Package Deal of Social Structure and Self-Reflection
When born into the world, we are given an unescapable package of two things:
1) Social structures of economic, political, cultural institutions that de facto need to be entered into in order to survive, find comfort, and fill time with entertainment.
2) Self-reflection. We can evaluate what we are doing in these social structures, and come to conclusions that we do not like doing these things while we are doing them.
Why does this package seem justified to perpetuate onto more people born into the world?
Is there a quasi-religious element of some "mission" involved in this?
Why is a movement against perpetuating the package of social structure and negative evaluation of human activities needed to survive condemned off the bat, but the perpetuation of this package is condoned and praised? Can't there be another point of view?
1) Social structures of economic, political, cultural institutions that de facto need to be entered into in order to survive, find comfort, and fill time with entertainment.
2) Self-reflection. We can evaluate what we are doing in these social structures, and come to conclusions that we do not like doing these things while we are doing them.
Why does this package seem justified to perpetuate onto more people born into the world?
Is there a quasi-religious element of some "mission" involved in this?
Why is a movement against perpetuating the package of social structure and negative evaluation of human activities needed to survive condemned off the bat, but the perpetuation of this package is condoned and praised? Can't there be another point of view?
Comments (166)
To the section question, the answer seems obvious and I think you know it too. Group think, Pollyanna biases, religion, and even an idea of “destiny” or progress: IE “we should colonize space and we need humans for that!” Personally I don’t fully buy you and Schopenhauer’s pessimistic diagnosis of human life, but I can certainly relate to the fact when people don’t want to hear you you’re suddenly insane or mentally ill. Radical ideas not welcome
Well, there's the old time "Be fruitful and multiply" rationalization (ideology) ...
Because mass cognitive dissonance would ensue ... and lambs would lay down with lions!
Another point of view? Sure. Won't be popular, though, never has been whenever and wherever its been practiced and promoted. We're ecologically-imbedded embodied animals with millions of years of homeostatic and procreative hardwiring that a few millennia of antinatal ratiocination cannot undo or override in the vast majority of homo sapiens.
Why are you so evangelical about this, schop1? Why isn't it enough for you that you refuse – for moral reasons or not – to breed? Like a "pro-lifer" on a jihad to stop others from having abortions because it's not enough for them not to have abortions themselves ...
I'll answer this first.. specifically on the two parts of the package mentioned in this thread..
Not breeding does not thereby negate being born. What does one do once born and is contrarian to the arrangement? Of course there is suicide. But besides this, I want to engage and evaluate the thought-process (often never looked at critically for reasons you have laid out well). Clearly other people are involved in this decision, and it is part of their value system, even if they are just following the tropes of the group-think. I want to understand the origins of this group-think, deconstruct it, show it bare for what it is, and expose the harmful political assumptions of perpetuating this package.
Quoting 180 Proof
Can you explain this process in more detail?
Quoting 180 Proof
Granted, that somehow gets in the ideology.
Quoting 180 Proof
Can you explain this one?
Quoting 180 Proof
But unlike eliminating waste or eating, procreation is never such an immediate need, and so the motivations are much more complex and culturally based.
And then what? You think the world will change?
Have you seen The Truman Show?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I wish it could be another point of view but in this era no... Remember that this world literally gave up on social basics as you said: ethics, equality, moral, etc... pursuing one goal: make the most ton of money you can doesn’t matter the rest.
You said we can think about it and change it through rationalism/ improving our criteria. Nevertheless, this depends a lot where you come from. Imagine you were born in El Salvador or Eritrea. What chances do you have to change the circumstances? I guess zero. Because your environment makes it really hard (violence, drugs, injustices, etc...) so... the first and second packages are from rich countries.
If it can be another point of view we have to the travel the “developed countries” and see what happens... but they are wasting money in social networks and fancy cars.
Procreation (the whole rigamarole of conception, pregnancy, and birth, feeding, diaper changes, etc.) isn't an immediate need. For women it's kind of a pain. But sex is an immediate need. Heterosexual sex, however much aimed at short-term gratification, leads to conception with enough frequency to achieve a growing population.
Is a growing population a problem? Until quite recently, it was not. In 1700 there were about .6B people. In 1800 the world population was about 1B. A century later it was 1.6B. Today it is 7.8B. Something (technology? better public health? more food? strong economy?) enabled population to more than double twice in 100 years. Culture hasn't kept up. Lots of people do not see a problem in 10 billion people converging with global warming. More fools they.
We are stuck with a large population, barring savage and draconian measures; a horrific epidemic (much worse than anything we have seen so far); or, my guess, agricultural collapse. No individual solutions will help, given the immensely unlikely possibility that 8 billion people will voluntarily refrain from reproductive sex.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, there is this "way of the world", the way things work. The higher-order self-questioning that leads to voluntary non-reproduction isn't very common among the world's people. There's nothing wrong with everybody; they are just doing what people do -- getting through their day. That is the world's way, from microbes on up.
Your thinking is explicitly anti-natal, but there are many millions of people who have opted for less than self-replacement levels of reproduction. Millions of people so opting is far short of enough to make a difference in world population. Until very recently, there was no good reason to promulgate antinatalism: the death rate was too high.
You will probably argue that high rates of grim death were actually an excellent reason to promote antinatalism. Collective thinking, habits, patterns, and so forth -- culture -- was no where close to finding your reasoning palatable (like in the medieval or Roman period when perhaps 25% to 33% of the area population died off from epidemics).
That is a really good question. At least get this contrarian idea to the norm out there.
Quoting baker
Yes, but what is the tie in?
So my premises are on why we create ANY socio-economic-cultural arrangements (which means this is not dependent on contingent cultural circumstances.. it can be first world or third world or hunter-gatherer arrangements). Why do we perpetuate more people to endure having to deal with
1.)Social structures of economic, political, cultural institutions that de facto need to be entered into in order to survive, find comfort, and fill time with entertainment.
ESPECIALLY in light of the fact that our species can (from normal development and socialization):
2.) Self-reflection. We can evaluate what we are doing in these social structures, and come to conclusions that we do not like doing these things while we are doing them.
SO rather the question is, why perpetuate any of this forced dilemma of survival, comfort-seeking, etc.? Is it not a political act to decide that more people need to live life and endure this? Are we not animals that have the double-duty of being able to reflect upon our situation and decide we don't like it BUT THEN STILL HAVE TO DO IT KNOWING THE CONSEQUENCES OTHERWISE ARE DE FACTO DEATH OR MOER MISERY?
But we all know that this is not cut-and-dry. Certainly one if one really wanted to, can refrain from sex for the rest of their life. It isn't as enjoyable as far as pleasure, but it is possible. However, with contraception that isn't necessary.. Roller coasters are also fun for many people.. but we certainly wouldn't want to ride one that hasn't been fully tested and have proper safety precautions. Obviously one can take precautions for sex as well, but you know that. Of course, unlike roller coasters, your personal sex life is not scrutinized for safety precautions by a commission of engineers :lol:. That might be the next step :D.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I wonder if the epidemic is giving people pause to how much they want to expose their child to contingent harms of the world. At the least, the disruption in certain ways of life may have people more introspective as to what the hell they are even doing day in and day out and what for anyways.. If people aren't introspecting.. they should. They have the capabilities to self-reflect on an existential level, why wouldn't they?
Quoting Bitter Crank
But my point is we are not similar in one way to microbes and other animals- we can self-reflect on any given task, condition, state of affairs we are in AND we can aggregate and self-reflect on "EXISTENCE" as a whole. Why would we not question this practice of simply continuing this arrangement of (and I know I repeat..)
1) Social structures of economic, political, cultural institutions that de facto need to be entered into in order to survive, find comfort, and fill time with entertainment.
In light of the fact that we can...
2) Self-reflection. We can evaluate what we are doing in these social structures, and come to conclusions that we do not like doing these things while we are doing them.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I should have read this first.. haha. Why wouldn't it be found palatable? What is this tendency to not find it palatable? Let me rephrase this.. If procreating more life is affecting other people, isn't this decision a political one that perpetuating cultural institutions like working to survive, and finding ways to get more comfortable and entertainment in your enviornment (what humans "do") is necessary and needed? There is are preferences here that are being willed into existence for human existence to do the whole socio-economic-cultural thing. That THIS arrangement is good. We should like it.
Because those who didn't create them died out. And the ones that are left were the ones that felt the need to create such arrangements. So their children will also probably feel the same need due to either genetics or culture or both (probably both).
If you're asking for why, that's why. If you're asking for justification: That would require the belief that the project is worth continuing somehow. Or the belief that not continuing the project is somehow harmful. Among a slew of other justifications(orders from God and such)
Certainly, when we live this is necessary for our species relying on cultural learning rather than inborn habits. However, we can self-reflect and say something like, "As I am doing this task to survive in this socio-economic circumstance, I am evaluating that I do not like this.." So one can always evaluate and not just blindly and unself-reflectively "do". So if we can self-reflect, we can decide, "Wait, if I do not like doing this, why would I want this to be a way of life for other people?". What is the need to perpetuate the way of life of needing to survive, etc? As you said:
Quoting khaled
It's more like if we can evaluate any part of it or all of it as generally negative, why would we perpetuate it? And if we did, my real question is then, isn't this a political choice we are willing to be enacted into the world? That this way of life needs (somehow) to take place? And if this is a political choice, what is wrong with the contrarian view of this? Why is one praised be default?
Well first off, most people like doing this. And second: For these reasons:
Quoting khaled
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's justification #1. There are plenty of others that people use.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Objectively? Nothing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Because it is intuitive and the majority believe it.
Not sure about that. There is a lot to unpack there. Because I like doing something doesn't mean that all of "humanity" should be doing it throughout all time.
And my point is that unlike simple habits that are never followed to the contrary or believed otherwise, we can believe a variety of things. Ad populum doesn't mean anything here to me as justification just that might makes right. Again, that is just political then.
[quote=All Will Be Forgotten_an unwritten epic mess!]As an unforeseen consequence of a (universal) cancer vaccine that induced immunity through the germline without apparent need for a booster – some gonzo madscience genemodding nanotech I'd posited back then (couple of decades before CRISPR) – after a remarkably successful global vaccination campaign in the mid-21st century, the human species became completely cancer-free AND completely sterile within a generation or two ...
... and a fraction of those in the immunized generation who had advanced cancers when they received the vaccine survived with their cancers as well as their aging processes "in remission" effectively became immortal (until their cancers randomly returned eventually killing them) ...
... most of these immortals were solitary or came together in small groups mostly hidden from the sterilized and despairing masses of soon to be extinct humanity, some seeking a "cure" for this genetic sterility, some seeking a way to predict and prevent or survive the recurring immortal-killing tumors (NB: living in micrograv with higher than earth-normal background rads was "the answer" but ...), some leading or just joining mass-suicide or decadent dionysian cults or Mad Max-like roving gangs among the decaying, ravaged cities of the collapsing late 21st global civilization, and some were seeking some form of "tech-singularity" ... [/quote]
But that's it, the plot/s escape/s me now. 'The story' – a cautionary tale about one-size-fits-all "cure all" that, in a chaotic universe, even when the plan succeeds very likely breeds unintended, unforeseen, consequences further down stream – got way too grand and deep for my (less-than-monomaniacal) attention-span at the time and so I went back to mostly very short (not quite "micro") fictions where I'm apparently still (permanently?) stuck.
Anyway, my point bringing up this "aborted novel" is, I guess, to point out that speculation about how to, for whatever reason, deliberately engineer human extinction will set off global conflagration of violent suffering once the panic sets-in of mass recognition from the inescapable loss of personal-generational futures, of the use (and abuse) of histories, of the consolations of soteriological faiths, of the relevance of scientific knowledge and discovery, etc. PD James et al have had it right: when looking hard enough at 'antinatalism' as an existential prospect, the very structure of human rationality, not merely our species biology, for better and worse, is an "immortality project" (E. Becker) manifest through natal hope. We are a tragic species either way – antinatality' solves nothing – which, my friends, is genuinely pessimistic.
That is grim and pessimistic. It's ironic that antinatalism not working is pessimistic :D. But what you seem to describe is a sort of forced antinatalism. Rather, I see it as a contrarian political movement to the pro (whatever we have now movement). My question to you then is why do the people who want to perpetuate this "way of life" get to make the rules and the contrarians are the ones to go fuck off and commit suicide if they don't like it? Might makes right, right? Why is the default that getting to perpetuate the political-economic-cultural (what we do now) on yet more people is somehow "good" for them and for the universe? Why is this just default? Antinatalists getting their way means passively NOT forcing a way of life on anything. That is not true with the majority opinion as it is now.
Of course it is "possible"; some people actually do remain celibate for all or much of their lives, some even without being monks, nuns, or priests. For most celibates, no-sex is a sacrifice (else it would have no value). For a few people, never having sex is a non-issue.
Quoting schopenhauer1
When it comes to roller coasters, I'm a celibate. Once was enough.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Come on, Schop; introspecting might be hard, or they did look into their inner beings, and found that there wasn't much there (he said, sarcastically).
Quoting schopenhauer1
Two reasons: 1, the pain of continuing along as we have been is less than the possible pain of deviating from the path. 2. Analysis Paralysis. It's real: Examine a problem from enough different angles and one often finds there is no superior arrangement towards which one should move.
Change is not always successful, short, medium, or long run. Look where the great ideas of the Industrial Revolution have brought us. It all seemed like a great idea at the time. A couple of centuries later we discovered that we have been digging our own global grave.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, we can "evaluate what we are doing..." and can conclude that we do not like doing these things. That does not mean that we can then change without lifting up the great weight of the social overburden. There are good reasons why people don't behave the way we think they should.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'll say here that these preferences are, in fact NOT willed. I do not believe we can WILL a liking or a preference into existence. If you do not like chocolate (some people don't) can you just decide that it is delicious and then enjoy it? No. Can a heterosexual will himself to find other men sexually attractive and then prefer to have sex with them? No. We can learn new tastes. People have to learn to like cigarettes. Having gotten addicted, they have to learn to like not smoking. Is the decision to smoke the same thing as willing to like cigarettes? No. The decision to smoke is willing to put up with a foul taste until one learns to like it. (Same thing with coffee, horseradish, fish sauce, etc.).
It is indisputable that we are a social species. We have inborn traits that PROPEL us into social behavior from kinderhood on up to ancient age. We don't will ourselves to be social -- we just are. (As Winston Churchill said, "It doesn't take all kinds of people to make a world, there just are.")
There is, as it happens, plenty of room for anti-natalists in this world. All of my best friends have avoided having children (easy for gay men to do). But a few of my heterosexual friends have also not wanted to bring children into this world, as they put it, and they didn't.
Antinatalists need Meet-Up groups; lodges, clubs, fraternities and sororities, associations, foundations. Bowling clubs, marching bands, nudist beaches, roller-coasters, coffee shops, bars, brothels, and bookstores. You all have got to BUILD THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT. Fucking will it into existence, dammit.
Damn, that's the best antinatalist call to action I've seen. I completely agree with you. I actually have an idea for the name of these groups as something like "Communities of Catharsis". In these groups one can bitch, moan, and gripe all one wants without any remonstrations to stop complaining and "get with the program". Rather, one unburdens oneself and is allowed to see their fellow humans as fellow-sufferers. Anyways, the bowling clubs and roller-coasters can be a good break in the routine of the regular catharsis meetings :D.
Quoting Bitter Crank
So bringing this back to politics.. If politics is about how to get large groups of people to do things, if we compare the antinatalist to the procreationist sympathizer, the antinatalist does not force anything on anyone, the procreationist sympathizer does. If you like bowling does that mean everyone should like bowling? If you like the whole "project" of the socio-cultural-economic enterprise of human existence, why must then others be pressed into this? One path leads to no enforcement, one does. They are both political statements, but the "yays" lead to pressing others into ones preferences and the "nays" do not do this. But it's not just this unjust outcome of the yays, it is the condemnation of the nays for being contrary to this foisting of (any) way of life (that is to say socio-cultural-economic enterprise of human existence).
Well, it is not always a given that changes to undermine the stats quo are going to be good. It is always possible that you will make things worse. And people do not agree about ways forward.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I would want a much better understanding of whether this claim is true and in what ways. Not everyone can evaluate. Some people lack insight. Some are rewarded as much as they are penalized. Some do not experience harm even if it is present.
Commissar: "After the Revolution, there will be enough bowling alleys for all. Nice ones.
Worker: "But Commissar, I don't like bowling."
Commissar: "Comrade, after the Revolution bowling had better be your favorite activity."
You can be exempted from participating in the Fertility Follies. You can march to the beat of whatever drummer you like. Mass societies are willing to tolerate a few people being out of step, as long as it doesn't frighten the horses or annoy those in charge.
My experience has been that IF the horses are frightened, and IF those in charge are annoyed beyond their very modest limits, toleration comes to a screeching halt. Then the deviant discover how punitive mass society can be. No, they probably won't lynch you, jail you (more than a day or two), or bankrupt you with fines. There are plenty of other things Those In Charge cam arrange that one will not like.
What is being made worse by making the political statement that one should not perpetuate the socio-economic-cultural project? Why is this necessary to perpetuate?
Quoting Tom Storm
The fact is, we as humans can evaluate something as negative while we are doing those things. We don't just "exist" but we know we like or don't like something as we are doing it. Why would we want to foist an existence where one not only has to survive, but can evaluate a negative value to this very act of having to survive?
I don't understand the sentence.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The history of psychology and counselling would be at odds with this. The fact is, many, many people don't know they are unhappy and don't know what they want.
So we live in a society.. this big superstructure.. basically we participate in it as a species to survive, get more comfortable, find entertainment. I'll just call it the "human enterprise". Why should we procreate more people and perpetuate this project? More to the point, if people could be born that don't just "live" but can evaluate that they don't like living, why would we put people into that situation where they can evaluate the very thing they need to survive as negative?
Well, the antinatalist foists nothing on no one. Their political statement of "NO" to life, creates no forced dealing with participating and being forced to deal with the social-economic-cultural superstructure.
The procreation sympathizers do indeed foist their view on others, whether they can evaluate it negative or not. Their solution is these people better get with the program that they think is "good" or kill themselves.
These are both political statements about the state of existence. Even more unfair.. The antinatalist is seen as knee-jerk just wrong while the status quo of the majority procreation sympathizers is seen as "obviously" the right or even inevitable political view.
Not sure this issue resonates with me vey much. I am simply making the point that your presuppositions here may not be recognizable to everyone.
If I were to say to you that you should not foist your view on others by not procreating other people who will have to take on the human enterprise who may not find this good, what would you say? I used an example of bowling for example. Just because I like bowling, should all of humanity bowl now? Why is the whole human project of having to exist and follow the structures of society be any different?
see my previous point.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You could argue the antinatalist forces people to not procreate. Most schools of thought don’t see procreation as an unjustified imposition. For instance: you would be forcing christians to go directly against their beliefs, as they’re told to have children.
We force things on people all the time if they’re justified. For instance education. So just because a position doesn’t force anything on anyone doesn’t make it better right off the bat. Not having kids go to school is definitely worse than having them go to school.
Or you could argue that the antinatalist also forces things on people. If you choose not to have children, then the people the children would have helped are worse off. You could argue that’s as much an imposition as having the child itself would be.
Is this so obvious? I agree that sex is mediated, but so are the others. Eat spaghetti with your hands. Take a shit and omit the wipe. Things will not go well for you. Before long, it doesn't even occur to you to eat spaghetti with your hands when you're alone.
I think one of the things that 180proof was getting at, which I agree with and will put in my own words, is that people aren't fundamentally rational. We're animals. A certain potential for suicide and voluntary infertility exists in the species so that a few of us can manage it. This has maybe served the community in some roundabout way, brave warriors and shamans perhaps. But mostly we are along for ride, cameras jammed into neckholes with the illusion of 'free will.' FWIW, I sympathize with anti-natalism. If we truly want to be innocent, unstained lambs, then we should not be at all, for we are worse than lions. There's a short story about a sect who takes it upon to destroy all life on earth, not only human life, because they fear than any residue will climb its way back up the evolutionary ladder back to a recognition of its absurd guilt. Actually that was the short story. I haven't fleshed it out. Why bother? [Nothing is funnier than unhappiness and futility.]
To some degree I think this already exists. Seinfeld loves to talk about how annoying everything is, ad he's ridiculously wealthy. But even without the wealth, to be able to talk with a friend about the horrors of life and make jokes about it is such a relief that life actually becomes pleasant for awhile. Kafka was a comedian. Dostoevsky was a comedian. The best clowns have tears in their eyes.
We know our positions well here I think, we do not have to rehash it. You will disagree with me as you have in the past about this, but I do believe there to be a distinction of someone not yet born and the already born when it comes to "forced" situations. The making kids go to school is the new lifeguard, etc. Forcing something that does not exist at all versus taking care of people that exist already are two different types of sets. One is null, one is part of the socio-economic-cultural community I talk about. You can disagree with this, but then we are going to veer this thread into something like the other one. I'd like to explore different aspects than this same argument. So if we can do that I'd like to continue but if this is going to be a rehash, I'm not interested as we've already done it an so won't be interesting or productive to me regarding this particular angle.
I actually agree with you here. So you hit upon what I was talking about earlier. Sex is not just an automatic response. It is mediated just like a lot of our other habits needed to survive as a human bound by cultural practices and conventions. We can break out of the habit of procreation, in other words, just like we don't have to dig our hands into spaghetti to eat our food.
Can you explain the difference between the shamans and most people with cameras jammed in neckholes? Is it the difference between those who wipe their ass an those who don't or those who put their hands in the spaghetti and those who don't?
Quoting norm
Fair enough. Sounds like you should continue it, if it's yours. Anyways, I am not trying to be that completely annihilationist. Rather, I am framing the usual view of life as a political view, not just a life choice or a preference or a lifestyle choice. To have children is to squarely believe life to be worth continuing and expanding, and perpetuating. So we have two sides of the debate.. the procreationist typical view (those think this is good or at least agnostic) and the antinatalist. One is forcing the situation of the socio-cultural-economic way of life (You have to work, get comfortable, find entertainment, suffer throughout all this and repeat basically). But why put forth this way of life over and over as a necessary or good thing as if this is decidedly so? We complain so much about particular things regarding life an how unfair certain things are, even in the best of circumstances. And yet here we are expanding and perpetuating it nonetheless, not taking it to its logical conclusion. And we not only just have neutral creatures, but creatures who can self-reflect on the very tasks at hand needed to survive and can evaluate it it as not good!
Yes, Seinfeld and the like is a sort of catharsis. But the comedy makes more palatable.
Yes I am well aware of your argument. What do you want me to say to you that would make us both come away feeling this was a productive conversation? You know we disagree, so shall we take another thousand pages to go over this argument? Are you saying this so your record is noted on the books? What would you like me to do with the information you provide me? Do you think that this has convinced me of your case? I only say this to you in particular because we have done this before.
Let me put this another way, to respect the fact that we have argued this same thing before, and to honor the fact that a new thread does not wipe away previous conversations, can you at least think of an argument I might give in the hypothetical thousand pages that would try to counter what you are saying, and frame it in a respectable way?
You argue the same thing you get the same reply. Why are you surprised?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not one that I’d find convincing. If I could think of an argument that could convince me to change my mind I would, well, change my mind! But I can’t so I don’t. And anyways that’s your job. You’re the one starting a new thread with the same old arguments. So expect to get the same old replies.
Cool. Your passive-aggressive comments aren't appreciated. I just don't get why pick the same fight? I am interested in moving the conversation into different territories not rehashing it. You seem to be a bit high on your horse thinking that I can't have a conversation about antinatalism unless it addresses the great powerful arguments of the great khaled. Either have a productive conversation or don't. If you don't, and want to have the same repetition, then I'm not interested unless you yourself can find a way past yourself, and no that is not my job that is yours.
I don't see these debates as zero-sum game, like you apparently do. If you want to elevate this so we can get something out of it besides aggravation and a shoving match, I am totally for it.
However, if not, it's going to go the same way:
K: Oh, we can use people once born to better the world.
S: But in doing so you are forcing others into negative experiences.
K: This doesn't matter, because we do it in other things like school and waking up lifeguards.
S: But they are already born so have to live in a community to survive, which is the very point I am trying to make of why perpetuate this society even further.
K: Because you can think of things in aggregate and find the best total gain.
S: But that is not taking into account there will be a new person on the other end who actually has to face this and is not just an tool for aggregation in an overall sum of life.
K: But most people won't find this sum bad but will totally like most things about life like video games and doing work they are proud of
S: Just because I like bowling doesn't mean everyone should like bowling even if a lot of other people end up liking bowling
K: Then you are unrealistic to think that what most people like will be not be thought to apply to most future people as well.
S: As you know, I think that most future people will also be greatly harmed, and that my main point is that tis socio-economic-cultural structure should not be assumed as something that ought to be perpetuated, especially because of some utilitarian-based approach that "good" must be had no matter what.
K: There is no good argument against perpetuating the socio-economic-cultural structure
S: There is a good argument against perpetuating the structure. We can evaluate it as bad, and thus is not a given that this should take place for people with self-reflection of negative aspects. K: So what if people are forced into negative aspects that can be self-reflected? Force isn't bad here as repetio ad absurdum, all things can be forced so this isn't any different.
S: Because one outcome leads to a way of life, and one there is no one that leads any way of life as they don't exist clearly.
Of course we can skip all that and all its variations because we've done it before. What we can focus on maybe to keep it more elevated (and not zero-sum) is see if whether keeping this structure going, is whether it is a political decision and why this political decision is seen as good, necessary, and cannot be criticized.
It's not new territory. There's nothing new here at all, it's exactly the same complaint you make every single time you post here.
The counter argument is going to be exactly the same too.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We raise new generations to help alleviate what would otherwise be the suffering of existing generations. As most people seem to enjoy it more than they hate it, and most people intend for their children to lead a happy life, their own net happiness/pain is not a consideration. The only matter left to weigh against the good that new generations do is the affront to their autonomy that making the decision for them causes. Since the overwhelming majority of people do not place trivial matters of personal autonomy above the well-being of existing people, it's not an issue.
You (and a handful of other neo-liberal Randians) place autonomy much higher than others (in some specific areas). We all know that, you can't argue for or against it, so what's left to say?
I apologize, I truly don't mean to be. Honestly.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You started the thread! If you make the same arguments of course I'm going to give the same reply!
Quoting schopenhauer1
So if I disagree with you it is my job to find a way to agree with you? C'mon now.
If so then you should have the same job so: Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
But I've talked about this.
"Is it worth it to keep this structure going"?
My answer: I don't care about evaluations of the structure as a whole, I only care about specific people. If you can't show me someone who gets harmed then I couldn't care less what "structures" are "harmed"
"Is it a political decision"?
My answer: If you mean a decision taken by looking at aggregates, not necessarily. You can have children because of the specific people they are likely to help. I'm not sure exactly if you would count that as "aggregate" or political but then again I'm not sure we're using the terms the same way.
"Why is it seen as good, necessary and cannot be criticized"?
My answer: Evolutionary reasons. And it's not so much "cannot be criticized" as "You will be shunned if you criticize it". Which is the case for any popular belief.
But then you tell me that you heard this before and so I should come up with ways to agree with you instead? Well of course you've heard it before because we've talked about this before a 1000 times.
If you think there's something new here then you gotta tell me what it is because I'm not seeing it. And I'm not trying to be rude, I just genuinely don't see how this is a new angle.
Just curious, do you and Isaac come in pairs now?
a) you've asked as question and then assumed your answer to it in the very same sentence - doesn't bode well for an open-minded discussion.
b) This one interests me most - what is the nature of "cannot be criticized? How 'cannot'? Are you not criticising it now? Are the police knocking at your door as we speak. What difference are you seeing between people disagreeing with your criticism (and so concluding it's invalid) and people somehow banning you from criticising?
Maybe we're just interested in the same topics.
So my main argument is basically, isn't this socio-economic-cultural structure, the maintenance and perpetuation of it indeed itself a political act? I mean, simply wearing a mask can be seen as taking one side or another, so cannot the position of AN, even though it seems to be diminished into more of a lifestyle choice or just a preference? I think it's more than that.
Quoting khaled
After all the debate we already have, and you are choosing to jump on this thread to rehash it? Then out of the principle of charity, yes, at this point we should figure out a new course that doesn't lead to aggravation.
Quoting khaled
No, I don't mean about the structures.. I mean the people that must engage with the structure. That is where the harm is. You know that I would never (intentionally) make an argument that abstracts where harm takes place. Rather, the superstructure itself involves tasks which can be negatively evaluated as stated in OP.
Quoting khaled
I mean political as in there is some sort of agenda one wants to enact for other people in the world. "I want to see the world look a certain way.. This way of life is the way I want it to look, and so I want it enacted and perpetuated.. thus says I and thus I create new person who will endure this and he/she WILL like it (group-think yadayada feedback loop re-enforcing strengthening the groundless goodness of this structure that is the status quo).
Quoting khaled
Yes, how can this be changed? What would it take? I mean, everything seems too intractable until it isn't. This shouldn't be any different just because it seems more intractable from our current vantage point. Saying evolutionary reasons opens up a whole debate. My hunch is that the preference for continuing this socio-eco-cultural structure is more of a cultural reinforcement.. group-think rather than anything inbuilt. Perhaps it is also magical thinking. People want there to be hope because if they think otherwise the "gods" will throw their thunderbolt for their lack of faith. I do not deny people have some weird irrational fear of universe-retribution for eschewing the universe that has been so "benevolently" bestowed upon them. Even atheists may have these weird subconscious superstitions surrounding hope and not tempting the "gods". I am not sure if my idea is being conveyed well here...But superstition does seem almost ingrained in human psyche.. However, that too is ratcheted up more from how the human develops in a culture that promotes superstitious thinking.
Quoting khaled
I'm hoping to get new and interesting conversations. If you don't see it as a new angle, are you then writing in this thread to put me in my place and tell me how it is? What is your intention here, simply to say, "Stop posting about this topic Schop". Why not just let the thread ride out with other participants then? How does it really harm you if I want to post about this?
Then antinatalism is also political.
Having agendas isn’t inherently bad. It depends on the agenda.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It couldn’t. The society that has people shun the members that disagree with the status quo will last longer than the society that doesn’t. Shunning in this way is evolutionarily advantageous so there’s no changing it. It’s gonna keep happening. Too much of it is evolutionarily disadvantageous though.
But in any case, it will never be evolutionarily advantageous NOT to shun the belief that will lead to extinction. By definition. This is assuming shunning is effecting at deterring the spread of ideas, which I think is a reasonable assumption.
Quoting schopenhauer1
AN is on a whole new scale. Every time there has been a massive social movement, it was because an old belief was found harmful to the social order as a whole. It was because changing a belief results in a better society. Having children will never be found that way. Changing that belief results in no society.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Highly doubt it. All animals reproduce. And none of them have culture except us. I think it’s more reasonable to assume then to assume it’s not culture. Or at least not purely culture.
Another reason it’s not purely culture: If it was purely cultural we wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. You need thousands of people, a couple generations, and a couple decades at least before you get culture. How do you reckon we got all that sorted if culture is what tells people to have kids?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Maybe a part of it. But not a large part. All animals reproduce. None of them fear universe-retribution while doing it I’d wager.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well that’s an odd way to frame it...
You argue the same thing. I respond the same way. You accuse me of rehashing. If anyone is rehashing it’s you.
If you don’t want to hear the same response, don’t write the same argument. I’m responding to anything you write. Old or not. I don’t see what’s unfair or combative about that. If you don’t want me to respond at all, you shouldn’t have started a thread.
Quoting schopenhauer1
How does it harm you if I wanna respond to it?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Such as? I don’t understand how a “superstructure” has tasks. Not sure what you mean.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not in my experience. When I told people “Having kids is wrong” they reacted very differently to when others told them “I don’t want to have kids”. I think people do understand it’s a stance. Just they think it’s invalid. And repulsive.
I think the simple reason this movement is condemned is that it is ugly. To look upon and preach that the world as an imposition, escapable only by suicide and self-sterilization, is itself a negative human activity, and many don’t like believing or participating in it. We can’t paint dog shit on a canvas and expect people to condone and praise it.
Paternalism then. There is nothing self-justifying of the agenda of life itself. It's just another hypothetical imperative that can keep being questioned in comparison to people who do not want this agenda, or be compared to the agenda of not causing harm or some other counter to the imperative itself that life must be perpetuated and society must be perpetuated and people must be born to deal with it and engage with it and have the choice for suicide or therapy to cope with it.
Quoting khaled
I am more interested in the movement itself of the people advocating for AN and the people against AN as they are living.. I'm not focusing on the consequence here but the implications for us the living as we hash this political yay/nay out.
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
But humans have a unique ability for superstition. When things are going well, people don't want want to test fate. When things go crummy, that's when they are more amenable to sympathize.
Procreation is caught up in so many things.. relationships, marriage, tribal relations. It is symbolic as much as it is some physical thing. There is a social dance, there is expectations, etc. It isn't akin to a bowel movement, breathing, the palmer reflex, the suckling reflex, etc. It is learned in development. I would bet you a feral person would not catch on really.
Quoting khaled
But I don't intend for you specifically to answer. I know your position well. We've been through this before and so between us specifically, there is no other need to engage.
Quoting khaled
I just don't get why you want to respond anymore. What do you care? Obviously I care a great deal on this topic, but why do you care so much to rebut it? For some reason then this topic resonates with you as well, even if just to be contrarian.. However, I can't but feel if it is just to be contrarian, you do have a bugaboo to put me in my place rather than want to have a non-zero-sum-game conversation. That then makes me resentful and posts become hostile, and tedious. But maybe that is your aim- to wear me out... I've been doing this for a while. Clearly that's not something I do easily on this topic.
Quoting khaled
I mean, you want to be tactful when presenting it, but that is fine if they are repulsed. Political debates are often knockdown drag out.. This is THE fundamental debate of whether to have a society at all, not just what kind of society. The debate of whether to have a society at all is even more fundamental and shouldn't be assumed that the answer is a resounding YES. And that is my main point here.
Also, did you read the NYT article? What are your thoughts there?
No. It's that the twin aspects of path of least effort (dumbing minds) and path of least action (humping bodies) have predominated @1000:1 ratio (at least) for hundreds of millennia.
Whether or not it's "good" ..., pro-natality is, as it's always been, more profitable for "political-economic-cultural" elites than not.
Apparently because there literally isn't a viable alternate (re: fossil record).
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'd say "You're entitled to that opinion".
Quoting norm
"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." ~Samuel Beckett
Or of the agenda of AN. There is nothing self justifying of any agenda.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It won’t be hashed out because the nays will die out much faster than the yays
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure there is a whole lot of cultural accessory around it. But it is still an instinct. This doesn’t address my argument as to why.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure. But at any given point in history the answer will always be yes.
Right, but foisting the engagement with a whole socio-economic-political structure is just a-okay though right? And what else is the choice if not commit suicide or "get with the program that was foisted upon you"? Your answer is probably circular.. "Well, because it's the thing you should DO!! You don't want to look at that ugly alternative of simply stopping the foisting, right?".
But I get what you're saying. At first glance, it's dark. It's literally hopeless and people like the idea of hope.
:lol: Now there's some real regret. But this does bring up a point that other animals cannot evaluate like we can. A fish cannot say to themselves, "God damn it, each and every fuckn day I have to search this stream for more bugs and algae and try to avoid being eaten by the bear/human/bigger fish/predator". But our unique species, whilst doing the very activities necessary to survive can say, "God damn it, I have to do this X, Y, Z task I rather not do". Progress I guess?
Agreed there.
Quoting 180 Proof
YES. And here is a point I'm also trying to highlight. Who or what benefits from this arrangement that people must be born to de facto engage with the political-economic-cultural structure? Why is it necessary for people to experience it and continue it?
Quoting 180 Proof
My opinion doesn't lead anybody (literally) to be forced into a situation. The otherside does. So it's more than opinion, its action creating situations for other people.. In other words, it is political in its most fundamental sense. It is time for the "NAYs" to make their voice heard.. to call for others to passively NOT foist this structure onto others.
But AN constantly must be on the defensive (as we speak actually), and yet the other side does not, so you see why it seems like there's no justification necessary for the other side because we are so used to it being the given.
Quoting khaled
No fossil record as @180 Proof said. Again, I am not worried as much as the outcomes as how this is hashed out- the attitudes of those who are currently running society. We can rebel against it, whilst still of course having to deal with it. It's not a contradiction to realize one cannot escape but rebel nonetheless via antinatalism. I believe one time @Inyenzi mentioned its akin to "going on strike".
Quoting khaled
What was your argument then? You mentioned evolution.. In our species culture is part of how evolution develops. We are a "symbolic species" (pace Terrence Deacon). What makes procreation an instinct really, though? Sexual pleasure and how it is used are two different things, often learned, often a choice, and is not a given. Not pursuing it doesn't do anything detrimental to your body either. So again, not so cut-and-dry.
Quoting khaled
Sure, but that's because AN thinking wasn't even on the radar in any significant way. It's time it has more of a presence on the political discourse as it IS political in nature. It affects others, and the whole structure of being, so yep it is.
Who said that?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Keyword: Seems
Quoting schopenhauer1
These 2:
Quoting khaled
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'd say it was just about on the radar as it is now, in the sense that the "percentage of antinatalists" hasn't changed. Heck it might have gone down. Antinatalism dates way back. It's just that with the internet, more people than ever are exposed to it.
Beckett's another example of first-rate comedian.
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
How is it that saying the worst, confessing the thing we think we fear, is such a relief? There's some kind of complicated, counter-intuitive transcendence involved.
It is hard to laugh during a root canal, no doubt. I suppose I'm saying that 'spiritual' pain is sometimes contaminated by a wicked pleasure (and the reverse.)
Yes, hence I think there should be opportunities for communities that allow for catharsis.
That's a great question with an endless answer. I'm using 'shaman' somewhat metaphorically when I say that comedians and some philosophers are shamans. A 'shaman' will say out lout (to the right people) what others might not say in the privacy of their mind. I think of people who know both the angels and the devils, while being neither. I'm tempted to call all great drama shamanic in that it conjures spirits within the magic circle. What is it to watch a simulacrum of MacBeth? I just reread Dostoevsky's Demons, and that's 'shamanic.' Spirits are summoned for my mind's eye, mad with the madness of this world. To see it calmly, to contemplate it...detachment, transcendence, some kind of dark laughter that lifts one out of one's petty little life.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And did you read the NYT article and how it frames humans as a some agenda of productivity?
Here it is again: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/opinion/coronavirus-baby-bust.html
@Bitter Crank What do you think of the idea that we are just productivity-agents for the superstructure? Screw it if you don't want to engage with it, people need to be around so production happens. Plastic needs to be made! I believe it was George Carlin and The Graduate that revealed this.
So what if a serious (not comedic) shaman said, "Don't force others to have to engage with the socio-economic-political structures of life". Survive, find comfort, find entertainment all through the social structures historically situated.. Why should more people deal with this at all? If people can evaluate the very activities needed to survive as negative (I hate doing this task, etc.), then why create these evaluative creatures? Hope in some positive experiences and positivity-in-struggle is just an ideology as much as any antinatalist one that people should be not forced into this.
If you got some parents drunk, maybe they'd confess that it's selfish to make babies. What in this world is more delightful than a happy baby? I don't have any (for reasons that include the guilt and the risk of it) but I adore them when I see them (friends' kids, siblings' kids). Maybe it's like the meat industry. Many knows it's 'bad' but in the end it's what most people still do. Rationality is something we can strive toward occasionally, but we seem to be animals only dimly aware of what we are up to. As I see it, people like you and me are freaks to spend the energy we do articulating these things.
I speculate that anti-natalism is also driven by a contempt for vulnerability. Humans are so disgustingly fragile. Maybe it's not only pity but also even hatred. If we can't roam the world like gods, then fuck this place. We think we are such clever monkeys, but we sit in traffic for hours and can't keep the heat on in the cold, etc.
Speaking truth here.
Quoting norm
I liken it to this: Is it worth perpetuating a life that is anything less than (and not even close to) a paradise? In a paradise, one would either want for nothing (you would be all things at once or nothing at all), or you can turn the dial of harm wherever you wanted at any given time. Clearly we are none of those things in this actual world.. In fact, we are so gaslighted about suffering that we have to say bullshit like "Suffering leads to more meaning".. If that's true, what does that say to live in a world where "meaning" is obtained through suffering? Fuck that shit.
I can't pretend to answer this neutrally. For me the 'spirit of seriousness' is a fallen state, which is not to say that it can be avoided, or that we should never be serious. I also don't like the ideology of hope. When Caesar heard that his troops were afraid of an enemy, he would gather them and assure them that the enemy troops were worse than they currently imagined, much worse. That makes me smile.
Personally I'd be OK with state-funded suicide boxes that painlessly killed the willing and vaporized them. One of the things that annoys me about suicide is the rude mess that one is forced to leave behind. The guy that jumped into the volcano...that sticks with me. Dissolve like a ghost, what I say, but when the time is right. I believe that this kind of talk is considered creepy. Somehow it's more respectable to end up helpless in diapers (and we agree to pretend to think so, etc.)
You can probably grasp that I don't see a justification for human life, and I don't subscribe to an ideology of hope.
I agree with Blake that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost. Fuck this shit, indeed. But also...fuck the shit out of this shit. I like Cioran and Schopenhauer for not being saccharine. Our ears are stuffed with the sounds of salesmen, or therapist who fix the workers like malfunctioning machines who need to quickly return to the Amazon Warehouse, until robots replace them next spring. 'This great stage of fools,' including the bitter fools like Lear's, like us. But I guess I'm bittersweet, because I'm wired wrong. I tend to get happy when I talk about death and comedy. I suppose that I do find a piece of paradise when the weather is good and I can have bittersweet conversation with a true friend. We agree about the commiseration clubs. I just find it is fleeting genuine friendships. Even if they last 10 years, they tend to dissolve eventually in the nightwaters of life.
Yes, indeed. And we are doing that here. It's not the same as in-person, but it's not nothing. Anonymously people can tell some truths. You don't want your next employer to know that you are as proud as Lucifer and think that the company is a piece of smoke.
So there is this character Truman who is living on a set of a tv show -- except that he's the only one who doesn't know it, he thinks he's living in the real world. Millions of people are watching this show. Then, he begins to discover that something isn't quite right, like when a reflector falls from the sky, or people keep moving in predictable patterns. And he pursues this, he wants to figure out what's gong on. And the tv viewers are cheering him on, rooting for him, they are thoroughly enthusiastic. Then he escapes the set. The tv audiences go crazy, they are sooooo happy for him. Go Truman! Then their elation wanes, in a matter of minutes. And then they forget about him. Completely. Switch to another channel. A character they have followed for years, and they forget about him in seconds, and move on to other things.
You said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
And I'm thinking that your doing the above, "showing it bare for what it is, and expose the harmful political assumptions of perpetuating this package" would go over like Truman's discovery of the real world and departing the fictional one: your deconstruction of group-think, your showing it bare for what it is, your exposing of harmful political assumptions of perpetuating that package would likely be met at first with elation, enthusiasm, that "Yes! This is the truth!" -- and then forgotten about it.
Sigh. You know what you’re right. You keep making the same argument, and you don’t want to hear the same response. Ok have fun in your echo chamber. As you dismiss any objection to your position as “I’ve heard that before, you should be trying to agree with me here!”
Why must I justify to you why I respond to a post on a public forum in the first place? Why must I justify caring to rebut your post but you don’t have to justify caring to make it over and over?
No. Why would I read a random opinion article that does something as ridiculous as treat people as an agenda of productivity. “We should have more kids to make more stuff” is exactly the kind of “harm to concepts” argument that I despise.
No, it's more complex than that.
In first-world countries, about a half of all pregnancies is unplanned, and about a half of all pregnancies is aborted. So that doesn't look very pronatalist.
Secondly, if you talk to parents in more detail, they will possibly have misgivings about having children at all, but they would not say so right away or in public.
Further, many people have children for some practical reason: to have someone who will look after them when they're old, to produce workers who will help them with their business, to gain social influence over other people. Some are more insidious: to collect child support or welfare, for a woman to prevent her boyfriend from abandoning her. So people who have children for such practical reasons don't believe in pronatalism per se, but in their practical reasons, even if those people are nominally pronatalists.
All in all, I have the impression that people are generally ambivalent about having children, but will rarely admit to this ambivalence in public.
It seems to me that by the time people realize they shouldn't have children or not that many children, it's too late, because they've already produced them.
And it's generally not considered a nice thing to tell your child, regardless of their age, that you wish you didn't have them.
I think many pronatalists are also defending their past bad choices, rationalizing them, so as to make it easier to live with them. This can explain their vitriol toward antinatalists.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The procreationist sympathizer probably feels otherwise, feels that the antinatalist is forcing on them their view.
Because it's a big project that requires the cooperation of many many people.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What if this is the mistake, thinking that ad populum/ad baculum is "just political"?
We can, but this doesn't already mean we do or that we will.
This isn't limited to having children, it's much more general: from career planning to retirement planning, in failing to prevent a bad habit from forming, in making poor choices in terms of romantic or business partners, ...
Deep question, and we could talk about it forever. But yeah, a god-given purpose of some kind given by some kind of god. Maybe the god is just History. For most, the justification should include some restitution, like the resurrection of the dead or the arrival of the Federation (but without the Klingons).*
*To me a big question is whether a society can be strong and cohesive without some external threat, but that's a different issue.
Because I clearly care about this TOPIC. You don't seem too keen on the TOPIC but of specifically trying to personally tell something to ME. It does then seem personal, and it does seem to be taking a page from Isaac, albeit without all the dramatic histrionics. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that you think you have something over me, but it doesn't make sense to keep telling me about it except for some targeted reason. You aren't engaging with others on the thread, we aren't exploring any common ground, so I'm sorry there seems to be some sort of trollish thing going on here, otherwise I don't get it. And you can go ahead and turn it around and say why is me posting about AN any different..but its well known I like this TOPIC, so its not like there's some other motivation here regarding what I feel I need to say to another individual poster. In other words, I'm not trying to stick it to any one poster that they better know whats right. I'm not saying it's wrong to disagree just wondering about the motivation once that disagreement is already known.
As Uncle Karl said, one of the tasks of the working class is to reproduce society. And that's what we do -- not merely replacing dead bodies with babies, but diapering, feeding, protecting, and teaching them from 0 through graduate school. The whole society -- individuals and institutions -- has to be replaced IF the bourgeois classes are to continue accumulating wealth from the labor of the working class. Producing wealth is, of course, the other task of the working class.
We are not for ourselves, we are for others' purposes. If the bourgeoisie (the wealthy owners of everything that's worth having, pretty much) could produce everything with machines, they wouldn't need workers at all. And in fact, fewer workers are needed per pound of production than in the past. One farmer can operate a large farm [with large machinery. A computer and sensors on board the tractor guided by GPS keep track of yield by the square meter, and plant and fertilize accordingly.] Robots perform many of the tasks on the assembly line. Computers have replaced a lot of functions in the office.
Millions of working class men, white men in particular, have come face to face with their economic irrelevance. Their irrelevance is literally killing them (leading the men to drink, drugs, etc.)
The essential task, at this point, of much of society is to consume. 70% of the GDP goes into consumption. Were 'the people' to turn to thrift and a simpler lifestyle that wasn't organized around consuming, the economy would crash. There is a gradually increasing level of anxiety among people as they discover that going to work in order to consume is not very meaningful.
In the good old days, religion provided an anodyne for this discomfort. It provided meaning for people's lives. Martin Luther declared that all work was sacred. Farming, mining, carpentry, street cleaning, collecting garbage -- whatever -- is as sacred as the work of priests--that's the Protestant Work Ethic: work is a sacred activity. Luther (1483-1546) lived before our economic world began to come into existence. Still, one can look at work as sacred, because it contributes to the common good of all men. It does that IF it does that. One can certainly argue that a lot of work does not contribute to the commonweal. It's essentially pointless, or contributes to the wellbeing of a very narrow portion of 'men'--mostly very rich ones.
How come I’m on every AN thread then?
If you wanna play the victim go right ahead. It isn’t personal. I replied to your OP because I found it interesting nothing more. And you took it as an attack. I don’t understand why you prefer to spend more time psychoanalysing my intentions than respond to my actual critiques. Culture not being the main reason we reproduce for example being one.
And even when I dropped the whole “Why are you responding to me” line you specifically brought it back up in a separate comment saying “I’m still waiting for a reply to this”. For what? And you accuse me of not engaging with your arguments and not trying to find common ground, while being more interested in debating my intentions than the actual arguments I put forward? What a joke.
You choose to see a personal attack. I even apologized first thing for my unintended passive aggressiveness. But no, that’s still not enough for you. You seek to prove, indisputably, that khaled has no reason to be commenting here. That khaled is targeting you because he’s a mean bully. And no matter how many times I tell you it’s not personal, and no matter how many times I try to respond to anything new you’re saying, you choose to see it as an attack, while ignoring the actual responses. And you would rather prove this than actually address what khaled is saying.
I’m not going to waste my time debating my intentions for commenting on a public forum with someone who would rather argue (in bad faith) about said intentions rather than address the arguments against the positions they put forward. Have a good one.
That's my point, why? You are interested in debating me specifically it seems. But why? You keep wanting to tell me the same thing. You think I'm wrong, and you want to make sure I know it at every turn. Got it.
Quoting khaled
Because you all you do is critique. This isn't UFC fight all day forum.. It's a forum.. More than just knock down disagreements have to take place.. at least for me. It's not like we haven't indulged the form you prefer- the toe-to-toe debates all day all the time. We've done that.. So no we just continue in this mode forever?
Quoting khaled
Yes, I don't get why it's debate mode all the time and am trying to understand this now.
Quoting khaled
To repeat, because I know how this plays out. I even did a mock debate that pretty much encapsulates it in an earlier post. But you seem to want more than just debate. You specifically do want to target me to prove me wrong.. To stick it to me. You want something from me... but not sure what.. I am not a video game boss that you have to try to defeat over and over here.
Quoting khaled
Good use of my terms there.. But I'm not arguing in bad faith, but rather am telling you how I prefer to engage in the topic with you as we've already done the toe-to-toe thing where everything we say is just a volley back and forth. Are you able to engage in a different manner? If you're not interested, then totally fine with that too. I think you have a good analytic mind, but it doesn't mean let's just keep doing the same thing.
True.. but how can this topic be elevated from these practical reasons to be seen as actually a political choice? By having the child, you are promoting the fact that someone else needs to experience life, and that they should engage with the soci-economic-cultural superstructure. This idea though seems so remote to certain mindsets. Why do you suppose some people cannot think in these more abstract terms? I guess socio-economic status and environment have a lot to do with it. If one isn't exposed to philosophical thinking, one doesn't engage with it naturally..
Quoting baker
Yes, very true. I don't see AN as a personal attack on them though, but many take it as that. What already happened happened. I think a lot of the vitriol though has to do more with questioning the "goodness" of life itself. Also, there is the idea that things are always improving, and it isn't so bad, don't tell us to end it by passively not procreating.. etc.
Quoting baker
But it's not forcing because there is no actual forceful stopping of anyone. It is simply stating the view and they can take it or leave it. The ironic thing though is the instant the procreationist actually has a child, that is indeed literally forcing the view onto someone else. Now the child is literally pressed into existence. The AN has no such analog. They are not literally forcing anything on anyone. So there is an asymmetry here for the consequences of one vs. the other in terms of force.
Quoting baker
And why must it be that people need to exist to pursue the project?
Quoting baker
Can you explain? I just mean that people think because the majority thinks it, it must be the right course of action. The political consequence is that the YAYs win out by default by voting with their procreation.
But we still have to do this habit forming and prevention. This isn't inbuilt, wrote anything. You are forcing people to grapple with this. It is deliberation and grappling. One can still evaluate all the way through that they don't like this.
Yes, I think we are on the same wavelength here. Also, as much as I do advocate for grappling with AN as an UNAVOIDABLE political topic (as it is the foundation for all existence and therefore all socio-economic-cultural and experiential things that ensue), there the moroseness of the matter does still get me down. I don't revel in it like a horror writer might revel in the morose. I simply think it is the most accurate aesthetic synthesis of the whole existential situation, DESPITE its unfortunate moroseness.
Commiseration clubs.. I like it :D. Communities of Catharsis. It is a good antidote to the usual "self-help" which tries to say YOU have a problem for not finding the LIFE program good, necessary, and worth the engagement. Rather, something is wrong here, let's talk about it, whether in serious manner or in "bittersweet" comedic tragedian style. Indeed, even the Commiseration Club brings its own enactment of the bittersweet brevity of the fact that no person can really "commune" with the other. Rather, we are like porcupines that don't want to get too close because we tend to bother each other, but we still want some closeness with others to entertain our social minds.
What interests me too is molding this social mindset in becoming a compliant worker for an entity. We can't but NOT do this if we need to survive as we humans do (by social effort), yet just as the OP states, here we are KNOWING and EVALUATING dislike for this effort WHILE we do it. What an insane world. Have you ever read Peter Zapffe? He talks about how we have an "over abundance of consciousness" that provides us more evaluative reflective capacities than is needed for an animal to survive. This meta-evaluation gives us that much more to grapple with. We don't just "do". We don't just go from garbage can to garbage can looking for food, and finding shade under a tree like a racoon. We KNOW we are doing something and can say, "Ah shit, not this X task again...". Why!?
:fire: YES to this. The character of Lucifer is a good one here. I rather like the the Gnostic concept of reversing this. The NAYsayer of life is the hero. It is the pro-life (suffering that comes from life) that is the "opponent" here. I think people are driven somewhat by superstition. It just make sense that if someone is having a relatively good day (Sunny out, reads a good book, plays a good video game, does some exercise, finds a girl/guy they like, eats a good meal, does some project at work that was fulfilling, listens to good music, stick any X good here) they don't want to then say, "DESPITE the goods that are contingent on living life, it still allows for negative evaluations of various tasks.. it STILL has suffering that is built-in and suffering that is contingent and can be wrought at any time"... This will get the person out of the good mood, and why would they want to do that? The intellectualization of the pessimism has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I kind of get why people at a particular POINT OF TIME might not want to let these thoughts in their heads. But I would say they don't have to perseverate on it, but simply keep it in the background that it is not always like this. There is a bigger thing going on here and this is not a paradise. These people don't want to tempt the "gods" to then give them a bad time for thinking these pessimistic thoughts. Maybe the gods of fate will strike them down with idiocy, and they won't be able to intellectualize at all.. Keep your head down, boy.. Don't fuck with me, says the gods of fate. I gave you GOODs that ARE POSSIBLE, don't look a gift horse in the mouth!
So let's just reduce the socii-economic-cultural thing to one thing to keep it easy. There is thing called "work". What is work? Work is a cultural phenomena built from historical contingencies of civilization. Hunting-gathering was "work" but really it was so built into the existential practice of living (as an animal that needs to do stuff to survive) that it may be inappropriate to call hunting/gathering "work". Work is a phenomena of civilziations that developed from property and specialization. So, when someone is born in a society that has "work" in this environment, is that something that we should "put" more people into? Should more people have to be made to "work"? If you start giving the stock reply that you can simply become a freeloader, homeless, or try to hack it in the wilderness, I will just say that the harm that ensues from this alternative lifestyle to the norm, would also be a part of this phenomena. The choice is sub-optimal "work" (which you must integrate as something you like or just "deal" with it), OR you must make the sub-optimal choice of harm and shame of other forms of living (homelessness and hacking it on your own in the wilderness).. SO why are we foisting this lifestyle (part of the socio-economic-cultural superstructure) on more people? Certainly it is a POLITICAL choice that work is something acceptable, as it is an intricate part of living as an embodied, culturally integrated animal as we are, but why must more people be pushed into existence to engage in it (and yes I use "push" loosely here.. so let's not get caught up in that semantics of non-existence being "pushed' into existence.. that's a focus of a different metaphysical topic).
Yes, it is the forgetting that is the mystery here. What does one do once it is exposed? I am advocating for communities of catharsis, of commiseration.. What does it mean for the superstructure itself? Of work? Of needing to survive? Of still having to live life knowing these ideas?
SO I came up with a neologism called "minutia-mongering". I think humans don't usually reflect existentially. Rather, due to the need to "fall into place" In a social setting, and specialization required to be important to a company/employer/community, we need to specialize in the minutia of a particular topic. Instead of asking daily "Why do I even exist and who cares about all this".. Rather, the chemical process of making plastic, or making sure the widget needed so an engine can run so a car can move, so a product can be transported on a truck, so the warehouse can palletize and store the product, so the product picker can grab the inventory, so the inventory clerk can reorder, so the manager can keep track of the numbers, so the accountant can see the accounts payable, so that the payroll can keep track of cutting checks, so the people can deposit their money so they can pay bills so they can save and invest to get extra money for future expenses, so that they can buy houses and cars and gas and groceries and entertainment and vacation trips, and food and restaurants, and so that they can read about philosophy books and science topics (or just blank their minds out with tv, video games, and booze, and drugs), so that they can go back to school to learn more about the intricaicies of the copper alloy needed to create a better CPU processor with cache and memory so that electric pulses can turn on and off to move the micro-wires on the CPU to locations so that it can be retrieved to allow for machine code that allows for compilers to make programming code show up on a screen that uses very specific chemicals to allow for hexedecimal colors to display in a way that creates a user interface experience so people can access programs, so they can type stuff for their businesses and buying more goods and entertain themselves on social media and to write word documents and keep track of minutia in a spreadsheet for more work and budgets and schedules, and to do lists, and meeting people so that they can do their kickball tournaments, so they can take their kids to the extra curricular activity so they can learn the intracies of throwing a curveball so they can get good at baseball so they can be integrated in a team sport in their high school and college, so that they can go to classes so they can learn minutia about physics, economics, or the really soft social science of sociology.. but their best friend is learning the minutia of phlebotomy so they can draw blood to survive, to pay some bills so that they can go to the local store to pick up a certain kind of bread for the recipe needed to create a family recipe, so that their children can eat it and then go play and annoy the neighbors by being too loud, while the roads need to be paved, and news anchors need to tell everyone about the unions, and intellectual property, and the latest news on politicians, and so that people can develop semi-shallow relationships to keep this all moving.
Very good insights here. Do people who believe in the Protestant Work Ethic, really sustain this thinking throughout their work life? At no point does the good Protestant worker go, "God I really don't care today to do this"? Also can one be in what is considered really "necessary" line of industry (a doctor for example) and still find it to be unfulfilling to do the work? Is the Prot. Work Ethic just a way to get certain people to not think about the existence itself? Zapffe observed that all humans have the ability to access the truth that we don't need to do anything at all, that we know our existential dilemma.. isn't the PWE just another trope to get people to limit their thoughts. to anchor them so that they don't run into an existential meltdown?
Also, there is no shangrala at the end of the road. We work to work to work to work. I just don't believe work itself is the reason we must be at all. It is a weird fetishization. Even Marx fetishizes it but says work is a "good" in itself as long as one is doing it as sort of a hobby. But I think any activity is not self-justified "goods" that are just "there" in existence necessarily (though I kind of vacillate on this idea of "goods" that are objective to existence).
However, after the "revolution" (though thats a pipe dream let's be realistic here) I'm inclined to disagree and see no issue with work in itself, and I believe that in an ideal world your problem wouldn't be that much of a problem at all. In the modern economy, there is lots of work that "must be done" FOR NO REASON. There's a growing movement nowadays called "anti-work" or simply The Right to Be Lazy. Doing nothing all day if one really wants should not be something we shame, and in a world of billions there's always going to be people who enjoy the labour the smart man thinks is just "grunt work" or "bullshit jobs".
All in all, I have no problem with work, but I do have a problem with people being born to live as a wage slave. I like your pessimistic neo-Schopenhauerian posts even though I don't agree with it all the way, but if what you're really asking me is "society constantly relies on a system of upkeep to sustain itself. Why are we putting humans in this imperfect world!?" then I will concede I simply don't have an answer there since I don't think work itself is wrong.
This is sort of what I was getting at. I agree with Marx but it's nice to see a refreshing perspective!
As an aside: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/383 :lol:
'Minutia-mongering' is good. In this economy, we are machine-parts, some more than others. I like the way you follow the for-the-sake-of's around in your post. To see the vast machine from the outside despite actually being trapped within...that's a piece of transcendence. It's our glory and our torment. I don't the other animals have that kind of experience (which is why it's still a little strange to call humans animals, even if it's biologically useful.)
I connect the nay-sayer (our dear 'negative creep') to the skeptic as Stirner & Kojeve describe him. The stoic, who as his charms, is more of an optimist. Both are terribly proud, but the skeptic is really not sure if the game is worth the candle. Maybe the luckiest are the neverborn. Even Socrates implies that life is a disease, when he's about to be cured of it.
There's a default prudent optimism which politicians must echo and which politeness dictates when dealing with strangers. 'Herd animals' gets it right, and I say this as someone who is largely another herd animal. We know that we will die, but we take precautions, let risky opportunities pass. Even monogamy may be a manifestation of sloth and fear (and not only of love.) We like TV shows where people risk their lives for honor, or trade a mediocre future for a intense moment. But politicians and schoolmarms and university administrators have to spurt out the same sentimental inanities. It's literally their job...to tell a partial truth, that we all agree to pretend to take seriously in public. It's not all bad, and ultimately it's virtuous to keep strangers out of our own risks and ecstasies. Ordinary life is the boring background that we all need a private sinners for our adventures to be adventurous. Hard drugs, sexual excess...these do often manifest in crimes that we'd hate our families to be the victims of.
The no-sayer, the skeptic who isn't sure about life, is scary because he claims to not be tethered to what keeps us all in line, fear of death and its primary agent, thiswordly diminishment (being cancelled, poverty, prison,...)
I've read some Zapffe. Good stuff, part of the truth-telling tradition. I'm guessing you have Schopenhauer's Essays and Aphorisms. I love the end of 'On philosophy and the intellect.'
He talks of a crown of thorns blossoming into a laurel-wreath. He talks of an insect laying its eggs so that it can die in peace. Btw, isn't God on the cross a supremely pessimistic image? The fucking divine itself is crucified, shamefully executed, naked to the storm. Our luciferian pride reveals the cross. If we were just scavenging raccoons, we might suffer but the pain wouldn't be spiritual. 'Only the damned are grand.' It's grasping the absurdity of existence that paradoxically almost sanctifies it.
We live in the belly of the empire and most of us haven't experienced war. But I think of Xerxes, etc., and of all the drama of conquest, the violent risk of life. There is a submerged part of our nature that hates the routine, hates swallowing pride. Peace has been described as rotten and decadent. Even in time of peace, men have fought duels. In Hegel/Kojeve the 'master' is only a master because he proves his freedom from the slavish attachment to life. In WWII, there were men who couldn't enlist for health reasons and killed themselves out of shame and envy. We're not in a moment where talking about this kind of toxic masculinity is going to win you a cubicle.
Well, it suffices to be a barren young married woman or an aging spinster, and one is thrown into the matter at the deep end.
The Early Buddhists would probably reply to this that human life is a "mixed bag".
Quoting schopenhauer1
(This is also in reply to several other questions and points by you:)
The matter appears to be so complex that only a massive and complex superstructure on the level of religion can handle it. Such as, for example, Buddhism in traditionally Buddhist countries. There, there exists a socially accepted (and even respected!) option of ordaining as a monk (or, to a lesser extent, nun) and exiting the usual business of life.
But without such a massive and complex superstructure, AN seems to be doomed to failure.
It's something I've been wondering about for a while. I think philosophy is a kind of la-la land, advocating for principles of reasoning that usually just don't work IRL with real people. In general, people don't give a rat's ass about "critical thinking". The argument from power is the strongest one.
I'd like to believe this isn't the final word on this, but I'm afraid it is.
People who grew up with the PWE probably also have a deeply ingrained contempt for idleness and failure. So I don't think they are likely to engage in thoughts of idleness or the justification of it.
The idea that work should be "fulfilling" seems to be rather new, a relatively modern invention.
I gather that in earlier times, people didn't look to work as something "fulfilling" or "unfulfilling".
That's a good one! As far as the religious component goes, I'm not so sure. This:
Quoting Bitter Crank
I don't believe this, not at all, at least not as far as the ordinary, illiterate masses are concerned. For the ordinary person, religion/religiosity is an externally imposed chore, a ritual, a keeping up of appearances, not something they would actually take to heart or with the help of which they would make sense of the world.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It is also true that we cannot not do something. One way or another, as long as one lives, one will do something, even if it means rocking back and forth in a chair.
The question isn't whether to do or not to do, it's what to do and what not to do.
Sure, it can be a useful heuristic, provided one has internalized it early enough in life.
Is that really a consideration in non-traditional societies? Yeah there is pressure from parents maybe to be grandparents, but is that such a strong incentive for most people?
Quoting baker
As Ligotti wrote over and over.. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to be, no one to know one to know (or something like that). Yet, we do need this as you explain. As Schopenhauer pointed out, if life was fully positive, we would not want for anything. We would just "be" and there would be no lack. The main point though is that we are an animal like all others, yet we KNOW what we are doing AS we are doing it. It is an odd paradox. To KNOW one can dislike the very tasks necessary to survive. So then the burden of justification is needed.
@Bitter Crank I'm wondering what you think Schopenhauer would say to Marx. What do you think Schopenhauer's critique would be of Marx's whole enterprise?
So another big point here is that bringing a child into the world isn't "just" this...bringing an individual into the world. Rather, it is perpetuating the ideology of the superstructure and reinforcing that superstructure. So I can't emphasize enough this becomes a political issue due to this broader societal nature of procreation. It isn't just, "A child is born". It is also, "And the institutions, values, and ways of life of the society shall be enacted and reinforced again and again with each new child". Our mode of production/consumption/trade/survival/comfort-seeking/entertainment is all wrapped up in the socio-economic-cultural superstructure. Birth is a clear YAY in its perpetuation.
However, who says that this should be perpetuated? As I stated in point 2 in the OP, our animal species can KNOW what we are doing as we are doing it. Any given task can be evaluated as non-preferable. So here we are perpetuating/replicating a way of life unto yet another person who can yet again, evaluate negatively any given task mandated (by de facto needs of living) by the socio-economic-cultural superstructure.
If we lived perhaps like other animals, this doesn't become as much an issue, and certainly not a political one. Rather, if I was another mammal of sorts.. I may prefer to eat rabbits instead of mice.. I might prefer to be in the sun at a particular moment and then in the shade. However, I cannot evaluate the very acts of my mode of living (e.g Aww.. shit, not THIS again!).
So combining this all together, by perpetuating more people (aka procreation) it is de facto akin to saying: The needs of perpetuating the superstructure are more important than any negative evaluations that can be had of any given task or aspect of said superstructure. Why should the superstructure take precedence over the negative evaluations of it in particular aspects or as a whole? This then further becomes a debate between those who want to perpetuate the ways of life of a given superstructure (any superstructure, not a particular one- it doesn't matter what the setup is) and those who do not.
Good question. I mean any mode over and above any individual's negative evaluation of any given superstructure they (must) find themselves in.
It's no so indiscriminate, though.
An upper class pronatalist surely isn't glad if a lower class woman gives birth. And vice versa.
White pronatalists aren't happy about black people having children. And vice versa.
And so on.
And further, it's not like pronatalists typically want to have as many children as physiologically possible. It seems they typically want to have a set number of children.
How do you account for that? You said, "And the institutions, values, and ways of life of the society shall be enacted and reinforced again and again with each new child". But given the above considerations, this holds only in the sense that there are many superstructures, some of them opposite to eachother.
So that, for example, the white supremacist pronatalist supports one superstructure, while the black supremacist pronatalist supports another one, and the two are in conflict, each wanting to eradicate the other.
The closest comparison is tribal competition and warfare.
Or maybe Plato was right and it's all about ideas.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't make a point of thinking of humans as animals, so this doesn't touch me they way it apparently touches you.
But this is the most important point and informs the other objections you were raising. So it isn't a particular but any society that is being perpetuated by procreation. However, we can evaluate and assign negative value to things. At each decision, we have to put a justification for why we do or don't do anything. It's usually for reportedly "practical" reasons, but even those are justifications. Other animals do not need that. They just "live". I recognize they have preferences perhaps, but they don't need justifications. That is important. At any moment, we can negatively value doing any task of the superstructure (work, chore, task, etc.). Yet this doesn't matter to procreation sympathizers (or agnostics). Apparently, perpetuating the structure is deemed more important than any individual potentially having negative evaluations of the very structures needed to survive.
I agree that it is political, but you are adding/interpreting such implications. I agree that in fact we perpetuate everything by continuing to breed, but we do so mostly blindly.
So they put the continuance of the superstructure over individuals that will engage (possibly negatively) with this superstructure.
We can evaluate negatively the very means of survival AS we are doing it. That is insane as far as keeping this whole thing going. Humans need a justification for any action.
I agree that we've culturally evolved a notion of ethical rationality, related to something like a universal secular humanism. So one ought to have justification. I've long thought that life is fundamentally immoral. Nature is a box of monsters eating one another. Human beings marry and breed before they even know what life is. It's only when one gets old and disillusioned that one realizes the sin.
It also makes sense that anti-natalist ideology will be bred out. Didn't the Quakers eschew reproduction? As much as I sympathize, I don't think AN has legs politically. It's not a live option. If Bernie couldn't win, ....
I suppose Nietzsche was a big influence on me. But another more banal influence is all the causes that cry out for attention. Factory farming is bad. Plastic is bad. Driving is bad (fossil fuels.) And so on. The 'pure' option is to just not exist at all, because we breath oxygen that someone else might need. But all this 'X is bad' stuff is itself caught up in powerplays that assert moral superiority! I don't deny some genuine empathy, but everything is mixed. But hey! Even non-existence is a sin, because one is not here to help others. It's selfish, this quest to be blameless. (The gods laugh, since there's nothing funnier than neurosis.) (I don't really believe in the gods, but I like the phrase 'the gods.')
EDIT
More to the point, you can maybe see historically 'the tribe' being slowly expanded to include all humanity (and perhaps eventually aliens.) Perhaps none of us live up to this ideal, but the ideal is prominent, I think.
But specifically here, I'm talking about the justification related to the superstructure. Let's break it down to a very discrete important part of it.. Work. Every day you decide to work, you have either an explicit or implicit justification for why you do so. You can do otherwise, but the other options are pretty dismal, so you go with the least bad option based on your calculation. If you don't like any given task at work, the people you have to interact with, etc. etc. that doesn't matter. You were born, now you have to "deal" with it. Again, we are the only animal that can evaluate what we are doing as we are doing it. We can say about work- an institution needed for survival "Aww shit.. I don't want to do this right now". Other animals have no capacity for this kind of negative evaluation. So when we put more people into the world, we are putting more people into institutions (like work), and we are not just automatically, Zen-like going through the motions, but are justifying and keeping ourselves "motivated" to keep doing what we do. And to say, "Well, one can find different work" is the wrong sentiment as it is the institution of "work" itself that is unavoidable without other consequences. But apparently, for most people, putting more people into the world as laborers (even if there are choices in what "labor" to do) is something that is considered good, appropriate, or right to bestow on another person. That person's negative evaluations of any given experience with the superstructure (such as institutions like work), are not taken as enough consideration to prevent putting more people into the world who must then deal with it.
I agree with you completely up to this. I think we have to distinguish between the safe & sentimental public discourse and the stuff one confesses to friends. 'Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.' Mostly we are just too greedily immersed in our own problems and opportunities to give strangers anything but platitudes. Or, since suicide is off the table for most people, we sincerely give the best non-suicide advice we can. 'Look on the bright side' is all we have. 'Try this' is all we have. I once told a good friend that I might end things and he didn't try to stop me. He respected my decision. In retrospect, I'm not so happy with that, but only because I was too young for such considerations, and because I had a woman who would have been devastated. (That's a big reason we all stick around. We're entangled.)
What exactly do you disagree with? Do you think it wrong to question putting more laborers with negative evaluations of the laboring into the world?
I'm saying that I don't think that most people simply think it's good and appropriate. I suspect that some people look at other people and think 'God, I hope they don't breed.' There's a lot of hatred for people in people. Also one hears talk of overpopulation, rational or not. What do you expect people to say to some pair of acquaintances with a new baby? 'Why'd you do that?' It's largely fearful prudence that keeps people within social conventions. What kind of maniac actually tells the truth in public?
I think this awareness and ambivalence are inherently human.
Not sure what you mean here. Do you envy them their "animalistic", thoughtless, going-through-the-motions way of life?
Are you sure they put that much of this kind of thought into their acts of procreation? Or did they "just do it"?
I guess just focusing on non-accidental birth. Let me then break it down to real basic elements then. Birth means creating more laborers. Is it ethical to create more people who labor? Now combine this with my comments on negative evaluations of that very labor.
It's not like we could come up with an nifty antinatalist syllogism, and then, boom, people change and stop making new babies.
And my question still stands:
Quoting baker
Well the argument and the efficacy of people changing their practices after hearing those arguments are two different things. I agree, just hearing a good argument won't change much for people.
Quoting baker
Granted. But to be fair, have people ever really been presented with antinatalist arguments? Only people on philosophy forums and niche groups probably. So it really hasn't been tested either.
There's a weird thing where not only does the argument have to be good, but the presentation of the argument must be convincing to really make people do something from it. It is a combination of ethos, pathos, and logos.
I wasn't quite sure what the question was pertaining to. Are you asking if I envy animals their thoughtless way of life, or people who don't think about procreation in political terms (e.g. creating more laborers who can evaluate their laboring as negative)?
If the latter, I don't envy them. Rather, I think it as thoughtless actions that create negative consequences for other people. It is bypassing our capacity to examine what is going on and assumes that automatically creating new people is a good thing for that person. It is not sufficiently seeing how we are manipulated by our very animal nature of needing to survive, and specifically the human animal's way of survival through the superstructure and our ability to negatively evaluate any task required of that superstructure. And I'm not even making the AN arguments that are more readily apparent like physical illness, pandemics, disease, disaster and the like.
This is more refined in that it is less obvious. It is about our very ability to understand what we are doing as we are doing it, and seeing it as negative, but still knowing we have to do it to survive.
Apart from the relatively small group of people who have found themselves forced by external circumstances not to have children, antinatalist views are reserved for the privileged who can afford not to have children.
It's hard to live with a pessimistic outlook on life if one actually has to work for a living. In contrast, pessimism is the luxury that the privileged can afford. Such as those living off trust funds.
I don't think this is weird at all. Why would it be weird?
Do you want to be like religious people who rattle down their doctrine and demand people to just believe it??
If you don't envy them, then what do you do? Fear them?
The pronatalists are posing a threat to your survival, doubly so: 1. to your person (which is endangered by pollution, socio-economic collapse, etc. posed by (over)population); 2. to your idea of what life on Earth should be like.
See, if you'd be a true pessimist and a true antinatalist, you'd just chuck the pronatalists and the gloomy prospects for planet Earth in the fuck it bin. But you don't do that. You argue against them on an internetz forum. Because even as a pessimist and an antinatalist, you still want to have a good life, right?
That makes no sense.
Quoting baker
Are you saying antinatalists don't have to work? Did you pull this statistic out of your ass or is your head stuck up there? I've seen several YouTube videos of poorer socioeconomic people and minorities advocating for antinatalism. Frankly, there are AN movements from all over the world, supposedly "third world" and first world. Of course, that doesn't make for statistics- just anecdote. Either way, your statements make no sense. Why would non-privileged people not be able to NOT have children?
Quoting baker
I was just stating that you need a combination of the three with political arguments. The pure logic of it doesn't seem to usually affect people.
Quoting baker
No religious people use the same tactics everyone else uses but for ridiculous positions usually. They try to use pathos, logos, ethos, etc. They do rely a lot on ethos though of their position as doctor of the church or something of that nature. The logic is usually of a medieval scholastic nature if at all. The pathos is usually some sort of emotional plea like a television preacher or some more typical carrot-and-stick approach.
Read again.
It's hard to live with a pessimistic outlook on life if one actually has to work for a living. In contrast, pessimism is the luxury that the privileged can afford. Such as those living off trust funds.
*sigh*
If you'd read them, they would.
Many people need to have children, in order to produce laborers to help them and to provide a measure of security for when they are unable to work.
Further, in order to endure the hardship of the daily grind, one needs to have a measure of optimism, needs to believe that it's all worth it somehow, that it all somehow makes sense.
Many people find this meaning and this optimism in having children: they work hard in order to provide for their children; their children make their hard work seem worthwhile. In contrast, working hard in an effort to pay for one's hedonistic pursuits is seen as empty, worthless, decadent by some (many, if not most?) people.
Sure. Why on earth should it??
Again, makes no sense. (and I really want to add fuckn before sense. You have to explain this as it is not evident by just you stating this as fact.
Quoting baker
I mean there is also a lot of upfront investment in this retirement plan (upbringing, education in business of work, feeding housing, etc.). But I see we are talking about mainly third-world situations here, and in those situations it is not so cut-and-dry. Many people die and the large birth rate leads to other things down the line that lead to negative consequences. Granted, the subsistence farmer isn't thinking about this. I guess then my main argument is that the the "living on a thin line" existence can be ended within one generation rather than its perpetuation. I believe all humans have the capacity to consider various arguments. They simply haven't had exposure to this one. I am not saying they would fully embrace it, but I am sure a subset of people from any subsistence society would consider it logical to them, and refrain from procreation. It's not so "If/then" as you seem to indicate.
Quoting baker
I mean, again this is a statement without evidence. People do things for many reasons.. competition, spite, not to get hassled, not to worry about dealing with it in the future, or purely to not lose what they have. It doesn't have to be optimistic reasons.
Quoting baker
Although I agree people do see some sort of meaning by having children, this doesn't negate the arguments of antinatalism. It is dealing with other people's lives, so we must tread lightly on how rightful this is. It isn't just, "X circumstance gives my life meaning, thus this is right and good". That is just fastforwarding to what you want to hear. I will give charity to people because birthing a whole new person is really the only thing of its kind. One cannot analogize it to anything else- teaching, caretakers, adoption, etc. Those are people that already exist. So it is hard to explain why this circumstance of procreation, while seeming similar to those, are not because it is creating an new instance from nothingness, and this new instance has implications of suffering far down the line.
Have you ever consistently made an effort to have a pessimistic attitude to life, yet were able to dilligently get up every morning and do your work well?
Much work gets done because it has to be or X will happen. One of the points of the OP is not only do we survive, we can evaluate any given task needed to survive (in the socio-economic-cultural superstructure). That's why I see this situation as a negative. Here we are, being able to negatively evaluate the very tasks needed to survive (and find comfort and survive).
So one of the other main points with the political slant here is that when a parent decides to procreate a new child, they are also becoming a witting (or mostly unwitting) participant in keeping that society/state's structure perpetuating and maintained. They become the literal bearers of their country's/state's progeny and duplication. When you think about it like that, it is a bit odd and seems to be a question of how people are being used in a way for this replication process. It is a political question to decide "Yes!! A new person should be reinforcing and perpetuating the ways of life of this political entity!". One is being complicit with one's government/body politic/institution, etc.
I've known a number of parents who are hoping their child becomes an iconoclast who will help bring down the state's structure. Don't underestimate the revolutionary projects of some would be parents.
Well, I did say "unwitting" participant's too. Most likely they will contribute to the economy in some way, even if they write some "revolutionary" blogposts and social media posts :D.
For sure, but they may do more than play around on social media - they might work in politics, in unions, in activism, in medical care, in civil rights law, in drug law reform, in a range of subversive activities.
Not sure how "subversive" that is. It is contributing, just in a different way and would make the country stronger in the long-run. Don't see how that contradicts the point.
I'm not contradicting your point, I am contributing to your point, just not in full support.
What do you think you are trying to achieve in general terms?
I am saying that by procreating people, you are willing (or unwitting) participants in perpetuating your socio-economic-cultural institutions (including governments, etc.). You have become oddly, a "political advocate" by adding more workers to the economy, more hands on deck, etc.
I understand you think this but why is it a problem?
Pretty much addressed in OP:
1) Social structures of economic, political, cultural institutions that de facto need to be entered into in order to survive, find comfort, and fill time with entertainment.
2) Self-reflection. We can evaluate what we are doing in these social structures, and come to conclusions that we do not like doing these things while we are doing them.
Why does this package seem justified to perpetuate onto more people born into the world?
Is there a quasi-religious element of some "mission" involved in this?
Why is a movement against perpetuating the package of social structure and negative evaluation of human activities needed to survive condemned off the bat, but the perpetuation of this package is condoned and praised? Can't there be another point of view?
To make it more succinct:
Having children is essentially pressing more people into the system. Preventing birth is not pressing more people into the system. Why press more people into the system? Is it bad to advocate to potential parents to NOT press more people into the system? Procreators are voting with their gametes. Antinatalists are voting with their persuasion.
To proclaim the rare poster @Inyenzi, antinatalists are in a way "boycotting" the system, and not being complicit in perpetuating it to yet another person who must be laborers, and self-aware of the laboring and may evaluate any given task in their laboring as negative.. and thus don't want to expose yet more laborers to the system.
Then this again goes back to the OP:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, I remember these points. This is obviously very important to you. The argument seems lacking in focus to me.
I don't think the 'package', as you put it, is praised - the world, our country is in constant tension, disagreement and nascent revolution. And doesn't it make sense that the powerful in a status quo oppose change? Also many if not most people are afraid of radical change for good reasons. You can always make things worse. No one really knows how to make things better. Just look at the culture war over taxation reform or a simple thing like health care.
People see having children as a way to escape from the system. For many people having a child recalibrates who they are and rebuilds the world.
Yet having a child shouldn't be about the person having the child, but the child itself. It affects someone else.. They could also meditate and take art classes.. but this pursuit somehow gets a pass even if it (excuse my French) is fucking with another person in the most profound way possible (their very state of being put into the world and having to contend with that). Post-facto justifications of good upbringing hopefulness, does not negate that one is putting yet another laborer in the economic-systemic fray. Why is this a good thing to do to someone else? Antinatalists want to stop this "pressing" of more laborers.. even if people don't think about their procreation in those terms, they are doing it, so advocacy to get more awareness of this. The parents are voting "YES MORE LABORERS!" (even if unwittingly). The antinatlists are saying, stop.
And here inevitably implicit weird justifications of the following ensue:
1. Protestant work ethic.. people need to be laborers so they can be happy laboring (work sets you free!)
2. People need to work for a future technological utopia or purely to create new technology (better plastic, more screens, yay we go to Jupiter and Beyond!)
Of course no one by necessity "needs" anything prior to birth, as there is no "one" there. So, it is purely to see various ideologies carried out, like people who are put into existence to labor and its supposed ensuing "meaning" from the laboring that "has" to be had by "someone". Odd.
Here's the thing: What's in it for the antinatalists??
What do antinatalists get or hope to get if other people stop producing children?
Less people who suffer and forced into X system that can be negatively evaluated. If one cares about the ethic, then one advocates strongly for it. There's also a justice thing.. Unjust to bring more laborers, suffering, extend the superstructure because you want it.
I'm curious why this matters so much to you. Do you feel you were thrown into the world (apologies to Heidegger) and that this is unfair and has lead to suffering?
IF you want a whole thread on the subject of the phrase "thrown into the world" and how it's used as a colloquialism, not a metaphysical statement, see my 5000 other posts on the subject :p. So, if you wanna go there, I'll just send you links to the lengthy threads on the matter.
And, what do you think?
People being born doesn't really concern me. I am more interested in behavior once they are here.
It concerns me that people want to see behaviors and thus create people to see them carried out. A bizarre political move. But it is political as it is one person affecting another, and it deals with the superstructure. I am very concerned people want to see X from another person because they have a vision that just needs to happen for the other person.
Human beings are behavior.
Don't think it addresses what I said. People are making humans to see behavior. One has to be there for the other to happen.
Because not doing it is also harmful. To the people already here.
And before you ask me why I’m commenting this: It’s to offer a different perspective since you, once again, seem to be repeating the same old argument. “Life can be harmful so it shouldn’t be enforced”. And since I don’t see anyone making this point on the thread I say it. “Not enforcing it is also harmful, sometimes”
No I’m not trying to stick it to you or “put you in your place” or whatever else you insist I’m doing. Just preventing the thread from becoming and echo chamber.
But can Tom make his own arguments? Now this changes the path this takes. I dont think his comments are necessarily an echo chamber. Its not like you are getting a 1up for adding your idea, I now have to choose to argue your particular line of thought.
And what do you actually mean by "preventing the thread from becoming an echo chamber" anyways? If I am talking to other people, and no one else is "echoing" what I am saying, that would not apply.
Sure. I’m just adding mine.
Quoting schopenhauer1
If you want to. But that got us nowhere last time.
Right, so that's why I don't get what's the point of commenting. We've argued more or less the same things before. Also it's going to now be Tom possibly piling onto your arguments rather than making an original one.
So we've argued this point before.. You are going to do the lifeguard argument, I presented what I thought about that. Is that where you are going with it again?
But proponents of antinatalism are doing the same thing: they want to see other people stop procreating because they (ie. the antinatalists) have a vision that just needs to happen for the other people.
Antinatalism, precisely because of its specific anti-life content, is not a stance that can be backed up by empathy or compassion for other people.
If someone argues for selective natalism/selective antinatalism (as has typically been the case throughout human history, such as in the form of forbidding sex outside of marriage, killing defective newborns, or stigmatizing unwed mothers and their children), then this can still be motivated by empathy or compassion for one of more parties involved.
But with antinatalism, there can be no such motivation -- other than to please the ego of the antinatalist (who will be dead within a few decades anyway, so why care about him).
But it's stopping other people from creating new people. It's not stopping other people from doing what they want to themselves.
Quoting baker
Antinatalism is about empathy or compassion for the future people that would be created by the procreators.
Quoting baker
This actually seems unempathetic.. being more akin to eugenics and nefarious programs in the past. I also don't see how shaming people is compassionate.. Rather, it's just more social pressures to see a certain outcome- ends justify the means. Antinatalists don't usually shame as a strategy though I'm sure some individuals do. Rather, they present the logic which may be hard pill to swallow but not trying to shame one after the fact.
Quoting baker
The motivation is to prevent future sufferers from suffering. That seems pretty egoless being that the antinatalist has nothing themselves to gain from it, since they already exist and all.
IOW, you haven't consistently practiced pessimism.
Getting up in the morning and thinking, "Oh no, not this again", but then getting dressed and going to work and doing it well is merely dilettante pessimism.
Yes, we've been over this. I'm not seeing anything special in this. You need to break eggs in order to make an omelette. Most people don't cry over the eggs being broken.
What do you mean by "find comfort"?
Are you saying that you see the futility of life as it is usually lived, but you nevertheless find ways to feel comforted? By what, how?
You'd have to explain that. Pessimism doesn't mean an utter inability to do what one doesn't want to.
Quoting baker
I should get a shirt that says "Most people". Most people have negative evaluations at some point. This is not a rare thing.
Quoting baker
It goes back to my usual categorization of basic human drives- survival (through socio-economic-cultural means in the human animal), comfort-seeking (not necessary to survive but nice to have.. get warmer/cooler, clean the house, etc.), and entertainment (you don't need it for survival, or comfort, but out of restlessness and novelty in one's life). Of course, any X experience can have all three overlapping or in any combination.. like being entertained by cleaning, and its more comfortable, and you get paid for it..etc.
But since, if the antinatalist is successful in convincing other people not to procreate, the potential future people will not exist anyway, so no compassion or empathy for them, so the point is moot.
Compassion and empathy are meaningful only in relation to already existing entities.
It's not possible to feel actual empathy for someone whom you don't know because they don't exist.
The compassion and empathy you're talking about are idle perversions.
It's empathy and compassion for existing people -- such as for those who are burdened with looking after orphans or the defective. Social norms are there to protect and serve the normal, the majority.
But there are not going to be any future sufferers!
It looks more like the final drop of pleasure that the antinatalist is trying to squeeze out of life.
Consequent pessimism is paralyzing. You're at most, talking about occasionally having some pessimistic thoughts. I'm talking about real, consequent 24/7 pessimism. That's the kind that makes one see the futility of every human action, 24/7.
I've written hundreds of posts on the non-identity argument against antinatalism. A future person would exist otherwise that would be harmed. I can refer you to more expanded versions of this debate if you want.
Quoting baker
Not true, otherwise people would have no consideration whatsoever for the outcome and welfare of a future person, baby, child.
Quoting baker
Not sure why it can't be extended to people that would exist but are prevented from doing so if otherwise not precautionary.
Quoting baker
Defective? Damn look who's harsh here. Ok, well, new social norms have and can be implemented. One where compassion extends to people who might exist, but can be prevented from doing so. Compassion the harm that could have taken place.
Quoting baker
If suffering is almost a guarantee once born, then yes there would be.
Quoting baker
Final drop of pleasure-- because it is suggesting to current people born to not screw with other people by procreating them? They are not saying to not do X, Y, Z for themselves. There's many ways one can try to find happiness without it involving other people's states of being.
False. Consideration can be motivated by other things than just empathy and compassion. Habit, pathological altruism, pride or the desire to look good in the eyes of others can result in acting in ways that can seem as being motivated by empathy and compassion.
It's like having compassion and empathy for fictional characters in a book or a film. It's not a meaningful way to have empathy and compassion.
It's a compassion and an empathy that doesn't take the other person into consideration as they actually are, as persons -- and it can't, because that other person doesn't actually exist. It's not emapthy and it's not compassion. It's pity and it's patronizing. And people have plenty of that indeed. It seems to make them feel really good!
All along, I've been privately comparing your antinatalist stance with the antinatalism that can be found in Early Buddhism. I don't recall ever seeing the argument that the reason why one should be celibate is out of compassion for others (although the point does come up in popular Buddhist discourse).
I certainly don't find your line of reasoning convincing, even though I would, for all practical intents and purposes, describe myself as at least a selective antinatalist.
It goes back to what's in it for the antinatalist.
Do list at least three such ways.
Either way there will be a person that exists, and you are taking into consideration the suffering that person would suffer. I find it hilarious that when it comes to these forums future conditionals go out the window in the name of "metaphysics".
Quoting baker
Um, so if a couple KNEW that by procreating there is a 100% chance that the child that would exist would live a horrible life, they should not take this into consideration? Get outta here.
Quoting baker
Buddhism is its own can of worms. Even though technically suffering can be achieve with antinatalist policy within a generation, I believe that Buddhism believes that reincarnation into a human form needs to happen in order for nirvana and enlightenment to be achieved. So in a way, it is oddly necessary for some to procreate so people can have a chance to realize nirvana. Well, I say: OR you can just not procreate. Maybe they are alluding to a sort of inevitability of evolution on Earth to lead to other animals to suffer, including eventually, self-aware animals. My AN was always centered around self-aware animals such as ourselves.
Quoting baker
Preventing yet another person from suffering. Keep it nonexistent please.
Quoting baker
Um, any activity you do outside of childrearing or related to childrearing. That's literally millions of things. Sports, hobbies, recreation, entertainment, anything.
Not in this case.
I'm sure there's a name for this fallacy, but I can't be bothered to look it up.
But you're evading the point. I'm saying that your antinatalist has motivations that are lowlier than empathy and compassion. I'm saying that your antinatalist has merely pity and patronizing. Or possibly worse.
Not according to Buddhism; and this is because merely dying doesn't guarantee cessation of suffering.
Your "solution" to the problem of suffering doesn't solve it; it amounts to "no man, no problem". It's akin to saying that the solution to global warming is to nuke planet Earth out of existence.
But Buddhism proposes a solution to the problem of suffering that people can actually experience.
Not that I'm a Buddhist, BTW, I'm just comparing your approach with another one.
What do _you_ get from other people not being born?
How many times do I need to repeat my question?????
Granted, one can try to find happiness those ways. The operative term being "try". The problem is that there is no lasting happiness to be found in those things.
So let's break it down into one case.. work.
Scenario A: A world exists in which people are more-or-less born into having to LABOR to stay alive and comfortable.
Scenario B: A world exists where people are not born into having to LABOR to stay alive and comfortable.
Scenario A is a de facto "force" upon someone (lest they choose to slowly die via homelessness and neglect, or rapid suicide).
Scenario B is NOT de facto "forced" upon any "ONE" (as there is no "one" who exists to be "forced" not to work).
Even if someone "LIKES" work, that doesn't justify to go ahead and force others to do the same, because they simply "like" it. However, scenario B can never be symmetrical to scenario A because even if someone would have "liked" work if they were born, no "one" is actually deprived of such a thing if prevented from coming to an existence.
This asymmetry holds for other things as well, not just de facto forced situations, but also suffering in general.
And it's precisely because so many things are outside of people's control when it comes to reproduction that they can't take full and meaningful responsibility for it.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Nowadays, birth can be reasonably prevented.