tell people not to have kids completely we should probably begin to consider how to transition towards more sustainable population numbers. A given ecosystem can only sustain so much of one species before it begins to break down. Our Eco system is the entire world and it is very much breaking down as we hit record temperatures year after year. There were lights at ends of tunnels during every war as they've always like, ended with a winning side that could rebuild/regrow, and even ecological collapses have been recovered from by humans but we're not going to get to be the humans that recover, and it doesn't look like our kids will be either. So, if we want to have kinda okay lives we should maybe consider minimizing the impact from what is about to happen, and also not bringing children into a world that has pretty much no chance of being better for them than it was for us.
You're conflating population growth with capitalistic and exploitative growth. the fact that we're destroying our ecology does have little to do with the population and everything to do with capitalist overextraction.
The capitalists would extract less if they had fewer workers and not as many people to sell stuff to.
are u serious?
I’m being a little snide but yeah supply and demand right? If the population reduces it impacts the demand for products and also the supply of workers.
Capitalists aren’t going to stop ruining the earth out of the goodness of their hearts or anything.
I get that less workers would mean more power to the workers, but avoiding having kids to limit the supply of workers seems, idk, fucking weird and also weirdly passive?
You can protest, join a union, start a workers co-op or organise in different ways, but that takes effort. Or you could not have kids, which takes less effort than having kids, and say it’s praxis? Idk, to me this feels like packaging your own personal choice as a grand political stand, as if you would jump at the opportunity to have kids if we lived in a socialist society.
Also, to counter your point, historically a lot of protest and unrest came from a dissatisfied populace with not enough job opportunities. So by that logic you should just pop out kids so they’ll be a part of the revolution. I don’t believe this, to be clear, but I mention it as a way to illustrate that basing your decision to have kids on how it will affect the supply and demand of labour is really fucking weird, and also not even something with a predictable outcome.
Oh my heavens no it’s not the only reason not to have kids and it’s not even factor #1 for me as a reason to not. Just one factor among many.
But this part of the thread started with a claim, as I understood it, that population growth wasn’t the problem - that the problem was instead capitalistic exploitation.
I’m just pointing out that limiting one could solve the other. Because I don’t think the oligarchs who rule the world will ever let us protest/unrest in a meaningful way again. People are kept just comfortable enough with fast food, Starbucks, entertainment, etc and just tired enough from selling labour that the vast majority of people wouldn’t care or engage with any sort of meaningful reform to the system.
We can’t even get people to engage in not electing King Fascist (US) and far-right populist Milhouse (Canada). For what reason??? Our other alternatives are middling, one is too old and in Canada I think they’re just tired of the tone and the tone deafness of our current guy. Seems like pretty lame excuses peddled by media that is owned by the very same oligarchs who stand to benefit the most from far right governments. The recent news in the UK and France makes it sting a little less, I guess.
How bad are we prepared to let things get? It’s gonna have to get pretty ugly at a local level for any meaningful change to happen.
I get what you’re saying, but it just feels incredibly (and needlessly) defeatist to me.
Socialism would no doubt increase the planets carrying capacity for humans, but not make it limitless. It is also nowhere near close to being implemented so I am assessing the world that we have, not the one I'd like it to be. Also, even if we did away with capitalism tomorrow we'd probably still need to discuss reasonable population growth and come up with a reasonable estimate for our planet's carrying capacity which could be weighed against quality of life, human happiness, etc as we transition our economy away from late stage capitalism.
I'd argue that it's more likely that capitalism is abolished tomorrow than any government having a proposed solution to population control that's not fundamentally evil.
I wouldn't. Really all post industrial countries need to do is stop trying to directly insentivize having kids and maybe provide access to free/low cost contraceptives. I think that's a lot easier than having socialism implemented in enough countries for it to matter.
Maybe Santa will bring that to you next Christmas, if you're a good Femcowboy. /s
I agree that having kids can be awesome, but the idea it's foolish to see it as a waste of time is shitty as well. OP is perfectly reasonable to find it terrible, because for many people, it is. People are less happy after having children on average, as alien and counterintuitive as it may seem to you. It's a spectrum, with many people actually being happier, or at least more content with their life after. However, many people don't.
The problem is that people make the mistake of seeing children as a means rather than an end. If they knew the truth, that raising children is the end goal for a parent rather than a step to something else, they wouldn't want to do it. Those people shouldn't be mislead. If you won't get satisfaction out of nurturing your kid, it's better for both you and your potential offspring that you live your own life. The kid might grow up and love life, but both of you will suffer for it.
Someone else, someone who really wants to change diapers and deal with tantrums to see a human grow, can raise the next generation just fine. If you want to pass on genes or whatever, but see no purpose beyond that, then have someone adopt them and be on your way. It'd be a win-win for us both.
OP is claiming having children is wrong, in other words that people who have children are wrong. They’re not saying that it’s not for them but might be the right choice for others, but rather that their own choice is the right one.
Life is a painful mess, no matter what you do, you can't guarantee that your child won't have the most horrid existence imaginable, rolling the dice on someone else's life due to your own selfish need to procreate is what they're saying is wrong. I regret that my mom had me, life has been a living hell, nothing short of her not having me would have changed that.
Your life is a painful mess and you’re generalising that to everyone. I’m sorry you’re unhappy about your life, but that really isn’t an argument about other people having children.
Life can be painful, it can be beautiful, it can be dull or exciting, or anything in between. It’s not inherently negative or positive, as you’re claiming.
The point is lost on you. I genuinely hope your kid has a good life, but I personally would never gamble someone else's life for my own selfish wants, and I can't reconcile others decisions to do so either.
But you’re basing that on your own negative experiences in life, and you’re acting like they’re objective and universal.
Also, by that logic you shouldn’t do anything that could potentially cascade into making someone else unhappy, which would be absolutely debilitating.
Don’t get me wrong, I get that you should think twice, thrice and even more about having kids, especially if you’re not in a position to give them a good life and/or if you have certain heritable issues. But your overall position seems overly negative and, idk, somewhat misanthropic? In your worldview humanity should just stop existing because people can be unhappy in life. It’s overly reductive and negative to me.
Everybody is basing their opinions on their own experience.
I find it hilarious that you can argue your own experience is any different.
To better explain the argument: they are not saying "it's 50:50 the child will suffer", they mean "there is obviously a non-zero chance that children will suffer", which is absolutely true. It's up to the individual to consider their situation (money, time, temper, parental knowledge, genetic diseases etc) to gauge how much more may their children have it worse than average.
And I would say that many children do indeed suffer, and many don't have the conditions that I personally would consider ideal.
But having a child is always on their respective parents. Morality won't change their minds.
They’re saying life is miserable, I’m saying it’s not inherently miserable. Like, that’s not a subjective take lol.
Also, what about my comment made it seem like they said it was 50/50? And even if I thought that’s what they said, how does that invalidate my argument?
Even in my comment I acknowledge there are multiple reasons not to have children, so I really don’t understand what you’re arguing against.
And OP is wrong to claim that. Both of your gut feelings about what is correct for you are valid, but you're both talking past each other emotionally. Your comment sounded condescending to me, and I actually wish I could have kids.
I've always loved that Samwise Gamgee line. Makes me tear up every time I read it.
Ah yes, it's not the billionaires, corrupt politicians and massive industry inefficiency that's causing our problems, it's children!!!
I swear to God, reading stupidity from people I expect to be on my side of the political divide hurts especially bad.
More like yes those are the problems and children are not the answer to those problems.
I'm not sure where they got the impression anyone was blaming children unless they are intentionally being obtuse to attack ideas they disagree with. Similar to people who screech "you hate dogs!?!" when you complain about shitty dog owners.
It’s humanity that causes problems
When an invasive species is destroying an ecosystem, what do you do?
I’m not advocating for any policy, I’m just saying people shouldn’t have children. It’s unethical.
I personally can think of several solutions to the climate crisis less drastic than humanity becoming extinct
Not necessarily extinct, but definitely less populous
That's a policy.
Why would you expect a random person on Lemmy to be on your side?
But without infinite growth how can we feed the capitalistic engine with more souls?
Just think of all them empty mines, sad and alone, only wanting to be filled with the sound of children coughing themselves to death from black lung.
People have children because they want to, not for growth. In a relatively stable society most people don't even have many children...
"If I didn't have children, who'd take care of me when I get old?"
"If we didn't have children, who'd work for our pensions and keep society running when we retire?"
"I want to live a happy life after I retire, and you (young people) are obliged to provide that."
Real words I heard.
A lot of people have kids mostly for future-proofing themselves.
India: "I need many children to support my everyday life and me when I'm old."
Germany: "wtf are children?"
(A bit exaggerated of course, but should illustrate your point.)
Access to opportunities and birth control drop birthrates.
Lots and lots of poor countries have large populations because poor parents are hoping many children can work. Also lack of access to birth control and far right groups insisting children are a religious necessity.
I'm sure that big bad capitalists will be sad of you not having kids and spending all your time and money on movies, games, traveling, ...
What money?
Lol, I'm not far-left but I do love comments like these.
It's important to note that capitalism is far from the only major exploitative system in the world. This said, I'm part of that particular system, and yes... It truly does feel like we're just cogs in an ever-hungry, broken system.
It's fine if you don't want kids for yourself, but antinatalism as an ideology is only a few steps away from ecofascism.
correct. i would have no problem if this post and the subsequent comments defending it didn’t use the words “wrong” and “immoral.” but they do and that’s fascist territory.
Lmao, no it’s not
"Nuh uh"
It is discussed with those words because it has been transformed into an ethical question. It is a personal freedom, but it can be asked how ethically correct or incorrect that action is aside from our current laws or [cultural/social] morality.
It's about wonder, ponder. I think that's always important, even for things that seem taboo at first.
I guess each person has a different approach to antinatalism. I don’t want to bring children into the world because unlike many people who outright lie, I do not think it will bring me joy. I’m also scared that if I bring a child into this world and it will suffer as much as I currently do, I won’t be able to live with the blame.
Antinatalism isn't just a personal decision to not have kids, it's an ideological belief that having kids is morally wrong.
This is an overgeneralisation which completely misses the nuance. Antinatalism does not postulate that it's morally wrong to procreate, only that it is morally wrong to bring another human consciousness into a soup of suffering, which... yeah, kinda'! I mean, is the world not presently a soup of suffering, with extra helpings on the way?
Personally, I doubt most people who subscribe to Antinatalism would do so if society weren't literally a hell hole right now.
if "a soup of suffering" means "life/the world" u just said "its not that its morally wrong to give birth, but that its morally wrong to give birth"? :p
The world as it is now, yes. But this is far from the only option, thus the world is not an inevitable soup of suffering. So, no.
Unless you're both an antinatalist and a philosophical pessimist and believe that the world will always be that soup. But yeah, that's not the case for all antinatalists. A friend of mine calls himself a "temporary antinatalist".
True. I guess the distinction, though semantically redundant, seems to be contextually necessary nowadays...
The problem with that argument is that the world has ALWAYS been a terrible place for the vast majority of people to live, at least since the industrial revolution and arguably since the agricultural revolution. The now vanishing middle class, an artifact of post war economic boom, was about the only time ever it was "morally right" to have a child because chances were very good that they would lead a life of even less suffering than their parents. I chose not to have kids because I agree that the world is headed in a bad direction, but more so because of my financial situation as a working class person, and my mental health as a result of a decade working check to check. If I were in the situation my parents were when I was born, I truly think the equation would work out differently.
I have to disagree with the idea that the world has always been a terrible place. Actually building upon what you've said subsequently, the world itself isn't terrible, it's just a rock with some moss and critters on it, the systems we've created for ourselves are terrible. That's exactly the nuance to which I was referring in my initial comment, Antinatalism isn't universally applicable to all existing and potential existential contexts.
I'm not antinatalist, but I am in favor of voluntary human extinction.
Crazy take: people get to choose if they have children.
I wish I got to choose if my parents had children.
... without being judged for it, I hope?
I wish they did but the governments are intent on taking that choice away
Yes... But should they get that choice?
If I could wave a magic wand, I'd make it so every 12 year old that could make sperm (trans, cis, whatever) gets a reversible vasectomy automatically. Then, if/when they ever want and plan for starting a family, they can take the class on childhood development and how to be a good parent who raises not shitty humans. If they pass, great! They get to undo the vasectomy and try for a family. If not, oh well, no one wanted to have to support your shitty kids in the first place.
I have no idea how something like this could ever actually be implemented in a fair way... Hense the need for the magic wand
How about we fix the fucking society, so raising children isn't so fucking volatile instead of thinking up some wand of eugenics +2?
Well, yeah, that would be the best way to go... I'd still think people should have to pass a class before they're allowed to be responsible for another human beings entire life
I don't trust state insitutions enough for that not to turnsinto yet another way to screw over the poor.
Certainly not as long as the corporations are in control of the government
Weirdo
Guilty
Ah, genocidal eugenics, there you are. How I didn't miss you.
Neither of those words apply here.
They do, in fact.
Nah... Not sure what you think those words mean, but no one's talking about genetics or the eradication of a race of people.
Ah of course, my mistake.
Eugenics certainly couldn't be checks notes deciding who can have kids, and humans arent checks notes people.
Absolutely ridiculous. Imagine actually being pro genocide.
Yes. Ultimately, the reason we should let people choose isn't to prevent people who would be bad parents from becoming parents. That's an issue that couldn't be solved directly, but could be indirectly addressed by providing comprehensive sex ed. The real reason we should let people choose is so people aren't forced to do or not do something they don't or do want. People may choose the wrong option for themselves and regret it, but outside forces aren't going to know what they want better than they will.
Magical thought experiments can often mislead, as ethics cannot exist outside of our uncertain, unmagical reality.
But in this case the "wrong option" means a human being will suffer terribly (assuming we're talking about parents who wouldn't pass the test)... Do we not ethically owe it to children/humanity to take some level of precautions against allowing them to grow up in hell?
We do owe them protection, but not only do we owe ourselves reproductive rights, there are other ways to protect those children. We can give people the knowledge and resources to be better parents while taking kids away from those that still suck. How many parents largely suck because of poverty? How many never got the chance to learn how to parent or what the experience will be like?
Of course. You can, and it’s your right to do so. But that doesn’t mean it’s ethical.
Antinatalism is the first law of robotics, reduced to absurdity. It answers the question by forgetting why you asked it in the first place.
Yes, it does eliminate human suffering. However, it does so in the same way that a bullet to the head cures a headache.
Yeah, a nuclear exchange would be a faster way of achieving what antinatalists would achieve if they got their way.
you do understand that the joker is in the wrong here, right? like in this scene he's a mentally i'll man saying that killing people is funny.
if you genuinely believe that existence has an inherent negative value then i strongly suggest you seek help, and i don't mean that to be facetious. antinatalism is depression turned into a moral philosophy, it posits itself as a solution to suffering by offering an unrealizable future, but really it's an excuse to not even attempt to make the world better.
Memes are generally divorced from their original source. This format is only used to show the creator has a controversial idea.
Not necessarily. Antinatalism and other pessimistic points of view can be held by non-depressed people. On the internet, it seems like psychological pessimism is the same as philosophical pessimism as many depressed people do adopt these points of view and flood the forums. Adding to that, they often abandon their philosophical pessimism when their depression lifts, leaving a testimony that it is true: only depressed people defend these ideas. But we need only an example of a person that is not depressed and still values antinatalism on its own to demonstrate that your statement is not the case, and I think I might be that example. Many other examples might be found in universities. I hope one day we get a formal social study so that I do not have to give anecdotal "evidence" and personal information.
Now, I'd add to defend those I know that are indeed depressed, we should be debating and trying to refute the philosophy itself. Even if depression is leading them into these kinds of thoughts, we cannot say that this disproves their ideas. Many brilliant discoveries and inventions were reached in what we classify as pathological states. The manic researcher and crafter is an archetype for a reason (e.g., mad scientist, mad artist), and we have not fewer examples of depressed people that made valuable work, such as author F. Dostoevsky. There are two books that are coming to my mind that explain why (specifically) mood disorders are pathological but still let people do great things: A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illnesses and Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. So, as I was saying, the fact that someone is clinically depressed does not inform us about how true or how solid their ideas might be. Discrediting them just because they suffer from depression would be an ad hominem, and, in the moral part, ableism. We need to listen to/read their ideas and discuss the ideas instead.
This is a very misunderstood part of antinatalism. Almost no antinatalist is utopic in their views, that is, few antinatalists think that the point must be to cease all reproduction and that antinatalism fails if they don't. That would be an ideal scenario; there's no suffering without existence, but that is a dream. There are no goals for many antinatalists, just the idea that bringing children into this world is not ethically correct. They might follow antinatalism and not have children or adopt, but not preach much about it because they know practically no one will listen. I, for instance, bring this problem to people that might have not thought about it before. If they go ahead and have children, I'd still think that was not correct, but well, nothing to do but to help take care of this new life. It can be as pragmatic as that.
No. In my case, I try to help in other ways. This right here is an example as I'm trying to broaden the discussion around these topics in a healthy way because I know Reddit has sadly damaged these debates with a lot of insults and bad attitudes from many sides. They insult people, so these people go to their subreddit and insult them back... It is not a good way to first learn about these topics, and many are learning what antinatalism is first on Reddit. I hope Lemmy will be slightly better.
Anyway, I also try to better the world in the ways I can. Still, as a person that values philosophical pessimism, I think we are only saving lives from a neverending fire, or giving palliatives for an incurable disease. I enjoy my life and I try to help others enjoy theirs as much as this existence lets us.
If anything, philosophies around negative utilitarianism, preference utilitarianism, overall pessimism, etc. tend to respect others a lot and value their suffering negatively. That's usually their point. Suffering is not a "necessary side for pleasure" or "a trial from which we gain something" or "something not that bad" or any explanation different cultures have given. Suffering is bad; in a better world, it wouldn't exist like this. It is tragic, but it is reality, so we must face it and combat suffering as best as we can. I'd say these ethical paths inspire protection of others more than others less centered on sentience.
Finally, it is good advice to seek professional help, but not on the sole basis of someone being an antinatalist. If our OP here is depressed, I do recommend visiting a professional.
when i say that it's depression turned into philosophy i mean it in the sense that it is a philosophy that will inevitably lead to depression, or at the very least a skewed world view (think you'll see a red car and you're going to spot a lot of red cars, think existence is suffering and you'll probably focus on suffering a lot).
interesting breakdown tho, i'm glad that you still have hope. i dislike antinatalism and similar philosophies mostry due to their "doomerism" and belief that experiences are somehow cumulative
Oh! That's a complicated consequence, yes. I cannot lie and say that studying sad things won't ever make one sad. It's... hard.
I don't think it is a rule that it is going to warp one's vision, but I've seen people getting depressed and definitely biased when studying philosophical pessimism. It seems like something that only happens in jokes or memes, but no, reading Arthur Schopenhauer or whoever can be dangerous if one is already vulnerable to depression, isolation, etc.
I definitely advise discretion. And it's not because they're dark monsters, monks of death dressed in black robes. There's nothing too morbid about the books; that's probably just the myth time has created around them. In reality, their danger is just pondering on dark aspects of life that can be disheartening if one is not prepared. Even when the reading is for high school or university, or for curiosity, I think these authors should be picked with an open mind and a serene "heart".
Thank you for reading and answering.
It's absolutely fine if you don't want to have kids
I don't agree with the Antinatalist idea that having children is immoral. Or that Antinatalism reduces suffering.
If I'm incorrect please elaborate
/> Pulls existence from the void into this mortal coil
/> Questions how not doing so could have prevented suffering
This point is highly dependent on whether or not you believe there is some sort of soul or existence before birth. I cannot argue on this point since this is pure belief, so I will accept your view for the sake of the discussion
You could say it prevents suffering, but it also prevents Joy, Love, Friendship. Sure it also prevents Sadness and Grief and so on. It prevents everything by way of not giving life a chance.
If you think you cannot provide a happy life to your children then it's perfectly valid to not want children. But it's egoistic to think that other people should not have kids because of your own world view.
Many Antinatalists believe that life in the current world is filled with so much suffering that it's not worth being born.
But that's like... Your opinion man! Let people make their own choices
Important distinction: Only one side is using "belief", and that is the one that has subscribed or invented themselves the idea of life before or after death. Zero evidence supports this. I'm not saying it does or does not exist, but it's a weak point to bring up.
You could just as easily invent the idea of children being literally us, reborn, to justify their creation. Or that children are literal currency in the after-life market. Conversly, what if taking lives gives us points? Maybe the Vikings had it right.
As for your second point, I think it's the first strong natalistic argument I've seen here! I don't agree with it any more than I agree with the antinatalism folks, but I appreciate the optimistic counter to all of the pessimistic points being made here.
In the end, I guess I remain of the opinion that this area of life (like countless others) is a gray area. I don't see either extreme as logically moral or immoral without more information being applied on a, case-by-case basis
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I'm enjoying playing devil's advocate here, however. People who justify having children as some sort of gift to the world are far less reasonable, and the arguments being made here by those types are exhausting.
I can diffuse just about every comment like this here with a simple word: "adoption".
I agree that bringing life into the world is morally bad. I also agree that eating other animals is morally bad, as is killing, always. However, that does not mean we should not do these things at times. You just need to understand that you are still committing an immoral act for personal gain. There is no such thing as a perfectly moral existence, as the world is a cruel place which cares little about morality and often forces you to be immoral. You should instead work towards being as moral as in out can when you can, and accept that sometimes morality is out of your hands.
In the case of the child: you are bringing a human consciousness kicking and screaming into this world you know to be dangerous and cruel. That is immoral, and you did it either by failing precaution, or out of personal want or instinct. I think to repent, you are morally obligated to give that child a good life at minimum and ideally the best life you can. You are beholden to them until they can live on their own happily, and you are obligated to help them even after that. I also think that if that child resents how you've cared for them, you have no grounds to hold that against them, as you were the one that forced them into this world.
If you cannot do the above, you are should reconsider whether you are fit to have a child.
It is also arguable that to do justice without injustice, the only option is to adopt or guide another person who has no one providing things they need, and I don't think this kindness should be limited to children but children are the most vulnerable.
What a bunch of cringe edgy antinatalist nonsense. Think about the future, if you don't have kids, who are we gonna feed to the machine a few decades from now?
Who feeds the machine now, it's you so why are you even around
Antinatalism is reactionary and incorrect.
Need dragon slayers in the time dragons.
Suffering is inherent to the human condition. Is it okay to undertake actions that cause people suffering?
What makes something okay? Who decides what is okay and what is not okay?
I'm taking an utilitarian approach. Suffering should be avoided, and happiness maximized. Bringing another being into existence guarantees suffering, with a chance of creating happiness. That is not a gamble you should take on behalf of another being.
Is the potential (or guarantee) for suffering greater than the potential for joy? You also have to account for the joy of the person and the joy they create. I believe the potential for expected joy exceeds the guarantee of suffering.
What previous status quo are antinatalists trying to return to? "Reactionary" is just the left wing equivalent of "woke".
I suppose the previous status quo that anti-natalists want to return to is before the evolution of intelligent life. Word is still out on whether it's immoral for single-celled organisms to reproduce.
touch grass
especially when I see what kind of people choose to have kids
Then you're leaving the future to them.
And the suffering that they cause.
Such a doomer mindset
If noone is cultivating and passing on positive culture, it's not making the chances of reducing suffering any better is my point.
ETA: I am not, to be clear, trying to say that having children is, in itself, a morally/ethically good thing. Generally, it is neutral but may be otherwise depending on one's situation. Choosing whether or not to have children is a personal choice - what's right for one might not be for another. Declaring others morally/ethically wrong for having children is myopic and likely a result of projecting one's experience into others.
In addition, antinatalism is bordering on eco-fascism, which is not ok. It seems most commonly expressed to make one feel superior while not putting in effort to effect positive change, like anti-electoralism/accelerationism.
Adoption. Community building. Helping the disenfranchised.
These are all methods of bettering the future without pumping another child into this world. And arguably, they're morally better than having a child.
I didn't know these where mutually exclusive.
You were the one who implied that, by saying that not having children leaves it up to those who will.
Have you or are you planning to adopt a child?
They’re not making a choice. They’re anti-choice.
I think most people simply don’t appreciate what having a child is and what a massive responsibility it is. Bringing another human being into this world is a gift, one that you should be expected to nurture and love no matter what.
The problem is that many believe that a child is simply an extension of oneself and can be manipulated and contorted into whatever the parent wants. A child is not you, a child is not a free workforce, or laborer. Too many people who do not truly understand what they are bringing into this world are parents and thats why theres so many flawed individuals.
I think most people shouldnt have children and especially right now with the way the worlds headed but to say having children is completely wrong is immensely stupid.
(in addition i myself am abstaining from having children because i dont want the responsibility and i find the lil shits annoying.)
I think you're talking out of your own ass, if you believe that most parents don't know all that.
mmmmm no id say youre talking out of your own ass.
Many parents when you truly get down to it seem to think the most important part of being a parent is spreading their genes and maintaining a bloodline.
I truly mean it when I say most parents dont realize how profound having a kid truly is. Otherwise i truly believe people take longer before having kid when it comes to finding another person to raise a kid with, considering what mental illnesses, or diseases that lurk in your dna.
I also think abortion wouldnt be that much of an issue if people consider when its truly the right time to raise a child.
So nah suck it brah.
WTF are you talking about? I don't know a single parent that does that.
I'll have to play the "you're no parent, so you simply have no idea card" here, since it's obviously like that.
As a parent, I thought I had an idea. Nope, still surprised. And I wanted the kid and have means to support them.
Yeah, most parents-to-be don't, since it's simply inconceivable, really.
From my experience,I personally agree with that sentiment. A lot of parents and parents to be put a lot on their kids that doesn’t need to be there, many don’t understand how much work it will be, and a lot put in much less work than they should.
It sounds like you are or would be an engaged parent to know it’s a lot of work to raise a little individual, but there are many people from many backgrounds.
That's simply something, no parent would say, so yeah: talking out of their asses galore down here.
So how about we fix the society as to that not only übermenschen can get children and born children have the resource of an intact social safety-net? Maybe that would be preferable to childless asses shaming parents whose situations they have no access to?
Most of the time, it's a lack of resources that disables parents to properly care for their kids. Try to be a supportive parent if you work 3 jobs to make ends meet.
You quoted the part where they said most people, but you're replying as if they said most parents.
Anyway, you'd hope people who don't know all that would learn better after the kid comes out, but I know some people don't. I can name two off the top of my head.
Hey, if they didn't mean most parents, then the first part of the sentence didn't apply.
I believed this once, but then I went to therapy. People have thrived under way worse conditions.
I'm more worried about the reefs thriving
Me too
Then not having kids is one of the best things you can do.
I am not willing to sacrifice having children. It's an integral part of life for me. Killing myself would probably be good for the climate as well.
Less good than not having children. But we are all free to make our own choices, but I don't think that you can seriously hold both "I care about the environment" and "I'm choosing to bring life into the world and damage the environment" ideas in your head without a lot of hypocrisy.
I know you may think, my one kid won't have such a big impact on the environment, but when 7 billion think that, the problem is exponential.
To be human is to hold contradicting understandings of reality in equal measure. The amount of people who hate the idea of animal cruelty (or environmental destruction for that matter), yet still consume animal products is astronomical.
The environment will never be saved by trying to convince people to not have kids. It's a biological staple of existence stretching back billions of years, and we as a species will never give that up.
Having children gives us a species a more personal stake in the planet's future, and it would be better to focus our energies on that angle instead of demonizing people who agree with you 95% of the time.
gross
I agree. The thought of bringing a child into the world in our current political and economical landscape would be gross.
hahaha it’s funny because you twisted my words to mean the opposite good one 😂😂😂
Minus the emojis, this statement would be great antihumor (not a disagreement with your point, I just love antihumor).
antihumor + emojis = a good antidote for unkind trolling in my experience :)
common spujb w
they call me wujb
This is why religious people outnumber us.
In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace
One of the problems with the historical Christian system, particularly in the US, is that its predicated on people living in the same place and going to the same church intergenerationally. As people are forced to migrate in order to find employment, they become untethered from their heritage church sites and the attendant communities that added real value to church membership.
The hyper-capitalization of the modern American Protestant movement hasn't helped, either. Very hard for the Southern Baptists to maintain participation when GenX, Millennial, and Zoomer cohorts no longer want to live in these heavily religious communities. They move to areas that don't have these highly active and Christian-dense neighborhoods. They fall out of the hyper-religious social circles. And they lose touch with the media and culture that ultimately drive these religious groups insane.
Meanwhile, the low housing prices and the increasingly finance and tech focused economic sectors are bringing in large numbers of religiously rivalrous migrant populations. The most common new religious constructions in the US are Mosques thanks to a large influx of Arab, Persian, and East African migrants. And because migrant populations and religious builders love cheap land, they're often showing up in and around declining Christian communities.
If you're out living in LA or Tampa or Houston and you're wondering why folks in Peoria, Indiana or Chattanooga, Tennessee or Tulsa, Oklahoma are losing their fucking minds over the super-scary illegal immigrant / Radical Islamic invasion, this is a big reason why. Their kids are all leaving for the coasts while lots of unseasonably tan people are showing up to take their place.
That... actually makes a lot of sense. Couldn't figure out why America, the land of immigrants, was so hostile to new people but now I can see why a poor old conservative feeling abandoned and surrounded by confusing things might think Trump actually makes sense.
As long as you're keeping it to your own life not trying to encourage genocide via antinatalist policy then you do you.
This. I don't have children and don't think its a good idea do to what humanity is doing to the planet, regardless of which element of humanity is to blame, but my other family members have children as do my friends and neighbors. Im not going to proselytize to them or encourage society to disallow it. I may not want it subsidized though, but even that there is often times no choice. For example while people may be bad for the planet in general, ignorant people is worse, so im gonnna want education funded and that same thing plays out for a lot of things.
The subsidies have an ontological value in that they improve the quality of life for the child. So removing subsidies will actively perpetuate and increase the very systemic issues that many antinatalists care about in the first place. You address this too, I'm just expressing agreement that simply removing chiodcare subsidies is not ethically simple even for staunch antinatalists.
In general governments ought to be working to support the people they represent. To me it seems an antinatalist who's goal is to reduce suffering would want to introduce things like a basic income or some such to improve the quality of life of those who do exist, not further take from those who have yet to be.
Yup. education, healthcare, basic income, carless cities, improved energy efficiency and usage of the cleanest sources. Im down.
Something that no one has discussed in this highly enlightened conversation here is the issue of consent. A person cannot consent to being born. Full stop. I don't know of a way around that besides ignoring it.
But they also can't request it. What do you do for the people who don't exist yet that desire existence?
I should note that I have gone around the local NICU and requested all the children present to indicate a desire to stop existing. None of them agreed. Many of them were struggling mightily to continue to exist. A few even yelled at me for asking the question. I'll admit its a small sample size, but hard to argue with a 100% existence endorsement.
Fuck me that's the best counter point I have heard so far. Thanks!
(In case you really work at a NICU: thank you so much for your work.)
My adopted son was born premature, and I'm currently doing a daily sabbatical to check on him. By all rights, he shouldn't be alive. One of the brighter moments of being an American right now is standing in a room full of babies whose lives hinge on our willingness to fund Medicaid. Every one of these beds is costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours to maintain. And people are dedicating their entire careers to bringing early newborns off the brink of death.
Its put a whole new spin on the ideas of natalism and anti-natalism. So easy to see some chud troll on the internet saying we should pull the plug, because none of these kids "consented" to keep breathing. But then you've got rooms full of compassion and care and joy, as these medical workers weenie all these little guys and girls into the world with the power of modern medicine. Stunning and majestic. The NICU Ward should be on the god damned American Flag. Its a testament to our greatness.
Just to clarify, I'm not advocating for any baby to be taken off life support, that's a pretty abhorrent thing to accuse me of, if that's what you meant.
I work in critical care and routinely bring people back from the brink of death. With a living being, unless otherwise stated, their consent to life saving treatment is implied, and I'm happy to give it.
Philosophically, I'm just not convinced that there is such a thing as an implied consent to "make me exist when I don't exist already".
That's just how evolution works- something that already exists and is driven to stay alive is more likely to pass on its genetics than something that is not driven to stay alive. This fact has nothing to do with the philosophy of consenting to exist in the first place.
Edit: missed your first question. Something that does not exist cannot desire.
But how can something that doesn't exist have the capability of consent being violated?
Because the typical standard of consent is that in order to do something to someone, you should have informed consent. If you cannot obtain that, then you do not do the thing. Something that does not exist cannot give informed consent, therefore you should not do the thing.
I knowhow consent works, but existence is the precondition for anything constent-related, including violationg consent.
Non-interference is a good default position to have, but we are capable of acting on behalf of others when we have a certain threshold of confidence for what they would want in a situation. Otherwise, we would consider it wrong to give CPR to an unconscious person.
When it comes to life, people overwhelmingly prefer to continue existing when they have the power to choose. So it makes sense for us to presume that a hypothetical person would choose to be born given the opportunity.
If living organisms are predisposed to prefer existence, this would imply existence is an inherently preferable state.
Prove it
It usually is- to a living organism, which is not what we're talking about.
Come on bro you can't be serious about this.
😂 Made my day
If we are to assume that every non-existent person desires to exist, and that we have the obligation to not block this, then we should be having children whenever possible as to not block anyone.
Let's visualize this. If I decide to wait for another partner and a certain age, the humans that I could create with my current sexual partner in these years are screaming to be born and I'm ignoring them. I'm not letting Laura or Ignacio be born, and over them I'm preferring Óscar who will be born in 2028 of a different father. Am I doing something morally incorrect at negating Laura's and Ignacio's right to be? If so, as I said, you agree we have the obligation of having children whenever possible and we better start now you and me and everyone else reading. If not, if we don't have this obligation, then there's no problem if I skip Laura this year, Ignacio the next and Óscar and others later. Unless you want to save this by saying some people deserve to come into existence more than others, but I already say I won't agree with that.
Other people would argue in a different way. There are people who would say that even if we create good by bringing people that do consent retrospectively, we also harm forcing life into people that wouldn't and don't want life. And even if the proportion is absurd, not harming is always the priority over giving pleasure. This is the idea behind negative utilitarianism and other ethical paradigms. This also has been studied by philosopher David Benatar who reframed it, and now that's called "Benatar asymmetry" (but the question is older than him).
I hope my English does not betray my explanation...
Sure. This is the philosophical counterpoint to the "Nobody consented to exist so it is unethnical to bring anyone into the world". You spin it to argue everyone has a right to exist and you end up with some sort of neoliberal spin on the Quiverfull movement.
You're assuming objective standards for "good" and "harm" that aren't a given. And you're still ultimately dictating a choice on behalf of other people - both people who are being born and people who are doing the birthing. I mean, ffs, how do you even approach the idea of consent while intruding on two people in the act of coitus? "Stop nutting! You're violating the potential rights of a potential person!" is a thing you get to say only when you've disregarded the actual rights of an actual person.
That's a personal ideal, not a functional standard. In practice, people routinely engage in socially harmful practices for the sake of personal pleasure. And that goes well beyond sex. Let me know when we abolish the cruise line industry and then maybe you can come back and discuss chopping off everyone's balls for the sake of potentially existent people.
The theory is rooted in the perspective that pain is bad. But even this isn't an objective standard.
Nothing is objective to our knowledge and nothing is a given, that's the point. I was not trying to declare those things as truths but trying to explain that there is room to consider them (e.g., to consider that little pain weighs more than enormous pleasure). I cited a philosopher who does, but there are many others. Those are the topics relevant to this discussion.
Antinatalism is not a negative attitude towards sex nor children.
People are free, free enough to create life. The antinatalist wonders if the people creating it have the right to do so, if it hurts in some way (and who), and if we should continue to do so. The answers are very different even among antinatalists. The only thing they have in common is that they do not approve ethically of creating new [human] lives. You can take out the square brackets for some.
And... that's it. I understand if many here believe that procreating is morally neutral or good, but I think there is validity in questioning it or in believing that it is morally incorrect. We all have our reasons and nobody ultimately knows.
Horrible news for physicists
Don't worry. Good physicists know it as they study epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of physics, among other things.
The problem I have with your argument is that it could easily be used to justify rape. A person who is incapable of giving consent is also incapable of requesting things, so does that make it okay to just assume consent?
It means that the original argument of consent to life is invalid. Consent isn't possible until life. It's a great philosophical problem but not one with a known solution.
Another note on the original post, their argument could also be used to justify going through the NICU and killing every newborn. So there's a clear 'pro life' bias going on here, with acts that bring more life being seen as good, regardless of consent. Wouldn't a more reasoned approach be to maintain, keep those who are alive, alive, and those not yet existing, unexisting? Forcing a being across the border is bad, regardless of direction.
Do you consider all heterosexual sex a form of rape?
For general rape, the victim is typically capable of giving consent but chooses not to, meaning we know the rapist is violating them. For situations where the victim is incapable of consenting, it is true that we are assuming a position for them. As a society, we have observed that being made to have sex in a vulnerable position is a negative experience, so it makes sense to extrapolate they would be opposed if they were capable of choosing.
For life, the observation is different. Once people have the power to knowingly "opt out" of existing, they rarely do. Most people instead prefer existing and consider it to be positive. So we should assume a hypothetical person would also choose to be born when acting on their behalf.
What's consent to a being that doesn't exist?
Nothing, unless they start existing.
So, how does the concept make any sense? Can I get consent from an angel, too?
I'm not sure what your point is here
My point is that the whole premise of "consent for existing" is bogus.
And how does that relate to angels?
They don't exist either.
We agree there
When you force it into existence, literally everything
I fail to see how the mere concept makes sense right now. That's the same flawed logic as longtermists use.
If my understanding of longtermism is correct, it's more of a function of utilitarianism. If one wants to do the most good for the most people, then it makes some amount of sense to focus on the far future where presumably there will be more people. Their consent is irrelevant, which is kind of the opposite of what I'm saying, which is that consent is relevant.
It's the other side of the same coin. They both argue about the well-being/bad-being of hypothetical humans. It's bogus, either way.
I think you make a great point. Have you read about the problems with "person-affecting views"? It's admittedly a bit harder to grasp, but doesn't seem less problematic to me.
Nope
Highly recommend. It's easy to dismiss as weird bullshit initially but enlightening when you put in the effort to understand.
To be clear, I am no longer strongly convinced of or against person affecting views and take both seriously.
This is a good starting point:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/c6ZYCpq2L46AxSJNy/my-favourite-arguments-against-person-affecting-views
I'm not sure if I should feel sad for you, or envious. To be so certain of your own point of view and take pride in not taking other ideas seriously. It must give some sense of calm but at the same time, you miss out on so much. I won't ask or recommend you anything though, I read the thing. Enjoy your wall staring. Let's hope it will make the world a better place.
Dude, get off your high horse. If I read every little thing some rando on the internet threw at me, I would never leave the toilet!
I don't find these EA thought experiments interesting. That's no reason to try to shame me for it.
I made a decision, please respect that.
They are not related because you have to exist to experience well-being or "bad-being". What I'm talking about is consenting to exist.
Longtermists try to justify their actions by invoking potential, future generations. Those don't exist either.
They're presuming that people will exist, which is not a wild assumption
But that's not a philosophy I particularly subscribe to so I don't feel compelled to explain or defend it further.
Sorry Timmy, you still have to go to bed.
I'm not consenting to paying taxes. Doew that mesn dobby is free now?
Technically, sure. You are free to go live in the woods, off grid, somewhere. Or you are free to violate this particular social contract and deal with the consequences.
That's legally not possible. Every piece of land belongs to someone already, either a private entity or a government. You might be able to live somewhere in a forest, but you're at the mercy of the entity that owns the land you live on.
You could technically live in the ocean, but I'm no fish lol
You can volunteer yo not pay taxes. Move to some place without and renounce your citizenship. If I recall correctly Saudi Arabia doesn't have a great deal of personal taxes.
Taxes are how currency gets its value. So if you plan to stop using taxed currencies, then sure.
With all due respect but that might be the worst take I've heard this week.
A currencies value is determined by the economy behind it. There's a reason why countries with lots of exports have a strong currency, while countries that don't are weaker in comparison.
Obviously, it's not the sole reason - economy is complex. But taxes have no role in a currencies value.
I mean I know there's no way to obtain that consent, but I did let my parents know that they should have just gotten the abortion since the condom ripped.
I wasn't planned, and I shouldn't have been born into that family. None of them were ready or cared to be ready or even cared to be with each other as they almost immediately split after my birth.
One thing I'll literally NEVER understand are the women on dating sites with literal newborns... What the actual fuck?
How long do you think women should wait to date after giving birth?
Any advanced society should be able to acknowledge that population growth must not outpace the available resources. Or else there will be Bad Times For All
There are more houses/apartments than people.
There is more food going to the trash than what we need.
It's not that we have a lot of people. The problem is the greed of a few and the complacency/idiocy of the rest.
Yeah, having kids probably reduced my household resource consumption, compared to the dual income no kid lifestyle that my wife and I had before kids.
Population growth is so far disconnected from resource consumption, because people's resource consumption does not resemble a bell curve. A private jet produces more CO2 in an hour (about 2 tonnes) than the average Indian produces in a year (about 1.9 tonnes).
The poor people having children aren't destroying the planet. Rich people, childless or not, are. (And yes, I acknowledge that I fall under the "rich" category here.)
I don't know you, but you probably don't fall on the category of "rich" in my mind.
Richer than an Indian farmer. Ok. I'm also rich then. I live in a house (not mine) and don't go hungry.
I don't even consider billionaires on the scale.....that is just an afront on humanity and shouldn't exist.
I think my personal resource consumption, if scaled up to the world population, would be devastating. That's what I mean by categorizing myself in the "rich." I might not be a billionaire, but I'm far, far above the global average, and still significantly above the national average for my nation.
Points to you, for self-awareness.
Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S.
I was a mild antinatalist for a while. Personally wanted kids, but felt the world was too broken to pass to a new generation that didn't ask for it.
And then -- I know this sounds dumb, but whatever -- I played Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Parenthood in a time of armageddon is a central theme, and it's not subtle about it. Every story element is named in a way that alludes to either parenthood or annihilation. The overarching plot describes the moral challenges of...
::: spoiler spoiler ...planning a next generation of humans to rise from the ashes, thousands of years after the previous generation went extinct. They died to an AI catastrophe, but it works just as well as an allegory for climate change.
Is it ethical to even subject a new generation to this, knowing what we know about how we fucked things up? If we're gonna try, do we have a duty to put in a kill switch in case things go off the rails again?
Obviously, the game sides firmly with the new humans, but it doesn't dismiss these questions out-of-hand, and it's okay with ambiguity and hypocrisy even on the part of Project Zero Dawn's chief architect.
The ending scene still gets me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFJ_vSCJdO0 :::
I consider myself staunchly antinatalist. Almost nobody I see in the world day-to-day should have children. Hell, working in retail I've come to understand how few people deserve life in general. And then those shitty people have shitty kids.
But I feel like I love as deeply as I hate. When I do meet actually decent people, it makes me feel very happy. It's just not often enough.
This honestly made me laugh. Again, fair.
It should do more than that, I should hope!
Hope you don't hurt falling from that highest of horses
Buddy needs to go touch some grass
That's fair.
Cats tend to land on their feet.
That's an output of the system, cat thing. Systems can be changed.
That's just misanthropy.
How full of yourself you are.
It's only encouraged because if people stop having children, it breaks the system, an utterly shit system which apparently can't be fixed fast enough if people stop having children so we better go full speed ahead on a the most moronically large scale sunk cost calamity that is going to hit us like a brick wall along with all the other things piling up.
The overriding fear I've seen is that not enough white children are being born. And as the definition and context of whiteness shifts, this inspires varying degrees of alarm and hatred. A big part of the current Israel/Palestine conflict stems from the demographically older and more infertile Israelis believing they need to cap the younger and more virile Palestinian population by any means necessary (including the current genocide).
So it isn't even that "people stop having children", but the "right" people not having the "correct" kind of children.
Sort of the dirty secret about climate change is that its got nothing to do with population size. Enormous amounts of natural resources and carbon emissions are being produced by vanishingly small portions of the population. The whole AI project has been a fossil fuel hog. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consumed phenomenal volumes of material for the benefit of an infinitesimal sliver of the planet's residents. Reliance on disposable plastics and love of enormous cars has nothing to do with the number of children we've been having.
Anti-natalism is completely divorced from ecological sustainability. In many ways, it is rooted in this delusion that we're all living in these remote rural settings with an infinite frontier to exploit forever. And that mentality emerges most forcefully in places that don't have these dense urban populations.
I love how your second quote literally and purposely leaves off the last part so you can fuel your argument better. Some people don't need to be misinformed, they do it to themselves!
Overpopulation is not "anti-natalism", overpopulation is literally a known and measured problem of biological populations, but some people like to make-believe that it doesn't apply to humans. Cue "but population really is falling (except not really because we keep bringing immigration from places with lower quality of life and then complain when ours continues to be lowered)" when it itself is an indication that we are reaching the limits and yet are still trying to push past them.
As an aside, lol at new labels like "anti-natalism" showing up that stereotype arguments launched against them, it reminds me of how the GQP has adopted their "woke"-ness label just because it gave them a term to band things that had existed for ages under. I'm sure "antinatalism" will serve as well - not blaming you for it, just realized the term was being paraded around and that it will work out just about as well as "woke".
Yes, I'm sure the consequences would be horrible if we stopped, but that's the thing, being already in a shit load of trouble if you pull out is sort of a prerequisite of sunk cost fallacies.
Yes, common objections are that the economy could crash or that humanity could go extinct. I don't think these are good objections, and I have different reasons. It seems like a bad "an end justifies the means" way of thinking sometimes.
Honestly, the economic crash one is weird. The logic is that we must sacrifice our present and immediate future (that happens to be millions of lives) so that other lives are better (supposedly). Huh? It reminds me of the argument I heard against prohibiting animals in circuses. They argue that the animals that were in the circuses at the time would be slaughtered or abandoned, so their logic was allowing more and more years of animals suffering inside the circuses. What? Yes, the change definitely hurt, but it was possible both to fight against their slaughter and abandonment, and to get rid of that abuse forever. If we decrease in population, of course it will be difficult, but we can find ways to face the difficulties while we get into a better system. We cannot preserve capitalism just because we are afraid of hard times, when capitalism itself is hurting us.
The extinction one is different. We won't get to that point, but even if we did, it would be a free decision of humanity that is hurting no one else. That's the intuition they probably have: that those humans would be hurting the ones that do not exist yet, but I already commented about that reasoning. I don't think there's harm against the non-existant. Our end is possibly inevitable because the habitable Universe seems to have an end. If we decide to fight it, that's okay as long as we do it ethically. But if we collectively decide to end it all, I respect it as long as it's done ethically too. Anyway, as I said, this is mere imagination as I do not see humanity (in the big numbers we now are) never ever choosing this path together. We will be here for some time.
How about don't have kids so you can work more and more flexible hours on demand in aspiration of a fabricated idea of a career
Stupid people have the most kids, that's how you know the world is full of idiots. Ocassionaly though you meet a really nice humble person that will make you think positive towards people again atleast for a while... Even better if you carry their torch and continue with those good vibes towards others. Gives you that touch of there's genuinely good people still out there. Its refreshing.
If only bad people have children, what will happen?
Your answer lies in the classic 2006 film "Idiocracy"
Kind of my point
Who cares, I'll be dead.
Well, you don't, but to answer your question: all the other, alive people.
I'm not a fan of utalitarianism myelf, so this might be wrong; this sounds like utalitarianism - as the action you did cause other suffering.
then in your moral philosophy, are all actions that cause suffering (and joy, and all other feelings a human can experience) morally wrong?
Is then not dating, f.ex Morally wrong?
Or is it the impossibility of consent? Yes, a child is unable to consent to being born. Just as we are all unable to consent to the world being created, or nature's whims. I cannot consent to a state on the other side of the world making policies, but I can still react and do things about it.
Is it morally wrong to let animals have children?
If one animal species is harming an ecosystem then I don't see how it's morally wrong to limit their reproduction.
Usually, a better way to help an ecosystem balance itself is to reintroduce predators or similarly.
the deer population in yellowstone was destroying the soil, this was solved by reintroducing wolves.
there's a big difference between this, and f.ex castrating a lot of the deer, or going on a shooting spree.
It also goes with the assumption that the ecosystem is either outside the moral spectrum, or morally good.
What's f.ex mean?
A guess, but “for example”? That’s how I’m reading it, anyway.
It's the norwegian / danish way of writing e.g
"for example"
There's also antinatalism from a deontological perspective.
But, from the negative utilitarianists I've known and seen, I've found an intense debate about the animal reproduction question. Some say antinatalism should include non-human animals and any other sentient being; some say it's a human-only matter. I do not have an opinion.
this comment section is a hell of a ride, but i'll just state what seems to be a pretty significant thing that everyone just merrily sails past:
Y'all remember that saying of "it takes a village to raise a child"? That's why modern parenting sucks, we don't tend to have villages to help raise our children anymore. We're not meant to raise kids with maybe at best our partner and some assistance from their grandparents and kindergarden/school, we're meant to share that load and responsibility among like at least a dozen people and kids are meant to constantly have access to other kids to play with and collectively learn what boundaries are.
I'm old and out of touch... What's with this "rule" memes?
Sooo back on reddit...
There is r/196. The rule of the sub is that if you visited it, you have to post a meme before you leave. These people are just following the rule.
Thank you. I've been subscribed to this sub for months and didn't know a damn thing just that it consistently produced amusing content. Please proceed you glorious bastards.
Thanks kind stranger
They also required “rule” somewhere in the title
r/195's 1 rule was if you visit this subreddit, you must post before you leave.
Now you have to send weekly nudes to the mods too. :(
It's funny to think that modern humans have been around for tens of thousands of years but we're only ~80 years of infertility away from global extinction.
80 years of total infertility across billions of people. Even 99.9% infertility would still leave millions of people. Extinction isn't coming anytime soon.
Ignore or assume we fix socioeconomics, environment, etc.;
Is having a child moral given the child cannot consent to being born?
(Not offering any opinion or trying to lead towards any answer)
The child can still consider taking the one-way exit as soon as it is able to make such considerations and thereby gets a choice.
You could ask in a similar manner:
Wouldn't it be immoral to disallow this decision making process by leaving the child no choice by not having it?
Asking for consent of an unborn is paradoxial and inherently impossible. It's almost like asking a plant whether it consents into being planted and eaten afterwards. It has no agency. Is it immoral though to plant it and eat it anyway?
Having a child is similar. Get it, let it grow and develop its agency. Then it can decide for itself.
So the answer boils down to kill yourself when you turn 18 bud? That seems like incredibly callous and unnecessary pain for all involved.
Consent 101: If you’re unsure about whether or not someone would consent, the answer is no. And since we can’t ask the unborn, people who don’t want kids assume the answer is no.
Which is - at least to some extent - a culturally formed perception. We know cultures where suicide was not frowned upon nor was seen as an inherently bad thing. For example:
This proves that it can be possible to embrace such decisions of mature adolescents, be it for life or against it.
We can turn this easily around: If you're unsure whether someone would consent to not being born, the answer is no and therefore they should be born.
But more importantly, to ask that question at all is already built on a erroneous premise, in my opinion: The unborn child has no sufficient agency to form an opinion about this question. It is therefore pointless to ask it. The ability to make such decisions comes with time and maturity of the child. Until this level is reached, you could also deny plants and even stones their existence because you are not able to ask them whether they want to exist at all. They have about the same level of agency as an unborn child.
If you're unsure wether someone would consent to not having sex, the answer is no. Therefore... If someone is unconscious it's okay, or even morally necessary, to have sex with them in order to not deprive them of a decision they don't have the agency to make themselves?
Put like that, it's of course not a conclusion which feels right. Which is interesting and which I would explain by the "greater goods" which are relevant in such considerations.
In your example, the greater good is an autonomy about one's own body and what happens to it in presence of other people. An issue which we've developed understanding and respect for one's individual will.
In the context of natalism however, there are different goods at play depending on how you look at them:
Antinatalism: "creating new humans is wrong, because they have guaranteed suffering. Allowing that will cause unneccessary suffering."
Pronatalism: "Creating new humans is okay, because their life can be joyful (and/or brings me joy). Denying that robs the possible being from this experience." (Depending on who you ask, it might not even be necessary to be joyful, as the experience of life is already seen as valuable by itself.)
In other words: Antinatalism's greater good: preventing suffering. Pronatalisms greater good: allowing joy and the experience of life.
But again, asking for consent here is pointless, as I've detailed before. If you want to have sex with someone who is unconcious, they are able to form on opinion about that before the incident, possibly during the incident and directly after the incident. In other words, they have agency about this. With unborns it is different: they don't exist and have no agency prior or during the incident of being born. They develop this ability during their childhood. Then you can ask. Without such a capacity I don't see any value in moral evaluations. Because to me, this is currently almost similar to asking a stone whether it wants to exist in this universe.
Yeah I just don’t think having a kid under the premise “well you can kill yourself later” is a really great argument. And they’re not really letting us kill ourselves humanely anyway - Medical Assistance in Dying laws are still incredibly restrictive and they actively prosecute people who sell alternatives.
Just because I find joy in life I can’t force that on other people. We all have different perspectives.
I look at it like joy is not guaranteed. The only thing that is guaranteed through life is suffering and death.
I don’t need to have kids for survival and we have too many people already. Why guarantee suffering in another person.
Which is an important practial limiation of course. But I'm currently discussing this on the level of the underlying ethical principle, less on the level of practical implications, because the latter could possibly be changed by forming an appropriate mindset in our society.
Sure, but would it be equally okay to deny someone their shot at joy? Even without (much) joy, some might see the suffering as part of their journey, a part of the experience of life which they could still prefer to not being born at all. We never know until we can ask and expect an answer to that question.
And it's totally okay for me if these are your reasons for not having children. I agree with a multitude of reasons why someone want's to be childless. So I hope you don't get me wrong here. I don't give a fuck whether someone wants or doesn't want children. It's their life and their decision regardless of their reasons. I just find the topic of natalism interesting from a philosophical point of view.
And that's why you should never pull an unconscious person out of a fire. QED.
I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. In the Canadian medical system consent to save an unconscious person’s life is pretty automatic.
We’re talking about consent to opt in to be born, which is completely different.
Death is far scarier than having never been born. I went through sooooo much torment thinking about death and if I should make today the day. I have PTSD from years of that. This is not a fair exit.
I understand that. It's a very scary feeling for most. (btw: If you really feel like this damaged you, I hope you've considered therapy.)
However, if someone decides they don't want to be alive (and we can ensure that this decision is made of "sound mind" (whatever that might look like)) I can imagine that they might get used to the idea of death and ending it.
I got used to the feeling, but it never stopped hurting. I'm a lot better now, but still need to address the lingering effects.
I mean.. with all the negativity in this thread, every single person here is consenting to be alive every single day. While there are a number who choose an early exit, the vast vast statistical majority overwhelmingly consent to live another day every day. With such stats I feel like it's fine to assume the default status is consent in this context.
Plus, speaking of morals, we're just dumb little apes. You give us too much credit if you think we can fight the greatest biological urge of all life over something we've completely invented in our minds : morals, and the morals of the unborn is like double hypothetical.
Death is scary, not wanting to die is not the same as wanting to live. I would've rather not been born during about 1/3 of my life, it's only now that I'm finding any substantial (though inconsistent) enjoyment from life.
"by waking up today, you consent to continue existing, and acknowledge the suffering it brings. Do you wish to continue?”
[yes] [yes]
no the fuck I do not. If I had a magicall button that would let me stop existing without the risk of damaging my neck and spending the rest of my life incapacitated but alive, and it didn't cause trauma to the people around me, I would have pressed it fucking years ago.
what disgusting mental acrobatics
I would say it isn’t
Oh boy, you guys are gonna love the global pension fund crash then!
Which shouldn't be a problem, but with how abjectly you guys reject AI and automation, it is gonna be a problem
Yeah, as if automation was never used to cut jobs in order to enrich the wealthy class and the working class didn't get any of the benefits. /s
Cool I guess we'll all just die then.
We sure will.
Valuing children only for the monetary value they will contribute is a very good way of producing unhappy children which in my view is pretty immoral. It's also pretty close to viewing humans as capital and that's problematic in it's own right
It's not the only value but you do you
At the level of humanity as a species we are born to reproduce, like every other living thing.
I don't care about the species, I care about the people. If someone doesn't want to reproduce, it's better for both them and the species that they don't. People only reproducing when they personally get something out of it will eventually make future generations enjoy it more. Forcing it just promotes suffering, perpetuating the cycle of unhappy parents in the long run.
This whole idea of caring about furthering our "species" is eugenics anyways. My genes make me want to be a parent, but I understand that the genes themselves don't matter for shit. I'm planning to have kids because I will enjoy raising them and helping them live full lives. If someone doesn't share this desire, I'm not gonna force my preference onto them.
Freedom and treating humans with dignity does that very job of eugenics better than the eugenics notion of pressuring people to be parents. There's no Darwinian excuse for being shitty to other people. Just be good.
Exactly. There's even an evolutionary reason to be good to other people, as described by Pjotr Kropotkin in "Mutual Aid".