Suffering and death by a thousand cuts
So with a deadly pandemic raging, causing pain and misery to millions of people, upending society, causing fear of making wrong decisions- where to go, what is safe to do, weighing options, making potentially wrong decisions that lead to pain and possibly death. Add this to the many other and already tried and true ways we suffer, compounding the other forms. Governments imploding into their own reenactnent of Greco Roman.cycle of democracy and tyranny. Pain is easily forgetten until one actually endures it. Then what? Be thankful you are no longer being tortured by a disease ravaging your body? How does this not lend cause to abstaining from procreation?
Comments (68)
What I really want to talk about is a little paradox I've chanced upon and I feel it hits the right keys of antinatalism at the start but ends on the wrong note as it were, leaving the audience with a bad taste in their mouths. A few metaphysical claims are involved but that's alright since what I'm aiming for is to offer a different perspective and that with a belief system that makes suffering its central doctrine.
The belief system I'm referring to is Buddhism; it claims as a key premise for its argument that life is suffering (dukkha). Naturally, Buddhism seems the perfect candidate, primed at the outset, for the antinatalist camp. Who could qualify for antinatalism if Buddhism - a belief that literally equates life with suffering - doesn't make the cut, right? Nirvana, as per Gautama, is an escape from the suffering tied to birth-death-rebirth in samsara - the basic idea being that one who's attained nirvana no longer needs to be born which, if you really give it some thought, is nonexistence, something which will click with the antinatalist crowd. By the way, "nirvana" means extinguish - a meaning so close to nonexistence that anyone with a minimum of common sense won't fail to notice. If nirvana (extinguish existence) is a Buddhist goal then surely antinatalism fits like a glove. Hitting the right keys!
However, it's not as simple as that. Buddhism has one other belief critical to this discussion viz. that only humans are capable of attaining nirvana - those living in lower realms (hell) overwhelmed by intense suffering and those of the higher realms (heaven) hypnotized by the rapturous delight. Ergo, in order to ensure more people have a shot at attaining nirvana, we should have/make more children. In other words, antinatalism doesn't square with Buddhism. Ending on the wrong note! Ouch! My ears! And Eyes! And Mind!
Paradox!
Anything else, contrary to what many think, and you even say "[something unpleasant] is easily forgotten until one actually endures it", being able to get everything you want when you want it without possibility of failure, is one of the worst hells that can be experienced. There's no thrills or excitement, no fear of death or injury or failure sure, which of course means, no passion. It would quickly become difficult to distinguish one's own existence from that of a vegetable growing in a garden.
How could you know? Sure there are indicators but that's all they are. An alleged well-off child could be born with a debilitating defect or have an accident that will be with them their entire life. An alleged poor or unfortunate child can end up being a genius or win the lottery or something. You never know. Just Google "rich people born poor", for a few examples. It's rare, no doubt. But it happens.
Furthermore, why is "procreation that leads to a life of mostly pleasure" right? Is there some religious basis for this? A "soul" being rewarded with the pleasures of this world? If not, many would liken all of us, rich or poor, to little more than slightly-advanced animals living a meaningless existence of chasing shiny objects.
Regardless, who are you to "gamble" with a life, be it divine or animalistic. Just someone who can- simply because you can at that moment. What meaning is there at all from that standpoint?
My child is a man now. I don't know what he will choose. The future belongs to him.
The state of affairs you describe lends cause to one of 2 outcomes, in my view. One that is more pessimistic, and another that is more optimistic. The pessimistic outcome is essentially that of antinatalism. The optimistic outcome is the use of advanced technology to eliminate suffering and to achieve artificial immortality. In either case, suffering will be eliminated once and for all. But it is just a question of how much imagination and determination we have as a species. For my part, I fully support the optimistic outcome :smile:
You cannot know for sure, but a decision on whether to procreate could be made on the most likely outcome. Whether most lives are net positive or negative could provide strong guidance.
Quoting Outlander
It's standard utilitarian thought that what ultimately matters is pleasure and suffering. I think at the very least they are the most important considerations. I don't think I can prove this as objective moral truth, but it seems right to me.
Quoting Outlander
As aforesaid, it could be argued that you should gamble when the odds are in your favour but not when the odds are against you. On the other hand it could be argued that the stakes should be taken into account.
Why propose these pussy half measures? Surely the logic of your position demands that all sentience should be ended immediately by any means necessary?
(If you construct a slippery slope argument, there is no valid reason not to slither all the way to its bottom.)
Yeah, isn't that convenient that even Buddhism needs an escape hatch for procreation. I do get the philosophy. If everything is "illusion" and nirvana is an "awakening" from this, the multiplicity of birth and individuation of subjects and objects disappear. Thus, all this talk of individual prevention of suffering matters not.
But as far as I know, this reality is "real" enough that suffering does ensue for the individual. Yes, the individual is a construct from the interaction of the person with the world, but this doesn't mean that it isn't how humans function. That being the "reality" of the case, the whole leaving it up to the "awakening" from illusion thing, just seems ineffective. I get where it is coming from. I even sympathize, as it is also a Schopenhaurean viewpoint to some extent. However, the only way I can see actually preventing suffering is to simply not start a new life in the first place.
I've said this before, but if the universe is one that works like this:
"You need to suffer to not be bored", then we are already off to a bad start this universe. Better off not even start with it.
Exactly. You don't know. Who are we to gamble. No one expected deadly pandemics to be this extensive. That's on an aggregate scale. Each individual life has its own possible horrors. Even more horrifying is no matter how much you reach out to others, we are the ones who have to endure it. The decision to create someone else is affecting someone else. This is not just an animal that doesn't know what is going on. You are creating someone who knows the situation.
But you don't know what will become of the person procreated. Look at this pandemic. You didn't predict that. This one is perhaps not as deadly as it could. Maybe not the next one.
However, lets not wrap the argument around just pandemics. All forms of "enduring" everything from tedious tasks to the most horrible torture awaits new people born. Yet, all we can do to justify it is to say, "Well, my life is good so therefore I should procreate someone else.
But then you are okay with using people to try to get to some technological utopia? People are thus fodder for the "aggregate utilitarian mill" of getting some advanced technology in some far off distant future?
Stop straw manning and red herring this. I'll start misrepresenting Peircean semiotics and then you can see how that feels.
But seriously, preventing birth hurts no one, and doesn't violate other people's consent, rights of choice, things such as this. You know this though. It's not just "here is the goal no matter what the cost". It's not utilitarian aggregate schemes of "the greatest this or that for the greatest this or that". You can argue that in arguments that are actually arguing for that.
I think that you genuinely believe that the solution to suffering is to stop procreation. I can see a certain point to what you are saying in the sense that in times of extreme suffering we can wish that we had not been born at all. However, I think your whole antinatalist stance is far too simplistic.
I am not one to say that suffering is necessarily a good thing. I would much rather a life with as little suffering as possible. It would be much easier. I also have known people who have committed suicide when they were in a state of deep crisis. But perhaps that is panic when people decide to end their lives. Deep down, I think that even in the worst circumstances there are potential creative pathways.
I thought that the Madfool's answer about the Buddhist understanding of suffering may have given you a different angle, as a means to see possible more creative ways of understanding suffering than your antinatalist one. Of course, I see that you point out that it is not about the more dramatic answer of nuclear annihilation. But at the same time your approach is a dead end, lacking any creativity.
At the end of the day whether to procreate or not is a personal decision. Each person comes from their own perspective on what kind of life they can provide for any children. I have come across people who come from the opposite viewpoint as you, who try to say we should have a duty to procreate. I object to them for preaching. But, really, you are preaching too.
Getting back to the Covid_19 situation, in some ways we are being prevented from going out and procreating in the usual way by all the lockdowns and social distancing. At the same time, I have friends who have brought children into the world since the pandemic. I do wonder about the future of these children in the post Covid_19 world, but I am just hoping that on a long term basis some positive reconstructions of living will be made. I think that your energy would be better addressed to the positive changes which could be made in creating positive changes in the real world to reduce suffering, but, of course, I don't want to become a preacher.
One has nothing to do with the other. Besides, those who alleviate suffering and work to care for the ill were born first. On the other hand, refusing to procreate alleviates zero suffering, helps no one, does nothing to innovate beyond our current circumstances, so one shouldn’t expect any cookies for it.
My life has been good and bad. I am keenly aware that my child's existence is surrounded by all kinds of peril.
I approached the choice with strong feelings of fear and trepidation, both for myself, my wife, and my child. I would not characterize the experience as doing something because I should on the basis of my experience. It was done more in spite of those perceptions. Maybe that is even worse from your point of view.
Love hurts. Caring puts one at risk. I am all for treating parenting more seriously as a culture to counter those who embark upon it with barely a thought or concern, but the idea that one could boycott it like a brand of cheese seems presumptuous to me. The idea is not going to change people's behavior.
No, I think it should be a voluntary and collective effort. But I wouldn't jump to conclusions by viewing the project as that of an "aggregate utilitarian mill". I for one am an ardent anti-consequentialist, so I have no plans to advocate for a utilitarian proposal. Nevertheless, we can still work towards a technological utopia on non-utilitarian grounds.
As you would've have already noticed, to subscribe to Buddhism means you accept some metaphysical claims - souls, karma, birth-rebirth, to name a few - but antinatalism doesn't. This is the reason behind the incongruity between the two doctrines. If one is of the opinion that life is just too painful to be worth it, we have two options on our hands 1) Antinatalism and 2) Buddhism. For a down-to-earth person who reserves belief only for those claims founded on hard evidence, antinatalism is the right choice - don't have children. However, to someone open-minded, willing to consider possibilities no matter how crazy, then, to err on the side of caution (what if we have souls, karma is real, reincarnation is true?), we'd need to embrace Buddhism - have as many children as possible.
@Wayfarer. I've been told that nirvana doesn't actually mean nonexistence but the spirit of Buddhism is to be no longer born in samsara and samsara includes the earth. In a sense then the desire and hope for nirvana is to be nonexistent on earth and that gibes with antinatalism.
You need to be able to suffer or otherwise have the possibility of failure, misfortune, or loss to have any sense of passion or life of purpose. Naturally we all work to avoid these things but after accepting their inevitability we learn to cope with them better when they do arise.
Why is gambling, playing a video game, skydiving, or riding a roller coaster exciting and not boring? Because each has a danger, some minor, some major, that invigorates us and is a departure from the normal routine.
I mean I object to people making the decisions for others whether they should create a whole other life, but I mean, other people object to certain political views, not eating animals, and all sorts of things. I wouldn't call it preaching to state those views and the reasons for it. This sounds like special pleading in the negative. Antinatalism is preaching but other viewpoints are just rationalizing their arguments for their claim. Interesting.
It prevents future suffering, not alleviates current ones. True, it literally helps no "one". The last part is just a straw man argument you are trying to knock down. I never stated how noble people are for not procreating, and how amazingly rewarded they should be. That is your false attribution.
Why do you suppose that is? Does acting the role of caregiver and lifegiver trump the realities that a child will have all sorts of sufferings known and unknown great and small befall him/her? Once born, you are giving a new being the task of enduring. Enduring what? It could be a number of personalized and generalized things.. Generalized things like navigating society's setup to survive within, find comfort, and seek ways to be entertained. It could be personalized things like dealing with various mental and physical illnesses, contingent circumstances of pain from the various causal circumstances of environmental, social, and physical combinations.
You are giving someone the game of life to play, but why is the presumption that this is ok to give this game?
The frequent response is the "If a tree falls.." argument.. Which I believe is falsely applied here and is kind of just a knee-jerk response. That is to say, people claim that people need to be born in order to see that they don't want to play the game. But they need to be born so they get to know that they don't like the game. Taken to its absurd extreme, it would be like saying that if you knew a newborn was going to be tortured, but since the newborn doesn't exist yet, we cannot determine that this is no good for that future person, because, it does not "actually" exist. So apparently the newborn needs to be tortured so we know that it would be bad. Does not make sense in that case, nor the "lesser" case of simply "giving" the game of life to someone, even if there is no actual person existing to know that they were "given" the game of life.
Work towards utopia, and prevent birth, so do both.
People are really horny. Under the threat of inevitable and impending doom, fucking is as good an option as any. Consequence: invasion of the babies.
I don't think it is possible for people to abstain from procreation, it's what they do outside of eating, shitting, and sleeping.
I mean I don't see it the same way as you presenting here. There are various ways that you are oversimplifying this. One way is that danger that becomes a real nightmare isn't as invigorating. Skydiving and crashing to your impending death or worse (surviving and breaking every bone and organ) isn't fun. But, my point was that in this reality, you need to have a deficit in order to gain some thrill or feel more rewarded, apparently. If that is true, I can at least imagine a universe where you can have just as many thrills without a deficit. It is just not this reality. So though, it may be true, that once born in this reality, we have to play the game of deficit/reward, it is not worth starting for someone else, being that it is not ideal circumstances. You have to have suffering or pain or whatever it is for some gain. Again, just because that is the reality, doesn't mean it is then automatically a good thing. That is what I am trying to decouple from what seems to be your presumption there.
Also, I don't think something is better off just because one had a negative experience that one overcame. A life where one could have gained the highs without the lows is better. However, if your claim is you can never have such a life, again that makes me think then there is something suspect about the reality of a situation where that is necessary in the first place. Just thinking a little beyond the usual tropes here of "No pain, no gain".
True enough. This does seem to be the case. I think it is also the same reason people adopt pets, etc. It is an experience of caregiving.. But you are certainly right, a lot of it is people screwing and babies are the outcome. However, a lot of people do think it through and still decide it is worth it for reasons I have stated. They want to see a being that has their genetics and/or the love child of their own genetics and their partner, navigate the world and do so based on their influence and input, etc. No one has the perspective change that perhaps it is not good to make another being endure, and deal with existence in the first place.
Utopia is a pipe dream. Any attempt to implement utopia, whether technologically based or not, necessarily requires some measure of tyranny. It is totally absurd to merely consider the possibility of a system that perfectly fits every single individual, free of conflict and injustice. And even to imagine such a fictitious state invokes imagery of an excruciatingly boring and meaningless existence.
By way of example: I have been very fortunate in my life to have experienced extremely good sport fishing. I have fly fished Alaska for salmon and have had days that at the end of the day my arms were only semi-functional because of all the fish I had caught that day (I release nearly all I catch). On the less productive days I am able to enjoy the glacier fed river I am in, the beautiful scenery, and life at it's more relaxing pace. Maybe I catch a fish, maybe I don't, but I chose to enjoy and embrace the other, more leisurely activities going on at the time. My Nephew on the other hand has also experienced this high level of fishing, however, when the fish aren't biting he is angry, disappointed and unable to appreciate anything going on around him. He is choosing to suffer, despite having a plentitude of amazing things around him that he could enjoy, if he chose to. His birth has very little direct effect on his amount of suffering, his choices directly cause his suffering.
However, without suffering there is no joy. I have lots of really good drugs that will relieve you of all your suffering, they will also relieve you of everything that makes you you. So will a well placed bullet.
I suggest that suffering promotes growth, which, eventually, leads to acceptance and internal peace.
Oft-stated response. My reply to a similar line of reasoning is here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/472633. Basically, I don't view ethics as based on some aggregate utilitarian construct whereby the greatest good is had for greatest number, or anything like that.
Quoting Book273
Yet, it is quite a fact that all individuals suffer in some way, and certainly the game of life is thrust upon a new individual to navigate and then have to figure out how to "choose to accept". I force you to play a game you don't want to play, and then tell you some horseshit like, "But it is up to you to figure out how to accept the situation", like I'm a freakn' Obi Won Kenobi.. Sounds like horseshit post-facto rationale to me for justifying thrusting the game on someone. Also it is gaslilghting..making them seem the crazy one for not accepting the game.
Quoting Book273
Again, read some of my responses to others on this thread with similar reasoning for "No pain, no gain" mentality. It is always YOUR fault for not understanding how the game works, and then it is proposed you just kill yourself for not being able to accept and cope properly. Try again, try harder.
There are probably many reasons people desire dependents. And in nearly all cases, I would say that the acquisition of a dependent is the result of impulse, rarely is it founded securely on solid rationale and well-thought-out reason. I'm quite confident most people are on autopilot nearly all the time.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't know if it's that simple. Young women seem to have an insatiable desire to procreate. I cannot think of one young woman that is totally put off from the thought of giving birth. The feminine is more immediate than the masculine, so it does not consider the course of history in its desire to procreate. The masculine has a stronger affinity towards the historical and speculative, but the feminine has the power to draw the masculine into immediacy. Translated, men want what women have, and to get it, they ultimately must give the woman what she wants, and what does the woman want more than anything else.... a baby. It's all part of God's sick plan.
True enough.. I actually think philosophical pessimism can be a communal catharsis for helping cope with suffering. Bitch away, bitch away, bitch away.. Just don't blow smoke up my ass by accepting the situation. Everyone has their own sufferings and death by a thousand cuts...
Right! Remember Fightclub:
Yep, I suspect in a lot of cases you are right. Cultural habits and expectations instilled, without much reflection for why they hold these expectations, why society might be perpetuating them, how they are being influenced by them and perhaps manipulated by it.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I can and have met some. It's not an instinct as much as a cultural expectation and a personal feeling of losing out on the "caregiving of my genetic offspring" experience. I don't equate that with other animals that procreate more because "It's that time of the season" and then go into immediate caregiving mode, literally without reflection due to inability to do so and deliberate on the matter like a human can.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Interesting.. Not sure it always works like that. I've heard of the man wanting a child and the woman being lukewarm but willing to go along with it. I can certainly see it going that way a lot of the time though, but that may be more a product of culture. Do you have strong evidence that women are "immediate" and men are "speculative".. These sound like really stereotypical tropes more than reasoned or empirical claims.
Ha, well I didn't want to state it that dramatically. That is more to wear the person's identity down. But the sentiment may be similar. The theme being that we are all born here and suffer. Let us look at the situation for what it is and not constantly gaslight it into your non-acceptance is the reason you suffer. No, life is about suffering and then coping with it. That in itself should be examined as to whether this is good in the first place, not gaslighted and then robotically overlooked for the next generation, and the next, etc. as if this answer is then an excuse to keep perpetuating the situation.. oh see. I can create life with suffering, because you see if they don't like it, it will be their fault.. You see what is happening here?
I have known many women, young and old, who do not, and have not, desired children. I know many men that have.
Do you even read my posts? I said the same thing in response to him.
Totally the case.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I would imagine that such women would be quite undesirable from the superficial man's perspective, but that is not important.
Perhaps you are right, that it is a part of aquired conditioning from an historically embedded culture, but I don't see women giving off that impression. But I cannot ignore that women are tightly engaged with their immediacy, and being that every normal young woman possesses the capacity to procreate, the right to bear progeny is immediately justified for each woman, justified apriori and without reason. The idea of caregiving is merely antecedent to having the baby, it is built into the charm of child bearing for the woman.
Ok fine. I blame women for everything, responsible for Hitler and sunsets alike.
What's wrong with stereotyping, it helps to weed out the hypersensitives (ironically, the most stereotypical people that exist, fuck em).
Quoting Book273
Yeah I've known men that have too. And any women that I've ever met that were hardlined about not having children ever, I can't remember. Though I'm quite certain, they were probably either ugly, or fucked in the head, or old and expired.
Right on!
It is a dire situation. Generation after generation passing on a gradually declining ethos. Do you really think such a monumental thing can be overcome, and in a single generation? I don't know, kinda seems like wishful thinking. I think it's better to accept that humanity will ultimately consume itself, then mock it all for its incorrigible stupity.
I do have evidence, but nothing statistical if that is what you require. But you can find out yourself by simply talking to men and women. Just ask them about babies, and you will see a contrast. Show them a baby and you will really understand what I mean.
You forgot to make popcorn while you watch the show. Of course humanity will consume itself, it consumes everything else and is nondiscriminatory that way.
You're right, popcorn will make it better.
That is a good point you bring up. How is it that people are guilty of the most heinous discrimination in every matter of life, but are completely nondiscriminatory when it comes to the question of how best to live? Maybe the best way to live is to set up the subsequent generation for failure. Why not?
Clear as mud. We aren't setting up future generations for failure so much as guaranteeing we cannot succeed ourselves. Enjoy the show.
It doesn’t prevent suffering. It prevents birth. It prevents life. But no, it doesn’t present suffering any more than cutting your thumb off prevents a thumbnail.
I never stated that you stated how noble people are for not procreating. The false attribution is yours.
I guess you could play a video game with all items unlocked, infinite health, ammo, etc. and still find some entertainment value from just going around and following the storyline. But would you really? I wouldn't call existence good or bad in comparison to some unknown construct made up on the spot just for sake of debate, it's simply "what is". What is your ideal reality you describe like exactly? No pain? I wouldn't be able to tell if I'm carrying too much or exposed to too much heat until my arms snap or flesh singes? Or would that just not happen and we'd all be supermen. Or just magically healed shortly after? If we're all super than technically no one would be. What about becoming trapped somewhere? Can we teleport out? Boredom? We'd all just be insanely fascinated by the slightest thing like a drop of water dripping from a faucet or some inllectual way like how paint drying actually is pretty interesting scientifically? How would this work?
Is the choice necessarily a presumption? Much generation happens without a lot of consideration. Some happens with care and the responsibility to do what one can to help.
Your position does not distinguish between different forms of life in this regard. We are all just bunnies fucking in order for the species to survive whatever is above them in the food chain.
That can't be right though; a utopis that no one can experience is not a utopia at all.
This is almost trivially disproven. A utopia that is reached without any measure of tyranny certainly does not violate any law of logic, and it also does not violate any law of physics. So already the idea is both logically and physically possible, and I would be willing to argue that it violates no other laws of any other kind either. So I'm quite comfortable with asserting that the idea is possible in every sense of that term. Saying that utopia "necessarily" requires tyranny of some kind is surely incorrect.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Of course it isn't, the idea is perfectly plausible. Furthermore, thinking about how we might get there can and does have very many interesting applications to current scientific research (just consider the current work being done in AI, futurology, the SENS Foundation, etc. Almost all of the work strives toward the utopian future). To say that it is "totally absurd" is obviously false and can be empirically disproven with ease.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
To you maybe, but not to me. I believe that such a state would be far more exciting than our current state.
It's a bit difficult to discern an actual argument here, but you seem to be saying that utopia will never be achieved in the future because it has not already been achieved. But this is obviously fallacious reasoning. It would be like if someone living in the year 1968 had said "Humans walking on the moon is a pipe dream. If this were really possible, we would have already done it." Or it would be like if someone living prior to the 1950's said "A vaccine for polio is a pipe dream. If such a thing were possible, we would have discovered it already."
The mere fact that something has yet to happen does not at all demonstrate that that thing is a pipe dream.
It prevents suffering because it prevents birth. You are implying that this is drastic. The trillions of unborn babies not being born is not drastic. Cutting off a thumb to prevent a thumbnail (which doesn't even make sense) is drastic, yes.
I don't know what that would look like, but it's not this one. The fact that I can "know" and compare states of affairs of this world with possible other ones is enough. I don't need those other words as a possibilities. But using my imagination hmm..
There can be universes that you can dial in as much pain as you want and leave it if you don't want it anymore. Thus enough pain to make a work out good, and games and such, but then turn it off when you don't want that anymore.
There can be universes where you don't need any dips in anything to have joy. Joy just comes from being alive, but you are also fully aware and intelligent of anything in this world but without the need for "No pain, no gain" coping mechanisms that we try to tell ourselves is necessary because.. well, do we have any other choice?! There is pain.. and there is positive psychology that can come from the fact that it isn't going anywhere. Thus we NEED the pain....
I mentioned a long time ago real utopia is actually something like having no desire whatsoever. This is something akin to nirvana. It would an existence of complete wholeness or nothingness.
Also, your little revisionism discounts real suffering. Suffering that is just pain but with no joy that comes from it other than getting out of the pain. You just want to get through it.
That isn't my position. I am not sure where you are getting that based on my response. What do you mean what one can to help?
I’m not implying it’s drastic. In fact, insofar as anti-natalism involves no one but the one practicing it, I think it is completely mild. I’m implying that preventing life in order to prevent suffering is nonsensical. It suspiciously leaves out other aspects of the human condition. You’d deny the entire gamut of human experience so as to avoid one degree of it. Someone could just as easily come along and say that you’re preventing joy and laughter and love. I just think it’s a stupid argument, almost a fallacy of composition.
The anti-natalist should be honest and admit that his principles are born from fear, not virtue. Only then could he ever hope to grapple with them. After all, as an ethic, anti-natalism turns out to be little more than a principle of self-concern.
Quoting NOS4A2
And this is not unusual. When an experience can harm someone we don't do it, even if it can benefit them as well. I'm pretty sure you'd object if I used your money to buy you a new house because I thought you would like it without asking you. Even though there is a chance you like the house.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'd call "fear of harming others" responsibility.
I understand your position to be that our form of life as humans should come to an end because it involves bringing suffering to sequential generations. We are responsible for their suffering by giving birth to them.
Whatever merit that argument has in pointing out what is in each of our control or not, it has no room to distinguish different ways to be a parent or promote institutions that build up those new people. Standing outside of those concerns is its own kind of irresponsibility. If the most important matter becomes proving that all reproduction is ultimately guilty of inflicting risk to future generations, it cannot be important that one family nourishes what another spoils or that education builds up or breaks down persons.
And those issues are what is important to those who bring new people into the world.
But who says promoting these institutions is even ethical? It is forcing a way of life on a person and then hoping that enculturation will make people "appreciate" these was of life thus forced.
Also, if it is past the debate about birth, then this is circular logic as the person is bypassing the very debate antinatalism is about, thus presuming exactly a position antinatalism is trying to debate in the first place.
As the OP states, there's a raging pandemic going on causing mass suffering. How does that not cause pause? But even the more mundane wanting to see someone play the game of life, is ultimately just playing a game of hot potato. Now a new person has to deal with life. Deal with all the things. All the things. All the things. All the things. All the things. All the things. All the things.
No pain will ensue. No dealing with overcoming will ensue. So you don't get to see someone have to deal with overcoming and maneuvering the institutions of a certain way of life.. So what? Why is that moral to want that for someone else?
If I even gave you one instance of overcoming something you really didn't want to deal with, it wouldn't be justified for me to do. If I give you a whole life time of known and unknown dealing withs.. everything from traffic to deadly pandemics. .That certainly isn't justified on someone else's behalf.
My responses may be circular in the way you describe. But you are calling for the end of human beings. Should that be ultimately decided by those human beings agreeing to a moral code where the cessation is required?
How is that less authoritarian than whatever you oppose?
But it's not forced. I never said it should be a view forced on people. Thus, they are not "deciding it". It's up to people's own individual decision. I don't advocate for such a controversial position to be law. Same as abortion, veganism, etc. etc.
Quoting Valentinus
For reasons explained above. It seems more authoritarian though to want to see people maneuver through life's institutions and believe that you have the "magic formula" to make this gamble a worth it for someone else.
But the idea of responsibility is based upon what people should do or not. It is authoritative by default, for better and worse.
That's what matters.
Quoting Valentinus
Ok, but I am not sure what you are getting at. If people looked to the authority of antinatalism, then that is what they do. You cannot say that antinatalists are dictating things though. Rather, people who agree with antinatalism are making decisions to not affect another person.
If this moral imperative is accepted as necessary, there can only be two groups. One calls for the suicide of the species while the other does not. The only people who would consider the argument take the work of parenting seriously. If the only people taking responsibility for reproduction do not reproduce, the only people having children will be those who decline to agree with the principle.
Without the power to change behavior, the whole idea is a dream.
Actually, no. I am saying that utopia will never be achieved because Utopia is unachievable. The concept of utopia is different for each person, therefore, since there are, roughly, 8 billion versions of it, to establish a state in which everyone is experiencing utopia is, in essence impossible. If we consider Utopia to simply be a lack of suffering and strife, then death, or a very drugged state could be considered as having achieved a utopian state. However, as my version of utopia, or heaven, if you will, is far different than the version espoused by my fellow man, or mentioned in any of the religious books I have read, or heard tell of. It has not happened yet, en masse, because it cannot. I believe it has happened individually, and there it will remain, an individual achievement.
Indeed.