It is life itself that we can all unite against
Life is the big old monster that is the basis of all else- including suffering. Not being born hurts literally no one. We should all be against procreation. It is what causes the suffering. I don't equate suffering itself with procreation, we all know that procreation inevitably leads to suffering. The great human project can be that which unites us against the principle of procreating more life. This can be our great cause. It is an inversion of the usual trope that life is always good- including the pain. Humanity can finally say, "ENOUGH!" and do something about it, by non-action - that is to simply not have future people.
Comments (222)
I don't think that's enough because life would still remain on Earth. Perhaps evolution has led to this moment? Earth created life capable of destroying all life so that it could finally be free. We must complete our mission.
Not sure about that cryptic one.. but working on our own species is fine with me as far as this ethic of not creating more suffering. Other animals can do this too when or if another species evolves self-awareness.
I think we have a moral obligation as an intelligent species to end the suffering of the other animals which lack the capacity.
I prioritize ethics to our own species first. Also, due to the fact that animals lack the self-awareness, it may be argued that it isn't our job to do anything on behalf of them. It can only be done as a passive movement, in response to one's own understanding. For example, I wouldn't presume to make others not procreate- simply try to convince them. Unless the animal has capacity to debate and reason with, it isn't our place.
Rationality might lead to antinatalism however we have not even got to the stage where logic and rationality dominate discourse.
I don't know if your overall perspective is influenced by a lack of belief in an afterlife.
I think human suffering could be reduced in different ways without total antinatalism and that would be better than the current situation.
There could be some calculus by which increased suffering of a mass of lives in the short term warrants a quickening of the end of life in the long term.
Antinatalists unite! We must pass out pronatal propaganda!
This is also about uniting.
Why not all of humanity on a project together? Life screws us over..time to start turning the tables against the conspiracy!
I think the the fact that the aim is right in sight and not hidden, is important though.. it isn't just that we are ending suffering. It is that we are in it together, understanding the situation and facing it.
Extinction is the final stage of evolution. It will happen one day, but it will be out of our control.
Nah. Great project of ending suffering for the future and not imposing life onto others, making that choice for them. Karl Rober Eduard von Hartmann thought it a good idea.
[quote=Wikipedia article]Von Hartmann is a pessimist, for no other view of life recognizes that evil necessarily belongs to existence and can cease only with existence itself. But he is not an unmitigated pessimist.[5] The individual's happiness is indeed unattainable either here and now or hereafter and in the future, but he does not despair of ultimately releasing the Unconscious from its sufferings. He differs from Schopenhauer in making salvation collective by the negation of the will to live depend on a collective social effort and not on individualistic asceticism. The conception of a redemption of the Unconscious also supplies the ultimate basis of von Hartmann's ethics. We must provisionally affirm life and devote ourselves to social evolution, instead of striving after a happiness which is impossible; in so doing we shall find that morality renders life less unhappy than it would otherwise be. Suicide, and all other forms of selfishness, are highly reprehensible. His realism enables him to maintain the reality of Time, and so of the process of the world's redemption.[4]
The essential feature of the morality built upon the basis of Hartmann's philosophy is the realization that all is one and that, while every attempt to gain happiness is illusory, yet before deliverance is possible, all forms of the illusion must appear and be tried to the utmost. Even he who recognizes the vanity of life best serves the highest aims by giving himself up to the illusion, and living as eagerly as if he thought life good. It is only through the constant attempt to gain happiness that people can learn the desirability of nothingness; and when this knowledge has become universal, or at least general, deliverance will come and the world will cease. No better proof of the rational nature of the universe is needed than that afforded by the different ways in which men have hoped to find happiness and so have been led unconsciously to work for the final goal. The first of these is the hope of good in the present, the confidence in the pleasures of this world, such as was felt by the Greeks. This is followed by the Christian transference of happiness to another and better life, to which in turn succeeds the illusion that looks for happiness in progress, and dreams of a future made worth while by the achievements of science. All alike are empty promises, and known as such in the final stage, which sees all human desires as equally vain and the only good in the peace of Nirvana.[5][/quote]
I like life and I'm glad I am alive and the vast majority of humans agree with me, so your argument stops right there.
Who’s going to take care of us when we’re 90 if people stop procreating? Bet you didn’t think of that.
We are working hard to do a good job of it. Our homeland planet is heating up; insect populations are crashing; big mammals are going extinct. Soon for us the way of the dodo bird.
Apparently you haven't heard that we will all be looked after by machines of loving grace.
I hope the robot that is going to wipe my ass has a gentle touch.
Right. You are preaching to the already doomed. As global warming escapes our control, climates become unsuitable and too erratic to support the necessary agricultural output, as insect populations crash and further shrink the food supply (exit the pollinators), as plants find it difficult to adapt, as we wipe out the megafauna (of which we are one), as ocean life dies, we will eventually slip the bonds of mortal existence and pass into the thick layer of geologically preserved plastic.
And then there will be no more humans whinging about the misery of existence. Life will go on in one form or another. Perhaps slime molds will become sentient, and eventually they too will be bitching and carping abut the bad deal of existence -- but that is a ways off and you won't be around to say "I told you so".
Are you an antiwhingilist?
That's nice. A fact is suffering exists. Another fact is that it can be prevented fully. Another fact is that no one need be "deprived" of good, if no one existed to be deprived.
Not a good excuse to use people. That has been a theme of mine actually. People shouldn't be born to be used by society.
Indeed. Even if we were in a politically green utopia, suffering still stands, and can be prevented.
That's too bad.
People aren’t used by society. Society is used by people so there is less suffering and more convenience.
Are you getting help for your clinical depression and morbid thoughts? Serious question. I’m not bullying you. I’m genuinely concerned.
Another fact is that for most people the good outweighs the bad in life and they're not going to join your silly movement. So have fun dying alone!
Well, because it's too broad. I'm anti murdering people, anti raping them and various other things, but "suffering" is too general/broad. A lot of things it's applied to by a lot of folks are things that I don't agree are bad, especially not morally bad or bad in a manner that suggests doing any and everything imaginable to avoid it.
I think this is the first problem. Your argument is based on an objective view on morality. Now, look through any of my comments and you will see I have a rather negative view on this. Here I would like to explain why.
Essentially your logic goes like this- Life is evil because those who alive suffer, and suffering is inherently wrong, therefore, we should all die.
This is the thought process of someone who is suicidal. I can at least provide some evidence for that because it was mine when I was. Of course, you just have to take my word for that, but word is better than nothing I suppose. It could also be said that I'm just referencing my own experience, but I think the context of it even correlating does give me some ground to stand on.
Of course, to clarify, I'm not saying you are suicidal, or even that you are implying everyone should die, this is just my take.
Also to clarify, I don't even think you are inherently wrong. I still struggle with depression sometimes and that is mostly because I can't prove you wrong.
Of course, I can't prove you right either. Your argument hinges on the idea that suffering is inherently wrong. What of the pleasure that can come from suffering? No one likes going to work, but what about the luxuries that a paycheck provides? Family reunions are tiring but the bonds you share and the support network you develop give you comfort. To take it even further, slaves were treated unfairly almost universally across the planet, but much of the infrastructure we rely on was put in place by them. Industrialization most certainly would not have happened without underpaid laborers (many children) that lived in squalor.
Essentially, the work comes first, then the reward. You have to suffer before there can be pleasure. If we had never decided to live together and farm crops despite the many challenges that kind of living situation created, we would never have invented anything. We would be animals.
In my view of morality, suffering is a necessary evil. In yours it is intolerable. In the mind of a racist, it is good if it is happening to who they want it to happen to. In the mind of a masochist, it is good because it makes them feel good. These are all perspectives based on experience. I have seen the good and the bad. You focus on the bad. The racist has only seen the bad. The masochist has learned to love the bad. That last one kind of makes the whole idea of "bad" things fall apart. Can anything inherently be bad? What happens when you disagree on what is bad? When the Christian kingdoms of Europe thought it was bad that they didn't own Jerusalem, and the Muslim Caliphates thought it was good, people died in bloody wars. Is that not suffering? When the East and West couldn't agree on how war torn Europe should distribute wealth, did that not lead to division and suffering?
So in conclusion, you can't be proven wrong, and you can't be proven right. Same for I. To put it in Chess terms, we are in a stalemate. Maybe one of us can still win though. We don't see the whole board, yes? There are things we don't know about the world. I hope we can work together to find a way we can both win. For our lives to have meaning. Let us not make the mistakes of the past. And if God exists, have him forbid we decide to forfeit.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Perhaps instead of cutting the suffering off, we should take it upon ourselves? Tank the suffering so that our children only know pleasure. If we do what needs to be done instead of shying away, we can break through to the other side. If we shy away instead, while our children will never suffer, they will also never have pleasure. They will lose because we never gave them a chance. Now, if they are born with losing odds I see no problem with cutting that off. A child that has a year to live or one born to unfit parents is set to experience an unfair amount of suffering. A healthy child can contribute to the cause of bringing pleasure.
I think all suffering is bad- be it suffering through adversity (even if it results in making something stronger) or suffering through collateral damage. You probably only find the latter unwarranted.
First, we are animals.. just saying. I am against all forms of suffering if it can be prevented- even suffering through adversity. Preventing birth prevents all forms of suffering. Also, a major conceit that is a cultural norm in capitalist societies, is that one is always working to gain some reward for oneself. This is simply the invisible hand at work. Working for oneself IS working for society. Having more children to be used as laborers makes no sense to me. Work is not a reward in itself, and I am not rewarding a child by having them so they can feel the "reward" of work and labor. That is poppycock propaganda. The same goes for working for so-called "selfish" reasons of accumulating wealth. Anyone who takes economics 101 knows that working really hard to accumulate wealth means simply producing more output.. output society needs and uses.. In other words- it is really using the person who thinks they are using society, but that is not the case, but the other way around. Yes, does this take the complete opposite view of the common notion? Yes. But doesn't mean it's wrong!
As I was saying in my last post- people are used by society, not the other way around. We are lead to believe that by pursuing our own self-interests, we are getting the consumptive goods/services we need. Really, it is the pursuit of wealth, and work ethic slogans like "work is its own reward" which society uses to make us work to perpetuate it.
I think that again you are only looking at the disadvantages. Society certainly uses us. We work from 9 to 5 and come home exhausted. We lose free time. We can't always feel pleasure. However, we also use society. On your time off, you can experience things infinitely more entertaining than our ancestors had. That is because their suffering advanced society to the point it could provide that. Generally, the amount of suffering goes down with the amount of work put into discovering new things via society. It is a cycle, what goes around comes around. I think that instead of limiting the workforce because it hurts us in the short term, we should look into advancing what we already know to both make ourselves more productive, (therefore us working for society) but also increase the amenities we will enjoy in the future (therefore society working for us).
I think that looking back at history, the pattern is that suffering has decreased in a linear fashion and pleasure has increased exponentially. I think that relates to the total amount of work we have done as a species, which can be increased by working hard but also inventing things to do the work for us. Yes, you may work more often than you'd like, and yes a child will suffer, but that suffering (at least from my observation) creates so much more pleasure. Following this logic, there may be a day when we can feel only pleasure and have the work automated. Of course, we would never get there (or at least we would get there slower) if we are not willing to make sacrifices in our selves.
I think that while you saw that society used us, you forgot to ask what society was using us for. What other motive is there? Society is made up of us and our collective will. What else do people want other than to feel good? People have certainly gotten the short end of the stick but even now you live on their labor. The least any of us could do is to continue to build the future they worked so hard for, even if they didn't know they were working for it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Who makes definitions? They certainly don't exist without us. I think that we are biologically very similar to animals, but it's the differences that count. There is a difference, at least to me, between you and my dog. My dog will do whatever I say and I value that, but you will question me, challenge me, and in turn make me stronger. I value that more.
Doesn't matter. They were used too. Being born is being used, period.
Quoting TogetherTurtle
Not really. Being that we cannot make a choice to be born, right off the bat you can see who is using who. We are born for our parents, and with the inevitable enculturation process, this means for society's means to be used for labor. As I've said before, values like "family pride" lead to values like "good laborers". Family pride leads to the inevitable sacrifice of the individual for society's means. By society I mean the maintenance and continuation of institutions which produce and maintain what is produced.
Quoting TogetherTurtle
That sounds like a terrible interim. Even so, there is built in systemic suffering not related to the usual contingent (read common) notions of suffering. There is the subtle suffering of the human psyche of desire, which is simply inbuilt. There is the contingent suffering of this or that harm of course, too which you are most likely discussing. Anyways, procreating more people so that they can be used, is not good, period. The ends here, don't justify the means, when, someone didn't need to be born to experience any harm in the first place, and no actual person prior to birth exists to be deprived.
Quoting TogetherTurtle
I don't see how perpetuating suffering of future people justifies past iniquities. What does society want? It has taken a life of its own. I believe there are social facts- institutions, if you will. Cultural norms perpetuate these institutions at the behest of individuals. Of course the one needs the other, and I don't think there is any way around it. But, individuals can be prevented from suffering, and being used (as is always the case once born). That is to say, to simply not have more individuals.
And in the fullness of time we will. All of us. Drop dead.
But Schop's plea is to not have children. None of us. Not one.
Is Schop depressed? I don't know -- could be. But quite a few people have decided to not have children who are not explicitly antinatalist and who are no more depressed than the average person (that is, slightly depressed from time to time). They view the world as too screwed up to be a fit place for a child. The big problem used to be the threat of nuclear war (which actually hasn't disappeared). The new threat is ecological collapse. The various harbingers of ecological collapse are already coming home to roost, so... just a matter of time. If the left one doesn't get you, the right one will.
I'm not an antinatalist, but I can see a certain logic to it.
On the other hand, i know men who were in hospice in 1996, waiting to die in very painful ways from terminal AIDS. About that time the trifecta cocktail of anti-HIV drugs arrived and quite a few of these men regained their health. They all seemed pretty happy to be alive once they started to regain their health and vitality--though they still had AIDS, it was under control. They certainly knew a thing or two about suffering, as do many people who have had other severe illnesses and accidents. Or just grown very old.
The fact is that life does involve suffering, and many people (probably most people) consider the pleasures of being alive worth the suffering that goes with it.
Life is suffering.
Being born entitles one to life's suffering.
therefore
not being born is good and being born is bad.
One could say
Life is adventure.
Being born entitles one to life's adventure.
therefore
being born is good and not being born is bad.
Life is good enough.
Being born entitles one to life's reasonable goodness.
therefore
being born is fairly good and not being born is fairly bad.
Life is full of shit.
Being a scarab beetle makes a heaven out of the shit pile.
therefore
be a scarab beetle.
Enjoy.
Fact is, human beings are wrecking the ecosystem on which we depend. It's probably too late to do anything about it, except if people stopped reproducing altogether. The population would fall, there would be less demand on resources, less CO production, less methane, less chlorofluorocarbon gas. Little, less, least -- eventually.
Plus, many people are assholes. The KGB, the US Census Bureau, Pew Research, and Cambridge Analytica all agree that a minimum of 40% of human beings are permanent assholes. They will always be assholes. 4 out of 10 people you meet on the street will be assholes. 4 out of 10 relatives will be assholes. 4 out of 10 school children in third grade will be assholes. Because some of the 40% of the population who are assholes comprise 99% of Republicans, the prospect of having Republicans in power is a very good reason to never have children.
One double benefit reason for not having children is that non-existent children would neither be assholes nor would they have to put up with assholes. And bear in mind, 40% is a minimum; it's a floor, not a ceiling.
That is not a fact.
You may feel that you personally are preventing some suffering by not procreating. But that doesn't do anything about all the other procreating that goes on, and hence does not prevent suffering 'fully'.
Since it is human nature to procreate, the only way to prevent it fully is by killing or sterilising the entire human population at a point in time. It is hard to imagine anyone having both the power and the will to do that.
Hence it appears not to be true that that action 'can' be taken.
To bring us back to my prior point about objective morality, why is being used bad?
People (not all of them, but I would think a majority) like to be useful. They enjoy having a positive effect on others. Just because you don't feel that way doesn't mean others don't. Of course, feeling that way doesn't make you a bad person because I don't believe in anything being inherently bad. (So at least to me I don't think you are a bad person.) Others would disagree. Consider a farmer that worked all his life to put his daughter through college. He works hard and suffers for it, and in the end his daughter is using him, but he does get something in return. The joy of seeing his offspring prosper. If you don't or can't feel that way, that is understandable. Just don't have children. As for the farmer, I know his daughter. She's my sociology teacher. She enjoyed her life considerably more than her father and is now working hard to give her children a better life. I know her children and they appreciate it. They are experiencing joy far more than pain. There are others like them. I don't think that they should be limited in how much joy they can produce. One of her daughters even has horrible heart complications. I won't get into the details but even with those, she is happy. I see her every day. 50 years ago she would have died a painful death, and if the doctor that treated her was never born, she most certainly would have.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You can not choose to be born without being born. Therefore, if you are not born you can not choose to be born. Both ways eliminate free will from the equation. No one will ever have a choice. If you wish to terminate your life after you are born, you can do that. Birth is, therefore, the genesis of choice. It is unreasonable to ask for a choice before you can even have one. Sometimes parents don't choose to have children. There have been plenty of accidents. Even when parents do choose, they are the only ones who could have done it. Essentially, parents give you a chance to exist, therefore giving you a choice. If you wish to go back to nonexistence, you can do it any time. You can not choose to live but you can certainly choose to die. That is your out if you wish for it. Most don't for the reasons I covered above.
As for the values that warp our mind so, I am lacking in them. It hurts to be honest but I don't feel any attachment to my family. I have no pride in where I came from. My parents were college dropouts. My grandparents did nothing of note. My father was a racist and my mother can't think about the world as you or I are right now. I don't fit the stereotype of a good worker nor do I try to. I'm lazy, that's really all there is to it. I understand the end game though, and I do contribute sometimes, but probably not as much as I should. I don't feel bad for it either if we are being honest.
As for these institutions, you have conveniently ignored the benefit of what they produce and maintain. They give pleasure. The movies, amusement parks, foods, all media, the are maintained through our work, and the benefits outweigh the detriments, otherwise, there would be less or even no people.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And what is the goal of the advertising you see on TV? satisfying desire. You, of course, need to contribute to society and earn money before you can have it. Some contribute by maintaining what we have and some contribute by making new things to satisfy more desire. The ultimate end of such a cycle is everyone having their desires met entirely. Living is an investment in the future. Your children would live a life so much better than yours, assuming you put in the proper effort to build that future for them. More desires met until we have the labor to have everything we need. Children would be born into a world of bliss. They won't need a choice because they won't want one. We can't get there unless we try though. We can't have the infrastructure required to live nice lives unless we live mediocre ones first.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And how does a future where no one suffers outweigh the suffering we have now? We have practically unlimited time left in the universe. Even if it takes a thousand years from now, that is roughly 13000 years of human civilization with suffering and the rest of the lifespan of the universe that doesn't. The sooner we work toward this, the more we get from it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It doesn't. This isn't about justice. Things that happened to past people were horrible but I do believe they were necessary and I don't want to punish anyone for that. Punishment would just cause more suffering and waste valuable time and resources. My point was that we shouldn't let their effort be in vain.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You didn't answer the question. What does society want? If it has taken a life of its own, first, how did it break free from our minds, and second, what is its motive? If individuals command that norms perpetuate institutions, why is it? Of course, our leaders are wealthy, but they would have no job if there was no job to do. At the end of the day, even corrupt officials make decisions. Those decisions have to have something in it for the people or they rise up. There is no government in the world that has only two classes composed of a single leader and thousands of slaves. The single leader would have been slaughtered by his servants long ago. The people's wants and needs matter because those desires keep them in line. A government that wants to continue existing must satisfy their people or risk death. As humanity gets better at providing what it wants, we get closer to a world where everyone has what they want. You can't do that without a sizable population or a lot of machines made by a lot of smart people.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think this is the ultimate selfishness. By discontinuing the human race you are hurting people past, present and future.
You hurt the past because all of their work has been in vain. Nothing matters not because we were destroyed by some inescapable force of nature, but because we decided it didn't. To put it frankly, we would be the kid in the group project who refused to do their part. the main difference being that without our part the project doesn't exist and everyone fails.
You hurt the present because of all the people who want their children to be happier than they were. If you had told that farmer 50 years ago that he wouldn't be allowed to have children, he would have felt so much pain. His daughter would have never felt the joy she did. That daughter would be in so much pain because the work of her father and herself would be in vain.
You hurt the future because all of the children who could have existed didn't get to have a choice. Some of them would have loved to be alive. Some of them for sure would have wanted out. You may have prevented suffering, but that suffering could have been avoided in ways that didn't involve the removal of joy. If we truly are able to build a world where suffering is no more, then you have eliminated a near infinite amount of people would live in that world and feel no pain. By ending the human race, you have objectively prevented more joy than pain.
I think that if individuals find their load of suffering to be more than they can handle, they should be helped. If they can find no help, perhaps it is better for them to end it. That is a choice that has to be made on the individual level. If everyone decides that they shouldn't have children and end the human race, then it will be done, however, I doubt that will happen. You are free to do as you choose, but don't expect to be remembered as one of the great heroes that built the world our posterity will be so grateful for. So, help build a future without suffering and only joy, or leave so the rest of us can. That is essentially the idea. I don't think either way is wrong, I just think that you shouldn't force everyone to do one or the other.
Why do you arrive at such a negative view of life? Why so much negation? The root of your analysis is composed of constant negation.
These threats. They cause so much anxiety and therefore suffering. These are the problems we need to solve. We can't do that unless we go on living.
I don't see the world as fit for a child right now, but I would like to have one. I would like to give them a better life than I had.
This reminds me of an old adage, "Heroes are not born, they are made". It is very unlikely for anyone to be in a position to fix these problems. I ask of you, what is the difference between a hero and a good person? Aside from them both being subjective, (one man's Hercules could be another's Hitler) I think that the difference is the opportunity. A good person might protest for something they believe in or donate to a charity they believe is reputable, but a hero is made through a heroic deed. Simply put, a hero was the right person in the right place at the right time. They had the opportunity and the means to do something great.
It is more about how you are remembered of course, but no one mistakes a hero for a good or bad person, they mistake a hero for a villain. But what of villains? Don't they usually have good intentions? Nobody destroys a city just to destroy a city unless they are mentally ill. (which many fictional villains are) While some interesting villains are mentally ill, I tend to like the ones with good motives more. Sometimes it's hard to disagree with the villain. In the end, both the hero and villain are destroying the city in the process of stopping each other, why is one good and one bad?
This reminds me of how our world has become. It always seems to be two sides fighting, but instead of putting their beliefs on the table and talking about it, then taking a course of action, we fight and destroy the city and in the end, one of us escapes and we fight again in the next episode. There's a reason TV shows don't go on forever. Living like this isn't sustainable.
It also prevents pleasure as well. Your argument ignores the existence of pleasure and the subjective nature of both. It really comes down to the question, "Is it better to have had pleasure and suffered, or to never have pleasure at all?" I would go with the former all the time.
Now, is that to say that everyone's life is the same with the same amount of pleasure and suffering experienced by everyone? No. That is why I respect the rights of others to make their own choice about whether or not to continue living for themselves. No one should have the power to determine the value of someone else's life based on their own subjective perspective of their own suffering.
I almost always enjoy your comments. Can't really argue with any of this.
Ok, let me put this in context. Here is where Smokey the Bear and Uncle Sam posters are pointing at you and saying, YOU can prevent suffering (fully for another person) by simply not procreating another person who would otherwise have inevitably suffered.
Even if one were to accept that preventing the commencement of any new human lives is morally preferable because it prevents all future suffering, it does not follow that, given the human race will not stop procreating (as @csalisbury pointed out), the morally preferred choice is to not procreate oneself.
The arguments for the latter proposition need to be different from those for the former.
In addition, there's no point in pointing your posters at me. I am past the point of procreation.
Nope. Suicide isn't the same as not existing in the first place. The point with most brands of antinatalism is that precisely because no actual person is deprived of the "good" of life prior to birth. It is a win/win. No person exists to be deprived, no person exists to suffer.
Quoting TogetherTurtle
Tradition really. Keep on doing what we've always done without question. That is what the self-interest and slogans are for. Take on cultural values of production.
Quoting TogetherTurtle
Uptopian fantasies. Also, again, using people in the meantime as debit for future people.
Quoting TogetherTurtle
Fails in whose eyes?
Quoting TogetherTurtle
The daughter wouldn't even exist to be deprived. There is no "telos" of the work of anyone. There is no work done in vein as there is no thing that needs to receive people's work.
Quoting TogetherTurtle
I'm not forcing anyone to do anything. I don't presume there needs to be a future posterity that needs to be grateful for anything in the first place. If no thing exists to be deprived, then there is no deprivation being had by any actual person.
Preventing suffering is the number one priority when it comes to ethics. We suffer and are used. We use others for sure too, but that just goes along with the fact that we are used nonetheless.
I believe the mission is really the most important part- the title of the thread. It's just the fact that some of us know what is going on, and want to do something about it. Perhaps it's not outcome, but what is being recognized as the problem.
But that is what choosing for someone to be born is all about. No actual human lost out on anything prior to birth. What sort of collateral damage are you willing to inflict? Why create anyone in the first place, cause you think there will be some states of pleasure they will feel at some point, is reason enough to start a life? A whole life of possibly 100 + years is based on these simply weighing of subjective states? Rather, all suffering is prevented in one fell swoop of abstaining from procreation. That is a fact.
I'm saying that they have. They have lost out on pleasure.
What makes suffering supersede pleasure in that the existence of suffering means that life should be exterminated, yet the existence of pleasure isn't an equal enough reason for propagating it? It seems to me that the existence of pleasure equally counterbalances your reasons for preventing the propagation of life.
If suffering is a good reason to prevent lives from being created, then how is it that pleasure isn't an equally good reason to create lives?
Therefore, we need to teach ourselves how to increase and prolong the pleasurable and decrease and shorten the pain in our lives. This seems more reasonable than saying life itself is the disease/affliction and needs to be prevented.
Yes there will always be people who will negate my whole point with death. Is death the final invincible foe for people like us who think life is better than nonexistence? Well, that we fear death is evidence that life is better than nonexistence is it not? Also, death is part of life, an inevitability that no one (yet) can escape. So, why waste time fretting over it? We have that between birth and death, LIFE, to appreciate and enjoy.
The demarcation for me is the degree of suffering--the intensity of it, the ubiquity and persistence of it. Collateral damage matters for determining whether it's morally bad. But even with that, degree is still a determinant.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say that "Oh if they never exist, they never suffered", and, "Since they didn't exist their potential happiness never did either". Either what they will experience exists before they are born or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Are we not questioning it now? People question whether or not they have meaning all the time and come to conclusions. Just because you haven't yet doesn't mean others haven't either.
Also, if these cultural values are so necessary, where are they in me? You don't seem to answer that.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You act as if a Utopia is entirely impossible. It isn't with modern technology, but what of tomorrow? Of course, you don't intend to have offspring around tomorrow to help with that, do you? Do you claim a Utopia is impossible out of actual facts or guilt for not wishing to contribute to it?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Partially in the eyes of evolution. Evolution, while not having a definition of, "perfection" does guide us to be the most well adapted to our environment as possible. Nothing is more adapted than complete comfort constantly. If we don't achieve that, we have failed every form of life that has come before us. Giving up because we just don't feel like it is even more pathetic.
It is also partially in our own eyes. While you don't share this vision, most people want pleasure and are willing to take the pain now for greater pleasure later. If we decide to give up we have failed all people past present and future who are willing to do that.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But if the work is not done, there is no benefit, and that work would not be done if there was not a greater benefit. The thing that receives our work is ourselves. If the farmer didn't work he would only suffer. How is that better?
Quoting schopenhauer1
But isn't deprivation the act of giving nothing in place of something? If you don't give life, then those potential children are deprived of choice. They are still deprived of something. You still lose.
Ultimately, your argument hinges on the presumption that life isn't worth it, that pain isn't worth pleasure, but a vast majority of people disagree with that. They live, and their pleasure and pain are there own, so there isn't any metric you can use to measure the two in comparison. Ultimately, if you are right, all of these has to be true.
Morality has to be objective at least to the point where pain is wrong, and we have already addressed that isn't always true.
Pain has to always outweigh pleasure, which we have already addressed isn't always the case.
And finally, everyone has to agree with you. This whole idea that birth leads to bad is inherently flawed because you never address that birth leads to good as well. You have thrown out that part of the equation entirely. You forgot about it. This whole idea disregards the fact that there are billions of people alive today that want to be that way. You have ignored reality and based an argument on a perceived moral high ground, and worse yet one that not everyone agrees on. If you wish to not have children and this is your reasoning, fine. This can't be an argument for truth, however. When we discuss emotions, what we feel goes. If people feel differently than you, and that group is a gross majority, then they are right, regardless of what you feel. That is what society is. General consensus guiding the minds of all.
I believe their opinions are an attempt to smear this forum by being very negative and extreme, thus enabling bad actors to point at this forum and say.
Look they are at a forum where 'people' have dangerous opinions, maybe they have picked them up too.
Thus I believe Judakas extreme views is not only using a faulty logic, but they end up being bad and dangerous, and also very bad for this forum and it's members.
They enable bad actors to smear people who are interested in philosophy and philosophers.
People here need to strongly speak out against their lack of moral and understanding of moral.
They are very wrong.
Most animals on earth don't suffer most of their life.
Insects, fishes, birds, wild animals etc are probably contempt most of their lives. We can also clearly see happiness in animals such as dogs.
Humans who suffer depression should get help.
Instead of giving up, we should carefully understand how to improve our society to minimize suffering without sacrificing lives.
If animals suffer we should help them live without suffering. In any normal situation it is not up to us to decide if we or other animals shouldn't breed or get children, only in extreme situations under certain conditions may we try to help another human to not procreate, for example by handing out condoms.
Because it is not certain if an animal or a human will suffer or how much or more than they enjoy life.
If it is a disease we might find a medical cure, we don't know what the future entails.
The views from Judaka and Schopenhauer1 lacks all basic philosophical understanding of morality and thus morality and is appalling, they are not representative of any normal person interested in philosophy or any known philosopher, they are the very opposite of any opinion I have ever come across among philosophers and therefore I suspect they are trolling and trying to harm the reputation of the forum and it's members.
It does not matter what they say or if they deny it, I will suspect it.
One reason could be to missrepresent atheistic philosophers.
I don't agree with antinatalist views, but I don't agree with your comment here, either.
If something doesn't exist, we can't say it has any properties, potential or otherwise. "They never suffered" is noting that those properties never obtain relative to something nonexistent. Same for "potential happiness never existed."
I don't want anyone banned, especially not because of any opinion they have/any view they express, but I do find what I call "agenda posters" annoying--basically, obsessives with a single-minded agenda that they're always campaigning for. They're always trying to turn any topic about anything into a discussion about their agenda, so they can campaign for it in that context.
But we can choose to not pay attention to those folks if we find them annoying or whatever.
I'm not so sure we can as that could be seen as an silent acceptance.
Another problem is, that when you answer you push up the subject and by default your answer will become hidden but the first post will be seen.
It's not the first time people with hidden agendas try to smear the reputation of philosophers.
They are actually suggesting that we should justify harming animals and people to end their suffering.
That is a really sick opinion.
I think anyone who try to justify violence should be banned. There should be a zero tolerance for justification of violence, it's easy to argue morally for such a stance.
There can still be interesting philosophical discussions.
It's just naive to accept such posts as they display zero knowledge and understanding of basic moral philosophy and human values. They can't claim to even be doing basic philosophy. There hasn't been a single historic philosopher who has not been concerned with how to help humanity prosper, it's the opposite of what these two charlatans do, they can't have read a single line of philosophy.
And they put philosophers in bad light by pretending to act as philosophers, when any real philosopher no matter school of thought will find their reasoning utterly idiotic, and also puts philosophers at risk of harm by missrepresenting them or people interested in philosophy.
I will not want to be associated with or contribute to a place that permits people who try to justify violence.
On Reddit I could have downvoted their views, unfortunately it is not possible here.
Wow, this is the most blatant anti-philosophical thing I've seen on here in a while. You don't agree with an opinion, so it should be banned. Quoting xyz-zyx
First of all, part of philosophical inquiry is questioning everything- even things we take for granted. Procreation is not immune to philosophical analysis as to its morality. Yes, even procreation can be seen in the light of its ethical implications.
Quoting xyz-zyx
Excuse me but there are a (small) group of modern philosophers who do indeed write about the view that we should not procreate as procreation creates suffering for new individuals. Please read David Benatar, and the concept of antinatalism in general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism
Also, some ancient and later philosophers, notably Arthur Schopenhauer were known for their negative views of existence. These more general philosophies that view life with as negative are considered, literally Philosophical Pessimists. Mainlander and Hartmann are two direct descendents of this.. but these ideas also influenced Nietzschean (although as a foil), and later philosophers like the Existentialists (Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, etc.).
Not everything is unicorns and roses..and those who don't think life is such shouldn't be banned. Look at my own discussions and comments history.. I've put plenty of arguments of various degrees, lengths and perspectives for the negative view of procreation.
Agreed, but can you point to the exact posts you're referencing?
Also, are you flagging the posts in question?
My personal opinion is that Judaka should be spoken to about being generally rude, but I wouldn't say he needs to be banned for it (yet).
I'm talking about whether it's "physically possible" to ignore someone. You're talking about how others might interpret that. How others interpret it is their problem, not mine, especially if they're ignorant enough to interpret a lack of a comment as acceptance.
Re the other stuff, I'm a free speech absolutist. I'm not in favor of banning or censoring any expression whatsoever, including incitement, slander, libel, hate speech, holocaust denial, etc. etc.
And there are established/academic philosophy professors who have endorsed antinatalism, as I'm sure schopenhauer has relayed already (since I see he responded after your post). I just don't personally agree with antinatalism, and I don't care for what I consider "agenda posting" (or "agenda calling" when we're talking about talk shows, for example) . . . but I don't want anyone banned.
He was rude to me, but I couldn't care less. I just ignore that and keep plugging away on trying to get him to think, critically, in ways he hasn't thought before; I keep getting him to try to put a bit more effort into actually doing philosophy.
I wish everyone could do that instead of being offended or triggered or whatever. If someone insults you it's irrelevant. Either you think their judgments are off-base/misconceived--in which case, why would you be offended/triggered just because someone else is ignorant and needs to learn something?--you should be trying to help them instead, or you think their judgments are on-target, in which case you shouldn't be upset with someone saying something that you think is true.
Because of the asymmetry that Benatar mapped out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar
Prior to birth, there is no actual person to be deprived of anything, which is neither good nor bad. Something that could experience good but does not, is not bad (it is not good either). It is neutral. Something that could experience bad, but does not is always a good thing though. Preventing good- no actual person loses out. Not preventing bad, an actual person would lose out.
What happens if there is no way around suffering- if it is intractable from the get-go?
I’m assuming you either live in the US or some other western country? You seem to suffer more than is normal for someone living in such a privileged place. It’s pathological.
I'm sorry, but it's not my job to make someone see the light who's treating me poorly. Come back with the right attitude and we can talk.
Apart from not being willing to be his doormat/punching bag, I also think Judaka exhibits an attitude that tells me he's not willing to change his mind. He says he is, but then gets condescending and ill-mannered toward anyone who doesn't adopt HIS positions.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m speaking as someone who has experienced your kind of suffering. A general depression and malaise that dominates every waking moment. It’s not normal and requires a shift in consciousness. I recommend seeking treatment.
1.the presence of pain is bad;
2.the presence of pleasure is good;
3.the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone;
4.the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.
Benatar's theory is dependent upon morality being objective, when it isn't. Claiming that some state is either good or bad is subjective.
If the absence of pain is good, then how is it that pleasure (which is the absence of pain) isn't good as well? Benatar says that it isn't bad. How is that different from saying that it is good? If there is some other state besides suffering and pleasure (maybe a "neither" category), and that state doesn't qualify as suffering, then the asymmetry seems to show that suffering isn't a state that is experienced most, or even half the time, and therefore would be irrational to prevent life from being created.
I've been thinking about this one for a while and I believe you are right. There is still something to say of his aversion to talking about positives which I think I was trying to get at here. I don't know.
I don't think anyone should be banned from anything. Call me a libertarian, but I think challenge is essential to progress. Even if this is a "smear campaign" as you put it, why not let detractors give their say? If we are so right, we can win against them. If we are wrong, we lose from the get-go. Besides, I think you may be getting too paranoid about this. I have only had a pleasant conversation with Schopenhauer1. He gives me the same amount of respect as most others around here, which is to say probably a bit more than I deserve.
You say we have no right to interfere in the lives of animals, but we are causing extinctions, and if your argument that it is good to end suffering in general by any means is correct, then that could only be a good thing, because it is obvious that, whether they are aware of it or not, animals suffer too.
And the robot that is going to fornicate your arse?
I can't speak for those who are truly suffering in a bad way. I'm not qualified. However I do see situations where suicide is the only option. Please note that I don't say suicide is the best option. Best options usually rank first in a list. Suicide is always the last option on any list. See, even in in extremis people prefer to live than die.
Yes, we’re born for the purpose of being used by society. Regarding my early life, I’ve often wondered, “What was that for?”; Whom was that for?”.
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For various reasons and people, always for someone else’s benefit. Someone else’s pride and feeling of “accomplishment”(?!); Feeding someone else’s hypocritical and egotistical self-image and altruistic-pretense as “nurturing”; Someone else’s gainful-job managing a compulsory juvie-jungle propaganda-prison called a “school”; Someone else’s opportunity to act-out their jealousy of youth; And of course, ultimately, as a labor-unit.
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Often, when uncomfortable, as when out on a freezing day, or in some kind of thoroughly undesirable adversity, I’ll say “ Shit! I didn’t ask to be born here!”
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Antinatalists say that, and it’s true.
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“Why did this life happen?! “
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Antinatalists ask that, and it’s a good question.
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Life, including specifically your life, is inevitable, and it neither has nor needs a reason, purpose or meaning. Because it’s inevitable, it isn’t your fault, or anyone else’s fault. Therefore there’s no need for regret or recrimination. Because it’s inevitable, what would be the point of objecting that it happened? It’s just literally an inevitable fact. Therefore, there’s no room, need, or even meaning, for complaint, objection or recrimination.
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When I was in elementary school, junior-high-school and highschool, I was convinced that my life was a mistake.
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But, because it has no purpose or reason, it wouldn’t be meaningful to speak of it as a mistake, or to speak of “loss”.
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Expectations. Without purpose or reason, there’s no reason for expectations.
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Without reason, purpose or expectations, there’s nothing against which to measure or define “wrongness”, loss or disppointment.
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It’s irrelevant that we disagree about whether you have one life or a long finite sequence of them. Either way, there eventually will be relief—final ultimate relief, in ever-deepening sleep.
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Sleep is the natural, normal, usual and rightful state-of-affairs.
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Death doesn’t interrupt life. Life (temporarily, briefly) interrupts sleep.
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Alright, you’re here for a while (It was inevitable, and no one’s fault). It’s temporary, and it won’t last long, so why not just enjoy it while it lasts (when it’s enjoyable*, of course, which, as we all know, isn’t always). What else is there to do?
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*and, when it isn’t? See above. There’s nothing to do about it, it’s no one’s fault, and it was inevitable. I don’t even claim that it was for a reason.
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Of course it isn’t necessary or important to enjoy it.
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It isn’t a matter of requirement, need or want. No need for those.
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Surely, if, as you’ve said, it isn’t necessary to start a life, then, in a life, there aren’t really necessities or genuine needs.
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It wouldn’t make any sense to say:
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“You have to enjoy it!”
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As Ringo Starr sang:
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“You don’t have to shout, or leap about; you can even take it easy.”
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Hindus say that life is “for” play (“Lila”). But of course that’s voluntary and optional. …not a need, want or purpose.
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Some anxiety and insecurity is natural and appropriate…even if this weren’t the kind of societal-world that it is. That’s just goes with having been born.
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You say that suffering is inevitable, regardless of how good a society it is. Are you sure? In a genuinely good society, we wouldn’t suffer at eachother’s hands. Disease and injury? For any unacceptable (as judged by the individual) disease or injury, there’d be euthanasia-upon-request. …as promptly as requested
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…or supplied or assisted auto-euthanasia on request.
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Significant suffering, by the standards of this societal-world, wouldn’t be present in a good-society. Might you still stub a toe, or step on a board with a nail in it, or get turned down when you ask someone out? Sure, but it would be a societal-world without the worst suffering of this one.
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Janet and I are relieved that we (at least so far) don’t have any grandchildren. …and so our family won’t be affected by the later worsening of grim future that’s on the way.
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(I wasn’t in a relationship till I was 30, and my girlfriends (roughly my age) either didn’t need more children, or (like me) didn’t want the responsibility of parenthood. Therefore, I never had to face the responsibilities of being a parent.)
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Schopenhauer1 makes good points, and, truth-be-admitted, do any of us not have those same feelings?
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I’m tired of debating Materialists and aggressive-Atheists, but the anti-life question in the Antinatalist threads interests me, and is worthwhile for discussion, because it’s about our impressions about, how we feel about, how things are. …how it affects us in the most meaningful ways. These Antinatalist threads are about the basics of how we feel about life.
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I often have the feelings and questions that are discussed in these Antinatalist threads. I bet that all of you do too.
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…certainly the basis of all that’s in life.
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Of course.
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Of course. Someone not conceived won’t have any reason to object to not being conceived.
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As Mark Twain said:
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“Before I was born, I was dead for millions of years, and it didn’t inconvenience me a bit.”
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I have no objection to that.
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…and it might be nice if pigs could fly.
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“If wishes were horses…”
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Sure, universal choice of contraception or celibacy would be fine, but (as has already been pointed out here), if that were achievable, then more modest proposals, such as a really good societal-world, would be achievable too.
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I like good sci-fi fantasy, and I’d say that a genuinely good societal-world is a better one than extinction.
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That’s why I like calendar-reform proposals. ..not because of any claim that they’re achievable, but merely because, as I said, I like good sci-fi fantasy. …and, if there were a “Utopian-Epoch”, a grand triumphal arrival of a completely new and better societal era, then people might want a complete departure from the old ways of doing things. …a complete break with the bad-old-days.
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Michael Ossipoff
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9 Sa
I believe he does not if I remember his book. He takes into account subjective and objective forms of "good". He also takes into account various models like preference-satisfaction and hedonic conceptions of the good.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This doesn't make sense to me. Clearly pleasure is some positive quality. If pleasure was simply more neutral, then that wouldn't change the argument.
The asymmetry which is a big part of Benatar's antinatalist argument is that absense of "good" is not "bad" unless there is an actual person to be deprived of that good. However, asymmetrically, abscense of bad is good, even if there is no actual person to enjoy this good.
I simply hold that ethics is in the realm of making decisions using reasoning and abstract ideas and as far as I know, only humans can do this. I can see your point of view, and do think there is some validity there, but I would hold the more conservative approach to this point and say that unless an animal can reason, it is not our place to make decisions of birth for them. It is bordering on forcing the issue, which I definitely think is wrong for humans to do. It is nothing if it isn't a choice.
I agree with your sentiment here. I think thinking about existence itself is of the utmost importance (maybe the most important topic in philosophical inquiry. Everything stems from it- all motivations, all actions, all assumptions of life, thought, and society.
The problem with that, of course, is that nothing is good or bad outside of an individual evaluating something that way, and really, there is nothing that couldn't be evaluated as either good or bad by some individual. That includes evaluating "the absence of potential people's good" as bad. They can't be incorrect about that, because no good/bad evaluations are incorrect (or correct).
I have no allusions we are all going to hold hands and agree in unison on this topic. The outcome is not the point, it is the coming to the realization of what is going on. That may never happen for many people, but it is always good to have a dialog. The more pondering of life itself, the better. The more we ignore and take certain conditions as simply the case, the less we are using our capacity to self-reflect and understand the situation as a whole. It is to ignore the whole for the part. We must get back to the whole.
So, why would the absence of a potential person's good be bad, if there is no actual person who is deprived? Is it bad you are not having a child that can experience good right now? If you say yes, I would like to know who is actually suffering from this.
Good and bad are evaluations that people make that are akin to yaying or booing. So it's simply a matter of someone booing the absence of potential persons' good.
Sure, but I'll just say, no harm, no foul. Where my decision actually prevented harm, yours didn't affect anything. Granted you can say placing weight on harm (negative utilitarianism) is arbitrary and I would then go back to the premise I've always told you. Ethics at the end of the day goes back to people's emotional weight regarding certain topics. I can try to convince of putting weight on certain things because of certain considerations.. but at the end of the day it is up to the listener to decide. I can't go any further to prove the axiology. But I've never said otherwise. To me, harm is of the utmost consideration when procreation is concerned as, I believe imposing harm is not a good thing to do on behalf of someone.
Edit: You can try to tell me otherwise, that it is good that a person to be born to experience harm..but I believe that to be wholly off base. To make someone so that they are harmed, so they "grow" is not right. To put adversity purposefully because you feel that it is good for others to experience is not right. Parents are not messianic figures bringing "freedom-through-suffering" into the world, or whatever other ridiculousness.
Wouldn't you say that booing is a type of suffering?
Nope.
So you'd have to define suffering and explain which negative/undesired states of body/mind count as suffering and which do not.
First, I must decide whether this argument is worth it..Whether both of us really get something out of this. Sometimes, I am not sure if I am dealing with someone where philosophical inquiry will flourish or if it is just contention for contention.
The idea is that you'd have to do that in order for the stance/argument to hold water and be consistent, tenable, coherent, etc. It's up to you whether you want to bother with that work or not, but the consistency problems remain if you don't do the work. It's to your benefit. I'm just pointing out problems/objections.
Excuse my language, but give me a fuckn break. I've done the work thousands of times over on this forum and the previous one. Don't lecture me on not doing the work because I am now seeing a pattern in how you post and see it isn't productive discussions that come forth. YOU must do the work of being a more charitable poster as well buddy.
It's just up to you. If you want to ignore the issue, cool. I pointed it out to you, but you can just ignore it if you like. I don't know why you'd not want to try to make the argument unassailable, but okay.
It isn't just about defending my argument. there has to be something that actually comes out of it. If you want to help me make my argument stronger, and walk with me through a dialectic process of discovery and see where it takes me, that's one thing. Some posters are good at that. They disagree with my position, but are not disagreeable. You are the opposite. You are simply burn, burn, burn. Notice, I'm not saying you make any good points. Nor that you "got me". Rather, the tone, tenor, and general attitude you present in your posts is simply that of destruction and aggravation, so there is no reason to cause more suffering and bother with that for me. Again, it's not aggravating because you make any good points, nor is it the case I'm trying to "dodge" some really great insights that you have.
I thought we did walk through this, though:
People can evaluate anything as good or bad, where that's akin to yaying or booing the thing in question. This can including booing (saying it's bad) the fact that we're not producing (more) people, booing the absence of good those potential people might have experienced, etc.
Booing is a negative reaction. One boos because one doesn't like something. One isn't comfortable with it, doesn't desire it, isn't satisfied, etc.
My impression was that you considered any dissatisfaction, uncomfortableness, etc., to be "suffering."
You said you do not. So we need to clarify just what negative emotions/reactions/assessments count as "suffering," if evaluating something as bad/booing it doesn't count.
Again, I'm not engaging further, unless you agree to not be disagreeable, and engage with good intentions rather than simply contention mode. Otherwise, again, no use, no matter how compelling you make your posts. I am only doing this with you, because I know the history I have when engaging you. It's like engaging with someone with a personality disorder and you keep getting aggravating replies to everything.. You keep thinking it's you when it is really th e person who has the personality disorder making you crazy. So agree first to not be such a disagreeable poster..while still disagreeing and maybe we can engage further.
Your title is a joke, I take it? And this is just you venting? Would it not be more productive to create a discussion where you can show that you're dealing with the wealth of criticism that you've amassed? Or at least some of the key points from it?
I mean, this is pretty ridiculous. Calling life a "big old monster"? Haven't we spoken about loaded language before? (I [i]know[/I] we have).
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It's a close call between "It is life itself that we can all unite against" and "With luck, the last thread on abortion" for most comically ironic.
Oh
Learn a valuable lesson? But what if they just can't? What if they're immune to good sense? Keep trying to get through until we're all sick to death, and then we all die of exasperation, and the anti-natalist gets what he wants?
Or maybe just ignore them, or poke fun at them. Basically, do whatever we like and move on. Same time again next week? I wonder what he'll call the next discussion on essentially the same topic yet again. This one is going to be hard to beat. How about, "Groundhog Day"?
Each variation provides a different perspective though. No one stays on queue (cue) though.
Yeah, sure. In this one, you called life "an old monster". In your other one, you probably called it something else, like "a terrible nightmare". And in the one before that, you probably called it something like "an insufferable hell".
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yeah, bringing everyone together in our mutual antagonism of life itself. Please tell me you see the comic irony in that.
Come on, guys! Let's all hold hands and work towards our own extinction! There's no "I" in team!
But the Antinatalist goal has a practical problem:
I know people who don't want to bring someone into a societal-world like this one. Fortunately one of them is my girlfriend's daughter. I wouldn't want to either. What if everyone on every inhabited planet in every universe felt that way? No one would ever be born in a bad-society.
The problem:
The judgment, consideration, ethical-ness, caringness, altlurusim, unselfishness, etc. needed for such a choice is exactly what is mostly missing in a bad society. The societal worlds that most need large-scale Antinatalism are the very ones that wouldn't have it.
Michael Ossipoff
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Of course I do.. I think it's poetic like a MAD comic :D
It also calls to mind canto VII of the Inferno. Here's John Ciardi's gloss on the "sullen" in the fifth circle:
[quote=Ciardi]Virgil also points out to Dante certain bubbles rising from the slime and informs
him that below that mud lie entombed the souls of the Sullen[...]in death they are buried
forever below the stinking waters of the Styx, gargling the words of an endless chant in a grotesque parody of singing a hymn. [/quote]
On a more sympathetic note, you might find the section on the "otukungurua" in Gravity's Rainbow interesting
The problem is that I'm not trying to be disagreeable, so I wouldn't know how to not be that way if that's the way I'm coming across. I'd have to post in a way that's "not me," a way that feels "fake"/dishonest to me, but I wouldn't even know how to start, because I dont know what, exactly, is coming across as disagreeable or why it's coming across that way.
True, it can be hard to change one's personality, online or otherwise. I don't know. The art of disagreeing without being disagreeable or contentious can be hard. Here is something I found in a quick search (mind you I have no idea about this website..just a simple search about disagree vs. disagreeable). Perhaps this can give you some ideas.
[quote=https://ambernaslund.com/disagreement-vs-disagreeable/] For some, every statement seems to be an invitation to do battle under the guise of playing “Devil’s advocate”, and that grows tiresome after it becomes habitual instead of thoughtful. (Someone recently wrote a great post about the downside of Devil’s Advocacy, but I’ll be darned if I can find it. Drop a link in the comments if you have it). It’s as if dissention is a badge of honor, that agreeing with someone means you’re nothing more than a lemming, and that being argumentative is the only way to prove that you have something valuable to say because you aren’t following the herd.
Walking away from disagreement that’s fruitless doesn’t mean we don’t respect the importance and the reality of diversity of thought. It’s a choice to entertain it in a less combative environment.
My good friend and intellectual sparring partner Matt Ridings is adept at disagreeing with things without being disagreeable, and he’s taught me plenty. So is my co-author Tamsen McMahon (and I deeply admire the temperance with which she greets the world at large). Julien Smith is brilliant at challenging my assumptions and perceptions while never making me feel attacked, inferior, or condescended. All of those make for great discussion, for self reflection, for great intellectual food for thought.
There is a difference, my friends, between disagreeing, and being disagreeable. Have you felt this? Do you see the difference? And how can we all be more conscious of which we’re doing?[/quote]
It can't do that because nobody has that understanding. We all know that the urge to procreate is far too strong for a movement against it to ever be successful in persuading everybody to have no offspring.
So no matter how fervently an antinatalist might believe, and evangelise their message, that procreation is immoral, they will never succeed. New people will continue to be born as long as the world remains habitable by large numbers of humans, and those new people will encounter suffering (as well as joy and a whole host of other experiences).
Interesting.. I read a little of some passages from Gravity's Rainbow in a Google search.. Interesting. What I saw, the Herero were choosing not to procreate and die off rather than live in their conditions. But, I'm probably missing a lot of the context being that I just read a small part.
But what does this urge "feel" like? What does it spring from?Quoting andrewk
I agree that thinking of life holistically, and questioning whether to put people in it is not very popular. Why do you think that is?
Interesting perspective. However, it's a bit too authoritarian in my taste to tell people what is good or bad. What makes things good or bad? Well, that's the opinions people hold about things. If everyone agreed murder isn't bad, it wouldn't be. In fact, groups of people throughout history have decided that murder is sometimes good and have performed it on numerous occasions for various reasons. Giving any one person/group the power to decide what is worth pain seems like a bit of a dangerous thing to do, considering that people are very easily corrupted. Even if everyone agreed that being a parent was morally wrong, could we rely on the people enforcing that to not value their own comfort over the comfort of the newly born? The only way I see antinatalism being a foolproof and valid argument is under two conditions, one being that everyone agrees that making new people is wrong, and the second being that we had a mechanism of destroying all life on the planet simultaneously without fail. (After all, if we don't get everything, beings could be born and suffer again) I don't think either of those criteria is met right now, and they may never be.
However, if they ever are, and we decide to act on this line of reasoning, you will then become right. Until then, I would guess that every culture on Earth would generally disagree.
This is true. It takes a tremendous amount of altruism and caringness for people to not procreate for the considerations of not making a new person suffer. It also takes a certain understanding of the implications of being born. I think it is not just lack of altruism (which is part of it), but lack of deep analysis.
For what it feels like, you'd have to ask the people that are having children now. My youngest is aged nineteen, so I can't remember. For where it springs from, I'd say evolution. Species that don't have an inbuilt urge to procreate will be replaced by those that do.
But regardless of whether we can answer either of those questions, we can be sure that the urge is there as a powerful driver in many humans, enough so that it can never be practical to expect all humans to voluntarily resist it.
Yeah, in the book its a tribal suicide. The context is pretty complicated & its been a decade since I read it - but as I recall, its something like a mandala of stances toward life, each part of which powers a Rocket (which can be read as death or mystical union or enlightenment or stillness, or gnostic awakening etc. depending). The idea of collective suicide (through ceasing procreation) is one part of the mandala. (I'm probably butchering this though.)
But, back to your OP. Since actually ending procreation is impractical, and since you seem to be putting less emphasis on realizing that goal, and more on mission and community - what about joining a meditation community? To work on stilling your own desire, helping and being helped by others?
I never disagree with someone just to disagree or because I don't want to agree. I'd be happy to agree, but you'd need to say something I agree with. :razz:
I don't believe there's merit to just letting slide things we think are misconceived or in error when we're doing philosophy (or science etc.) Aren't we aiming to "get right what the world is like"? Otherwise what are we doing?
Again, I have no problem with disagreement. It's the way you do it. Have you ever dealt with someone who has a personality disorder? There's a way to do things that don't bring ire. You are irkesome sir. I don't know what else to say. I don't like debating irksome people and I have debated many people who I disagree with and have been frustrated with..but I draw the line at irking.
Well, that is a very Schopenhaurean suggestion, but probably not a life I could live in a dedicated way to. I'm more interested in the "great outdoors" of society and understanding its ends. Micro-decisions like procreation have such profound implications. What is the point of bringing another person into the world? What are we here for in the first place? I wish this was more of a focus rather than, the darned TPS reports.. .This economic system keeping things going, but we don't know what it's going for. Look at modern life. We can have illusions it can be different, but von Hartmann had some interesting insights in this regard- the illusion is that happiness can be had in the present, the hereafter, or a future utopian state. So where does that leave us if indeed he is correct? Pretend, for a minute that he is correct. Where does that leave us?
I'd like to bring your attention to my response to csalisbury above: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/259599
The only way I could imagine him being correct is if nobody can ever be happy, even for a moment. Since that would require that everybody that has ever said they are happy was lying, I find that too implausible to consider. It seems more likely that the Earth is made of cheese.
I guess maybe we have to distinguish what he meant by happiness though, huh?
I guess it's more the idea that the faster we develop various avenues, the faster we get weary of it.. I may be interpreting him wrong, but I think his idea is of the Hegelian lines that history is moving towards a teleology, but instead of some ideal political/social state, it is one of discontinuance. So, let us pursue of all avenues and tucker our curiosity, hope, and illusions out, and then we will just decide that the best course of action is the quietude of non-being. It will just take a very long time to work itself out. I just think that's an interesting thought. What is your reaction to it besides that it is majorly depressing sounding?
@csalisbury I'm interested in your opinion too.
I don't believe in utopian visions. We are not heading towards heaven on Earth. But I do think that things have been getting generally better in the West since medieval times. The progress is very slow and sometimes we go back for a while. The current rise of national chauvinism in many countries, and attempts to justify racism and sexism, are examples.
I am not so sanguine about some other cultures. It is especially disheartening that many countries with islamic majorities have been becoming more theocratic and repressive. In some cases, like Turkey and Indonesia, the theocratic element is new. In others like Pakistan, it was always there but whereas it was waning up to about 1980, it has been on the rise since.
Russia is another setback. After a decade or so of optimism following the fall of the Soviet Union, we now seem to well on the way back to repression that is not very different from what was there pre-1989.
In any case, no matter how kind a civilisation becomes, it's still vulnerable to external shocks, be they global warming or an asteroid impact, which could send them back to a post-apocalyptic, everyone for themselves, situation, from which they need to gradually extricate themselves over the centuries. Asimov's 'Nightfall' depicts a world in which that collapse happens with monotonous regularity over millennia.
I don't expect a consensus for voluntary extinction to ever be reached. It is only ever tiny minorities that have such views. For that to change, the genetic makeup of humans would need to change, and it's hard to see how that could happen in a way that makes that a goal, Hegel notwithstanding.
We are thrown into this existence, and have to make the best of it. Some individuals may choose on ethical grounds not to procreate - to throw others into existence - but I think it will be rare enough that it makes no difference to the big picture of human history.
It leaves us where we've always been doesn't it?
[quote=Ecclesiastes]Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.[/quote]
Appetite can take all forms, and the appetite for 'wisdom' of this sort is itself as vain as anything else. Appetite becomes addiction when the addict returns to the same thing, again and again, trying to derive the same kick. When you say you wouldn't pursue meditation, because you're more 'interested' in the understanding society and it's ends - who or what really is speaking here? In what way are you interested in understanding society and its ends? Please understand I mean no offense when I say it seems you arrived at a final understanding a long time ago.
How would you characterize a drive that keeps you chasing after something, and always arriving at the same place, tho in slightly varied guise?
Ok, then would you say there is a difference between this "understanding" I have that is constantly arriving at the same place, and the usual economic cycle, or the daily worklife, or the hunting and gathering?
Edit: In other words- why is mine sublimated intellectualism and the "others" not sublimated dailylifeness?
Well, yes, but it's a broad question. Many differences, many similarities. Isn't the essential characteristic of will that it is in-itself one, but presents itself as multiple?
Ok, I see, this is looking through the Schopenhauer lens. Yes, if looking through the Schopenhauer lens, we are just manifestations of will and thus any attempt at anything really is will- even philosophicalesque ponderings and musings. Calming the will is the salvation here. But going back to my point about von Hartmann and the Great Outdoors. Von Hartmann was indicating that it isn't individual quietude but social quietude. Schopenhauer doesn't take into account as much the social phenomena of existence. Procreation begets others- it is a social union between two. Lonliness is part of the restless will- manifested in humans for example. We form communities- even of a philosophical and religious nature, and even if to teach about negating the need for other people, other things, other thoughts, etc. It's a bit circular, but the social cannot be ignored. We are here due to many social circumstances- a culture, an economy a history with development. So I am not trying to constrain my thoughts only through the lens of Schopenhauer, though there are immense insights that can be applied from him to the evaluation of our psyche and restlessness, and suffering in general.
Sort of. But it's not just that it won't happen, but we will become weary to the point of disquietude. The software engineer who takes kids out to see a movie, reads a novel on the weekend, watches some YouTube clips, plays some video games while the kids are away and he has a chance for himself, mows the lawn, trims the hedges, putters in the garden, plants a few more trees by the edge of the yard, meets up with a friend at the bar, plans a vacation to Asia, makes some tweaks to the retirement plan, picks up the groceries for the week, sends some cards and gifts out for birthdays and holidays, gets mad at the neighbors for making too much noise, walking the dog and making some veterinarian appointments, getting the dog food, making sure the utilities, rent/mortgage, car payments are met at the beginning of the month, watches some TV or Netflix, reads a few news articles, and looks endlessly on social media apps....What is this?
It's Trainspotting, or a Houellebecq novel - both of which are filled to the gills with sex, or obsession with it.
It's also ecclesiastes.
That's what I'm saying. People aren't going to stop procreating because all is vanity. It has been for a long time and the human race is still going strong.
How is it you are equating that with the vanities I was discussing :D? I'm more interested in how someone perseveres through a workday where they do minutia all day and then go home and do other minutia all day.
Quoting csalisbury
Yes that makes sense.
Quoting csalisbury
But as we get more "advanced" in our introspection, our technology, our understanding, perhaps it won't? Perhaps truly all will be vanity?
Monologue from Trainspotting:
[quote=trainspotting]Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself.[/quote]
It's in the same genre as your post. It's also, in a modified form (the gormless bachelor, rather than the complacent suburbanite) the type of thing Houellebecq fixates on, especially in his early novels.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I see no reason for thinking that since, again, we already reached that introspection in Ecclesiastes which was 900 thousand years ago (give or take.)
Ah. Very good.
Quoting csalisbury
Well, that is one person or one author.. and there are thousands of others. But for it to become ubiquitous, for it to be a motivator (or demotivator rather). For it to actually affect people in their daily lives- not just some interesting topic of literature and the arts in general.
Alright, but give me the Von Hartmann argument for why that's likely to happen in the future, even tho it hasn't in the past.
Otherwise known as "speaking for everyone."
Your prickish tendancies yet again steer you astray..missing the forest for the trees in your critiques.. Is it just some sort of condition of ahole tourettes? You can't help but spew it out right? Knee-jerk jerkishness, if you will.
The point being that it's a dubious empirical claim, Probably due to psychological projection from the author.
Yeah I know what you were saying, but you probably don't really understand why I was criticizing your critique.
Oh, I understand, but I want to get us to do some philosophy rather than focusing just on your personality quirks.
Life is already suffering enough to deal with people like you. Either figure out how not to be an aggravating, irksome, disagreeable poster, or don't try to engage with me. Thank you.
I don't believe that I'm the problem here. Maybe you should make some adjustments?
Hey, usually people with these problems rarely or never recognize it in themselves. Can't do much with it. Therapy I can recommend to exorcise the demons..other than that.. Disengaging with crazy-making people is the best solution for others.
Aren't you the one complaining about suffering?
[the above quote was inserted by mod in order to enable merging of threads]
Try being strong instead of whiny and weak.
“Life is too hard, dying is too hard boo hoo.”
Grow up, and stop burdening everyone with yet another iteration of “I didnt ask to be born waaaa waaa”. I mean for fucksake, you know that thats a punchline to a joke right? That anybody could be such a whiny, weak person that they drop that line of reasoning is a JOKE people tell to make fun of the angsty, childish attitude you are meant to grow out of.
The fact that you or anyone else can intellectualise about it doesnt give you a pass on the weakness and self indulgent petulance that motivates it.
You wanna wallow in your diaper then you are free to do so but I invite you to shut up about it because nobody cares.
You should be ashamed of couching this in terms of philosophy rather than the actual source of you continuously bringing it up which is, to review one last time, that you a whiny and weak person. You can do better, diaper off, big boy pants on. Good luck, you sem like you’ll need it.
Also, for the mods who might want to delete that response on ad hom grounds or somesuch, I offer that it is an equally valid retort as the premiss of the thread, and there is actual merit to the criticisms I stated in the context of this thread.
Quoting DingoJones
I don't consider myself weak for pointing out the wrongness of the situation. I consider conformists, the apathetic and people who abandon arguments weak.
I think stoicism in that face of blatant illogical and injustice is weak minded
The only questions that need asking are to parents/reproducers who keep perpetuating this. You don't ask an abuse victim how they managed to get abused.
I am still alive. A lot of people have died through victimization (War/famine/genocide etc). I am therefore not voiceless. It appears like you and others want silent victims who don't infringe on your comforts with protest over their experiences and opinions on life.
I think if someone is going to be forced into existence without consent the world would need to be a much better place with a much brighter history.
Life is a tyranny of the majority and majority are not the most exceptional, intelligent people.
That's a brilliant first line of a first reply. In fact, the rest of your reply is pretty brilliant, too. :lol: :up:
I wish more people here would unabashedly tell it like it is without fear of reprisals.
Thanks :)
I mean come on already right? Evidently i still have work to do, my response got eaten when the threads were merged, I was writing it at the time.
Yes the suffering of your posts.
It's hard to find one honestly, but here is an excerpt I found:
[quote=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/229388/pdf]The term "unconscious," for yon Hartmann includes the entire primordial foundation of all reality, and he sketches the levels and kinds and types in considerable detail. The problem of evil, as might be expected, becomes the center of his philosophical consideration, for we must solve that in order to know what the forces of the unconscious are like. However, yon Hartmann's goal becomes to shatter the individual's hope of attaining happiness in a life hereafter. His pessimism makes him basically opposed to Christianity. In its progress, the world will return to its proper and original state of rest. Men are doomed but God will also go along with us. The final call to morality is issued by pessimism. It is our duty to remain in life and to continue the human species in order to alleviate the misery of the absolute by our constant sufferings. The ultimate end unveils itself in the return of all existence into nonexistence. Obviously, this is a metaphysics with a grand sweep. Professor Darnoi gives us mostly a bold picture and very little critical evaluation, although such criticisms as he suggests are simply offered and not supported in detail. We are left with a voluntarist and a pessimist of radical proportions, and the book's value lies in its description of a little-known metaphysics.[/quote]
Oh please... this pull yourself up by the bootstraps is just as cliche too.. You mine as well be doing a parody of the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket. It is the uncreative, easy-to-reach-for retort, and doesn't provide much insight other than the chance you take at low-hanging fruit for the "don't be a cry baby" trope. Next.
Hence you having a problem rather than me. :razz:
You rephrased what I said into a cliche, then accused me of cliche. A complete strawman.
Im not making reference to whatever pet peeve talking points you are refering to.
Some conservative, Full Metal Jacket caricature of the hard ass telling people to shape up IS a cliche, it IS a kind of jackass who deserves your disdain. Thats one thing. Another thing is an instance where someone IS being weak, and DOES need to grow up. It can ACTUALLY be the case, as I believe is the case here that I was commenting on, that a person is expressing a childish view. It IS possible for everything I said to Andrew to be true AND for it to NOT be an example of the flimsy strawman you have offered.
He IS whining, by which I mean saying nothing of substance and merely complaining and boo hooing for no other reason but to express a tantrum he is having because he didnt consent to being born. Nobody did. Its not the kind of thing one can actually do. It is pathetic and weak, and I for one am not moved even the tiniest bit because he couches his childish, pointless discontent in bad philosophy. Sophisticated whining is still whining, and thought out contructed weakness is still weakness.
This I figured out.
Quoting DingoJones
And the meek shall inherit the Earth. So what if he's so-called "weak"? What does this advance? He is making a case- don't procreate. You are calling him weak and to grow up. One was an actual philosophical position, the other was just invective at someone's perceived character. Now, sir, I am not saying it is off the table to call out someone's character. I've done so with for example, Mr. Terrapin Station, who indeed doesn't JUST provide an argument but indeed is trying to irk and annoy as well (or at least I see it that way). Mr. Andrew has not done this. He made a general statement about life itself, and an action he thought should be taken to resolve- said general statement. If you think his ARGUMENT is weak, then explain it to him and have him answer it, but this invective on his character when there was no attack on you, is unnecessary, advances nothing philosophically.
1. Yes, being alive is necessary to be able to suffer but it isn't sufficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency;
2. The definition of "suffering" employed by pessimists/anti-natalist is not normative free and not acceptable in any type of everyday usage of the word. This is the "whiny" part in my view, where boredom all of a sudden become suffering. You're not suffering, you're just bored;
3. It assumes a utilitarian ethical framework, which I do not accept (as a virtue ethicist).
It is not an abstraction but a real lived experience. People love stoicism in suffering because it means people don't have to be infringed on by other peoples suffering or reflect on the true nature of life.
The arguments are skewed when the genuine opposition are silenced or belittled.
Anyhow the lack of consent has real and wide ramifications. Humans are the only species that can reflect on life like this and on issues like consent, ethical issues and the nature of existence.
If I had the energy and didn't suffer from fatigue I would be at war for my stance, It is not a tantrum.
His argument is directly linked to his weakness. He is only able to make his argument by taking a position of such simpering weakness that he cannot tell the difference between suffering and work, or recognise the trade off inherent to reward or happiness and meaning. His argument is refuted by refuting his weakness and childish outlook.
Look, I have no bone to pick in this discussion since I don't care either way, but that's a textbook ad hominem fallacy. Nice going, there.
I think there are problems with creating a society based on this fundamental lack of consent and having ethical expectations of other people.
I don't think you can dismiss peoples individual experiences because society is only made up of individuals. I think people will dismiss some experiences and embrace others like their own.
You don't have to be an antinatalist to be dissatisfied with life, society and peoples ideas and values. The response to the Indian man suing his parents in general shows how irrational and unreflective peoples attitude towards having children is.
So have you decided to join the respectful? I'm ready to engage when you're ready to be more charitable poster. You can keep (believing you are) seeking truth, but there is no rule that truth-seeking is proportional to simply being confrontational and disagreeable.
I don't believe putting an obstacle course on behalf of another person in the name of "no pain, no gain" is ethical. Creating people for the sake of "growing through suffering (whatever amount)", is still not "right". Creating harm where there was none and then post-facto saying it was for the sake of "that" person is not right.
No ethical theory will have a smoking gun, knockdown, slamdunk argument. Rather, I can try to present the case that creating life for another person is not right, unless there is a guarantee that suffering will not occur for that individual. It would be wrong to create any amount of suffering for another person, for some "X" reason (starting a family, wanting to play the role of parent, watching someone learn about life and overcoming adversity, pressure from family or society, just want to, etc. etc.). While creating suffering where there was no one to suffer is bad, preventing suffering is good. At the same time, there is no ACTUAL person to be deprived of the good of life. This is a win/win.
Also, is it really fair to make this decision on behalf of those who might/probably would have chosen otherwise?
Something that doesn't exist doesn't have a will. How do you suggest this works?
Well, I did say that I agreed that there can never be "objective" deciphering of the axiology of a particular line of ethical reasoning. You can simply lay out the reasoning and appeal to emotions regarding the premise. So yeah, it's "subjective", but no more so than any other ethics. Thus, in the realm of ethical discourse, I lay out the reasoning that follows from the premise and perhaps appeal to emotion regarding the premise which is to not cause harm where there was no harm, and to not make the choice to cause the opportunity for (all other) harm for another person.
Quoting Theorem
I liken this to "no harm, no foul" reasoning. If no one was ACTUALLY born, no ACTUAL person was deprived of the "goods" of life. If someone is born, an actual person will suffer, however. In other words, it is not bad (or good) if potential person does not actualize to experience good, as there is no actual person to be deprived of that good. On the other hand, that someone did not experience bad is always a good thing, even if there was no actual person to enjoy this.
That's not true at all. Billions of actual people would be deprived of the goods (of which there are many) associated with having and raising families.
But more to the point, I asked whether it was fair for us to make the decision on behalf of others. The no harm/no foul principle does not address the question of whether one group of people living at a specific time and place and under specific circumstances has the moral authority to decide whether life is worth living tout court. That seems like a dangerously slippery slope.
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That’s all true. My own background, and the worse things that happen to a lot of people around the world are as you say, and we didn’t ask for it.
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Yes, when there’s a “Shit!” moment, I’m reminded that I didn’t ask for this. When people say that, it’s true.
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But the fact that life is without reason, purpose, meaning or agency (Your parents, purposefully-responsive devices like all of us, and like a Roomba, were only cogs in the machine, not original agents of your life), and the fact that the start of your life was just inevitable, and is now an accomplished fact…
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--all that doesn’t leave me with anything to complain about.
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When I spoke of my parents’ culpability, I meant it as proximal explanation, not complaint.
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So yes, it’s often “Shit!”, but it’s just an inevitable reasonless accomplished-fact.
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It was inevitable because every hypothetical possibility-world and hypothetical experience-story is inevitable and spontaneous. …including one in which your parents reproduced.
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As physicist Michael Faraday pointed out in 1844, what’s observed and known about this physical world is logical and mathematical structural-relation. The supposed objectively-existent (whatever that would mean) “stuff” is the stuff of metaphysical theory only.
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For instance, an inter-referring system of abstract facts are inter-related (…as a truism, just by the facts themselves and their being about eachother). And that’s so, without reference to any outside reality or frame-of-reference, and without any claim of objective existence or real-ness for that system, whatever that would mean.
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There is this physical world, in its own context, and in the context of your life. …as the setting of a life-experience story that’s a system of inter-referring abstract implications (if-then facts).
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…inevitably.
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That isn’t a theory--just uncontroversial statements..
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It isn’t a metaphysics or ontology, because it claims nothing about what’s “real” or “existent”.
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Logical inevitability isn’t immoral.
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Immorality requires an agent.
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This societal-world is decidedly immoral.
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None of us consented to being born.
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Our undeniably culpably-immoral parents were the proximal mechanism of our birth, not its original agent. There was no agency for the inevitable start of our lives.
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Without agency, no immorality.
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That’s right. Both the start, and the soon end, of this life were/are inevitable, and there’s no point or reason to blame, protest, second-guess or evaluate it.
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Our time in this inevitable but temporary life is brief, so what is there to do, but to enjoy it while it lasts.
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Michael Ossipoff
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10 Th
To be fair to the anti-natalist, boredom is just one part of what makes life less worth living. If some occasional short term boredom were the end of it, then sure, we could easily dismiss their argument. But it's not. I'm okay with some boredom. But there are other things in life that are not so okay that often have to be dealt with which do make me question whether being alive is worth it, from time to time.
For an antinatalist the lack of consent involved in creating a child is a deterrent from doing this.
But even if you are not antinatalist acknowledging the lack of consenting raises ethical issues which puts the onus of responsibilities on parents.
You have to be really quite confident as a parent to think your child will benefit from having you as a parent and being in this world. It is easy to imagine a hypothetical better world.
I think creating a new person gives you different responsibilities for, not just to your child, but society compared to the childless.
People often use the phrase "our children" as if we have collective responsibility or are all endorsing the same thing. I see having a child as an endorsement of everything, everything you are exposing them to.
I am not convinced by the inevitability argument.
The problem is that is is not always on our power to enjoy life. I think the optimistic position that everyone could enjoy life is part of the Just World fallacy.
I just found it difficult to embrace something so unjust. It seems better to be a psychopath narcissist where one might only be concerned with ones own desires.
If you're ready to engage in a conversation, just start already.
So let's define how you're using "suffering" and explain which negative/undesired states of body/mind count as suffering and which do not.
I think you missed the point (which admittedly wasn't worded clearly) I was trying to make when I say that something that doesn't exist doesn't have a will, so it cannot be subject to consent either. It doesn't make sense to expect or demand consent from a rock, because it's clear it doesn't have any. Why are you expecting consent from nothing (eg. an unborn child)? And how does that work?
Pointing out a lack of consent does not entail an expectation of consent. But once someone starts to exists they can exhibit a will. Just like you can imagine the wishes of an unconscious person you can imagine your future child's ability to consent and have contrary desires to yours..
You cannot claim someone consented to being created or signed some kind of contract with life. The child exists based on the parents desires (including sexual desires).
With other organisms hypothetical consent isn't even possible they appear not to have the conceptual apparatus (which is why a lot of people do not consider them part of the moral universe).
People already choose not to have children based on their belief they would be an unfit parent or that the child would inherit a faulty body or environment.
I just need confirmation that you'll try to do my recommendations.
That's on them. I liken it to being deprived of the good of making someone go through an obstacle course that they didn't ask for because it's fun to watch them have to figure it out. This is causing harm without consent.. Maybe the other person will even grow from the adversity of the obstacle course, but it isn't right. In the same token, making someone go through the adversities of life (when they didn't need to go through this in the first place) because it is enjoyable to watch them overcome adversity, isn't right.
Quoting Theorem
I don't see how this gets around the asymmetry. No actual person is crying over missed opportunities, if not born. The potential for the person to exist is only potential. No one is crying over the billions of people that could be born at every minute either. I don't see the dangerous slippery slope. I don't believe in forcing anyone to agree to not force other people into existence (see the irony there). It is all about presenting an argument and having people being able to reason over the issue.
Sure, I can say a lot of things that appear to make sense on the surface. Language is rather fascinating in that way.
The above is true but nobody disputes it. The problem is you think it's profound where it is only trivially true. For starters, it's a false analogy to compare nothing with an unconscious person. An unconscious person has a will but is incapable of expressing it, nothing doesn't have a will. It's not just incapable, it's that it doesn't have any.
And yes, I can imagine another person existing that doesn't exist yet. But I can imagine unicorns and dragons to exist too. That doesn't mean they become moral actors because of it and something I need to take into consideration when making ethical choices.
So, we do agree the decision to have children is an ethical one.
By the way, I agree with this sort of thing and other comments you've made about the responsibilities of parents.
But I don't really understand what you're saying here:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I don't see how you think the fact people did not consent to be born or assent to life and society is trivial?
This is not a trivial dynamic between parent and child or individual and society. People have a legitimate complaint if they do not like the life or the society they have been given. They are not partaking freely in life but under substantial coercion.
For example I had to got to church up to five times a week as a child and read the bible and pray every day. I was bullied in school but had no choice but to go to school. Because of my status as a child I did not have the power or resources to prevent this. Then people want to hold the individual responsible for his or her own fate after a process of disempowering and indoctrination.
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The point about an unconscious person is that they can't consent and If you do not know the person you do not know what their wishes are. But this does not give you permission to do something to them. You can't justify taking someones car when they are asleep on the basis of the impossibility of them consenting in their sleep.
When no consent is available that never leads to the conclusion that you can make something happen to someone. Imagine a future persons consent is not like imagining a unicorn because a future person will have wishes and desires and will exist.
When you don't mistreat an unconscious person you are doing this because you are imagining their future wishes .
If you live in a world of inequality that is the world you are exposing your child to.
So it does not make sense to me to say you oppose inequality yet expose a child to it and your child will then be either one of the privileged or underprivileged.
If I live in a house with a leaking roof I would want to get that fixed before creating a child so as not to expose them to it.I think if everyone tried to bring their child into a decent lifestyle the world would be more decent.
C'mon we've been through this. Unicorns can never exist. A potential person can. We make political, ethical, and daily decisions all the time based on future people. That's a strawman to compare future people to unicorns.
As I said, I'm never trying to be disagreeable. So I won't be shooting for that at all.
Based on future people that will exist. Those aren't potential people. That's an important difference. A potential person doesn't exist, eg. it's nothing. That makes the comparison entirely apt.
It's not that it's trivial it's that it's a category error. I've explained this to you before. It doesn't stop being a category error just because you ignored that or you didn't understand it or whatever.
Not really. A unicorn can never exist in the future. A potential person is a placeholder for someone that can exist in the future. I have the components for a chair and the ability to make it.. but I may not make one. I decide not to make one. There is a potential chair, that has not be made into an actual chair. This is not complicated.
I cannot remember what your objection was. I don't see how creating someone does not create consent problems.
After a person is created they are capable of withholding consent and having an opinion on their existence. You are unlikely to create someone who does not value consent so then you are infringing on them.
I think most parents have it easy because most people don't realise the lack of consent issues so they are not going to crticise their parents or they don't accept consent arguments.
For example there are lots of things I would not have accepted as a child if I was informed. I would have refused to go to school for one. But I believed someone had authority over me to force me to go to school. Also I would not have gone to church and ignored my parents on a lot of issues.
Religious folk and others have opposed gays parenting.
The fact that we can judge someone to be an unfit parent before they have children means that the child does not have to exist to make welfare assessments about potential children.
People just need to extend this criticism to themselves and not assume they are good parenting material.
Consent is a category error because there's no one to either grant or withhold consent. We need there to be a person capable of granting or withholding consent before consent is an issue.
This is not true. You can discuss issues of consent in general and in an abstract way and from the experiences of prior people.
If someone sticks there hand in a fire and says "That really hurt" you don't need to stick your hand in the fire before deciding not to do so.
The issue of consent already exists because people already exist and you can't plead ignorance of the issue and its ramifications.
If you intend to create a new person than it is inevitable that consent issues will arise.
An unconscious person cannot give consent and that does not grant us permission to do what we like with them. The fact there is a stage where consent is not possible is not a get out clause.
The issue is whether the person being born is granting consent or not, correct?
This issue is that life is not consensual. If someone cannot consent to being born then they are here in a non consensual manner.
They can't withhold consent can they?
Neither can an unconscious person.
For an unconscious person, their preferences prior to being unconscious are what matter (for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_healthcare_directive). Do people who don't exist yet have that?
How do you know what there preferences were before?
Why don't possible preferences get considered?
Do you need to consider past preferences to decide that an unconscious person would not like to be set on fire? I have not stated all my preferences to everyone nor do I carry a list of all my preferences around with me in case of an accident. I find it implausible if you say you cannot imagine a future persons preferences or consent issues.
I do not think I am in a suitable position to be a parent. However I could claim my child does not exist so I am entitled become a parent because I cannot know until the child exist who they will feel about my parenting. However I think that it is wrong to gamble with someone else's life when there are good reasons not to.
Because they've expressed them. Sometimes formally: again, here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_healthcare_directive
Quoting Andrew4Handel
If you want to know whether they want to be set on fire, yes. If you don't know, then it's best not to act. But why that matters is because we're talking about a person who has preferences. You can not do this when the person does not exist.
You can talk about the general rule that no human past present or future would like to be set on fire. It is ludicrous to claim you cannot talk hypothetically about these things when we can and are.
Quoting Terrapin Station
That is rarely the case as I pointed out that people don't know my wishes and I don't go round advertising them all the time. Their wishes could easily have change anyway.
For example say someone is young and asks to be resuscitated in a living will in case of an accident. However they have an accident and become paralyzed and are very unhappy and wish they had not being.
There are several suicides where it is shown the person had changed their mind and tried to get help. So I don't think you can be confident about the desires of an unconscious person.
The problem is no one can consent to being brought into life. It is completely non consensual and I do not see how you can justify putting someone in that position where they did not consent to their life or having you as a parent and are not supposed to complain. I do not see where the entitlement to do that comes from. Your assumption must be that no one regrets being born which is clearly not the case.
"Which would you prefer? Growing up in a nice house in the suburbs as a good looking healthy child or growing up with a chronic illness in a slum.?"
I would certainly prefer the former.
The idea that the child you are going to create has no preferences is ludicrous in my opinion. It is very easy to imagine what the a majority of people would dislike when they come to exist and social services already use this metric and the eugenics movement sterilized people based on perceived negative outcomes.
You can just make up shit, you mean?
There is no "general rule" about preferences that is universal.
In addition, there are no preferences period, when it comes to nonexistent people.
So some people like being set on fire?
It's certainly possible that someone does.
Here's how you know: you ask the person in question.
It is too late after you have created a person to ask whether or not they wanted to experience life.
Your positions seems bogus to me if you claim not be able to imagine preferences especially in cases which are likely to have no exceptions.
If someone says "I hate life and kills themselves" How can you justify having created them? You decided that that child would want to be born. By having a child you must be assuming they want to born or are just been extremely selfish and self centered.
How many people enjoyed being slaves or dying in genocide?
No it really isn't based on how the body responds to being burnt alive. It is unbearable.
First off, someone having a preference to x doesn't imply that they've experienced x yet.
That is what I have been saying all along. You appear to be claiming someone needs to be actively experiencing something for it to matter.
In my thread that was merged with this I expressed how I know I did not consent to all the negative experiences I am having. My parents assumed before having me I would have a certain kind of life. they didn't imagine the reality. I know consent matters from personal experience.
Society cannot be based on the idea individuals are responsible for their own lives. But it should be based on the fact that society is created by parents creating new people. I am not responsible for coming into existence but I would be responsible for my children coming into existence.
It's frustrating because it seems like you're not at all understanding what I'm writing, but I don't know why.
Someone needs to be existent and to be able to grant or withhold consent for us to be able to do anything in line with or against their consent.
That doesn't imply that they need to have experienced a particular thing to have an opinion about it.
But they can't have an opinion about it if they don't exist, they don't have thoughts, etc.
I have not claimed that creating someone is against their consent. I am saying it is non consensual in nature. Chopping down a tree is non consensual because it cannot give or withhold its consent.
I am talking abut how we can imagine people that would not consent to different types of lives or life in general.
One reason consent matters is because of suffering and whether someone would consent to gross suffering. Suffering includes things like work stresses, insomnia, relationship breakdown to chronic disease.
I do not think any one person should have to suffer because other people enjoy life. The Kind of suffering we are talking about is not trivial.
In an analogy a lot of people find sex pleasurable but that does not justify rape. If everyone was glad to be alive then consent would be less of an issue but this simply is not that kind of world. There are clearly things that happen that people would not consent to and i can say that from rich personal experience. Your world view does not appear to recognize any kind of suffering.
"Nonconsensual" conventionally has a connotation that something is against someone's consent.
Otherwise, how do you distinguish between an action involving something with an inability to either grant or withhold consent and an action that's contrary to an agent's wishes?
Words are not that rigid.
A tree probably would not want to be cut down if it was conscious and plants like this appear to strive to exist and flourish unconsciously.
Humans can consent once they are created so you are not referring to a situation where someone can never consent anyway.
An unconscious person can never consent because they are unconscious. The reason we don't offend against them is because of future potential.
It is important to point out that people did not consent to be born when it comes to ethical and social issues.
For example you cannot blame a child if its parents are drug addicts and it lives in poverty. I think morality is undermined because of the lack of initial consent to life. Morality implies a responsibility or contract. People are responsible for their children's existence but not for their own existence. I don't think my child would be a serial killer but it is a possibility and it is a certainly that my child would harm and exploit someone. These are the risks of creating someone else.
A dead person is unable to give consent but that does not justify necrophilia. That is an extreme example but it does not follow that if something can't consent we are justified in taking any action towards it.
This is a big issue with ecological philosophy. Should we pollute a lake because it and its inhabitants are outside the scope of consent. Should I be allowed to torture a dog because it cannot voice its consent other than expressing distress.
Again, it's as if you can not understand what I write for some reason.
I didn't say anything about rigidity. I simply said that conventionally, "nonconsensual" has a connotation of being against someone's consent.
And then I asked you what terms you use to distinguish between something against an agent's consent and something that involves an entity that is incapable of granting or withholding consent.
I was hoping you'd actually tell me what terms you use for that distinction. If you don't make the distinction, do you not think it's worth making?
You constantly amaze me with your patience. What are you getting out of it? It seems to me that he is not listening, is refusing to concede blatant errors and is simply (childishly as ive said already) doing the philosophical equivalent of crossing his arms and stomping his feet.
Im not knocking ya, but are you REALLY, actually confused about why it seems like he is not understanding what you are writing? It seems perfectly obvious to me he is not trying to understand what you are writing.
What are you seeing that im not here? You think he is actually interested in counter-arguments to his position?
I don't expect anyone to ever admit it online, but I think that it's possible to get through to some people via patience/persistence-via-trying various different wordings, angles of explanation, etc.
Part of why I think that is probably due to my experience teaching, including times where I taught private students (I've taught music as much as anything else), including teaching kids who had various obstacles to overcome--learning disabilities, ADHD issues, language issues, kids whose parents were basically forcing them to take music lessons when they didn't want to, and so on.
Aside from that, I tend to be an "irrational optimist," lol.
I thought it was something like that, and of course its a virtue in most cases but sometimes your just wasting your time ive observed. Anyway, just curious if you had expectation or hope. Hope I can get, expectation might make me question your sanity in this case. ;)
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There’s more than one answer to that:
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1. If you’re a Materialist, then, according to that metaphysics that you believe in, your life wasn’t inevitable. But, in the unparsimoniously brute-fact physical universe, randomness of events was inevitable, maybe with the generation of biological life on some planet, and a randomness of resulting lives, which turns out to have resulted in your life.
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If it’s like that, instead of your life having been inevitable, does that really give us more to productively protest?
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Your life is still without reason, purpose, meaning or agency—an accomplished reasonless fact. What good can it do, and in fact, what can it even mean, to protest it or complain about it if it’s agentless and reasonless?
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2. Even under Materialism, maybe there’s an infinite physically-inter-related multiverse, containing infinitely-many universes with every possible system of physical-laws, in every possible configuration and state, in which case it’s inevitable that there would happen somewhere the life that is your life.
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3. To believe in Materialism is to believe in an unparsimonious brute-fact, an unverifiable, unfalsifiable proposition. …and, more generally, to believe in a metaphysics/ontology. I don’t believe in one, and if someone does, then ask them what they mean by context-less, unqualified, objective “Exist”, “There is…”, and “Real”.
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In my previous reply in this thread, I quoted Faraday, and mentioned (as a truism) the logical structural relation among a system of abstract implications that are to some extent about eachother and about some of the same propositions, and about some of the same hypothetical things that the propositions are about.
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Among the infinitely-many logical-systems that I spoke of in that previous post, it’s inevitable that they include a system in which the logical and mathematical structural-relations are those of your experience of your physical surroundings….without any claim of their objective, unqualified, context-less “real-ness” or “existence”.
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Of course, as a truism, there are your life and surroundings in their own context, where the meaning of “There is…” is contextually limited.
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Maybe a good briefer reply would be to just point out that, unless objective, absolute, contextless, unqualified “Exist”, “There is…”, and “Real” mean something, then your life (as a hypothetical logical system that can be called an “experience-story”) is inevitable as one of the infinitely-many hypothetical systems of inter-referring abstract implications.
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So, all of this has been in answer to your saying that you aren’t convinced about the inevitability of your life.
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Of course not all of life is enjoyable. That’s what I mean when I refer to our inevitable “Shit!” moments.
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I often find myself saying (to myself, but sometimes to others) “Shit!”. …or “I’m so tired.” (…not referring to physical tiredness, but to being tired of all that happens to us.)
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It can be because of some local hardship such as minor physical discomfort (such as being out on a freezing winter day, or stubbing a toe, etc.), or social discomfort, or anxiety or insecurity (both of which I consider normal and appropriate), or regret about past mistakes (whether recent or long-distant).
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Absurdists emphasize the absurd drastic difference or contrast between human wants and needs, vs the things that actually have happened and continue to happen.
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(Kentucky Buddhist Ken Keyes emphasizes that we have likes, but needn’t believe that we have needs, or even wants.)
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I’ve learned much from the Antinatalists and Absurdists here. What they say, and what I’ve read from Absurdists confirms my own sentiments, when I say:
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I didn’t ask or choose to be born, and I didn’t have a chance.
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I like the Absurdist response to that fact.
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(I don’t know all of Absurdists’ beliefs, and I well might not agree with all of them (e.g. many of them are Materialists), but they’re right about some significant things.)
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I don't either.
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Unjust, of course. But without agency there’s no one to blame.
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Inevitability isn’t anyone’s fault.
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That’s still unnecessarily taking it seriously, taking it up, and acting it out…and digging oneself deeper in it.
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Participating in it hardly sounds to me like something that would do oneself any good.
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Michael Ossipoff
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10 Su
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0001 UTC
If you never asked or chose to be born, and it wasn't your fault, then it isn't really your problem, and you needn't take it seriously.
Disown it.
It's dealt with, and what's dealt-with is done-with
Michael Ossipoff
10 Su
0434 UTC