Anti-natalism is the philosophical value judgment that procreation is unethical or unjustifiable. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from making children. Some antinatalists consider coming into existence to always be a serious harm. Their views are not necessarily limited only to humans but may encompass all sentient creatures, arguing that coming into existence is a serious harm for sentient beings in general. There are various reasons why antinatalists believe human reproduction is problematic. The most common arguments for antinatalism include that life entails inevitable suffering, death is inevitable, and humans are born without their consent. Additionally, although some people may turn out to be happy, this is not guaranteed, so to procreate is to gamble with another person’s suffering. WIKIPEDIA
If you think, maybe for a few years, like 10-20 years, no one should make babies, and when things get better, we can continue, then you are not an anti-natalist. Anti-natalists believe that suffering will always be there and no one should be born EVER.
This photo was clicked by a friend, at Linnahall.
til im not an anti-natalists. I just think people should not have babies. I mean same with letting pets breed needlessly. anywho.
I immediately reject any theories that pretend to “know” what they are talking about. I mean WTF are they talking about here ? We have limited senses to sense this world and limited communication capabilities, that was built on top of our fear of death and suddenly these theories trying to claim they “know it all” and this is the “judgment”. WTF. Get off your high horse.
Nobody knows anything. We ALL are just dumb. World is too big to know.
I certainly like humus more than humans, so…
But seriously, anti-natalism sits on consequentialism as a hard to deny entailment. If you believe in consequentialism and utilitarianism, you’re basically there.
Is there a word for not believing in consequences ?
Hmm, not that I can think of offhand. Maybe something akin to existential nihilism or temporal nihilism.
Though, consequentialism isn’t belief in the existence of consequences, meaning events caused by an action, but rather belief that consequences are the way one judges a particular action’s moral quality. Other systems of determining moral quality are available.
While certainly don’t appreciate being born (and correct about life = suffering no gꝏd outweighing it in my case) , dœsn’t mean procreation inherently unethical (although true peops often have children for selfish reasons)
Tꝏk lꝏk at antinatalist subreddit some years ago (curiosity) , felt more like contempt for (women|children) disguised as philosophical stance . “Breeder” used lots there :
- Implies women’s primary functions producing children (cannot be any thing other) , reduces women to their capacity for pregnancy
- Implies all women “chuse” to have kids
- Derogatory word toward black women during slavery , where they were forced to have children that would later be sold into said slavery
Also don’t think demanding every one stop having children dœs anything to reduce inherent suffering that comes with being living organism
I think it is fine. No one should produce or raise children they do not want.
I still support our society focusing on improving the material conditions for every generation, new and old.
There should not be conflict there.
In a society whose official ideology is that “There is No Alternative”, antinatalism is basically a dressed up version of “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”.
It’s basically just lack of imagination. Doomerist defeatism.
I guess I’ve accepted it. Seeing how history has gone, and current US politics, your dependent are likely to be victims of war, slavery, diseases, or experimentation. I have to wonder what is the “good life” or pleasant? Like is it just taking drugs and having sex all the time? We can’t have endless creature comforts.
It’s just me life doesn’t have high highs but very low lows
I don’t want to die, but if I could un-exist like Marty McFly disappearing from a photograph I would choose it in an instant. I have a pretty privileged life but, even for me, if I try to honestly inventory my experience there appears to be more suffering than pleasure. I don’t think this is unfair or unnatural, I believe suffering is integral to being alive because it’s how organisms respond and adapt to a world that is constantly trying to dis-organize them. Basically you can’t have life without it, given the laws of physics.
I don’t think “humans are a virus” is correct because it’s a pejorative and I don’t think viruses or humans are inherently bad. If I was going to classify anything as bad it would be the capacity to suffer, which is so foundational it actually informs the concept of “bad” rather than they other way around. I think suffering also becomes more acute the more processing power you have. Unfortunately for Agent Smith, the “virus” is intelligence and the machines already caught it.
I admit my ideas are probably half-baked on this because I just don’t feel articulate or intelligent enough to describe it. All I have is my own experience. As far as I can see, it appears that more complex animals have a greater capacity for suffering than less complex ones. It seems that the mechanisms of suffering are “body stuff”, mainly nerves, and more complex organisms simply have more of those in more robust configurations. This might just be cope, because the alternative is horrific. As a kid I looked through a microscope and saw an entire world of rotifers and paramecia ripping each other apart, struggling for energy, and realized that if all organisms can experience the same “level” of suffering than we are truly in Hell. It was literally inconceivable.
I don’t care for the “antinatalist” label. I admit that suffering is hard to quantify and may be totally subjective. This is why I don’t mind what other people choose to believe. It’s none of my business. Based on my subjective experience I will not be doing so. Sometimes people pry into why I don’t have kids and I am forced to expose my beliefs. Suddenly, in their eyes, I become an evangelist. I’m not. They won’t engage with the notion of 'the non-existent mind". They constantly argue from the position of a hypothetical mind that chooses stuff. Eventually they think I’m suicidal because in their mind dying and non-existence are the same. They also get angry and insulted even though I’m leaving more resources for their own children by not having my own which, by their logic, should be good. So I just don’t bother. Do what you want. Maybe they are right.
I think suffering also becomes more acute the more processing power you have.
I think this is right. If you’re more sensitive, you learn more about your environment because you pay more attention to it, but you also perceive pain more intensely. That is why sensitivity is both a blessing and a curse.
Theoretical weakness:
Anti-natalism is a deeply pessimistic take on the possibilities of the human experience. Where, once, people looked to push the boundaries of humanity’s knowledge and experience (e.g. psychedelic drugs, space exploration, art movements, radical politics), this movement sees the scale as so heavily tipped towards suffering that the bit of joy and wonder we experience is not even worth it. Its calculus looks to me to be similar to Effective Altruism, because it measures all the suffering to come for the unborn as a greater infinity than all the good they will experience. It simply offers a different conclusion: instead of putting those at the top of the hierarchies in our world in charge reducing/ending suffering (a solution I supply disagree with), AN instead just wants life to end because reducing suffering enough can’t be done.
To me, this leaves no room for the possibility of changing the human experience for the better. If we’re just trying to do some accounting as to whether it’s worth having kids on a societal scale, couldn’t we make it worth it? Instead of extinction, why not try radically different ways of organizing society to get rid of the hierarchies that create most of our suffering? One lesson i take from the history i’ve been around for is that the status quo only lasts for so long.
Finally, the idea of unborn people not having consented to birth is odd. They do not exist, so they have no desires, needs, or ability to consent. We can equally say they don’t “consent” to non-existence and are stuck there until they are born. When life first came into existence in the universe, was consent involved?
Practical weakness:
If this movement ever goes beyond a purely voluntary movement, to the point of enacting policy or attempting to prevent births in any way, it will become monstrous very quickly. Every such program will face resistance and, without an anti-carceral component to the movement, will have governments (or roving mobs) criminalizing birth, sterilizing people, and destroying the infrastructure of child care. At their most extreme, “anti-natalist” movements could advocate for the murder of every single person on earth, because that would be the surest way of preventing birth. All of these things would multiply the suffering of everyone, but would be “justifiable” in their eyes because it would “prevent the suffering” of innumerable people to be born in the future. Would global nuclear war achieve their goal?
Basically Malthusian eco-fascism. Nobody should be forced to have kids, having kids is a huge commitment that should be reserved for those who want kids, but the “humans are the virus” crowd just play into reactionary hands and cede all control to those directly responsible for the worst excess.
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It’s far from oversimplified “eco-fascism” strawman. To illustrate this, I’ll start from this argument of yours:
that should be reserved for those who want kids
Notice your own phrasing, “those who want kids”. The subject behind predicate “wanting” isn’t the object being “wanted”, despite the very object being “wanted” being a living being that’ll be unable to revert this decision imposed unto them.
People often say about “wanting kids” as if they were talking about wanting some kind of material belonging.
Yes, they have no means to decide on the circumstances of their birth, and that’s part of the problem: they can’t choose, neither positively nor negatively, they’re dependent on other’s wills because they got no agency…
…until they reach a certain age, when they’ll suddenly be recognized with agency and then the world will shift the blame upon them: they’ll be required to become a cog in the machine, they’ll be required to “work” and “serve society” in order to fulfill the basic needs (eating food and seeking shelter to protect oneself from elements) that their own body imposed upon them as part of involuntary survival instincts, they’ll be required to “pay” for eating and having a shelter (things that Mother Nature used to give freely), and they’ll be required to accept it as a “matter of fact” of “living among society”.
They can’t opt-out because they’ll be forbidden to live among wildlife as our Homo erectus ancestors did because “we’re different species”.
This leads us to this:
the “humans are the virus” crowd just play into reactionary hands and cede all control to those directly responsible for the worst excess.
IMHO, the fundamentum behind capitalistic greed is human greed.
Billionaires and riches aren’t extraterrestrials nor lizards: as far as Science is concerned, they’re Homo sapiens, differing from the majority of other Homo sapiens insofar they got “enough power” to give agency to their greed.
“Give enough power to a person and you’ll know who they really are” (a popular saying) and “humans are wolves to humans” (Thomas Hobbes).
In this regard, there’s a documentary from Derren Brown called “The Push”. Despite being cinematographic, it precisely depicts what humans are capable of doing to other humans, especially when pressed by life-or-death circumstances. It’s within us.
Finally, I must recall the initial, ecological point: if humans can endanger others from their own species (as we watch daily in capitalist-technofeudalist dystopia), other lifeforms are undeniable under danger that’s posed by human existence.
That’s because humans can’t simply blend with the all other species as one with Mother Earth (just like our ancestors used to do millions of years ago), we humans got this anthropocentric arrogance since the accidental discovery of the fire: now we’re slowly burning ourselves (literally, with fossil fuels) together with all the other lifeforms.
All of the problems you posited are consequences of capitalism and imperialism, the environmental damages included. You’re shifting the blame from genuine systemic failures to humanity genetically. It cedes all responsibility to move onto a better world, preferring to give up and adopt an eco-fascist position.
Jesus Christ stop calling it eco-facism! This is not that. Anti-Natalism is not eco-facism. The person you replied to made excellent points.
No they didn’t, and yes, this is eco-fascism. Desiring omnicide of humanity for ecological reasons cedes all agency to the ruling class.
And all the fundamenta of capitalism and imperalism are consequences of how we humans are our own wolves. Again, billionaires aren’t extraterrestrials or lizards.
It cedes all responsibility to move onto a better world
Some things aren’t reversible. For example, the species that went extinct (some of which we won’t even know they existed because there wasn’t enough time for them to be catalogued by Science) due to “Industrial Revolution”.
A naïve part of me hopes for a better world, where humans could finally coexist with Mother Nature, while we could improve things for all biosphere through Science and Academia, a Science and an Academia detached from capitalistic greed, a sincere pursuit of knowledge and scientific improvement not just for humans, but for all lifeforms, letting go from all our human malice and greed.
However, I can’t help but notice how this is getting farther and farther to be reached as the world is increasingly technofeudalist. I can’t help but see reality as it is: bleak, with a bleaker future awaiting for us, as we get increasingly trapped into a dystopia where the majority of humans would be required to fight against the asymmetrical forces possessing nuclear warheads and real-time control of public opinions from social media.
Sorry if I’m overly realistic and I can’t gaslight myself into hoping for the best, because I’m past this point, I grew tired of hoping for better times as I watch powerless to the dystopia where I was compelled to exist.
My hope now relies beyond this Pale Blue Dot: some supernova within this cosmic vicinity of the Milky Way blasting insurmountable amounts of energy towards here (not enough to vaporize the Earth, but enough to vaporize the machine where we’re forced to be cogs), or some solar CME/flare, powerful enough to free us from ourselves.
And all the fundamenta of capitalism and imperalism are consequences of how we humans are our own wolves.
- It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. — Frederic Jameson
- It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of imperialism. — Daniel Bessner
Genetic determinism was historically grossly over-applied and is still over-applied in popular (pseudo-)science and in far-right politics.Biological determinism has been associated with movements in science and society including eugenics, scientific racism, and the debates around the heritability of IQ, the basis of sexual orientation, and evolutionary foundations of cooperation in sociobiology.
Where exactly am I saying it’s something to do with human ethnic origins? Where exactly am I nodding or advocating for eugenics or other bigoted concepts?
Because my point is about the innermost human nature, imbued within every human that ever existed, exists and will exist. When, for example, Thomas Hobbes says “Humans are wolves to humans”, he’s not saying about a specific race or gender, he’s talking about the Homo sapiens. All of us, since humans discovered fire and became “fearsome” to other lifeforms holding this warm thing we think we can control.
It goes with saying how the fact that there are bigoted people using this science to try and “validate” eugenics (and how there are bigoted people in the first place) is, ironically enough, another evidence of how humans are wolves to themselves. It’s like I said in a previous reply, billionaires (and far-right figures) aren’t extraterrestrials or lizards, they’re humans with enough power to let their evilness affect other humans. Given enough power, many other humans are likely to pave similar paths.
Yes, not everyone, the end of Derren Brown’s “The Push” documentary shows how there are situations where humans can end up not ceding to their impulses to harm others in order to save their own skin.
But even when we choose to do good and help others (and this includes caring for the wellbeing of the unborn so they don’t suffer the consequences of current humanity’s actions) despite our own wellbeing, our wolves are still there, lurking inside us, because it’s born with us.
This doesn’t invalidate “Homo homini lupus est”, just shows how we sometimes get to be less of a wolf. The first step is letting go of our antropocentrism, our way of seeing the whole cosmos as if it depended and was centered on us humans, and starting to see things anachronistically, beyond human existence, and realizing how we’re just a speck in this cosmic timeline, just wandering star dust.
You aren’t being realistic. Being pessimistic isn’t realism, again you attribute the problems of systems like capitalism and imperialism to humanity, but we know for a fact that tribal societies didn’t have such problems, and neither do socialist states as they exist today. You turn hatred of symptoms of capitalism and imperialism to humanity. It’s eco-fascism.
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You hate humans and don’t want to be called fascist? LMAO
I’m pro-veganism and pro-socialism, so we can move onto a more ethical and environmentally conscious mode of production. Wanting humanity to go extinct is just ecofascism.
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While tribal societies were indeed better insofar they were closer to Nature as today’s humanity, I can’t see a haven in today’s world.
I mean, yeah, things can be going better in, say, China, insofar (AFAIK) Chinese people haven’t to worry about having a shelter and enough food, because they’re not relegated to the whims of capital as we are in the West. I can sort of agree it’s the best we can have in terms of social welfare.
But even China is far from detached, for example, from consequences of climate change. We’ve seen how floods and typhoons and drought have been increasingly hitting the Chinese, because we all exist within the same cosmic boulder called Planet Earth so whatever is done here also affects there and vice-versa.
Even though China is moving more and more to green energy, the way West countries are still "drill baby drill"ing inexorably affects them as well. And also their future, and our future, everyone’s future and every future generations upon whom climate consequences will inexorably hit harder (not to say, for example, about the mess waiting to happen above our heads due to ever-increasing amount of satellites, the Kessler Syndrome, which will also affect us down here if things get beyond control up there).
A better world is neither easy nor impossible, but merely difficult. Your pessimism takes this to be impossible and just cedes all agency to those who would perpetuate the worst excesses when you yourself acknowledge that countries like the PRC are making massive strides forward. It’s better to get organized and try to move towards socialism than it is to say the battle is already lost and we are doomed.
This reply of mine is probably going to diverge a lot from the main subject, but you suggested that I should “get organized and try to move towards socialism”.
Politically speaking, I live in a country (Brazil) where we already have nice relations with PRC and a country that been trying to counteract the Global North through BRICS.
So, to a certain extent, there’s some effort in this regard from the current government in the country I was born in, but Brazil is still a marionette of USian interests since USA pulled Brazil to their side during Cold War (1964 Military Coup, orchestrated by USA).
And Brazilians themselves are politically divided, with a significant part of the country advocating for their own economic slavery (far-right). Partly because people are held captive by a system that conceals knowledge from them, making them too busy with the “rat race” alongside the panis et circensis, so they rely in out-of-the-shelf opinions without pondering broader. When I try to talk with those geographically around me trying to wake 'em up, it’s as if I was talking in Sumerian or Akkadian, anything but contemporary language.
Then, there’s the religious aspect, very strong around here. Brazil is highly christian, while I went to Left-hand Path (highly-personalized syncretic spirituality involving Luciferianism and other esoteric beliefs) a few years ago, quite the opposite… If I couldn’t “convince” people back when I was still a christian, it’s worse now while I’m literally worshiping their “enemy”. Can’t really belong to secularists, either, because I got a belief in the supernatural, even though my belief tries to consider scientific facts.
So I doubt I can “get organized”. My worldview is very atypical, I’m very atypical. In fact, I’m just nobody. You’re likely the second person this week suggesting I got some kind of power when I got none. I can’t even have power over myself, let alone over other people (and I don’t even want to).
While I do talk and participate in discussions regarding the sociopolitical, philosophical and the mundane sometimes, trying to understand and be understood, trying to share knowledge while also trying to learn, open to what I don’t know yet, deep inside I got extensively de-realized and depersonalized, accepting how even the whole cosmos will end someday (Big Freeze / Big Rip / Big Crunch / Big Bounce), and I can’t see purpose except beyond existence.
It’s not about “ceding agency to those who would perpetuate the worst excesses”, it’s just that I went too far into staring at the Darkness and seeing how cosmic existence is pointless and fleeting, so deeply that I can’t simply “unsee” and/or forget Her stare back at me, so everything became fleeting. It’s my inner battle that’s already lost, because ain’t no battle, no spoon, nothing but the nothingness… And my weirdness before others… And Nature, Moon, Earth and Cosmos as closest manifestations of Her principle.
life entails inevitable suffering, death is inevitable, and humans are born without their consent
Doesn’t that apply to all living beings? Wouldn’t that mean that the morally correct thing to do is to prevent all organisms from procreating, as it inevitably leads to more suffering?
If I could delete the universe, I would see no moral problem with it.
I think the future is bleak and procreation at this point is selfish. I’m not one to prescribe what other people can do, but even if I still could I would never have a child.
procreation at this point is selfish
i wonder what that means? What would a person personally get from procreating? I think barely anything. Then why would it be selfish?
I’ll respond to this because I’m a father and have observed a lot of things about other parents that I never noticed or paid attention to before becoming one. There are some seriously selfish-ass people who treat their kids like accessories or tea-cup dogs. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who treat their kids as franchises or property and view the kid in terms of ROI.
Some people only find value in themselves as mothers or fathers (“I’m the goddamn pater familias!”) where the role is often more important than the kids. While the act of parenting can be selfless, there is a performative element to it that takes over some people’s identities and personalities (clothing that advertises your “parent-ness,” name-brand clothing, chic and fashionable accessories, strollers that cost as much as a used car, humongous houses and baby suites, paying for full- or part-time help, excessively documenting “baby’s” life and sharing it widely beyond friends and family, et cetera and ad nauseam).
Now, there’s another take on selfishness I’ve picked up on from anti-natalist threads which is specifically tied to the concept of agency: a child has no agency regarding the circumstances of its birth. The fact that two people can intentionally (or even worse, unintentionally) choose to procreate is viewed as immensely selfish since it denies the created being of all choice. Parents often “want” to have a kid; but there is often no “need” (biological imperative notwithstanding). Hence, a selfish act.
Another expression of selfishness is that some parents cannot help themselves from creating clones. From birth, the kid is a reflection of the parents’ identity, interests, politics, hobbies, and media fandoms. The political or religious parts are especially disturbing—no kid has a valid opinion of the election and has no solid foundation for belief in a deity. Raising kids with values is one thing, but creating little mouthpieces that just repeat parents’ opinions is another. There is also the chance that a parent will try to live vicariously through their child and push them into sports or academics so that they can fix their mistakes or relive the past.
All said, some people make really shitty parents. And I don’t mean shitty people—there are lots of pleasant and thoughtful people who are fucking terrible caregivers. I think that some people felt too much social, cultural, or religious pressure to be honest with themselves and stay away from parenting. I think that nothing says selfish like knowing that you shouldn’t do something but do it anyway because you know that you will benefit from it in some way (financially, socially, etc.).
What would a person personally get from procreating?
A child?
You can look at this through the buddhist worldview:
After you die, you are going to be reborn in the world that you helped create. This could be a smile on another person’s face or a project you helped realize. Especially, also children are a large part of what you helped create, so in a certain sense, a part of you is going to be reborn into them.
Then, the question is, if you could be born again in the year 2030, would you choose to? Would you think such a life is worthwhile?
Answering such a question might give you a hint of what your children would want, if they could be asked.
Capitalists consider unemployed people dead weight.
A tree trunk is dead weight too and that’s what keeps the tree stable.
Same with society. A certain amount of dead weight actually provides benefits. It provides possibilities in case of urgencies and provides a stable environment in peace times.
It depends heavily. If youre choosing not to have kids because you think youre unable to provide a decent quality of life, or because you just dont feel the urge, or because you’re having too much fun looking after #1 then cool.
I accidentally stumbled into r/antinatalism once though, and their reasoning seems to be “too scared to kill myself. Life is suffering. Fuck your cumpet.” Which, you know, its hard to argue against but its not a reason that sits well with me.
cumpet
Yanno for movement that claims to prevent suffering of unborn children , they sure do have contempt for children
