Yesterday, Post readers were moved by the image of our Prime Minister, in Poland on April 5, kneeling at the Death Wall of Auschwitz, the worst of the Holocaust extermination camps. In the museum guest book he wrote, “Lord, bless the souls of those who suffered and perished here, and deliver us from evil.”
Stephen Harper’s prayerful posture and traditional words of commemoration for the lost souls of a barbaric era reveal a sensibility noticeably out of sync with the religion of environmentalism that presently dominates our culture.
The contrast was illuminated in the coincidence of Mr. Harper’s expression of reverence for human life with the contempt for human life displayed by Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society chief. In reaction to the March 29 maritime deaths of four seal hunters, Watson declared the deaths of seals a “greater tragedy.”
Publicly discomfited, Green party leader Elizabeth May resigned from the advisory board of Sea Shepherd, but tellingly (rather like Obama with his racist pastor, Jeremiah White) wouldn’t distance herself personally from Paul Watson. As a faithful adherent to their mutual church — Our Gaia of all that is Non-Human — to which she remains fully committed, May elected to stand by Watson for the sake of his “good work.”
But what “good work” can compensate for Watson’s advocacy of a population-decimating cap of one billion people, or calling human beings “the AIDS of the Earth?”
Watson should be a social pariah. Instead he’s been touted by Time, that iconic pulse-taker of our culture, as an “Environmental Hero of the Twentieth Century,” which speaks volumes about the inability of our society’s wildly vacillating moral compass to locate true north.
Watson is the symbol of a movement that originated in a desire to improve the planet’s physical condition, but transmogrified into the zero-sum dogma of eco-spirituality, in which the object of worship is the environment, and the messianic goal its return to a pre-civilization Edenic state. In this scenario, Earth is perennial victim, mankind eternal villain, the consumption of natural resources original sin. No emotionally manipulative appeal is beyond the pale for this pagan religion’s demagogues, even the
shameful appropriation of racist tropes. Alpha eco-spiritualist novelist Alice Walker claims, “the Earth is the nigger of the world.”
The case of Englishwoman Toni Vernelli illustrates the disturbingly irrational nature of this death-friendly replacement of Christianity. In 2000, at age 27, Vernelli had herself sterilized so as to “reduce her carbon footprint” and “protect the planet.” “Every person who is born,” Vernelli lamented, “uses more food, more water, more land…and produces more rubbish, more pollution.”
The West’s plunging demographics suggest that, however extremist their views, Watson and Vernelli do represent an influential cultural shift. Canada’s fertility rate is presently 1.54%, lower than China’s one-baby 1.7%. Italy, whose fertility rate is a shocking 1.23%, “has lost a little of its will for the future,” understates Rome’s Mayor, Walter Veltroni.
The anti-natalist movement’s guru is a philosophy professor from Cape Town University, David Benatar. In 2006 Benatar published Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, which unabashedly advocates the extinction of humanity. It is always wrong to have children, Benatar claims, urging a “pro-death” view of abortion.
Is anti-natalism an historical first, a natural consequence of easy birth control? No. Cultural defeatism isn’t technology dependent. In about 150 BCE), an ancient called Polybius wrote, “The whole of Greece has been subject to a low birthrate and a general decrease of the population.” His explanation: “For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear children born to them, or at most as a rule one or two of them … the evil rapidly and insensibly grew.”
Anti-natalists are gentler exterminators than Nazis. No gassings, no ovens, just ideology induced suicide. The perfect world of the Nazis was judenrein — free of Jews. The ideal world of antinatalists like Watson is Menschenrein –people-free.
Wringing our hands and letting the Pope and other theological polemicists do the heavy intellectual lifting on this issue won’t do. A return to the Judeo-Christian values that produced Western civilization is our best offence against the hollow purposelessness of militant secularism, the abhorent vacuum that loves the moral cretinism of anti-natalism.
We can love the Earth without hating its inhabitants. Demonstrating reverence for the dead is not enough. Mr. Harper must institute policies that show reverence for the lives to come.
bkay@videotron.ca
If Watson would care to lead by example I’ll volunteer to pay for the shotgun shell. Think of all the animals he could feed.
Great stuff by Barbara. The environmentalist movement started with laudable goals. I too desire to improve the planet’s physical condition. But we see what happens when your world view is determined by a single issue. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Four lanes and no speed limit. Free hand baskets for all.
Well said, Skeptic. And I too, for all the ridicule which I apply so freely, want a world as clean as is feasible without killing people and destroying the economy. I want the wild places to remain wild places, as much as possible. And I like clean water and air that I can see through. But I prefer to worship the creator and not the creation.
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I think it’s important to distinguish between environmental antinatalism, which may be characterized as misanthropic, and Benatar’s ethical antinatalism, which is explicitly philanthropic (read the book’s final chapter for some relevant discussion of this distinction). Whether you begin with utilitarian or deontological premises (loosely defined), the underlying assumption of ethical antinatalism is that the creation of sentient life is intrinsically harmful; regardless of the good things that a created person may enjoy, their existence will most likely entail some degree of suffering, and their existence will surely end with the grave harm of death. If you begin with theological premises AND you believe in damnation, then the stakes are even more grave since there is a possibility that a created person will not only suffer and die during their life, but that he or she will also endure the eternal agony of Hell. Not creating new people avoids this outcome without imposing any deprivation on those who are never summoned into existence (those who don’t yet exist cannot suffer or be deprived). Perhaps there are other reasons to dismiss ethical antinatalism as “moral cretinism,” but the “exterminationist” label does not fit. Ethical antinatalism proceeds after the anthropocentric assumption that human suffering is a problem of profound magnitude, and it seeks to avoid its perpetuation by getting to the root of things.
I do like the term “Menschenrein.”
Life at the bare bones level is all about killing and eating, with a lot of suffering in between. There are joys, distractions, and a lot of self delusion in between as well, but survival by any means is generally the name of the game. Of course, this applies to all of creation(sic), and not just to humankind. Still, it can be argued that humans, because of their abstract ability to ’suffer from a distance’, generally receive the fat end of the baseball bat vis-a-vis existential pain. There’s a painless solution, of course, and that’s to simply stop breeding. Human suffering annihilated in a generation…think about it.
As far as any religious ramifications…I agree with Chip. Why would ANYBODY bring a child into the world that has even the slightest chance of suffering eternal torment in hell? For those who believe in an age of accountability (most Christians, I would think), my advice would be for all pregnant god followers to queue up in front of the abortion clinic post haste. It’s a ‘get into heaven free’ card, folks!
As far as the rest of of the earth’s creatures after we’re gone? Not much to be done about it, I suppose, barring the fortuitous path of a rogue comet, perhaps. I don’t worship life, nor do I find it to have some sort of ‘intrinsic value’ (value used in this way is a category error, IMO). The moment a lifeform comes into existence, it becomes a receptacle for suffering, and eventual death. Always. Antinatalism isn’t about hating life…it’s about hating the suffering that is intrinsic to life, and the wish to eliminate that suffering, painlessly and irrevocably. The person who is never born, never suffers, and never misses any of the good stuff (and the certainty of avoiding hellfire is certainly an enormous plus, as well).
Dang, these guys are completely bonkers. What depressing lives they must lead. Sure, life may have pain and suffering, but it sure as heck is worth it. I wouldn’t deprive any unborn baby the joy of being able to live in this world. It’s the suffering that makes the beauty all the more wonderful.
Careful mentioning Paul Watson on your blog, or anything to do with the seal hunt. You’ll have tonnes of trollers appear and leave ridiculous comments. Happened to me a year and a half ago (and all I did was paste the DFO’s lists of myths about the seal hunt).
Deborah: Then, using your logic, we should increase the suffering, or at least, ignore it, to further the wonderfulness of existence? Furthermore, if a non-existent entity can be said to be deprived, and being that we can conceive of an infinitude of non-existent entities (all those potential children that are never brought into existence), then again, by your logic, there will always exist an infinite number of ‘deprived’ people, suffering under the fact that they were never conceived in the first place? Bonkers is as bonkers does, I suppose.
So, do you regret becoming a father? Have you told your children that news?
Do you wish that your then-wife had aborted them?
Did you have them sterilized?
Deborah,
You write:
“I wouldn’t deprive any unborn baby the joy of being able to live in this world.”
This is a good place to begin since the antinatalist debate largely hinges on the question of whether one is being “deprived” of anything. For the sake of argument, I will grant that unborn babies — which is to say, fetuses — can have an interest in, or a right to, continued life. But when you are talking about people who have not yet been conceived (but who could be, one day), would you not agree that the idea of “deprivation” is misapplied? The person who could have been brought into existence but who is never conceived is spared every potential harm in life (including death), but since they don’t ever exist, “they” are deprived of nothing.
And by the way, I disagree with your assertion that “It’s the suffering that makes the beauty all the more wonderful.” I think this is a cognitive bias that doesn’t really make sense upon examination. But regardless of whether you or I are right about the symbiotic relationship between suffering and beauty, isn’t it significant to consider that any child that you bring into existence might NOT see the world the same way? It’s wonderful if you can sustain such a life-affirming perspective, but I think it is a serious mistake to presume that your offspring will be equally predisposed to optimism.
Suffering is part of being alive. You may want to wave the white flag, but not I. I like a good fight. Furthermore, you may find that mass murder leads to a different destination being printed on your ticket. This death cult is contrary to any of the teachings us “God followers” believe.
Chip and Jim your argument is evil. However, it is so absurd that it is a big hit in the office. Thanks for lessoning our suffering through your insanity.
Bear:
“So, do you regret becoming a father? Have you told your children that news?”
In the sense that I’ve brought my children into an existence that intrinsically produces suffering, I would have to say yes, though I won’t deny that there are both plusses and minuses on the ledger.
“Do you wish that your then-wife had aborted them?”
Yes, since I don’t believe that fetuses suffer; and, even if they do, the suffering is nothing compared to what lies in store for them, including their own, eventual deaths, with all the suffering of disease and such that will lead up to that death.
“Did you have them sterilized?”
No, though I have encouraged both of them to remain childless, for the above mentioned reasons.
Stillman:
It’s one thing to “fight the good fight” when it comes to your own life. Quite another to place that onus on those who never had a choice in the matter. To say that “suffering is part of being alive” is simply a re-statement of the status-quo, and offers nothing in terms of valuation. As far as your religious predilections are concerned, I only hope that your children don’t happen to choose a religion/philosophy further on down the road, that precludes them from your heavenly bounty, and places them within the proximity of demons bearing pitchforks…for eternity.
Jim: the least I can do is to thank you for your honesty.
Wow.
I can’t make up my mind: is this satire? It’s so insane that I keep expecting to see the Monty Python foot come down and squash it. Chip and Jim are so far gone they can not be taken seriously. Incredible.
Bear:
Thanks, I try my best.
Stillman:
That’s only because it’s much easier to to dismiss the arguments via mockery, than to actually consider the ramifications of a position you don’t like. Personally, I find the idea of worshipping an invisible king who threatens everybody who doesn’t toe his line with eternal punishment rather insane. But then, that’s me.
Stillman,
You submit that, “suffering is part of being alive.” Obviously, I would agree. And as far as the “white flag” business is concerned, I don’t want to give in, either. Not ever. I just prefer not to bring others into my ordeal as a mortal beast. I prefer not to enlist, by dint of procreation, those who have no choice in my particular struggle. And by refraining from having children, I cause no one any harm. Furthermore, for every child my wife and I do not have, there will be one less death. You call it absurd. I call it math.
To acknowledge that suffering is inevitable is one thing. To invoke this fact as a justification for imposing new suffering on beings who never consented and could otherwise have been spared, is arrogant at the very least.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re amused.
The problem is, Jim: I have considered the ramifications of your position. All it deserves is mockery. In order to get involved in any real debate I’d need to take it far more seriously than the ramifications allow. I regard your position as being so insane I can’t shake the suspicion that I’m falling victim to a very clever (and funny) wind-up.
Bear:
I notice you’ve retitled this thread. Am I glad to be alive? Depends when you ask me, I suppose. However, there are many people, due to various life circumstances, who generally are NOT glad to be alive. The real point here is that each of us exists on a sliding scale between happiness and misery, based on circumstances largely beyond our control. Where we were born, who we were born to, our physical and mental health, etc., etc. Ultimately, it’s a toss of the dice as to what shore life throws us up on. And no matter what one’s personal situation is, the fact is that many people are born into lives of extreme misery. To unequivocally state that ‘life is good’ is simply to ignore the dark end of the spectrum of existence. Utter hubris, IMO. And a justification to keep the ball rolling, of course.
Stillman:
So far, all I’ve seen from you is trite dismissal, and one or two tautalogical assertions with no argumentation to back them up.
In reference to the ‘Monty Pyton foot’; I suggest you pay closer attention to whom the foot usually comes down on. Remember this line from the closing number of ‘Life of Brian’?…
Life’s a piece of sh*t
When you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true.
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep ‘em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
P.S. to Bear:
Hope I’m not tying up your thread here. Say the word, and I’m off, and thanks for the opportunity to post here…jim
Stillman,
The way I add it up, the ramifications of antinatalist ethics may be summed up as the attritional cessation of (or reduction of) suffering and death, with no commensurate experiential deprivation for those never brought into existence.
The ramifications of pronatalist (or procreationist) ethics may be fairly characterized as the perpetuation of suffering and death, with the precious jollies for those born never being offset by the foregone prospect of unknowing, pre-existent nothingness.
I agree that it’s funny, but I suspect we’re laughing at different punch-lines.
I’d love to hang around and argue, but you have throw me a bone — even if it’s for your own amusement.
Best regards,
Chip
“So far, all I’ve seen from you is trite dismissal, and one or two tautological [sic] assertions with no argumentation to back them up.”
Correct.
Still don’t feel the need to lead evidence.
Stillman:
Given your position, quite understandable.
Stillman,
Jim spells “tautological” correctly. Is the implication of your “[sic]” that his characterization doesn’t apply to anything you’ve asserted? If so, we might have something to work with.
Regardless, I’ll step out of the pool. Unless of course anyone wants to address my position.
Thanks for playing host to my dissenting views.
Chip
Jim: I have no desire to throw you out. You have, one way or another, livened up the proceedings !
Tautological is correct.
Chip:
I’m not sure the subject can be addressed logically from the other side; at least, unless one is willing to divorce oneself from an empathic frame of reference. For instance, Vox Day could certainly chime in, since his whole creed seems to consist of ‘it doesn’t matter what happens to everybody else, as long as I save my own skin’. Of course, one wonders where he would come down if Satan had happened to win the ‘war in heaven’. On second thought, I suppose one really needn’t wonder, at all.
Bear: Yes, I corrected it initially and then decided that was unfair so added “sic,” but failed to go back.
Ugh! I NEVER spellcheck! (bad habit). I also meant ‘empathetic’ and NOT empathic (Counselor Troi, forgive me!). Tell you what, you keep after me on the typos, and I’ll keep pointing out the vacuity of your rationale, and we’ll both come out better people for it. *wink*
Re: “tautological.” My mistake for not tracing it back to the original comment. I guess we can all agree on spelling.
Bear:
The discussion thus far has been nifty, but…duty calls (those burgers ain’t gonna flip themselves!). Thanks again for the opportunity to present my case, and I’m looking forward to further commenting that may ensue. Please feel free to visit my site when you get the opportunity… http://antinatalism.net … out for now!
jim
Jim:
You assume my logic is that increased suffering = increased wonderfulness of existence, and that is incorrect.
An unborn baby is not non-existant. He or she exists in the womb. E.g.: if I become pregnant, I will not abort my baby just because he or she may face pain and suffering in this world.
Chip:
Knowing that suffering exists does increase my awareness of pleasure. For example, I suffer from migraines. I almost constantly have a headache, which is rather unpleasant. Monday morning I was driving my fiance to the ferry and I realised that for once I didn’t have a headache and felt really good. Knowing that the pain exists heightens my awareness of how good it feels to not be in pain.
This isn’t to say that we should cause pain and suffering. It is to say that it does not detract from or outweigh the joy I have of living here and makes me appreciate the little things (such as not being in pain) all the more.
Additionally, I didn’t refer at any point to people who have not been conceived. Read my comment again and you will see that I usesd the words “unborn babies”. It’s not a baby if it hasn’t been conceived yet, so I was obviously referring to babies still living in their mother’s womb.
Jim: bonus points on the Star Trek reference.
Deborah,
Thanks for your clarification, which is helpful.
To respond in reverse order, it may surprise you to learn that I agree that the unborn should not be aborted under most if not all circumstances. This is because, unlike David Benatar, I believe that it is safest to assume that persons “come into existence,” when they are conceived, rather than at some arbitrary point of gestational or physical development thereafter. If human life plays out over a continuum, then abortion will always be morally and legally problematic, and even though I don’t believe fetuses possess the same active capacities that make human beings such good candidates for legally enforced protections against encroachment and harm, they do, by dint of genetic nature, have the same inherent potential for such capacity. And slippery slopes are relevant.
But if human life plays out over a continuum, and the continuum ends most certainly in death, my contention is that it is demonstrably harmful to set a life into motion by conceiving that life. In this sense, normative antinatalism can be cast as a kind of extrapolation of the secular argument against abortion. The slogan that announces “Abortion = Death” can be revised to take account of the ultimate stakes: “Conception = Death.” That’s an oversimplification. But such complicating factors as I can imagine do nothing to diminish the implacable conclusion that those who are never brought into existence, i.e., those who are never conceived, will never suffer, and never die. Would you consider the act of procreation — demarcated at conception — to be a harm to the person conceived?
I am very sorry about your migraines. I’ve never had one, but my wife has, and I have some removed understanding of just how excruciating they can be. While I think it is good that you can derive some heightened experiential appreciation of the good things in life by observing the contrast between the mental state of enduring a migraine headache and the absence of that state, I must point out that the same could be said of any pain/pleasure asymmetry. If a person is tortured every other day, the “off” days may come to seem like heaven on earth. If a child has Cystic Fibrosis, I’m sure that the all-too-brief respiratory relief that comes after the daily treatment provides that child with some renewed appreciation for those of life’s pleasures at which they may yet clutch. You can play this game into the furthest reaches of pain and pleasure, and it’s a useful exercise. Yet if a new drug were introduced that relieved you of your affliction, I suspect you would take it. And I submit that your life would better, even without the intermittent pain to remind you of how awful it can be.
But more importantly, I notice you speak only of your own experience when you aver that suffering does not detract from the good things in life. Which is to say you avoid my question regarding your potential offspring’s potential demurral. It is well and good that you can accentuate the good in life in such manner, but this is far from a universal trait, and if you have a child who doesn’t share your outlook, then you have created a person who will suffer the more, and who will suffer without the perspective in which you take daily solace. My view is that it is better not to take that risk, since the risk is taken, presumptively, on another’s behalf, without even the possibility of their consent. And since the gravity of the risk is simply unknowable in advance; your child could be severely afflicted, or could live through some horrible misfortune or crime or war. Neither you nor I know what might happen to a child who is yet to be conceived, or how that child will regard their plight. But it is certain that by not conceiving that child, every bad and potentially awful event will be avoided. And what’s more, as you agree, there will no one deprived of any good things.
Regarding abortion, I’m not that concerned about drawing arbitrary lines between non-personhood/personhood. As a naturalist, I don’t really believe that entities ‘come into existence’, insofar as something can be said to arrive from nowhere (though the language of the argument might make it seem otherwise). Rather, I see life lying somewhere along the spectrum of existence, and what I’m concerned about is the arising of experiential pain, which seems to be part and parcel to this segment of the aforementioned spectrum. In a sense, this a Buddhistic take on things, whereas one might say, ‘there is no one who suffers; only the suffering exists’. However, perception and language being what it is, we are sort of forced to use clunky concepts like ’self’ and ‘personhood’. Which is fine, but it does cloud the issue when we ask questions like “when does life begin?” But enough of that.
As far as the rest, I think Chip has outlined the case more than sufficiently. Deborah, you may think you’re adequately compensated for your suffering (though I find your rationalizations somewhat pollyannish), but who’s to say how your child, or others, may feel about the situation? Furthermore, any given life may suffer horribly more than you do with your migraines. Life is a gamble, and many get the very short end of the stick, you know? And it’s one thing to gamble with your own money, but something completely different to gamble with someone else’s.
I’d like to sort of stick you with something you said. You said “It’s the suffering that makes the beauty all the more wonderful.” This says more than your later migraine analogy would imply, I think. Here, suffering makes beauty ‘more wonderful’. If we turn this statement around, what you’re actually saying is that beauty is diminished in the face of lack of suffering. In other words, you have tied suffering to beauty (or goodness, or happiness, or what have you, I assume) ‘as a necessity’, without which beauty is less than it could be. Now, this isn’t a new notion. Thomas Aquinas postulated that the saints in heaven would be able to look down and enjoy the suffering of hell’s unfortunate denizens, in order to heighten their own happiness. I think this attitude springs from an intuitive knowledge that happiness is, indeed, a relative affair, and springs from a duality much like you described with your migraine example. If true, I believe this rather puts the kibosh on any plans the transhumanists have of attaining ideal, everlasting happiness through genetic manipulation, or technological supplantation. Just a side thought, there.
To sum up: non-entities don’t experience any of the pain, and don’t miss any of the good stuff; plain and simple. To mourn a child who never was, is to mourn a figment of the imagination. And when you consider the Christian twist to the matter, with the inherent threat of eternal damnation, the choice is clear. Don’t conceive; but if you do, get an abortion poste-haste (that is, unless you believe God will also send fetuses to hell, in which case I guess the damage is already done).
I think that Epicurus summed this issue up well:
“Yet much worse still is the man who says it is good not to be born, but ‘once born make haste to pass the gates of Death.’ For if he says this from conviction why does he not pass away out of life? For it is open to him to do so, if he had firmly made up his mind to this.”
So I’m going to go ahead and procreate because I want to and it is in my nature to do so. Also, my future-husband wouldn’t be too happy if I didn’t want children, and sleepyoldbear here needs some grandchildren to spoil.
If my children feel that I have harmed them by bringing them into existence, then they will know how to deal with the situation. But I suspect that they will much prefer to exist than to not exist. With few exceptions, it’s pretty universal that people prefer to exist than to not exist, so I think it’s pretty safe to assume that my children will also be happy to exist, and I’ll also be quite happy for them to exist as well.
This cult of death and surrender is shifting from farcical to disturbing in a hurry. Let’s examine why:
1. Chip and Jim arrived close together (1 hour). They seem to have been working together since their arrival.
2. They both have been leaning heavily on well practised, possibly tinned arguments.
3. Chip and Jim both extraordinarily polite — even fawning. They seem too eager to ingratiate themselves. They also search for points to agree on in order to create an illusion of common ground.
Their arguments don’t look so pretty when distilled:
1. Life is nothing but pain.
2. Pain is entirely bad.
3. Death is the end.
It ignores the many good and wonderful things in life. That pain is not always a bad thing. That death is not the end.
This high stakes “I’m taking my ball and going home” is pathetic. It ignores the ability of people to improve themselves, their circumstances and their surroundings. It absolves our descendants of personal responsibility: your future offspring might do bad stuff and go to hell so it will be you to blame. No it won’t. Little Timmy will have to take his lumps for his choices like a big boy.
This is a cultish faux religion promising an easy fix. The problem is it doesn’t fix anything. What they propose is not building a car because it might break down.
The kicker is that an atheist is trying to use Christianity as a plank in his argument. Problem is Christianity is clear on the subject:
“And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.”
Stillman,
I freely admit that I brought this forum to the attention of Jim, but beyond that, there’s been no collusion. If our arguments sound similar, it’s because our reasoning proceeds after similar premises. There aren’t many of us antinatalists around, so it should be no surprise that we make similar noises. As for my — our? — being suspiciously polite, I really don’t know what to say. When I enter a discourse, I strive for civility and I try to be fair to the other guy, cerebration being generally preferable to fulmination.
I suppose I should clarify my disagreement with your distillation of my — our? — underlying presuppositions.
First, I certainly don’t agree that “Life is nothing but pain.” It’s a ledger of good and bad things; pleasure and pain; disappointment and satisfaction, etc. The salient antinatalist point is that the model collapses when you weigh the scales against the option of pre-vital nothingness. The ancillary point I would reiterate is that it is impossible to know just how asymmetrical the pain/pleasure ledger may turn out for a particular person before they’re born (or conceived). To argue that it is better never to exist and that it is right not to have children is not to deny that once you DO exist, you shouldn’t make the best of things and strive to be happy.
I would disagree also that “pain is entirely bad.” Pain is information, and it is often information that can be useful for any number of reasons. It is also trivially true that a person’s experience with pain may serve to heighten that person’s experience of pleasure by contrast, and I suppose that by a certain convolution of reasoning it may thus be said that such pain can itself be “good.” Fair enough. But I’m sure we can agree that not ALL pain is “good,” no? Or phrased somewhat differently, that SOME pain is indeed “entirely bad”? Let’s stick to that variety of pain, then — the kind that is more accurately called “suffering.” Or, if you think “suffering” is in some sense similarly nuanced, let’s simply admit that there are a few unqualifiedly bad things — like child torture, or a slow death by starvation, or Oliver Stone movies. My point is that antinatalist ethics absolutely guarantees that such “unqualifiedly bad things” will not happen to those who are never created, and that the choice is ours. No “unqualifiedly bad things” will befall those who are not. And I say, good for them.
As to death being “the end,” I proffer no qualification on this point. I’m quite convinced that death is absolute cessation, a personal version of the end of the world. When I imagine being dead, I simply recall what I was doing in 1967, three years before I was born. The fact of the death as “the end” I find at once horrifying, comforting, and puzzling. But of course, this is where our disagreement is nested on purer terms.
The charge of “surrender” interests me. Especially since I regard antinatalism as emerging from a less deceived understanding of human agency than is common. Unpack the causal skein and you will see that the absolution of responsibility that you decry is merely descriptive. “You have children who do bad things and die and go to Hell” or “You don’t have children who don’t do bad things and don’t go to Hell.” Either way, your primary agency is assured. This ultimate conclusion survives regardless of what options and responsibilities you presumptuously foist upon your unconsenting offspring. By virtue of only one choice is there zero chance of death or damnation. It takes no courage to have children. People “surrender” to the procreative urge as a matter of course. But to face the potential consequences of your action, and then to stand athwart the regenerating masses — that takes resolve.
Surrender to procreative urges? I think not. While it may be in my nature to have children (I’m not convinced that reproductive systems are around just for decoration), I actually WANT to have children, and that was a conscious decision that I made a long time ago. I am certainly not subject to my “urges” and don’t make decisions based “urges” either.
Anti-natalism is considerably more prevalent than you make it out to be. People simply hold those views for different reasons. Yours may be philosophical, though these days, environmental reasons are quite the rage.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=495495&in_page_id=1879
The problem with trying to advance a set of morals based on atheist belief is it has no authority or depth. Furthermore, if death is the end there is no need to worry about anyone or anything other than yourself. Indeed, it would be a foolish waste of time.
On the other hand if you approach anti-natalisim from a Christian stand point it falls apart for different reasons. The first two that spring to mind are: death is not death and be fruitful. In fact “be fruitful” puts the lie to the assertion that there would be zero chance of damnation by not having children.
A crippling fear of failure — solved by walking away. Courage and resolve are found are acknowledging the problems in the world and striving to overcome them — not walking away from it.
Pardon the pun, but the anti-natalist argument arrives at a dead end. Christians aren’t faced with such a problem.
Deborah,
Perhaps “urges” was a poor choice of words, but you seem to recognize that your desire to reproduce is at least partly informed by your genetic constitution, or your nature. If it’s merely a selfless desire to have a child, you could opt for adoption. Not only would you be channeling your maternal, er, sensibilities, toward someone who already exists and whose needs are not currently not being met, but you would avoid even the possibility of creating a human being whose life may turn out very badly. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that the idea of adoption doesn’t feel the same somehow. If we are essentially gene-machines (which is really what I was getting at with my reference to “procreative urges”), then the difference in sentiment, which, again, I may be wrong to presume, would make perfect sense.
Regarding other arguments against procreation, my initial comment in this thread sought merely to distinguish Benatar’s normative antinatalism from the more commonly encountered environmentalist strain, with which I disagree.
Stillman,
Obviously, I disagree completely with your assertion that atheism implies any kind of moral vertigo. To my mind, the fact that we are rational and social creatures caught up in the same existential predicament is itself a sufficient foundation from which to foster a productive value system, which may in turn be reified through law and custom. For a pithy exposition on morality without God, I would refer you to Penn Jillette’s essay, “There is No God,” with which I largely agree (except for the bits about family creation, of course). Here’s the link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557
Just the same, even if I did agree with you that an atheist worldview leads to moral turpitude, I don’t know what I could do about it since I seem to be constitutionally incapable of believing in anything supernatural, and since I would object to the tenets of the Nicene Creed even if I could somehow bring myself to believe that it reflected a higher Truth.
If you want to read arguments by a converted Christian who at times comes precipitously close to embracing antinatalism, I highly recommend the papers on file at: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/ — particularly those under the heading “Pascal’s Wager and Christianity.” It’s fascinating stuff.
With reference to your scripturally based rejoinder regarding the Christian response to antinatalism, are you saying that eternal damnation is the biblical sanction for one’s failure to obey God’s command to “be fruitful” — even for those who otherwise accept Christ as the truth the light and the way? I’ve never heard this suggested before, but if it is true, then I guess you’d better have as many children as possible, and hope they do as well. And so on, and so on.
The politics of “surrender” abounds with irony.
If any of you are interested in a parting comment from Chip that was apparently blocked from this site, you can read it here.
I know nothing of such a parting comment; I have blocked nothing. But I had better check Akismet. Stand by.
UPDATE I have found it, blocked by the spam filter unfortunately. Two comments up.
Stillman:
Beyond the conspiracy fantasies, your position seems to boil down to “just following order”. This being the case, you are simply outside the pail of reasoned argumentation. Beyond that, your penchant for mis-statement and misinterpretation is just a facile attempt at an end run around what’s been said. Here’s one slight example…
1. Life is nothing but pain.
2. Pain is entirely bad.
3. Death is the end.
As far as I can tell, nobody has said that life is all pain, or that all pain is entirely bad. You’re shooting flares at your own strawman here, I’m afraid. And as far as I’m concerned, the idea that death is the end is a good thing, especially when you consider that the hammer of extreme suffering would eventually fall on all of us, given enough time.
My apologies for trying to keep it civil…ingrained bad habits, I suppose.
Deborah: You said…
“I think that Epicurus summed this issue up well:
“Yet much worse still is the man who says it is good not to be born, but ‘once born make haste to pass the gates of Death.’ For if he says this from conviction why does he not pass away out of life? For it is open to him to do so, if he had firmly made up his mind to this.”
So I’m going to go ahead and procreate because I want to and it is in my nature to do so. Also, my future-husband wouldn’t be too happy if I didn’t want children, and sleepyoldbear here needs some grandchildren to spoil.”
Firstly, there are many factors that might deter one from committing sucide. Here’s a response on that subject from my own blog… https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=354069516366024003&postID=5649662879068291539 …
As for the rest of your post, your position seems to come down to ‘because I wanna!’. Nice for you, I guess. Not so nice for your future children, if fate happens to look unkindly upon them. Thanks for your honesty, though.
In my web hopping, I AM gleaning an antinatalist POV here and there; for various reasons, like you said. Maybe there’s hope for reason, after all.
Stillman: One more issue. You said…
“It absolves our descendants of personal responsibility: your future offspring might do bad stuff and go to hell so it will be you to blame. No it won’t. Little Timmy will have to take his lumps for his choices like a big boy.”
So, your 15 yr old daughter comes home. You hug her tightly, feeling her heart beating, that same heart that beat against your chest every time you held her since she was born. Then she tells you, “Daddy, I don’t believe in your god. I’ve tried, but I just can’t. I think I’ll try out buddhism for a while. You have an argument, she runs outside, and gets hit by a car. She dies. So, you go on praising the deity who has committed your daughter to indescrible, unimaginable torment forever and ever? You go to church, and praise him with this knowledge ever present in the back of your mind; because it’s your own arse in the balance, after all? And you shrug, and say “oh well…it was her choice, after all. And you DARE to call my position pathetic?
It amazes me how religion can blunt peoples’ sensibilities. You may consider my morality to be lacking, having no authoritive anchor; but, consider this: the authority upon which you deem the bible’s worthiness is still your own, subjective authority. ..there’s no escaping the truth of this. All your rationalizations finally boil down to ‘I was just following orders’…which is just a tidy way of foisting off the responsibility of facing the hard questions of life. As far as moral stances go, I find yours rather lacking.
Of course, since you feel this way, you might look twice at the benefits of supplying an endless number of Timmys to eventually be ‘lumped’. I don’t think vasectomies are explicitly prohibited, so you’d probably still be allowed into the circle of heavenly sycophants. Just a thought.
Sorry, one final point. Stillman, you said:
“In fact “be fruitful” puts the lie to the assertion that there would be zero chance of damnation by not having children.”
Of course, the assertion is actually that, by not having children, no new lives will be brought into the world to have the ‘opportunity’ to be damned to hell. I’m beginning to wonder if you’re capable of following the bouncing ball.
Also, are you implying that anyone who chooses to be childless is breaking the ‘be fruitful and multiply’ statute, and thus condemned to hell? Questions…
1)all?
2)some?
3)is there some definite number required to fulfill the heavenly mandate?
4)where does one procure a deferral?
Now that I have the opposition chasing its tails I will declare victory and call it a day.
The notion that “Stillman” can claim a victory in this discourse is laughable. Stop looking in the mirror and spend some time actually reading the above posts.
You’re a little late Josh. What’s the matter? Did the short bus break down?