Coronavirus, Meaning, Existentialism, Pessimism, and Everything
So with the coronavirus severely affecting all of civilization around the world pretty much, this gets into some interesting issues around meaning and such. Specifically, it may point to a sort of intuitive truth about the correctness of pessimism. Here are several conclusions perhaps people might come to:
1) With pandemics becoming very real for people, maybe they will see that life entails much suffering. This may make people think twice about putting another person into the world who will also very likely face suffering. The widespread nature of a virus was not something most people (outside of scientific communities, CDC, and the like) thought about much nor expecting to deal with on such a deep scale. Now people are looking at mass issues of mortality and suffering on a social scale. What does that say that we are always faced with sufferings and death, to put another person through this very real possibility? What does that say about the indifference of the universe to human dignity, ingenuity, and desires?
2) Perhaps the social isolation will provide the absurdity people were perhaps overlooking of human life. Those stuck with their family members, may start to resent having to be with them.. Yet that is the full consequence of having a family to its logical extent, yet it is something most people resent. The absurdity of seeing the same people over and over, and never getting away. Then there is the isolated single person who can't visit friends, form romantic relationships, and the like except through the weaker means of an electronic medium. These people may just see the daily routines played out over and over.. What is the point of it? It becomes absurd.
3) Utilitarian calculations of economic collapse and the risk of losing more lives to the virus makes humans seem like absurd paws or data points in a larger, meaningless system of repetition. Round and round the economic wheels churn, but for who and why? Wealth creation? Economic survival of the individual? Survival of the state? The species? Why does this circular economic flow of activity need to be perpetuated at all? It is just more repetition that stems from our individual repetitive functions of needing to deal with survival, comfort, and entertainment. In other words, you are here to keep the company going, to keep you paid, which means you buy stuff that makes money for other companies that employs individuals, and on and on it goes....circular flows of economic activities churning and churning in circles, creating more people, creating the illusions that there is something more to work for.
Perhaps people will generally see the human project as not as fantastic as they thought. Perhaps it is an absurd repetition of behaviors to keep oneself surviving, comfortable, and entertained. But the unique circumstances of isolation and social distancing, may give people more time to ponder and think about this understanding. Perhaps humanity will willingly work together to end the pointless repetition and suffering for future generations.
1) With pandemics becoming very real for people, maybe they will see that life entails much suffering. This may make people think twice about putting another person into the world who will also very likely face suffering. The widespread nature of a virus was not something most people (outside of scientific communities, CDC, and the like) thought about much nor expecting to deal with on such a deep scale. Now people are looking at mass issues of mortality and suffering on a social scale. What does that say that we are always faced with sufferings and death, to put another person through this very real possibility? What does that say about the indifference of the universe to human dignity, ingenuity, and desires?
2) Perhaps the social isolation will provide the absurdity people were perhaps overlooking of human life. Those stuck with their family members, may start to resent having to be with them.. Yet that is the full consequence of having a family to its logical extent, yet it is something most people resent. The absurdity of seeing the same people over and over, and never getting away. Then there is the isolated single person who can't visit friends, form romantic relationships, and the like except through the weaker means of an electronic medium. These people may just see the daily routines played out over and over.. What is the point of it? It becomes absurd.
3) Utilitarian calculations of economic collapse and the risk of losing more lives to the virus makes humans seem like absurd paws or data points in a larger, meaningless system of repetition. Round and round the economic wheels churn, but for who and why? Wealth creation? Economic survival of the individual? Survival of the state? The species? Why does this circular economic flow of activity need to be perpetuated at all? It is just more repetition that stems from our individual repetitive functions of needing to deal with survival, comfort, and entertainment. In other words, you are here to keep the company going, to keep you paid, which means you buy stuff that makes money for other companies that employs individuals, and on and on it goes....circular flows of economic activities churning and churning in circles, creating more people, creating the illusions that there is something more to work for.
Perhaps people will generally see the human project as not as fantastic as they thought. Perhaps it is an absurd repetition of behaviors to keep oneself surviving, comfortable, and entertained. But the unique circumstances of isolation and social distancing, may give people more time to ponder and think about this understanding. Perhaps humanity will willingly work together to end the pointless repetition and suffering for future generations.
Comments (95)
I would, if I may, take a small issue with your thoughts in Section 1. If I understand you correctly, you are questioning the ethics of procreation in this time of uncertainty, fear, illness and death. I would say it may be wise to stop and take time to reflect on the nature of Nature.
Human beings in their wisdom or lack of it, have given us the present world. Humans will have to deal with it. I would like to think that you might not want ALL Nature to cease replicating just because of questionable human behaviour.
This may be a good time for us to reflect on the fact that we are as much a part of Nature as anything in our existence. It might be a good time to keep this in mind.
I relate to your grim vision. But creating more people is creating genuine work. People love their children. They will work for and even die for their children. It's a grand system of cub-petting. Petting cubs justifies life and necessitates the justification of life as that same time. I'm joking but serious. The grim old sages saw all of this long ago. It's a snake swallowing its own tail, with no external justification.
It is aesthetically justified or aesthetically rejected. A few of us resist the urge to breed, but we are the exceptions. And we miss out on the basic justification of existence perhaps, cub-petting. The father sends forth his son like an arrow from the grave. The life of the child is the death of the parent and the purpose of the parent. The rest is vanity, entertainment, sex tourism. I'm 50% joking, but only 50%. Not that it matters or will put a dent in the circle of life. People will keep breeding. I assure you. And even the poor, the least secure, will keep breeding.
Do you know this author? He treats the declining birth rate in sophisticated nations. Many of us want to remain children rather than have them. I chose this path. This is the narcissistic path.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Houellebecq
Here's something relevant too, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat
Thank you kind sir!
Quoting Teller
So this may not surprise you, but I question the ethics of procreation at any time. I consider my views as antinatalist- that is to say, I think that having children is not a good idea due to reasons of suffering for the future generation. I just think that in this time in particular, this would be an impetus for others to also start holding this view, especially due to the more apparent suffering that one can currently see on a mass societal level.
We are a part of nature, true. But we are not bound to replicate more people into its indifference. And precisely because of our nature in Nature, we cannot but repetitively and absurdly survive, maintain our comfort, and try to entertain ourselves. These three seemingly innocuous things lead to the striving, internalized strife that Schopenhauer discusses at length. He doesn't split it so distinctly in those nice three categories (that's my bit), but I think those cover the major forces behind most of our willful (and subconscious) needs and wants. Even religion and finding meaning falls under "entertainment" here. These survival/comfort/entertainment pursuits create the epiphenomenal organizations of societal institutions which we then become ensnared in to keep our personal pursuits of survival, comfort, and entertainment continuously going. Thus we become enmeshed in keeping this gargantuan meaningless system that uses its participants from its epiphenomenal need to maintain its power, control, and legitimacy, in order for people to pursue the basic human conditions of survival, comfort, and entertainment.
This seems to be true. The justifications for why don't seem to be reflected on much. Ones own vain pursuit of some goal. The next generation somehow has to be created, but why? It's all the same absurd repetition and there is a lot of suffering outside just internal wills that are not satisfied. Things like pandemics, for example. But the number and ways is seemingly endless.
Quoting jjAmEs
Yes I have heard of him, but never actually read any of his books. Can you explain the part of narcissism? That doesn't make sense to me at all. The view that being a parent makes you an X type of person (put any description there), seems like a way to perpetuate the whole scheme of having more children in the first place. And wouldn't that be narcissistic to prove you are X type of person by procreating a whole new life?
Why keep the scheme going? Why keep the absurd repetition going to yet another life? I mean, we get the picture.. survival, comfort, entertainment, repeat. But doe we HAVE to keep repeating!
All I intended was a rough generalization. I was thinking of others like myself, married but childless. I have more time for books, music, hobbies. I'm not old but I'm no longer young. To age without children has a certain flavor. I've always seen myself as a writer type, but I've dodged a fundamental human experience. Some of my peers have children. Others committed suicide directly or through heroin.
Houellebecq is fascinated by the sexual revolution and its consequences. These days some of us avoid the responsibility of raising children and do what we can to remain attractive and adventurously sexual into our 40s and beyond. (I'm not so adventurous these days, mostly because sex creates so much embarrassment. I'm too proud for the machinations, and it fouls up the peaceful vibe of monogamy. Too bad the holodeck isn't real yet.) Neotony is stretched to its limits. Instead of having children, one remains as childlike as possible in the positive sense. One is one's own child. One lives for one's own accomplishments and reputation rather than vicariously through the success of the child. In that sense, parents are no less narcissistic. Indeed, 'doing it for the children' is nice justification of household selfishness. Kids play a huge role in justificatory rhetoric, as I'm sure you know.
A recurrent theme in Houellebecq's novels is the intrusion of free-market economics into human relationships and sexuality. The original French title of Whatever, Extension du domaine de la lutte (literally "broadening of the field of struggle"), alludes to economic competition extending into the search for relationships. As the book says, a free market has absolute winners and absolute losers, and the same applies to relationships in a society that does not value monogamy but rather exhorts people to seek the happiness that always eludes them through the path of sexual consumerism, in pursuit of narcissistic satisfaction.
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Houellebecq
I read his Platform first, which involves sex tourism and starts something like Camus' The Stranger.
His sci-fi The Possibility of an Island touches on something worth discussing, namely immortality. Some thinkers have tried to justify the trauma of human existence in terms of the coming attainment of immortality or utopia through technology. The old-fashioned version of this is just Heaven, but intellectuals secularized it. To me this is the gist of Hegel and the gang. Christianity is transformed into a secular religion of earthly progress. It's already in Bacon's last utopian work and Descartes' 'lords and masters of nature.' History is a nightmare from which we shall awake, one way or another --to utopia or a blessed extinction. John Gray writes some devastating lines on the still dominant religion of progress. Somehow or another we'll become The Federation. That's the secular dream. It justifies earthly suffering as a necessary prologue. All our errors are half-truths that accumulate to the genuine truth at/as the end of history.
I really have and continue to endure this vision. It's one lens on reality among others. I'd just add that 'meaningless' only makes sense if 'meaning' is grasped as some trans-biological vague thing that perhaps cannot be specified. Personally I think time is involved here. All things are perishable, therefore all things are meaningless. That seems to be the implicit logic. It's as if that we future-oriented beings crave/suppose something like a point at infinity (an eternal God or his surrogate) in order to feel grounded in our doings.
To me this connects with even non-parents depending on the endurance of the cub-petting system. If I fantasize that I'm clever enough to contribute to human progress (be a scientist or an artist), then I need posterity as the ground of my project. If we all knew that an asteroid would wipe us out in a few months, that would radically change the human situation. We'd be cast into the Dionysian mode of living for the moment that people belch about insincerely otherwise. The argument against the vices in which we find our ecstasy is the future. All work and discipline is aimed at the stage of the future. We postpone enjoyment. I don't eat ice cream now because I want to be seen as attractive on the beach later. I study boring tech stuff now so I'll live in a nice condo later. Perhaps now more than ever our enjoyment is in being seen a certain way, in a virtuality of success. Happiness is the glamour of being envied. It's more important to look rich than to be rich, given a certain level of actual security. And so on. Kundera writes beautifully on this in Immortality.
Yes that was my point. But a decision to be childless will affect no future person.
Well the repetition of the same. We basically understand what the human condition is. Why keep perpetuating it. If humanity can realize the absurdity as a whole community and instead of forcing people into the work of life, slowly diminish that work for future generations by simply not having them. You survive, get more comfortable with your environment, and then entertain yourself. It rally doesn't have be done again and again. Even the "goods" of life (basically physical pleasure, aesthetic pleasure, feelings of accomplishment, relationships, flow states) are just the same chasing after wind over and over. Let's just realize that its worn its welcome this existence thing. Politics and economies and such just reiterate what we really are culling. Culling is the key word. Culling.
I think you give humanity too much credit. If somebody was already planning on bringing children into a world and life that involves work, suffering, sickness, need, grief, etc - into a life that culminates in an inevitable death - then I highly doubt the existence of just another way among many to suffer (covid-19) will be the tipping the point that sways them into antinatalism.
Thank you for your pessimistic view of the world... happily I can ignore it.
If people want to wallow in misery, it is really no business of mine.
True points.
I don't have much to disagree with other than to say it's all a matter of opinion, but I thought I would point out that it is these kinds of crises that cause baby booms.
If your position holds, then it's almost an irony that as our mistakes and circumstances clarify and worsen -as the hole deepens- we inevitably start digging with greater fervor.
Of course, it's a necessary jerk from an evolutionary-survival perspective...
Pandemics, disasters, wars, etc. are a part of this journey as much as sprains, fractures and even deaths are part of a relay race; the person who began the race and the person in the middle of the run will not make it to the finish line but, with courage, determination and a little bit of luck, someone will.
Absurd in relation to what, though? Do you see the self-eating snake? For some it's aesthetically justified. For these the extinction is the ultimate threat and not the ultimate release.
What is this vague sense of something that should be there that would be all things from absurdity? What is the meaning that would rescue humanity from meaninglessness? Even God seems like a vague approximation and not the god-shaped hole itself. Against what background are the doings of man absurd? What's he seen that he likes better? If not simply a more user-friendly environment? A new and improved Garden Of Delights?
I thought you might like this.
[quote= John Gray]
..we are approaching a time when, in Moravec's words, 'almost all humans work to amuse other humans.' In rich countries, that time has already arrived. The old industries have been exported to the developing world. At home, new occupations have evolved, replacing those of the industrial era. Many of them satisfy needs that in the past were repressed or disguised. A thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions and spiritual boutiques has sprung up. Beyond that, there is an enormous grey economy of illegal industries supplying drugs and sex. The function of this new economy, legal and illegal, is to entertain and distract a population which - though it is busier than ever before - secretly suspects that it is useless. Industrialisation created the working class. Now it has made the working class obsolete. Unless it is cut short by ecological collapse, it will eventually do the same to nearly everyone.
[/quote]
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gray_(philosopher)
I hear you, and I feel a certain relief in not having forced someone into this maze. A different personality might feel guilty for not giving a new soul the opportunity of this maze. I've known great ecstasy and terrible suffering. I can't make a final judgment on life, though 'in youth is pleasure' makes sense to me. I'm losing the highs and the lows. It's the self-important dreams of youth that help light up life. The path of the grim sage is a strange one, and its haunted by divine laughter. 'Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.' I experience my own dark lines as a kind of stand-up comedy. As long as I stick around to gripe, I'm still invested. The gloomy existentialist still hopes for a piece of tail. The ideological violence is the rattle of a peacock feather, a seductive virtual eye of quasi-renunciation and pseudo-transcendence.
Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; and now I know it.
'My Own Epitaph' John Gay
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kohelet-ecclesiastes-full-text
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Worstward Ho! (Beckett)
This vid can be interpreted as a parody of metaphysics (also Beckett):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXoq_H9BrTE
This is nice too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpgOcWZHEcY
This last one is insanely concentrated: life is a mouth that can't shut up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LDwfKxr-M
That seems to be the essence of Hegel, and the critics find it Panglossian.
[quote= link]
Enlightenment thinkers rejected the religious interpretation of history but brought in their own teleology, the idea of progress—the idea that humanity is moving in the direction of better and more perfect civilization, and that this progression can be witnessed through study of the history of civilization (Condorcet 1795; Montesquieu 1748). Vico's philosophy of history seeks to identify a foundational series of stages of human civilization. Different civilizations go through the same stages, because human nature is constant across history (Pompa 1990). Rousseau (1762a; 1762b) and Kant (1784–5; 1784–6) brought some of these assumptions about rationality and progress into their political philosophies, and Adam Smith embodies some of this optimism about the progressive effects of rationality in his account of the unfolding of the modern European economic system (1776). This effort to derive a fixed series of stages as a tool of interpretation of the history of civilization is repeated throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; it finds expression in Hegel's philosophy (discussed below), as well as Marx's materialist theory of the development of economic modes of production (Marx and Engels 1845–49; Marx and Engels 1848).
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The 'religion' of progress seems to be our secular replacement for a religion involving afterlife.
Indeed, it does seem an optimistic point of view, this "religion" of progress but can we deny that progress has been made and not feel one has lied in doing so?
If one compares the present to the past in terms of very broad categories like disease and death then there has been absolutely no progress - our ancestors did suffer from disease and did die and so do we. However, if one goes into the details, the diseases that our ancestors suffered from and died from are very different to those we experience; perhaps the notion of progress lies in such kinds of differences.
I agree that there has been progress in many ways. What's strange is perhaps the sense of the finitude of the world. We're all trapped down here with the same virus and the same global warming and other global threats.
I wrote:
[quote=me]
Some thinkers have tried to justify the trauma of human existence in terms of the coming attainment of immortality or utopia through technology. The old-fashioned version of this is just Heaven, but intellectuals secularized it.... Christianity is transformed into a secular religion of earthly progress. It's already in Bacon's last utopian work and Descartes' 'lords and masters of nature.' History is a nightmare from which we shall awake...
[/quote]
You wrote:
Quoting TheMadFool
Key to your vision seems to be an identification with that last runner who finally makes it at the end and justification of history. But clearly we enjoy a pleasure in anticipation now. Part of the joy in art and science is the joy in the joy that others will take in it. And this works even if humanity never escapes but only reduces suffering sufficiently so that life is clearly worth it. That few commit suicide suggests that most of us act as if life is already worth the suffering, though admittedly it's taboo and uncomfortable to check out early.
Anyway, I don't reject the religion of progress but only enjoy talking about it from the outside, making it explicit to take a certain distance from it. What is this pleasure taken in distancing? Such transcendence seems basic to the pugnacious philosophical personality.
[quote=Gray]
Most people today think they belong to a species that can be master of its destiny. This is faith, not science. We do not speak of a time when whales or gorillas will be masters of their destinies. Why then humans?
...
Our lives are more like fragmentary dreams than the enactments of conscious selves. We control very little of what we most care about; many of our most fateful decisions are made unbeknownst to ourselves. Yet we insist that mankind can achieve what we cannot: conscious mastery of its existence. This is the creed of those who have given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational faith in mankind.
...
Like most philosophers, Kant worked to shore up the conventional beliefs of his time. Schopenhauer did the opposite. Accepting the arguments of Hume and Kant that the world is unknowable, he concluded that both the world and the individual subject that imagines it knows it are maya, dreamlike constructions with no basis in reality. ... Schopenhauer accepted the sceptical side of Kant's philosophy and turned it against him. Kant demonstrated that we are trapped in the world of phenomena and cannot know things in themselves. Schopenhauer went one step further and observed that we ourselves belong in the world of appearances. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer was ready to follow his thoughts wherever they led. Kant argued that unless we accept that we are autonomous, freely choosing selves we cannot make sense of our moral experience. Schopenhauer responded that our actual experience is not of freely choosing the way we live but of being driven along by our bodily needs - by fear, hunger and, above all, sex.
...
Even the deepest contemplation only recalls us to our unreality. Seeing that the self we take ourselves to be is illusory does not mean seeing through it to something else. It is more like surrendering to a dream. To see ourselves as figments is to awake, not to reality, but to a lucid dream, a false awakening that has no end.
[/quote]
Is John Gray right? If he's right, then he can't be right. He's one more dreamer. To me there's a kind of dark stand-up comedy in grim intellectualizing. I think Beckett had it right when he labelled Waiting For Godot a tragicomedy. What we have are speech acts which are ambiguous with respect to their earnestness. Derrida made a big deal of this in Limited Inc on page 106, with his own kind of serious joke against the serious/non-serious distinction. I think the OP is relatively earnest and its author fairly anti-Nietzschean. But I relate to the madness, irony, and endless ambiguity of Nietzsche.
We are never quite sure who we are or what exactly we mean. The words pour forth, speech acts that we are never done reinterpreting with...speech acts which we are never done reinterpreting...with ....
This touches a chord - I count myself among those who've lost their faith in humankind. Nevertheless, faith, by definition, is irrational and therein lies the rub. We have faith, not because we have good reasons to believe but, on most occasions, no or even bad reasons to believe.
Faith in humankind springs, in my humble opinion, from that quintessential life-trait, hope, that every living organism possesses and hope is, in essence, that which opposes what we call brute facts of life and the world at large. Our nature, perhaps the reason why Gray thinks faith in mankind is irrational, is not a secret to us. We recognize ourselves quite well in the mirror as the beast that no one should trust or believe or have faith in. Nevertheless, within us, perhaps in the same place where hope resides, there's this belief that we can be better, that we can overcome those qualities in us that make us such poor candidates for faith and trust and build on those that make us worthy of the same. It seems, therefore, that to call faith in humankind irrational is, in some ways, to ignore the complexity of being human. I imagine the human condition to be like the Beast in Beauty and the Beast: the Beast, although mostly driven by selfish motives, has within him the seeds of love and compassion, things that transform him from a hopelessly unlikeable character into one who's worthy of Beauty's faith, trust and love. I'm not saying we're not like the Beast but I am saying the Beast is a tad bit more complex than what Gray makes him out to be.
Ironic, right?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I don't see procreation related to survival or innate instincts in humans. We can decide not to do it. If it is a thought-preference, it is not an innate urge, like most other animals. Rather "I'm bored, and this feels good" is a preference of an individual based on predispositions for pleasure and avoiding boredom.
I'm mainly in agreement with @jjAmEs. I would also add that using individuals to try to get to some utopian/heavenly realm on Earth, is still using their suffering. Also, our human natures are pretty much fixed, whatever the material circumstances. The striving dissatisfaction Schopenhauer described would make the efforts to alleviate suffering for naught. To equivocate actual release from suffering with smply economic circumstances would be a false attribution.
The absurdity comes from the repetition of human affairs- it all comes back to surviving, maintaining comfort, entertainment in some cultural context. We know what it is, we have seen it billions of times, yet we want more people to be born to experience this same thing.
I like that one.
Your needs and wants require others to work. Their needs and wants require you to work. I don't just mean in the economic sense, though that can be literally taken that way. Rather, our needs requires others- this shows in our inability to survive through infancy and childhood with absolutely no human interaction. Let's look at the chain of events parents are doing by having children:
1) The children rely on the parent for survival at the very beginning.
2) The parents rely on neighbors, childcare, family to help raise the child
3) The parents rely on the school systems to look after child, socialize them with peers and disciplined authority, as well as learning to do work in a timely fashion
4) That is another person who will need to buy goods and services, and then need to work under owners, managers, or in some cases the customers themselves
All of this work that we end up making each other do, to maintain our survival, comfort, and entertainment. Again, why should we keep make each other do all of this? Why should we socialize more people into the world with their needs and wants? Can you see why this makes me think that we are being used possibly more than we are using? Here we are, not of our own devices keeping the big ship going that keeps our unending needs and wants satiated.
We are forced to deal with ourselves and others. We cannot just be. As Schopenhauer stated:
[quote=Schopenhauer WWR] Boredom is certainly not an evil to be taken lightly: it will ultimately etch lines of true despair onto a face. It makes beings with as little love for each other as humans nonetheless seek each other with such intensity, and in this way becomes the source of sociability.[/quote]
And here:
[quote=Schopenhauer, On the Vanity of Existence]Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us—an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; or else when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest—when in reality we have stepped forth from life to look upon it from the outside, much after the manner of spectators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange and uncommon—an innate and ineradicable tendency of human nature—shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious.
That this most perfect manifestation of the will to live, the human organism, with the cunning and complex working of its machinery, must fall to dust and yield up itself and all its strivings to extinction—this is the naïve way in which Nature, who is always so true and sincere in what she says, proclaims the whole struggle of this will as in its very essence barren and unprofitable. Were it of any value in itself, anything unconditioned and absolute, it could not thus end in mere nothing.[/quote]
Ah yes, I understand that view. I've playfully summarized it as a system of cub-petting. Life is justified by the joys of parenting, but parenting generations the lives that must be justified in the first place. On the level of pure concept, I don't see how a decision for or against the system is possible.
Since we are semi-conscious animals, breeding is only occasionally a conscious decision. But many do consciously affirm the net value of life (expected value > 0 ) and then have children. Are they wrong? I don't think it's a 'mathematical' question.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Right. We're social animals. We exist in and through and for one another. Maybe even bitter Schopenhauer-style philosophers contribute to the survival of the species. We create the strange and fascinating 'imploding' conceptual art of maximum distancing. Isn't this connected to God on the cross somehow? Hasn't religion also seen the world as run by Satan? Or a breeding pen ?
[quote=link]
According to Buddhist tradition, after several years of mendicancy, meditation, and asceticism, he awakened to understand the mechanism which keeps people trapped in the cycle of rebirth.
[/quote]
What if all the gooey stuff has been added on? and the insight was pessimist with a goal of detachment and transcendence? How old is this recognition of absurdity and what keeps it going? The dream machine. I've harped on cub-petting, but it's just as much as system of lust and ambition. Lust is directly connected to reproduction, while ambition can be associated with sublimated parenthood and the cruel joy of being superior in status. A pile of dogs, all tying to climb to the top and evade death through puppies.
But you haven't addressed the comic pleasure we take in putting it like this.
OK, but what's the problem with repetition? Heaven sounds repetitive. I think I'd be pretty if I lived in an almost ideal world and never aged or got sick. Brave New World. I'll chew my sex-hormone gum and go to the feelies. I'd look forward to a different pneumatic girl every weekend (which is really a repetition). Occasionally one of us would die by accident, and we'd pity them. So we'd cook up another semi-immortal in the test tubes. (This is better than the Brave New World situation, but similar.)
What I think you are neglecting is the genuine joy to be had in sex, drugs, music, good weather. Life has its profound joys, but they come at a cost. And to me aging and disease and scarcity are a big part of that --so the utopian dreams aren't completely absurd. They just ignore how difficult the political problem is and how greedy and aggressive the human being is. We also take pleasure in the suffering and humiliation of others. As Schopenhauer saw, we are the demons who run hell as well as its prisoners. But we also run Sensual Adventureland for one another. A young, rich, and beautiful person in the 21st century has plenty to stick around for. As they age, things may change. But some are born to sweet delight, however fragile and temporary.
You make a great point in this thread. The pessimism is absolutely warranted. But not many will vibe with your position since, I'm willing to bet, many, if not most on TPF, (just as in the world) are already heavily invested and their interests deeply embedded in the scheme. The positive thing I take from all the absurdity: at least I now know with absolute certainty that the present generation is as stupid as I had previously suspected.
I think this gets at a key point: “heaven” is as much (if not more so) a matter of our internal states as external ones. If you could have absolutely anything you wanted in all of its possible variety, all of it good, and yet you would still be bored and so displeased eventually, then there is still something you don’t have: interest, an internal quality, the opposite of boredom. It’s like if all the sex you could possibly want were available but you had no libido and that made you unhappy: the solution isn’t some weird new kind of sex, it’s the restoration of your libido.
If you could be of a mental state where everything around you is perceived either as a delightful pleasure (however small some of them may be) or an interesting challenge (however daunting some of them may be), then you could be happy all the time, in any circumstance. And feeling like that, life would seem worth living, and perpetuating. If life doesn’t seem worth living or perpetuating, perhaps the problem is not with the world (though it undoubtedly has plenty of problems too), but with you.
We agree, and I think most people would agree. That's the genius and mischief of drugs. Just push that button directly and the rest of the world falls into place --until it all falls apart.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I agree with this too. It's largely about libido. A person can 'fall out of love with life.' This is what I meant by my Tiger King inspired notion of the cub-petting system. Life is aesthetically justified, especially perhaps (at least for many) by the profound joys of parenthood (which I've heard plenty about but never experienced.) Then there's sexuality, connected to the 'immortality' of the species in the same way, and art-science-culture, which arguably is a sublimation of the others.
Of course we should consider that frustrated libido could be a torment. Imagine the plight of a homosexual in a violently homophobic society. Or just the plight of an overweight and unattractive girl in high school. Or even the plight of the old lecher who is finally falling apart. Aging sucks, and the old are too ugly and useless to us to excite much pity.
It makes sense to me that pessimism is related to Buddhism and 'spiritual' renunciations of worldliness in general. 'Thou shalt enjoy.' 'Thou shalt consume.' There's a pill for the malfunctioning soul. 'It's not our problem, it's yours.' So here's advice and maybe a pill. I'm no better in this regard. I've been around desperate people and mostly I just clutched my valuables and guarded my own fragile happiness. I've regurgitated my philosophers to those with more chance of pulling through, but my strategy is more about meeting pessimism or despair half-way. The world is disgusting and absurd. That's not an illusion. But there are nice things too. I'm not necessarily correct when I give advice from my fragile happiness to their despair. It's just what people do when they are less troubled than those they are talking with, which is reach for the platitudes or profundities or black humor and demonstrate concern --which is stuff that may not help at all, since it's all deeper than mere thoughts.
Mind you that I was sick lately (probably our famous virus itself). It was bad, but I had enough energy to read the news and see the world through that lens of suffering and impotence. To me it's a reminder that the bright philosophy that we tend to think of as a cause is perhaps more of an effect. Which I guess supports the notion that anti-natalism is the flower of suffering. In general we might say that humans vote for eternal recurrence simply by being immersed in the life cycle, happy monkeys who don't think to question and object to the system as a whole but only various obstacles. There's an industry devoted to the sanctity of the obstacle course itself (books and pills and conversations). And Beckett and Kafka and other dark comedians are a special slice of that, right on the edge of sanity, ambiguous.
Right on. As Schopenhauer stated, people like to have something to struggle for- I suspect the "interests deeply embedded" part. It's an illusion, to just keep the merry-go-round.
Again, Schopenhauer expounded upon and predicted all that you bring up. He really did know what he was talking about:
[quote=Schopenhauer]Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us—an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; or else when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest—when in reality we have stepped forth from life to look upon it from the outside, much after the manner of spectators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange and uncommon—an innate and ineradicable tendency of human nature—shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious.][/quote]
So if society perpetuates its dictates based on enculturating tricks, one of the more cunning ones is to make sure that the pessimist "knows" it is THEIR fault the foundations of existence have a negative value. See, by turning it on the experiencer as just their lack of participation in the good parts of existence, then existence itself can never get the bad rap. It's a clever meme that it's YOUR fault and thus the system is sound, the system is good, it is just your "malfunctioning" view. If we were to all see it for what it was, the Schopenhauer's suffering of the internal-psychological, external suffering of all the things that we encounter, then we would rebel. The rebellion would take the form of communal pessimism- knowing this isn't right to perpetuate unto the next generation.
You cannot lecture me on heaven as that would be obviously as repetitively absurd as what we have now. If you haven't gotten it already, NO experiential scenario avoids this outside of basically non-existence. Sensual delights become repetitive, all of it. We just try to rush to novelty so as to outrun the pessimism that actually exists- that this world is just a weary tedium sameness, that goals we perceive as good only look good because they are distant and give us something to cling to. It doesn't matter how many countries you go to, how many sexual adventures you have, foods you taste, mountains you climb, how many new books you read, people you know, products you produce, things you learn, or new experiences you purport to have. It is all repetitive again and again. It is all the fishbowl. Add to this negative experiences of pains and tragedies of all sorts. This just doesn't need to be continued for more people. Keep working. Keep enduring. Keep existing. That is the theme of the common man (informally optimistic) people. They don't question why. It is too sad for them to face reality so they keep running after the goals and are indignant if some see them for what they are.. consuming time, waiting.
What I’m saying is that that can be and sometimes is the case — it’s a state of mind, not a state of the world. I’ve had that state of mind before. I’ve also had its opposite, which I’m convinced is behind a lot of authors like Schopenhauer’s worldview.
IOW life is meaningful if and only if someone finds it meaningful. There is no more that there could conceivably be to "meaning" than someone finding meaning in something. There are awful, dread- and angst-ridden states of mind in which everything seems meaningless, and so to a person in such a state of mind everything is meaningless, because the meaning lies in the state of mind. I expect that Schopie et al found themselves all too often in that state of mind. I've been there too. But I've also been in the opposite state of mind, the kind that religious folks and magical thinkers call a "religious" or "mystical" experience, which to me for a lot of my life was a common and thereby sort of "mundane" albeit still awesome experience, unlike the existential angst which only ever really hit me in force last year.
In that positive state, that I call "ontophilia" (love of being), I love just... being. But also, dying doesn't seem so awful. I'd love to live forever, I'll do what I can to keep living, but also it's okay if I don't. Dying is fine, but living is great and so preferable. But while in the negative state, "ontophobia", I'm constantly terrified of the horrific meat-grinder that is all of existence, and yet the very thing that terrifies me is the potential loss of that existence. Living is awful, because dying is awful, but dying seems (when in that state) like it might be the less awful option.
I've since concluded that, reflexively, the meaning-as-in-purpose of life is precisely to cultivate and spread that meaningful feeling, that love of being, ontophilia. To make life feel worth living, and to aid people to continue doing so.
Wants and needs are not even necessary sans being born. What would communal pessimism look like? Again, as I told @jjAmEs, and I've heard this before, so this isn't my first rodeo:
Quoting schopenhauer1
And prior to that, Hegel pointed out that the species cannot evolve without struggle. He explains it in terms of the lord and bondsman, world historic figures, and the slaughterbench of history. But, even though he's an awesome philosopher, fuck Hegel.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes indeed, the merry-go-round for retards. And I, foolishy thought that the rabble who ate up the lies that incited the war in Iraq was bad - it pales in comparison.
I agree, but then the system is also just relatively happy people protecting their relative happiness. IMV we are a fairly selfish species. We don't want our party interrupted. We don't think of the homeless as we initiate sex with a new partner or open our latest package from Amazon. We just don't generally feel the suffering or the pleasure of others. So 'suffering is your problem' is not just metaphysics but simply us all being in different bodies at different levels of health in different environments.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'd like to find this out the hard way. To me what sucks is getting old and the scarcity in cruelty involved in ecstatic experiences. Plug me up to a soma-drip and a variety of lucid dreams (many of them sexual, with exactly the partner I'd choose) and I doubt I'd get bored. One just varies the dreams. I'd even agree to an hour of intense pain every week for a life or virtual life like that. I'd know rationally that non-existence was painless, but I'd avoid it if possible to keep the orgy-porgy going.
One of the reasons we learn to die is because we are forced to do so by aging. Our stupid bodies slowly fail us, and we slowly learn to let go. Another reason is a perception of the cruelty and injustice in the world, though I think that maybe it's only personal suffering that tenderizes us and makes us aware of and disturbed by the suffering of strangers.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But it does matter. The whole system of envy and resentment is based on the perception that others are having a better time. Give people a variety of good experiences with lots of novelty. Give them health, beauty, self-esteem. Minimize their frustration and humiliation. They'll be happy. Maybe in thousands of years they'll get bored. Who knows? I'll be the guinea pig, but no one will let me. The hard part is fooling a body that is meant to reproduce and die. Perhaps we'll invent VR so good that we'll only come out to maintain the machines reluctantly.
I agree with this. Life is justified or rejected on the level of feeling. We always speak from some mood. And I know what you mean (I think) by 'mystical' or joyful/transcendent experience. And I've walked through the black fires of hell. The world can seem like a screeching idiotic meat-grinder, 'a tale told by an idiot, etc.' Pangloss wants to ignore the suffering vision and others want to ignore that the garden of delights is also down here in the meat grinder. The temptation is to elevate a mood to a metaphysical principle, while the alternative is to understand it all as dialogue within a play. Different states of [s]mind[/s] being each spout their own metaphysics.
:up: the unconscious march towards oblivion - very nicely put.
Ah, "the system". What an ineffably awe inspiring edifice. The system does not fit into you, you fit into the system, REMEMBER THAT.
My ultimate goal with the philosophical endeavor is to devise tactics and stratagems that obliterate systems. I credit Socratic Ignorance for aiding me with this.
Nice. I'll just add that for me, in a certain dark mood, that there's maybe a sick love affair with 'The Dark Truth.' It's like self-Crucifixion, self-mutilation, some kind of role play. 'Only the damned are grand.' But at some point a person just really wants the pain and horror to stop. One fears that the holy truth is just a black-fire-thought-crime virus that should be cast into the memory hole.
Perhaps you are missing the subtle machismo in pessimism. It's all about gazing at the abyss, the terrible truth. The pessimist faces the black dragon of the ugliest and most profound truth. From his perspective (the abstract pessimist), your criticism is involved in comforting self-deceit.
As you may know, Nietzsche thought that noble natures were slow to admit they were suffering in the first place. Because suffering is something that happens to losers. But self-deceit and an flattering misperception of status are also associated with losers. I'm a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, for instance. (Candace Owens on victim culture. She has a point, but...)
I can't play the cards of the pessimist, but there's some genuine profundity in the position. It's not this or that institution that's all fucked up. It's the wheel of life itself. It's Buddhism without the incense. Maybe it has two feet in the grave when just one would do.
But how does all of this connect to the glory of war? And young men running at machine guns?
The ultimate system is our own condition for survival, comfort, and entertainment, followed closely by social institutions that, by feeding individuals needs, grows its own epiphenomenal needs to survive and maintain itself.
Need to get working on is the slogan of the system. Rather, need to get working. Working. Throwing more people into the grist. What is wrong with letting the "slumber" of non-existence stay that way.. I'm being poetic more than literal here.. I know non-existence doesn't "slumber" obviously. But we cherish deep sleep, yet what is wrong with a deep sleep that one doesn't have to awake from or better, NEVER had to awake from in the first place? Why bring more people out of "sleep" and into the working, becoming world of the temporal, disturbing the non-being? I call it the "dealing with" of the conscious, waking life. Somehow this is valorized. Again, I ask you, what would communal pessimism look like to you, not just individual dispositions for pessimism?
And what's wrong with nothing? Nothing never hurt nothing. More to the point, why does there need to be something or somebody in the first place? What is your/their goal? I predict your answer, and I raise you the absurd repetition that I mention pretty repetitively. Why keep that going? The goods of existence MUST be experienced by yet a new person? Is this some sort of game and there needs to be players who play the game and move the pieces? Experience is something that needs to be gained by yet more people?
The ultimate system sounds like a great target for annihilation.
I love your philosophy!!!!
Again, what would collective pessimism look like rather than individual dispositions for pessimism? What of the fact that having new humans affects OTHERS. And how about of the fact that your putting them into the world, is a political statement that society/life is something someone ELSE should live? What does it mean to know that now a new person will "deal with" life, and that is deemed ok to do for someone else? What is it that HAS to be continued so that MORE people yet again, have to deal? If the answer to this is no particular good reason, then of course, start from square one. Why put more people into the world? It's just a bunch of needs and wants continued, absurdly, repetitiously, thrown to the system/community that needs more workers, sustainers, and contributors to keep IT going as well. More people who use and more importantly, will be used. But why do this to someone? We know of the struggles of the ever present striving will of wants and needs (pace the perennial philosophies of Schopenhauer, Ecclesiastes, Buddhism, and the like). We know of the near endless externally imposed sufferings of the world on the individual (pace our negative encounters with the world). To say that the goods of life are why we have and need more people, is to not recognize the alternative clearly enough. The alternative is no one needs anything prior to birth. If no new humans scares you, then perhaps THAT is something to examine- the fear of nothing. But the alternative is the stress and dealing with of living that more new people will endure- brought about from the previous generation through their fear of nothing and of childishly pinning one's own hopes to be lived out THROUGH the experiences of the said child.
Rather humans can discontinue the suffering. We can discontinue the absurdity of repetitious survival, maintenance, and entertainment. Your thought experiment of a paradise machine that is only novel, pleasurable experiences are just that- a thought experiment. No people are there, or will get there. Certainly using current generations to try to get there is using them and causing more harm in the name of some distant cause. If Schopenhauer was correct, human nature doesn't even work that way to begin with. Rather, absurdity will be brought to an umpteenth degree of absurditude in your laughable scenario of worldly delights.
Certainly I can think of a thought experiment too.. I can be outdo you.. Rather I can imagine a world where everything can be completely dialed in.. You can choose how much struggle, suffering, and stress you want. You can choose how much pain you want.. maybe just a little so you can feel you accomplished something, and then if it doesn't work out, or you didn't like that situation, change it at will on command. You can dial up anything to extreme pleasure at all times, or if you get tired of that, go back to a bit more struggle, moderating those dials. But see, that itself is absurd.. just one step removed from the absurdity of your situation which is one step removed from what we have going on in the real world. Rather all scenarios become absurd, even if at the same time more tolerable to endure. It becomes absurd entertainment-only repetition rather than the trifecta of survival, maintenance, and entertainment conditions we all actually experience in the real world. Why want any of it? What makes good so good that it means we must endure and continue repetitiously in our condition?
Again, whats's wrong with nothing? Nothing never hurt nothing. More to the point, why does there need to be something or somebody in the first place? What is your/their goal? You want more wills in the world that need and want.. More demands on you from others and you onto others. Why? You can see that one can resign, but you know that not going to happen for most.. Rather it is going to be slogging along into the fray like usual, being pulled, pulling others, and all forced to deal with. But again, why this needs to continue rather than let nothingness take its course, is the question. In this case, it is not the metaphysical question of why something rather than nothing, but the ethical question of why continue instead of discontinue. Why have more fray and not less fray? People genuinely cannot answer this with any satisfactory answer. Rather, only the platitudes of "the good life" that can be had.. if you just followed this or that mindset and set of behaviors or tried to cultivate these experiences or those experiences. It ls a shill to justify, to overshoot the very question of why endure in the first place. Why the need for this need.
So again, what would collective pessimism mean? What would that look like? What would a community dominated by pessimists look like? And no, not the black turtle-necked wearing "sprachter" pessimists of parody, but rather philosophical pessimists- those who see the Schopenhauer and "Buddhist without incense" understanding. I call this the rebellious stance. What would that be in comparison to the default moderate optimism we have now, which is the compliance and acceptance stance?
Yeah through discontinuing it, perhaps. Passive resistance, if you will. What does a collective pessimism mean you thin? A society that acknowledges these truths, lets say. Or, if you want to be subjectivist like @Pfhorrest, then who share this "mindset" or point of view?
Well, nice! I'm glad you do!
I'm glad you're glad about something.
Exactly. Pessimism is always characterized in this way as a sort of moral failing - a personal weakness on the part of the one espousing it. The pessimist just needs to stop being so soft and weak minded, to stop being so pathetic and just get on with it like the rest of us. It is through this attacking of the pessimists character that the content of his or her arguments or views can just be tossed aside, much like the rantings of a drunk. I suspect it functions as a sort of defense mechanism - far easier to attack someones character than to confront your own pessimistic doubts and niggles buried deep within.
I don't see how these "you're just depressed", "you are deficient", "you are weak-minded", responses are in any way an argument against antinatalism. I would think it's more proof for the opposite - why bring more children into the world when there is a possibility they will be afflicted by a malfunctioning mind that makes them see the entire human project as absurd and pointless? Why have children when they may suffer a deficiency in character that makes life seem a tedious process of bodily and social maintenance? There are zero reasons, for the child's sake, to take this risk. To 'be' unborn is the ultimate peace, why disturb it?
In brief : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vSYPwX4NPg4
Yes I saw that one. Very appropriate for this discussion. I noticed the major theme there seemed to be to incorporate the lessons of the epidemic. Everything should not be as it was.
Incidentally, I saw this Onion recently. It's an oldie but goody :rofl:
https://local.theonion.com/newborn-loses-faith-in-humanity-after-record-6-days-1819573929
@Inyenzi @jjAmEs @Pfhorrest gotta check that one out.. very funny and unfortunately true!
Yes. Well put.
Quoting Inyenzi
Very good points. Well put.
@Pfhorrest @jjAmEs I refer you to Inyenzi's post.
Inyenzi, that is a great response. Most of the times, I am very impressed by how you state more succinctly what takes me a long-winded time to convey. Do you know if you can elaborate in your own words what I am trying to convey about the absurdity bit? It seems this part goes over peoples' heads and they think that I am trying to get at some comparison with permanence or something (like a god or heaven or something), but that is not quite it. They don't understand what I mean by the repetition and how it relates to any act and behavior we perform in our survival (in the West the form of production, consumption, utility of products and service via participation in enculturated institutions), comfort (doing things that keep us more comfortable, not needed for survival), and entertainment pursuits (anything else leftover that keeps our minds occupied and finding flow or meaning in something for a time so as not to turn in on being itself).
I meet you half way. I talked about 'poor people' reproducing, the prolific proles. Their children are cast into the world in an inferior position, owning nothing, starting as wage slaves, if even that.
The main difference in our views is that it's obvious to me that some lives are better than nonexistence, at least for certain stretches. I do note that people tend to reproduce before they face the grim reality of aging. So they don't even know what they are forcing on their children. They don't even know all that life is yet, but they more or less blindly obey the prime directive. We're still here after all of these centuries.
I agree that non-existence is the safe choice, the clean choice. I'm not a parent. To some degree it's because I was conscious of the moral burden. It's an implicit judgment on the world, on my own dysfunctional working class childhood. But if I had been rich and secure when younger, I might have had children. Just about anyone would have to confess that a risk is involved. A child could always be terribly unhappy, suffer a disease, etc. So it's a question (for many) of expected value. And it's indeed a heavy thing to summon another mortal consciousness into this strange world.
I don't object to anti-natalism. I do think it's somewhat futile at this time. We aren't essentially rational creatures. And even the poor people I sometimes pity are often happier than me, since we tend to comfort ourselves with inaccurate visions of our talent, etc.
Here's a problem for your perspective. Most people would decline a clean and painless exit from the world. To be sure, some people do commit suicide. And suicide rates would increase if it was made cleaner and easier and less taboo. But I suggest that most would choose to live. And that's an argument for uncertain life's positive expected value. The more philosophical argument against pessimism is simply to insist that value judgments aren't objective.
Have you seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alive_(1993_film) ? Look what some people will do in the short term for an attachment to the apparent promise of a future known to be uncertain. This is why I'm in the tragicomic camp. Life is horrible in many ways but we are mostly in love with it, we poor curious masochists.
I'm guessing this is about boredom, but many of us don't count boredom as a big issue. To me it's aging, disease, accidents, and crime/injustice that speak against existence. I can think of many experiences that I'd love to repeat again and again.
Even as a non-parent the reasons for the child's sake are obvious. If one sees existence as likely to be a net good, then the parent is giving the gift of life to a new being. It's true that this is always the 'gift' of a certain amount of suffering too. So we're back to a seemingly subjective evaluation of expected value of a existence in particular circumstances. We have rich happy parents who have considered carefully versus poor unhappy parents who just haven't mastered contraception.
'Ultimate peace' is a safe zero, but people will gamble if the expected value is positive, especially if their instincts drive their reasoning toward optimism. To not see this is IMV to tune out a kind of common sense. Question it, of course, but be aware of it. Account for it.
You are simply not separating a life worth starting vs. a life worth continuing. The logic for a life worth starting is the following: The absence of good is not bad, if there is no actual person who exists to be deprived of this good. The absence of suffering is good, even if there is no actual person to enjoy this good.
The logic of those already existing to continue to exist is something along the lines of the following: Even if it was better if they did not exist, now that they exist, the pain and suffering of either the pain or fear of death, along with already-set interests in goals, may be enough to continue living once born. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar for the full argument.
From the Wiki:
So Zeus, your thread was taken down because there are a lot of antinatalism threads already. Here is an example of one. I tried to get that back up or added to another thread, but seems like that's not going to happen. That being the case, if you would like to continue the discussion, feel free to here.
No, not quite boredom, unless existential boredom. It's more like this:
1) The sun goes up and down, round and round.
2) You go to bed and get up again and again.
3) You eat and shit over and over.
4) You read your book, watch your movie, do your exercise, talk to your friend, again, again, again
5) You make it a point to travel to "new" (to you) places again and again and again
6) You seek out relationships over and over and over
7) You go to work each day again and again and again
8) You do stuff for maintenance like laundry, dishes, over and over
9) You take that millionth walk/run around the block or on your treadmill
It doesn't matter how many "novel" things you do to stay ahead of the curb, it's all repetitive actions to fulfill our primal motivations of survival, comfort-seeking, entertainment. But this is just repetitive actions that fill time and provide the absurdity I talk about. It's all been done to the umpteenth time by billions and billions of people over and over. There is no need to keep repeating the repetition again and again and again...
Where should all this analysis lead us? Certainly, the case for antinatalism is strong. But, do take this point:
A group of people (who are already born and hence can derive no benefit out of antinatalism) arguing about whether or not parents should consider the opinions of the potential child before bringing it into existence, is as good as the proverbial crying over spilt milk. Say we make a good case for antinatalism and establish after some deliberation that an unborn child is way well off. It saves the unborn child some trouble. What trouble it saves me? So, does antinatalist philosophy lead man (who is already existing) to truth and clarity which will help him lead his life (now that he's born) better? No. It won't. On the contrary, a good case made for antinatalism will deprive life of all meanings. Now, is that what man wishes? No. A man (who is born) wants to be happy. That's ingrained in the tenets of biology making it a fact. Of course it's a point worth considering. But, it just that. A point worth considering. If a man deliberately wants to sad, he may brood over this topic, but the only kind of men who would want that are:
1. Men who seek only intellectual stimulation.
2. Men who want to find an excuse for their circumstances (circumstances which could very well be improved if a man dwells in a different view-point)
So, is it not worth it to find a philosophy which will make THIS life better?
I don't think we can say one way or another about happiness ingrained in biology. There is a tendency for humans to prefer certain goods, but it would be extremely difficult to near impossible to pinpoint that to a biological process. Rather, the most we can say is humans tend towards certain goods, and when they experience them, tend to have positive feelings associated with it.
A pessimist would not necessarily try to discourage trying to maximize your preferences. What they might do is say that there is a pattern in our own psychology whereby we cannot simply "be" but only becoming, where we must find some goal in the distance that we think needs to overcome to give us something to cling to. They may recognize the absurdity of the repetition of even the goods of life (relationships, pleasure, beauty, humor, etc.). They may recognize that we are all in this together. So if there were a lot of pessimists, a communal pessimism, there may be a feeling of brotherhood in our rebellion against that which puts us in this position. In a way, there is a positivity in this shared recognition.
Think of the economy. You are but a pawn in it as your needs and wants force others to work, and their needs and wants force you to work. Your survival needs force you to work even if you were in a completely isolated one-person economy. The repetition to keep you alive, so that you can stay alive, so that you can stay alive, so that you can stay alive.. All forced repetition. Then the epiphenomenal institutions that are created which look at you not as the individual but as the laborer.. You are a laborer who they want output from.. enculturate it so that it happens, etc. etc. Keep the system alive and going with more people. Perhaps the pessimist can recognize it for what it is. It is the foundation of government policy, economic policy, and businesses. You cannot escape it, it is forced upon you lest you die. The pessimist rebels against this and does not accept it. He sees it for what it is, the manipulation. Group think right now works in the way of preserving it.
I may have been misunderstood. I said man would always choose pleasantness as opposed to unpleasantness. I think it can very well be pinpointed to a biological process because we want our dopamine reserves replete at all points of time. The brain demands to be happy NOW. Now the means exercised to obtain that happiness may differ depending on how a man is conditioned.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think, pessimism (or any other -ism for that matter) is merely the brain's tendency to cling to an ideal. A man says, "I am a pessimist". What he's really implying is that he has been, through his social milieu, exposed to certain ideologies and he has been taught to choose one of the ideologies. A brain wants an ideal (pessimism in your case) because without it it's empty, hollow. Without it he feels he's worth nothing. His ideal feeds his ego. His ideal makes him reject other ideals. I think, a man needs freedom from his conditioning to truly understand what it is all about. But, man refuses to do that because man is scared to lose that which feeds his ego, that which makes his image. Man does not understand that it's merely a projection he's taking on from the OUTSIDE.
Man, in the truest sense, is nothing. And so he takes refuge in a 'collective' because there he feels safe. He feels secure. But is he really? I think, a man is truly secure if and only if he takes on no projection from outside and attaches himself to no group or ideology.
I think repetition can be looked at differently. Can not a man live in a way that his memory does not come in way of his experiencing? Why should I be thinking about my sexual experiences with my ex-girlfriend when I am making love to my girlfriend. Those two experiences are by no way same. This point can be discussed more elaborately.
Secondly, as I was stating, philosophy has to be purpose oriented. If I say, so and so philosophers were pessimists and I like their views and feel a connection with their views and so I am also a pessimist, that implies I am second hand.
I never said you had to deny pleasure in the moment to go all contemplative if you didn't want to. Rather, it is just an overall understanding. I understand that we are still here and we still have to make it through however way gets us by with the least suffering. Pursuing goods is also not frowned upon. It is more of of an aesthetic understanding. It is about the need for need and what this entails.
I am interested in knowing, holding such a world-view, where is one emotion-wise? I think, if one is really honest with oneself and if one's (even if he himself is leading a relatively comfortable life) opinions encompass a big enough sample space of human beings, then he would be deceiving himself if he calls himself anything other than a pessimist. So, then where is one then emotionally? Can this question be answered objectively?
Secondly, to further your point on the apparent routine of everyday life, is there something, anything, in this world that doesn't follow a routine? I think there is one thing, and it's art. In expression there is tremendous possibility. Kafka gave so much to the world but, he too was plagued by repetitiveness. But, his works suggest anything but. L. S. Lowry, the great English artist, found through his art a respite from the routine. Krishnamurti said, whatever we can think about, is mechanical. Everyday life is routine because it is a by-product of thought. Art frees one to go beyond this plane. Also, there is beauty. The beauty of the river, the sea, the meadows, the sky. It might be a cliche but we don't really LOOK. Would you agree?
I am completely for your pessimism argument. But, don't you think there is something beyond earthly pleasures? Something beyond the routine?
I don't get what you are asking really.
Quoting Zeus
Well, as you probably note, pessimists like Schopenhauer had a high regard for art as a way to get oneself out of one's own will. It was a way of seeing the Ideas without mediation through time-space (or so he thought). Thus, sort of an inverse of Plato- art was closer to the Ideas and not derivative of the real or something like that. The beauty of nature and art and especially music put oneself in a weird way out of time. I'm not sure if the metaphysics adds up, but the subjective experience of the sublime in aesthetic experience, does seem to be what he's getting at.
Quoting Zeus
I don't think it's worth bringing more people in the world to chase after this. If the Buddhists (and Schopenhauer) is right, almost everything is indeed chasing after something. Let's say you get a sublime feeling of aesthetic pleasure from a view from a mountain or creating a painting of some tragedy and meaning, or reading a great piece of literature, or composing or just listening to a great piece of music...then what? It's over, you try to get that feeling back. You are still chasing after it, trying to maintain it, etc. And then what after that? You still have everyday situations- survival, comforts, and entertainments to pursue. You have contingent harms to contend with (e.g. disease, disasters, other people, emotional anguish, anxiety, annoyances of all kinds). So as I've said many times before, I agree that there are about a handful of "goods of life". That isn't denied. It is rather the general dissatisfactions that characterize the human life in general that pessimism understands well and keeps in mind. It doesn't let the temptation of the goods (pace Emil Cioran's Temptation to Exist), overtake the perspective as if just because something is "good" or that good things exist, thus existence itself is a necessary, positive, worthwhile endeavor that should be perpetuated in perpetuity to progeny and future generations over and over.
You mention repetition. That is exactly what is being replicated. The repetition of ordinary life AND the repetition of chasing after the (well known billions of times over) "goods" of life. Most of life is what I call "dealing with". Dealing with survival, maintenance, entertainment-seeking- essentially dealing with oneself. Dealing with requires coping often. Often the repetitive, tedious nature of these three categories lead to needing some sort of mental strategy.. trying to ignore the bad, trying to deny it, trying to accept it, trying to sublimate it, etc. This is what Stoicism tries to do along with modern cognitive-behavioral techniques. I think they are all just band-aids to the very fact that there is something wrong (the "dealing with") to begin with.
https://youtu.be/OeOS5seSl_I
Do listen to this dialog.
Yeah similar themes.
Regarding antinatalism, couldn’t it be argued that attempting to prohibit people from having children creates additional suffering on those of us who would prefer or enjoy having a child? It see to me that the suffering that two people that want to be parents would experience potentially could be greater than the suffering one person could potentially experience as a result of being born, because the total amount of suffering would have to include the sum of the two people that want children (and perhaps the suffering of people who want grandchildren, nieces/nephews, etc.). I know that people that learn they are infertile, as well as expectant parents that have had miscarriages, can go to some pretty grim places emotionally and mentally as a result of not being able to have children or losing them. Also, it seems that antinatalism disregards the pleasure that one person can provide to several other people.
Regarding pessimism, it seems that the entire philosophy is predicated on the fact that life is absurd due to the repetition of chasing goals to temporarily alleviate our suffering, such as you have described. I don’t dispute this, but have you considered whether or not life would be better or worse if our needs for survival, maintenance, and entertainment were completely and permanently satiated? I think this scenario would be even less tolerable, because then we wouldn’t even possess the absurd repetition that we claim is so bad. Also, doesn’t the pleasure of chasing things count for something? Therefore isn’t it better to accept fate, a la Nietzsche, and will both the pleasures and sufferings that life necessarily consists of?
1) I've definitely heard this argument before and my general response is that if it causes other people's suffering, one that will continually appear throughout possibly 80+ years of another person's life, then this consideration overrides one's own suffering for not being able to do an action that causes someone else's suffering.
2) Also, all things being considered, if you cannot get consent (like the situation prior to birth), then the least harm one causes for another person would be the optimal choice. No actual person is losing out on not existing.
What this all comes down to is that when you are doing something to someone else that leads to inevitable and unnecessary suffering, then any other consideration for one's own reasons for doing this are secondary or should not even be in the equation.
Quoting Pinprick
Yes, this is the boredom Schopenhauer discussed- he thought there was a pendulum between the human need for goals and boredom. And he makes a great point that if living itself satisfied us, we would be happy just being and not wanting. Clearly, due to survival, comfort, and entertainment needs (as I like to parse out our desires), we cannot do this, even in principle.
Quoting Pinprick
No, if there is anything I'm definitely opposed to it is the philosophies of acceptance. That is about every major philosophy's goal- to accept this situation. I say rebel. We can rebel communally. We all know we are in this situation, and we all agree to stop it for future generations. This may also translate to more compassion in regards to how our demands cause each other to labor and not be free. It can never be different, but at least we will know it.
Ok, but I’m just not convinced that the intermittent suffering of the child for 80+ years would be greater than the intermittent suffering of two people (both parents) for, let’s say 50-60 years. And to me I think it is at least conceivable that two people who desperately want to have children but can’t would intermittently suffer for the remainder of their lives as a consequence.
Quoting schopenhauer1
A couple things regarding this.
1. This checks out fine if you are only practicing this in your personal life, but if you are advocating for, or in any way trying to prevent other people who want to have children from doing so, then you are causing them to needlessly suffer. I’m not saying you are or aren’t trying to do this, I don’t know.
2. This seems like a moral argument since it pertains to how people should conduct their life. However, morality itself is aimed at determining what type of life is good, among other things. Antinatalism seems to entail the denial of morality since it denies that life itself is good. Therefore it appears contradictory for a moral nihilist(?) to proceed to make moral arguments. IOW, if you do not value life, or think that life has any value, then how can you logically make an argument that appeals to values at all? If you do not value life, then how can you say you care how people are treated?
Quoting schopenhauer1
If you consider Antinatalism to be rebellion, then aren’t you throwing the baby out with the bath water? Your solution to living a life of suffering is to end life?
Of what I've read so far (and which might be tangentially useful to the present discussion), one of the most interesting existentialist reversals is that death is no longer the arrival of nothingness, as we might normally think of it. The common fear is that when we die, we become nothing. Death, in other words, is nothingness. But under existentialism as Sartre has it, conscious life (the for-itself) is itself negation, and only life brings nothingness into the world. Only while we are alive can nothingness be present; this is the basis of freedom (and also our failure to achieve it). When we finally die, we return to the domain of the in-itself, of full coincidence with ourselves, of A=A and the night when all cows are black. Our corpse is our corpse and our past our past in the same sense that this table is a table, yet the for-itself that is writing this post and finds its Being thereby could equally just as well be a for-itself pouring itself another glass of whiskey.
There is thus a strange optimism here. In other words, it is in death that we achieve that which we are always striving for, and while alive only evanescentally attain: being in-itself, full positivity, full coincidence with who and what one is/has been. However, this is not necessarily to say death is preferable, even if it is inevitable, and even if the for-itself as a project is always a failure. Without wanting to sound like a self-help book, it is also true in the existentialist sense that it is only within the experience of failure that we also find the real seeds of success, of transfiguration, of being something while also not being that something after all.
No, but that's not my argument, which suffering will be greater. My argument is that the parents' suffering is irrelevant as it is causing suffering for someone else. This is no longer about one's own pain, but causing someone else pain.
Quoting Pinprick
Well, I'm not. I'm advocating that people don't cause the conditions for other people to suffer. I am not forcing them to do so. And again, the "needless suffering" of unrequited parenting is irrelevant when it is tied to causing the conditions for someone else's suffering.
Quoting Pinprick
You're characterization that antinatalism is considered moral nihilism is a wrong premise. Antinatalism isn't indifferent to morality. Rather, antinatalism values prevention of needless suffering for other people, especially in the case of birth, as there is no downside of an actual person losing out on the goods of life (as no one existed prior to birth to be deprived of this). It is true that procreation is the necessary condition for people to suffer. It is true that all lives have some suffering. It is true that prevention of birth will prevent suffering from occurring which is always a good thing since, preventing "good" experiences from occurring is only instrumental- that is to say, it only matters if the person was already born to be deprived of said goods. This is only the case after someone is born, not prior. Thus it is always best to not procreate. And again, the suffering of the parents is irrelevant as their suffering is tied to creating the conditions for someone else's suffering. I can do a thought experiment or scenario on this, but I'm sure you can think of examples yourself where someone gets joy that is contingent on the inevitable suffering of others. Again, I am not saying the parents are malicious, as they simply don't see it that way. But most things that drive certain beliefs are based on perspectives, perhaps that are not fully considered or only informed by what is prominent in the culture (and the belief to have children is highly enculturated in all societies).
I've never read Being and Nothingness, but have read snippets and the novel Nausea by Sartre. I'm aware mainly of his ideas of "radical freedom" and have posted about it several times. The existentialism I am interested in most is the idea of Sisyphus condemned to push the rock endlessly. It is the repetitious absurd nature of our human condition of being motivated by survival, comfort, and entertainment and then how this condition leads to the epiphenomena of political-economic systems. I said earlier:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Also related, is because of our demands we force others to labor, and they force us to labor. This forces coordination, control, etc. Doing otherwise is not even an option, but just because this is our condition, does not mean it is good. A world with hospitals, doctors, and experts in disease prevention is a good thing. A world with certain technologies alleviates certain discomforts, safety, and increases survival. Even in hunting-gathering societies, the group relies on the talents and demands of the others, to make things work. However, this relying on other people creates the conditions that one must labor in the first place. It is a catch-22. There is no way out of the need for labor, but labor is what is needed due to our individual demands combining (into social institutions). Thus our individual demands makes us pawns in a greater system that arises from the agreements needed to coordinate them.
Antinatalism is the ultimate rebellion against being used as a pawn. Prevention of birth is preventing people from controlling others and being controlled- which is inevitable in society and birth and the demands of being human. If it is inevitable, it is also preventable- simply don't have future people born into this situation to begin with. The freedom from being enslaved by the demands of others- of being a point of "added value" to a third-party system (the economy). One is commodified, but one cannot be anything else. There is no political system that "frees" one out of this situation. The only way out was to never enter (not be born).
What is interesting is the idea of "communal pessimism". Maybe the virus will teach us that life brings about more suffering than people realize. Maybe the virus will teach us that we are pawns in a game much greater than ourselves, and unnecessarily and unwittingly are playing it. The game is our own "wills" (our needs for survival, comforts, and entertainments), which causes us to be "pawns" (the epiphenomenal institutions that arise because of our needs) that make us data points and laborers in a third-party system. We can walk hand-in-hand to prevent future people from being thrown into the human and social conditions. They will not experience the absurd repetition of surviving, needing to be more comfortable, find entertainment/meaning. In essence, they will be prevented from dissatisfaction that is the core of human nature. We cannot just be happy being, as our survival, comfort, and boredom drives us to pursue what we pursue. In other words, our dissatisfaction drives us.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I get that my suffering is irrelevant if I, as someone contemplating parenthood, choose to not have children on the basis of Antinatalism. However, if I adopt Antinatalism as an ideology, it seems to entail that I believe that people should not have children. Meaning other people. This is where I get stuck on how you can actually hold Antinatalism as an ideology without implying to the rest of the world that they shouldn’t have children. I know people who have chosen to not have children, and their reasons are whatever they are. It is a personal choice, and as such, remains private. But by making your personal choice public and espousing it as an ideology, it is implied that you judge other’s choices to have or not have children as either “good” or “bad.” In this way, suppose you are successful in convincing me that I shouldn’t have children even though I want to. Wouldn’t you at least be partly responsible for whatever suffering I endure as a result of this decision?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I agree with this.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I also agree with this, but it’s also true that procreation is necessary for morality itself to continue. Therefore, to be against procreation entails being against morality, at least as a side effect. IOW’s if the moral statement “Thou shalt not procreate” is applied universally via Kant’s Categorical Imperative, then the elimination of morality will logically follow in time.
Yes, it is like veganism. It is a choice, and one can convince others of its merits. But the point is that it is not forced, just influencing and making a case. The other person can see the merit in the argument and follow it or not.
Obviously, if they think that the case is relevant enough to follow-through with it, they believe they are indeed causing someone else's lifetime of possible instances of suffering if they procreated. Clearly, they agree and follow the antinatalist argument, they think it is more important to prevent suffering than to cause conditions of suffering for another (even if it seems against their own initial wants).
At the end of the day, if you are caused pain by not causing (the conditions for) pain in someone else, the other person's right not to be caused suffering wins out. A very extreme example of this is a sociopath who gets joy from causing others pain. Should he be accommodated because his pain is so great by suppressing his true passions? Of course not. Let's make it less stark. Should a religious nut who thinks causing suffering and death for others is the righteous thing to do be allowed to act on those impulses because not doing so causes them the suffering of not being able to do those acts? Of course not.
Quoting Pinprick
If no one is around to suffer, then morality doesn't matter. Morality only matters for those already existing. I don't see anything contradictory there. Humans don't exist to keep morality going, morality exists only when multiple humans and sentient life comes in the picture.
Yes one can, but only by convincing them that it is “good.” But “good” only makes sense in the paradigm of morality. The issue is that the statement “Antinatalism is good” destroys the only context in which “good” makes sense. Antinatalism only exists within the context of morality, but Antinatalism entails the ending of human life if carried out across the board, which then entails the end of morality, which is the very scaffolding holding up Antinatalism in the first place. It’s a snake swallowing it’s own tail.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But to prevent suffering by preventing life defeats the purpose of Antinatalism. If Antinatalism is a type of morality, then it necessarily includes the premise that life is worth living. If not, then how can it purport to answer the question “What is the good life?”? If it is stating that one cannot live a good life, because there’s no such thing as a good life due to the inevitable experience of suffering, then it is essentially Nihilistic. It denies morality. Therefore, it cannot validly make moral claims about what is good, or how we should live.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I can agree with this, but if Antinatalism’s premise is that causing suffering for someone else is always bad, then that entails much more than preventing birth. It would also entail being against many different medical procedures; vaccines/shots, foul tasting medicine, exams that cause discomfort, etc. Or does it hold the position that it is ok to directly cause suffering if by doing so more intense suffering is prevented or lessened?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Holding a moral view that results in ending morality seems contradictory. The justification for the view directly appeals to morality, but also indirectly destroys the preconditions for morality.
Again, I see no problem. No humans = no need for morality. Humans are not around to see that morality gets enacted. Morality is enacted when humans are around.
Quoting Pinprick
No that is not entailed in morality. Morality can be a set of many things that are regarded to how humans should act and treat each other. This argument states that it is wrong to create suffering on behalf of another person who will suffer throughout their whole life in unknown but often predictable ways. It also realizes that good is indeed a benefit, but only for people who already exist. It matters not for people who don't exist. What does matter is suffering is not occurring where it could have (see negative utilitarianism).
Quoting Pinprick
No, it does not deny morality. Unlike nihilism (which does not believe in any values), pessimism/antinatalism puts a premium on prevention of unnecessary suffering which is actually a compassionate stance. In the case of procreation, the least suffering you can cause for a future person is to not have that possible future person.
Quoting Pinprick
Yes, the second one. ONCE BORN, then things change. The whole logic changes actually. The decision prior to someone's birth is an asymmetry in respect to preventing suffering for a future person (which is always a good thing), and preventing good experiences for a future person (which is neither good nor bad because there is no actual person to be deprived of the good experiences). The asymmetry here always is skewed towards the prevention of suffering, meaning non-birth of the future person.
Quoting Pinprick
I addressed this above. The preconditions for morality only hold when people exist. If no people exist, no morality needs to exist either. Once there are enough people for morality to matter, then it comes into effect. In other words, the minute a person can affect another person to cause them suffering, then this rule would matter. In a world where no one is ever tortured ever, the rule "do not torture people" might not matter. Once there is a world where torture takes place, this rule matters. If people never suffered, this rule would not matter as well. As long as suffering exists, this rule matters. If it doesn't, like in the case of no people, this rule would not matter.
If Antinatalism entails “no humans” then it also entails no need for morality. Agree? If that is the case, then why make moral statements and judgements? Your argument for me to refrain from procreating is based on the belief that doing so is good. However, your argument also entails that morality is pointless or unnecessary. Therefore, what you consider to be good is irrelevant because morality is pointless or unnecessary. Put simply, you can’t tell me to behave morally and then go on to say that morality is unnecessary. I have no reason to behave morally if morality doesn’t matter.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, but behavior is only a means to the end, which is life being good or tolerable. Life is what gives meaning to behavior.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Why is this wrong? If the justification for this includes the goal of making life better in some way, then ending life refutes the justification. Having no life at all doesn’t make life better.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It’s nihilistic in the sense that it’s consequence results in morality ceasing to exist. I understand that Antinatalists have values. But their values are irrelevant because they result in morality becoming extinct.
Quoting schopenhauer1
:up:
Your little logic doesn't apply to what I'm saying, so I will not repeat myself. Morality is not pointless or unnecessary if there are humans around. The very basis of morality relies on being alive. If we are not here, then there is no basis for morality. That does not entail that we must be alive so morality can come into play. It just means when humans are around the logic: "Do not procreate" applies. End of story.
If a: Humans are around
then b: Humans should not procreate
Quoting Pinprick
The sentence "Life is what gives meaning to behavior" is vague and practically nonsensical. Antinatalism is about a specific applied ethical case- procreation. It has as its basis of value the asymmetry between suffering and good for something that can possibly exist but currently does not.
Quoting Pinprick
If someone does not exist, only in hypothetical, that hypothetical person literally needs NOTHING. However, it is the case that in time and state X, no new person (that could) is suffering. In other words, if no person exists, they don't need to exist to make their life better. In fact, they don't need anything. In fact, in most Buddhist and Schopenhaerian conceptions, suffering exists due to the very nature of our needs and desires (like being in a "better" state). Thus, no procreating people who need to be in a better state, solves or bypasses this. At the least, even without Buddhist/Schopenhauerian conceptions, you are preventing the need for someone to need in the first place.
Quoting Pinprick
I don't know why you have this notion but humans don't exist so that morality can exist. Morality exists because humans exist. That is a huge difference. Humans don't owe any principle/idea/conception/rule of morality anything. To think so seems bizarre. To be crude, we are not some third-party, abstract principle's bitch.
I’m not making the claim that morality must endure no matter what, as if it is some purpose or meaning of life. I’m just not seeing how Antinatalism can justify its claim by appealing to morality when that very claim seems to refute morality, albeit indirectly, due to the end of human life being a direct consequence of its claim.
1) Antinatalism’s claim that one should not procreate is a moral claim.
2) As such, it’s justification is entirely dependent on the existence of morality itself.
3) The purpose of making moral claims is to increase moral behavior.
4) Antinatalism’s logical conclusion results in the ending of human life.
5) This results in the end of morality.
6) Therefore, Antinatalism’s goal of increasing moral behavior becomes impossible, as neither people nor morality will continue to exist if Antinatalism is adhered to.
It’s similar to coaching a team to do its best, but then not keeping score of the game. Doing your best becomes pointless, because the purpose of doing your best is to win the game.
That doesn't seem right. The purpose of moral claims is to define what is moral. Increasing moral behavior is not entailed in all moral claims. Anyways, in this case an increase in moral behavior is a decrease in births.
Quoting Pinprick
Again, this does not matter, because as you stated:
Quoting Pinprick
So.. I don't know what you're getting at honestly.
Quoting Pinprick
Winning the game would be preventing all suffering. If no one existed, no one suffers.
I have said just recently:
I’m saying that if Antinatalism is to be considered a type of morality, then it must seek to maintain morality. Otherwise it seeks it’s own demise by destroying the basis for morality (human life). I’m not saying anyone should or should not do anything. I’m just saying that all types of morality seek to increase moral behavior so that life is “good” or “better” in some way. Antinatalism, by seeking the extinction of humans, cannot actually increase moral behavior, or make life better in any way. Suppose I want to become the world’s greatest football player. If in order to achieve my goal I kill every other football player so that by default I would be the best football player alive, I still haven’t achieved my goal, because if there are no other football players, then it is impossible to actually play football. I’ve eliminated the game itself. I see Antinatalism doing this in regards to its relationship with morality.
Therefore, this
Quoting schopenhauer1
isn’t true. You’ve eliminated the game itself, so you can’t even play it.
That's the point. There is nothing to "play". Just prevent suffering, period. If there's no one to prevent suffering anymore, then so what?
By not making a life I am preventing its suffering. It’s like saying if I did not make a sandwich I prevented anyone from eating it.
Someone can come along and say, with equal force, that by preventing life we are preventing joy and love and laughter. But really what we’re talking about is preventing life, period. No suffering, no laughter, no joy, no love, no loss, no death, but life. This is because life is not a one-to-one ratio with suffering, but is much more.
I have a problem with the ethical angle. One cannot claim he is preventing suffering by preventing life because it is impossible to prevent suffering in the not-yet-living, and for the same reason it is impossible to prevent the suffering of the dead—they do not exist. Exactly whose suffering did they prevent? One cannot find them on any plane of existence.
There are many valid reasons why one would not want to have children, but to prevent the suffering of the unborn has to be the worst of them.
This argument is ridiculous. You don't need a person to actually exist to prevent an actual person from suffering. Let's say that instead of the more generalized suffering, it is known that a future person would 99% be guaranteed to be suffering from some chronic genetic-related condition if born. The genetic tests actually prove this would be so. You would still say that one cannot meaningfully talk about a future person's outcomes from this, and preventing it? Feck off.
As long as there are fertile people who can potentially procreate, of course you can talk about future outcomes and preventing them as related to birth.
That is a bad analogy. Preventing people, prevents suffering. Not making a sandwich doesn't prevent anyone from eating.
Quoting NOS4A2
Well, this is nuanced. Philosophical pessimists would actually refute that and say human nature is inherently suffering. But besides that, you are still not getting the asymmetry argument. If not born, NO ACTUAL person suffers the "loss" of no happiness. However, NO ACTUAL person suffers, which is ALWAYS good, whether someone is actually alive to know this. Before you even answer, see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar
I believe that we should have been doing much more networking.
Children can learn most things by networking without being crowded into classrooms. An effort to create well designed video learning modules would give all children the benefits from teachers who prove to have the best, most interesting way to teach each subject. Half the day at an actual school would be enough, rounded out with home lessons on laptops like college students have.
I think teleconferencing is better for corporations, instead of executives jetting all over at great expense, just to shake hands and talk in person.
The advance in medical technology, like more better ventilators and public detectors for symptoms, is likely the inevitable future fast forwarded to now. This can have benefits beyond covid-19.
The present we were used to is now the past, for the better in some ways.