Making someone work or feel stress unnecessarily is wrong
Is giving someone the "opportunity" to succeed through stressful trial-by-fires and work a good thing? Why?
Is it an opportunity or is it imposing one's values at the behest of negative stress on another person? Certainly, it would be hard for people to function otherwise. They must put in some effort to do a task that institutions approve through profit/salary/subsidy. But why is the presumption, "And this is good" a true one?
I think work should be done. My society has enculturated me to believe this is just a fact of life. I have embodied the value. Thus, other people should do the same. But this is true?
Is it an opportunity or is it imposing one's values at the behest of negative stress on another person? Certainly, it would be hard for people to function otherwise. They must put in some effort to do a task that institutions approve through profit/salary/subsidy. But why is the presumption, "And this is good" a true one?
I think work should be done. My society has enculturated me to believe this is just a fact of life. I have embodied the value. Thus, other people should do the same. But this is true?
Comments (91)
I'm retired now. I don't have to work and I love it. I would have done it long ago except I needed to eat; I needed a place to live; I needed to be able to support my family; I needed clothes. I worked because I had to, as do all humans. As do all animals I guess. It's not unfair. It's just how it works.
You know how I'm going to answer though, right? Let's say my other arguments are on the table here...
If life was all retirement.. But you see we need to create some sort of excuse for why people need to be put in situations that aren't retirement... "It's good to overcome X"... "You can't get Y without X", but then why we need X is not justified, only that Y isn't possible without X (Y= retirement, X = work). X is never accounted for other than people's excuses.. Like:
Quoting T Clark
Quoting T Clark
Yet all animals don't have the ability to even think of the idea of "Not causing others to unnecessary work or feel stress".. So the point seems moot.
So about that, a theme I've been toying with for a little bit is the idea that humans have the extra burden having to justify (or make excuses) for why X, Y, Z is happening on top of just "doing" the task at hand. We don't just X, we have reasons for X (not just causes).
Again, it's what humans do. Here's what you wrote in your OP.
Quoting schopenhauer1
My post was in response to this. You make something easy look hard for your particular rhetorical purpose. You and I have gone over this before. I'm not going to change my mind, not are you. Your posts just seem intellectually... I was going to say "dishonest," but I believe you are sincere. Maybe the right word is "unserious." I wanted to respond to that without taking it any further.
There seems to be sweet spots with challenges. IOW I think we actually do feel best when challenged. But feeling one must repeatedly stuff down emotional reactions given the power of bosses and a dearth of professional options can easily be well outside that sweet spot. I think most people are not so happy if they are doing work that does not challenge them at all - unless they can do the job AND pursue some kind of (mental?) activity at the same time that does matter to them and does offer that sweet spot of challenge. Generally we don't want to play ping pong with a world champion whose serves we cannot return and who can easily slam our serves. Nor would we choose the theoretically stress free game with someone we can beat that easily.
Quoting T Clark
So you weren't seeing my line of argument then. You said that "It's what humans do".. But you cannot hide justifications behind such a naturalistic fallacy as we can "do otherwise".. hence why I said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So, when you force others to X, you are doing it for your reasons, and deeming it as "good".
You are also missing that I usually like taking everyday assumptions and question them. You call it "unserious", but I call it not taking any given as taken for granted as "just what is the case".
But how about forcing someone into a situation where they have to work in the first place?
So if someone is exploding fireworks everyday at 2am, upsetting the neighborhood.. It is imposing on others.. Generally people would frown on this.. But putting new people (born) to work and deal with stress.. essentially imposing. That's okay. Because it's what a lot of people want, so it must be right.
The great out for everyone: "It's what we do!!!".. Rather it's just what a lot of people want.. And that is an excuse?
It’s good to gain that sort of life and work experience so that you can better operate in the future. Experience, study, and practice betters the range of skills one can have.
Stress can be a valuable function insofar as it helps one stay alert, motivated, and adaptive. If you can manage stress it can be quite beneficial.
So if there could be a state of affairs where no one feels stress, and one where there was, would you pick the one where the was on someone else's behalf? Is that kind of imposition right to do for someone else?
That isn't answering how it is right to allow impositions on someone else's behalf.
Quoting Bylaw
Urge to procreate isn't the same as dire urges that lead to death. That is a tricky one for humans, and to conflate it with how things work with other animals would be misguided.
People have the urge for a lot of things that don't need to be followed through (violence perhaps as an example).
I just don't get what you are saying here, especially when you mention "complicit".
Oh that sounds like spiritual stuff.
Again, this doesn't make sense to me.
What does "aligned with survival and being alive" mean?
Yes, organism is aligned.. just makes no sense. You aren't explaining it either.
There is no state of affairs where no one feels stress, but I suppose one could avoid it with drugs and the like. I wouldn’t impose any of that, but I would advise against it.
Where is the idea of "unnecessary work" introduced? I would suggest that we work as much as we deem "necessary" to attain the goal we have set out to achieve. As do gophers, rabbits, and all the other creatures that perform tasks in order to survive.
So, even under threat of death, I suggest that all work being done is necessary to the one doing it. There is always a choice to not work, even if that means death.
We could venture a layer deeper and ask ourselves why the subject is accepting the burdens that are put on him.
The easy answer is "everyone needs to eat", but ideals and standards of living imposed by the subject's environment since their birth play a far greater role. After all, even a beggar gets to eat.
As I said, you and I have both made these types of argument before without success. Not much chance of it working here.
This is a different question that what's in the heading. In the heading, you ask if subjecting someone to unnecessary stress is wrong. I think "unnecessary" stress is a bad thing, but stress is not necessarily a bad thing. Stress is a motivator and it provides an added sense of accomplishment when you're successful. I don't know what it would be like to take center stage for some major performance and be completely unfazed, as if you were sitting on your couch watching TV
There are, as far as swimming itself goes, easier and more effective ways to teach and learn swimming, and the above seems like subjecting someone to unnecessary suffering.
But I suppose that if the actual lesson is to be about learning that it is necessary to learn to swim, then something like this is the way.
IOW, the salient distinction is between a skill and the necessity for said skill. Learning the former can usually be done with minimum stress; with the latter, stress seems inevitable.
As for work, it's economics. Everybody has to sell something.
That's a lot of assumptions about "how things work".
I would argue that work activates people. The early humans got mentally and physically active because of doing what was needed in nature. In modern times we have replaced this with "work", so it keeps us healthy.
However,
That is just an illusion since if we had anything else than work that required thought and physical movement in day-to-day life, that would be as much "activating" as any kind of work. Assuming work is needed is based on the manufactured ideas of duties. But what if we replaced all those duties with automation? What then? It is probably going to happen, as it is being done right now. Lots of people are losing their jobs because of automation, so what will the future hold if "work" is no longer a necessity?
Work is also stressing out people, it is lowering their life expectancy. There are only a few occupations today that do not have a negative impact on people's lives and it's usually non-critical jobs that give more of a subjective sense of meaningfulness than any collective necessity.
But assuming that we work, "because that's just how it works" feels like a philosophically shallow viewpoint on the topic of "work". The nature of "work" as it exists for many people in the world today, is often just a manufactured thing that is not necessary at all.
Or we change the economics into something else that does not require that. It will be a necessity in the future when automation takes care of most stuff. What will people do then?
Thanks for giving me an aha moment.
The etymology of "robot" is slave. Ah, those good ol' days!
A slave can only be a slave if it has the capacity for self-reflection. It's also the foundation for how slavers mentally tortured slaves into thinking of themselves as slaves and nothing else, they changed their mental self-image to fit the reflection. But "AI" doesn't have to be strong AI, it can just be VI (virtual intelligence), it can be an algorithm or a complex automated robot that do complex actions in repetition, like taking care of old people by fixing laundry, making dinner etc. They don't have to be strong AIs for that.
Anyone who's into AI and the development of such technology can see what is going on right now. It's the first step in the total automation of society. Like every new disruption technology, like the first car, people right now are viewing these things as little more than a curiosity. "Oh, look at Tesla's new self-driving, it's cute, but it will never be a thing". It will, and it is inevitable. Capitalism demands it. It's the perfect ratio of expense vs income for a company, so any company will apply automation where it is possible, or else lose to the competition.
But what is interesting is what happens after the fall of traditional economics. What will the future of capitalism look like when everyone is utilizing autiomation?
First of all, some (or many?) people will not be able to afford the automation and will have to make do the old fashioned way.
Secondly, some people will probably rebel against automation.
There is a vast number of futuristic films that explore the possible scenarios of how the above two premises work out.
Is that what we've seen with the car? Started off as exclusive, then luxury, then it worked its way down through the classes and today everyone can either get a $100000 Model S or a scrappy old rust-waggon from the 90s. Technology rarely stays exclusive and expensive, especially in wide adoption. On top of that, it's mainly larger industries that employs people who will automate in the first run of change. So where do the employees go?
Quoting baker
Why? Sure, if it's a nice corner café with really good service, that will never change to automation because social interaction is part of the reason people go there. There will be a lot of similar places to work, but not enough for the entire population.
But if you mean that the implementation of automation in industries lead to mass unemployment and that these unemployed people will rebel against this adoption, yes, it will be a massive push to "ban" it, but how can you combine a capitalistic free market system with governments demanding companies to "lose money" on employing people instead of the extremely more efficient automation systems?
This will probably shift more into governments getting the boot since they didn't have a plan for this kind of mass change in the economy. They are still educating subway engineers to drive trains in nations where the trains will soon be automated. Governments don't seem to have a clue on what's going on. The solution is to re-educate the workers getting replaced, into technical support teams for the automated systems. Instead of driving the trains, they supervise, but even that will be gone a couple of decades later.
Quoting baker
Films are mostly written with the intent to tell a story and that story is about other things than the premise of world-building. So, in a sci-fi set in a future where there's automation all over and there are class struggles around these things, they rarely are the center of that story, or it never really explores the extreme sociological problems that could happen if the progress goes unchecked. I would say that "Blade Runner 2049" gives a good background to how the future might look in that the majority of people live almost in homeless conditions while the ones actually working are stuck in shit jobs while the privileged have gone off-world retiring far before old age. But even that isn't really about the wide sociological scope, it only zooms in on the workforce of replicants that took over the jobs of the regular people, which mostly live in hallways and megastructures with little to no hope of any change in their condition.
Even a movie like "Elysium" seems to focus directly on the class division that happens when technology becomes extremely advanced, almost caricatures the complexities of the issues into an almost "heaven and hell" simplicity.
I think the biggest question to tackle is if there's even going to be a solution that is enough for all?
Not all people are suited for high intellectual work, which is the kind of gigs that will be left for humans when automation becomes enough advanced. People live in a fantasy where everyone can become whatever they want if they want it, but that's not true. The IQ levels required for many gigs that cannot easily be automated go above the average intelligence, so a majority of people cannot do that work based on their mental capacity alone. If society focuses on high intelligence work more, then we might see a more complex education system and generally higher IQ in society when people are required to push their own IQ span a bit higher, but it won't be enough.
In the end, we will have a massive amount of people who don't fit anywhere. So going back to the original question of economics, capitalism will through this fall and needs to be replaced with a new system. It will start with universal basic income, which is just the natural way for governments to make sure the economy doesn't crash in the first run of change. But even that cannot work since there's no one working and paying enough taxes to fund that UBI, so eventually that would collapse as well.
What then would a new form of economics be? If the only choices a citizen has is to do creative or high intellectual jobs, which most aren't educated for or have the capacity for, or have UBI until they can't anymore because there aren't enough national funds to cover it, and then industries start failing because no one can afford to buy products even though they make them cheaply using automation.
There will be a collapse in this scenario and something needs to replace that collapse.
So if the choice was between no one existing and creating someone who must do X work to survive, maintain, entertain, what would yo do?
You're right - the world of employment and work is a product of enculturation. Nevertheless, people do question this set up, especially those in their teens and twenties who have recently joined the 'rat race' and are wondering why all this potential drudgery is ahead of them.
Many people would love not to work and many people don't work. There's off the grid living or being homeless and living on the street. But then other types of labour and survival hustling kick in. The best way avoid work in our culture is be born wealthy. Why do you think people want to be rich? That said, some people love their work and not all work is equal. Some involves doing things the worker loves. Some jobs are rewarding and useful to others. This matter is far from straight forward.
But should you decide that for someone else if the “like work” preferences are contingent and stochastic? I’ll even grant you the notion that if you created a guaranteed happy situation for someone else, it is permissible to create the situation for someone else…But if it’s not? Is it really necessary to do that for someone else? And if it’s not, why would such an unknown situation be considered permissible?
Who is deciding? Just adding to the picture not advocating any path.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Permissible based on whose reckoning? Why use the word permissible? Nothing is necessary, I am just describing a situation, not making a prescription.
We live in a capitalist paradigm of work. It would be lovely to have a choice about this but how do you suggest we tackle it?
Are you asking if it's better to exist and suffer or not exist at all? I don't think that question helps in regards to a very realistic outcome of the current capitalist movement of automation. We will probably end up in what I describe, so what do we do in that scenario and after is the main question. I feel the question asked in the OP just touch upon a very old and contemporary issue with "work", but we're soon in for something entirely different in the scale of the industrial revolution during the coming hundred years, and it will define if capitalism, as we see it today, will survive in the same form or not.
Sort of. Rather, is it ethical to choose for someone else a state of affairs whereby they must "work" and "feel stress" and do so when there was no need in the first place (no one existed prior to work or feel stress)? I am looking for a standard here, not necessarily what is happening in practice.
A parent.
Quoting Tom Storm
Well, I am trying to find some standard here as to the ethical weight of forcing something else to work-in-order to X (survive, maintain, entertain), which is the situation of an average person born.
I find it funny how it is all a big raucous, work, life etc. All needing to be maintained. How about the goal of not spreading more work and stress via "just don't create the situation for more people". If we can't actually develop a way out of it, then why would we put people into it? Pondering ways out on a philosophy forum won't suffice to change anything. The micro-decision to not put more people into situations of work and stress is attainable, however.
Ha, well, you know my answer though. If we can't find a way out of it, why put people in it? As I said to another poster, if people liking X thing (work) is a stochastic and not guaranteed thing (happy with it), why would we presume that we can make the decision for other people, when it was unnecessary to create that situation in the first place (meaning someone didn't already exist to be ameliorated by these negative situations of unwanted work/stress).
You can stop at, "There is a state of affairs where there is no one who feels stress". That is not existing in the first place.
This is inauthentic. Once humans develop the capacity to "reason" or "find reasons" rather, most waking decisions are not "automatic striving for life" but rather micro-decisions made as to what, when, how to do something. Humans barely unthinkingly do anything, and to compare to animals that may do so, would be misguided. Yeah you can find times when humans "zone out" or find "flow states" but in the course of daily X, Y, Z, there is a lot of stress, tedium, etc. and knowing one is stressed. So then one has to made a decision to try to be less stressed, etc. etc. An example is one can choose to walk out of the workplace at any time. One just doesn't want to live with the consequences.. All of this is reasoned and not automatic thinking. Certainly as @darthbarracuda stated, there is a societal pressure as to how one reasons, however. Like memes, the idea of "work hard to survive" needs to be in there.. But that isn't the real focus here. It is rather, should someone else (like a parent) decide that this person needs work and stress which is inevitable in being born in the first place.
A bit hard to deconstruct what you are aiming for here? Is it ethical to ask someone to do stressful work that is unnecessary? Or to do stressful work that is necessary but wasn't up until that point? Depends on what work it is, how the economy works, and so on. If the work is, say, dig up people who are trapped in a collapsed building, then demanding stressful work onto people is a necessity to save lives; the stress they feel during work is irrelevant to the positive outcome. If the work is rather stressful out of making the owner rich while the person working earns very little, you could argue it is unethical, but also while under a free market, fair, if the worker didn't do anything to become an owner themselves and only accepted their class and place in the economical hierarchy. In a more Marxist view, the only fair/ethical thing would be if the work is helping both the worker and collective, the stress is shared among all that collaborate for the whole group.
It's hard to sense a standard with so many variables. It depends on the type of work and what kind of ethical economical structure society is built upon. In the US, people are being more taken advantage of than in Sweden where the unions have much more power and laws are harsh against those who try to use cheap labor. So just between these two nations, there are two pretty different levels of ethical viewpoints on "work" that leads to different answers to your question.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Because capitalism really. We invented a monster we call a friend and when we realize we cannot easily kill the monster devouring us we either just continue ignoring it and feel fine in that ignorance, or we just kill it, regardless of the consequence to society. Problem is that if we adapt heavily into automation, we are essentially "solving" this thing by replacing humans who are stressed out by the work, with machines so that the bigger monster can continue and let us humans rest... but we haven't figured out how the monster will continue to exist when the bloodstream of transactions stop working. It's like we have the shell of capitalism, but nothing within it will work. Right now, we maintain the monster, we keep it fed, we read fairy tales before it sleeps the out-of-market night, but we don't know how to actually opt-out and deal with it without collapsing the entire world.
Capitalism is like Fenrir, the giant wolf, and child of Loki. If Loki created capitalism, it would be this wolf. And we, the people, are Odin, chaining it down, feeding it in the hopes that it will not lead to Ragnarök. We hope that we can keep it like that, forever ongoing, that it will not devour the moon and start the collapse of everything. But it will, it is inevitable, and we need to know what to do after Ragnarök, not fool ourselves with trying to prevent it, as Odin did and failed.
These are pretty old arguments and I wonder what the point might be - what does it bring you if you determine that it is unfair to have to work? Which of course how it seems to be to many, many people. World capitalism would suggest this approach is built into almost all cultures. Marxism might be one response for some. And you can pose similar 'fairness' based questions for almost anything humans do.
Why should people be forced to go looking for animals and edibles berries in a hunter gatherer tribe?
Why should everyone not be given a house and a car free when they turn 18, so they don't have to 'suffer' through work?
Why should a cleaner not be paid as much as a lawyer; is it unfair for some people to work hard for so much less reward?
“There is no state of affairs where no one feels stress”. Such a state of affairs exists only in fantasy, like a world made of candy.
Exactly. Any person born into the world will have to work. Is that a fair decision on someone else's behalf?
Let's chuck any argument with the non-identity issue.. Which brings me to NOSA2 haha.
A world with no people is still a state of affairs where no one feels stress.. So it isn't a world of fantasy. The world in fact existed billions of years before humans and presumably billions of years after.
I wonder if just being a human necessitates living with unfair decisions on other's behalf. The question for me is what can be changed, why should it be changed, and how can it be changed.
We didn't choose the system of government, the use of currency and the corporations which now dominate us (often unfairly). Where the hell do you begin?
mmm more like they're forced to not be a hunter-gatherer...human potentiality is defined in reference to a prison. Who wants to live in a stupid city except those who can't survive without it?
The wild is no piece of cake, but those who are born into it are uncorrupted by the luxuries of the city and, for the most part, are well-adjusted to whatever hardships occur. These people are the last remnant of the natural age of humans, before there was any "humanity", "civilization", "institutions", or "technology", when much, much less people lived shorter lives but with the greatest amount of freedom possible, when domesticated life was sneered at, when what mattered were actual real goals achieved through the full utilization of the body, before civilization came along and introduced countless insane imaginative systems of control that have systematically wreaked havoc and quite simply have no good reason to continue to exist.
It is shameful that nearly everyone would choose to continue to live in a civilization because "it's too hard" to live outside of it. It's mostly not even our fault, but we really are truly disgusting creatures.
It does and hence there is the first political thing to tackle. What do you do when a practice is unfair or unjust or unempathetic or cruel? Stop it.
Quoting Tom Storm
Don't have people, it causes a state of affairs where the consequence is another person is having to work and feel stress.. the how goes along with the what basically.. don't make the decision for others, like birthing them in the first place to work and feel stress.
If the situation is intractable, then the people already existing can at least realize the folly rather than just accept it as the way it is... Well no shit it's "the way it is".. and so then what? I just gave you an answer. Communal catharsis of recognition of the situation "this sucks" OR that "not everyone will like X, Y, Z work and stress that I do" and a realization not to put the burden on a future generation "We won't make the state of affairs like this for someone else".
No. I would only consider stopping anything if there were no significant and damaging consequences. To do otherwise is naive. You can always make things worse, no?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Why don't you advocate death for children? They are only going to suffer through puberty, relationships, illness, work, and disappointments. Death is better, right? A rock solid guarantee of no more suffering? I also think anyone seriously interested in reducing their carbon footprint and environment impact could consider dying too.
So an individual choosing to not procreate is all that? Misleading and false characterization. How is simply not procreating “damaging”? Quite the contrary..not foisting the state of affairs of work and stress to another person is a good thing.
Quoting Tom Storm
Because, why would I be the opposite of ethical? How do you jump to the conclusion that my position is the ends justifies the means in ethical reasoning?
A world with no people is one thing, a world where no one feels stress is something else entirely. But ok. You can call your state of affairs a world where no one feels stress, and I’ll call your state of affairs a world where no one feels joy or happiness.
So @Tom Storm indicated that “ends justifies means” reasoning. You are assuming that the collateral damage of stress and work is okay to impose for someone else to justify providing possible experiences of joy. Why is this kind of collateral damage justified, even if joy is the intention? It’s not like the person already exists to ameliorate a lesser harm for a greater harm. This would be creating the state of affairs of stress and work just because the parent wants this outcome to come about. That doesn’t seem like a good justification. An intention for good outcomes with known (and permanent/intractable) collateral damage, and for no other reason, “just because”, seems wrong. Not sure how it’s defended other than it’s currently held to be ethical by most people currently.
I was only making the point that one must first exist in order to negate stress. The argument that one will not feel stress if he doesn’t exist is a weird one. He will not feel, do, or be anything, so you could replace “not feel stress” with any aspect of existence, like joy, happiness, gravity, breathing, eating McDonalds.
I don’t believe that giving birth is tantamount to imposing stress and work. That opposite is the case, except in the case of negligence. More often than not a person is coddled, raised, and cared for during the early stages of life, so pretending parents impose work and stress is largely untrue.
Quoting Tom Storm
About me? Don’t see where you get that but okie dokie.
Hence my use of “state of affairs”. It is sub species aeternatatis.
Quoting NOS4A2
You are either being intellectually dishonest or you are truly not understanding me. It’s not that parents are directly giving work to their children. It’s that by giving birth to them they will have to work and feel stress. This can be prevented. The state of affairs of someone working and feeling stress is not occurring by not procreating. You do understand that, right? That is the point being debated: Is knowingly putting someone in a position where they must work and feel stress (unnecessarily) ethically wrong? That is the point being debated, not whether someone has to exist to know that this is the case, just that proposition there.
I guess the question restated is, that if we know the usual manner in which we need to survive, why is a life with work something that should be bestowed for another person, on their behalf, even if there is [place positive attribute of life here]?
1.) One can say a kind of decision that affects another person negatively, and that decision was not meant to mitigate another worse outcome for that person (because no one was born to need mitigation in the first place), then that is wrong..
a) To elaborate: Work is not like a painful abscess or incredibly tortuous disease (though those are plenty good reasons right there to not bring people into the world).. Work is a daily, grinding kind of gnawing thing that needs to get done for most individuals.. So it seems more innocuous. But is it really, when it is about making the decision on behalf of another person?
2.) If no person exists, there is no experiencer of the world. Is having no experiencer of the world make any negative outcome one does on another's behalf permissible? Thus, because there would be no one to feel X, bestowing life to another (and thus having an experiencer) that will have negative event Y (torture, the grinding nature of daily work and maintenance) is permissible because ANYTHING is better than nothing?
3.) Some people think working is just a "good" in itself, and that others need to experience it.
Both 1 and 2 seem off by a longshot. 3 is a personal preference that certainly not everyone shares.. Some people think torture is something that is cleansing, doesn't mean one should make others go through torture.
For me it does not follow that refusing to have a child prevents work and suffering any more than refusing to buy a car prevents a flat tire and busted tail-light. It’s not so much a problem with the proposition, but with my own thinking: the consequences of your behavior and the beings they are applied to cannot be empirically observed and measured. The sum total of suffering in the world remains. You haven’t prevented, eased or done anything about it.
At best I can say you are preventing yourself from having children. That’s it; you have prevented nothing else. And given that this behavior is entirely self-involved, that’s as far I can stretch the ethics in your behavior, and even then it’s pretty threadbare. In other words, it isn’t ethical at all.
To expect adulation and praise for what isn’t ethical behavior, though, is unethical behavior. I suppose that’s the man reason for my pushback.
The suffering is 100.. By adding another person, it becomes 120 let's say.. You have prevented that 20 addition that would have been suffered by someone So you HAVE done something. To ignore this fact would be to ignore future conditionals.. Then I would think you were making a playground of how we think of "could statements" to suit your argument.
Quoting NOS4A2
Who the hell said (mainly talking about myself) that I thought I wanted "adulation"? This has nothing to do with wanting a pat on the back or adulation. That's your interpretation somehow.
I’m not ignoring future conditionals. I’m well aware that the opposite of your state of affairs is also possible, and have previously stated that, just as you claim to prevent suffering, I could blame you for preventing joy, love, and forgiveness.
What I mean is, your behavior does not prevent or alleviate extant suffering. Therefor it does not prevent or alleviate suffering. If I stand on the street and refuse to punch 100 people, I cannot say my behavior was ethical because I prevented 100 bloody noses, when in fact I did nothing at all. Again, all you’ve prevented is yourself having a child.
That is just false. I can prevent a future suffering by not doing X. That is not a false statement. Alleviating suffering does not need to be only present suffering.
Quoting NOS4A2
Even more strength to the argument for antinatalism. It is simply NOT doing a simple thing.
Certainly we can say, "It is moral NOT to throw that person off the cliff", even if it is not heroic. It is simply an ethically true statement. The ease of which the ethical application of a guideline doesn't have to do with its moral import. "You can prevent suffering by doing X" should be taken as only that, and nothing more. Impactful for a whole future life prevented from suffering, it is. Heroic you can argue it isn't.
I get it, but I keep stumbling. I cannot conceive of living as work and suffering, in any case, but in order to prevent work and suffering one must prevent someone else’s or his own work and suffering. You’re preventing no one’s work and suffering. I can’t get past that fact.
While it is immoral to throw someone from a cliff, it does not follow that other behaviors—twiddling the thumbs, walking, or just standing there—must be moral because they don’t involve throwing people from cliffs. Even if I did believe procreation was immoral, I cannot see how doing something else, whether using birth control or burping the worm, must therefor be moral.
Your integrity and devotion to your principles could be seen as moral, and I do see it that way, but that’s as far as I can extend it. It doesn’t involve any one else, let alone their suffering, and I am unable to pretend you are preventing anything beyond fertilization.
I'm not AN anymore but I still hate this argument.
Suppose there was a parent that wanted to have a disabled child and so requested that his doctor genetically engineer the zygote so that his child comes out blind and deaf whereas otherwise he/she would be fine. Is that moral? After all, he's not harming anyone! Unless you think a single cell is a person.
Or another example, say someone had a time machine and he knew that Johnny, 13 years old, would be the first to step on a specific area in the woods 25 years from now. Is it moral to plant a mine there? After all, Johnny doesn't exist yet. And we know Johnny would be the first to set off the mine. Therefore it must be ok by this logic, it's not harming anyone!
You keep making this argument despite first making it like 1 or 2 years ago and I explained to you why it doesn't work. For an antinatalist, it's not that not having children is a good thing, it's that having children is a bad thing.
Quoting NOS4A2
But you can say that punching 100 people is unethical. Which is exactly what antinatalism is about having children. Again, it's not that not having children is a good thing, (it's not that not punching people is ethical), it's that having children is a bad thing (punching people is unethical). That's antinatalism (anti-punching-people-in-the-street-ism). Hope that makes the analogy clear.
I made this argument:
“In order to prevent work and suffering one must prevent someone else’s or his own work and suffering. [The anti-natalist] is preventing no one’s work and suffering.”
I don’t remember if I said “he isn’t harming anyone” years ago, but the argument above is not analogous to the ones you listed. Maybe we’re getting our discussion mixed up. Perhaps you can help and explain why the one above does not work.
I am well aware of the “having children is a bad thing” argument, but I am more interested in the OP’s argument that he can prevent work and suffering by doing something other than procreating.
Fair enough. I took a step further and thought you said this to argue “And so having children is justified”.
Not an AN anymore but that line doesn’t work for the examples I cited above.
Once you're born, the logic of ethics changes. You are now someone who requires help. Giving someone the opportunity to work so they can take better care of themselves is a beneficent thing to do, as long as you're not taking advantage of them (which is usually the case).
Living almost always involves work (at least maintenance) and certainly suffering.
Quoting NOS4A2
I am not sure what you are asking. You can prevent work and suffering by not procreating. Once born, it is an inevitable (what I call) evil or form of suffering. Certainly, an implication is you shouldn't assume for another that they should go through this and all is good because you don't mind it (at the time of the decision at least).
Yes, I agree with all of this. Notice you said, "Once you're born, the logic of ethics changes." So why create this situation in the first place for someone who needs to work to be in a better position? I'm being rhetorical here, because your answer seems to be something akin to the Protestant idea of purification through work or at least, the "elect" "knowing" that they were "elected" by the "consequences" of the "fruits" of their labor has permeated cultural practice (even presumably in non-Protestant countries that were influenced by colonial practices). Protestant work theology was always a bit foreign to me, but I'm willing to learn more about its wrongness :). Perhaps people are simply uncreative and work gives them something to do.. like a slave who doesn't know what to do with freedom or something. Zapffe's psychological mechanisms comes rearing again (sublimation, isolation, distraction, and anchoring). We need something to "limit" our consciousness, otherwise Schopenhauer's dreaded "boredom" with existence comes seeping in.
But it involves a great deal more. It seems to me the rest should be included among what it is you are preventing.
Again, when I look at what act or object or process it is you are preventing, I can only ever see that you’re preventing fertilization, and nothing besides. I have nothing beyond your word to turn to that shows me, yes, he really is preventing suffering.
It’s true, one shouldn’t assume for another that they should live, but ought the corollary hold, one shouldn’t assume the opposite? We cannot get consent from the unborn in any case, so the idea of consent seems ridiculous, but might you wonder if in fact your future lives would prefer to be born?
I think that is my point. As long as suffering is in the package, it doesn't matter what the other part of the package is. It is already not suited to decide for someone else.
Quoting NOS4A2
No actual harm is done to a person in the scenario: future lives prefer to be born but were not.
Actual harm is done with the opposite scenario.
The asymmetry is that:
Having children: Chance of harm (bad), chance of pleasure (good)
Not having children: No harm (good), No pleasure (not bad)
I don’t see how that follows from anything I said. I think it’s stupid to say that the absence of harm is good in itself.
Quoting Albero
To disarm it? Sure. But that’s not the analogy. The analogy would be to put it down vs to not put it down. It’s not good to simply not plant a mine. Claiming it is would be like saying: “Look at how much of a paragon of virtue I am, for I haven’t murdered anyone!”
Simply not harming people is not good in itself.
Why should this be decided for on someone else's behalf, especially if no one had to work in the first place (because they weren't born)? Why cause another person to deal with something in the first place? You can't say because it solves another problem for that person if they don't exit yet.
Giving someone an opportunity is not the same as compelling them to take up the opportunity.
In some cases work is good for the worker. This doesn't make it right to compel adult human beings to do some such work.
I suppose it's acceptable for guardians to compel minors to do some sorts of work, like schoolwork, exercise, chores, volunteer work. It's arguably irresponsible for guardians to raise children without getting them to perform some such work on a regular basis. This supposition rests on another, that some such work is required for the healthy development of the child.
I'm also sympathetic to the view that work is required for the flourishing of the adult human being. Not work for pay, necessarily, which you seem to have especially in mind. But work that exercises the powers of the human person, and that offers them perhaps a mode of participation in a community united by its interest in work of the relevant kind.
Chomsky offers a version of this view by way of Humboldt and Marx in his 1970 lecture "Government in the Future" (audio available here):
So much of this OP was about how procreation is unnecessarily creating people that will be forced to work. The unnecessary part here is that, prior to birth no "one" needs to do anything, but after being born, almost everyone has to be a part of the economic system in some way (usually as a laborer/worker). Why create more little laborers? Well your quote from Chomsky (and ultimately Marx) is a perfect example of how I think procreation becomes its own self-creating political agenda. Work becomes this paternalistic political goal that "must" be foisted on the next generation. The parent has an assumption that work is edifying and someone MUST be born to be edified by this. It is just intrinsically "self-fulfilling" according to this conception. However, I am turning this notion on its head. Perhaps it is paternalistic and wrong to foist upon another person the need to labor, lest that new being born die. It is unnecessary and wrong to cause others to exist to then have to labor (run through an obstacle course of the economic system). Thus unnecessarily creating obstacles for others (like in the definite case of procreation) is wrong.