"Antinatalism Transcended (a.k.a. Antinatalist Tomfoolery)", LudditeReturns
"Vloggerdome: Efilist ...video #2", InMendham
"Re Antinatalism Transcended (a.k.a. Antinatalist Tomfoolery)", mymiseryandme
mymiseryandme's notes:
00:15 is the
"act of bringing a child into being ... an act of murder"?
the act of bringing a child into
being entails all the harms which will eventually befall that particular child.
So while it cannot be presumed that every child who is brought into existence
will be murdered, it is certainly true that those children/adults who do end
their existence through murder can trace that end to their initial birth. The
point being made with this analogy is that birth entails suffering and death.
So any potential parent who considers having a child should take into account
the pitfalls of that process, namely the harms that will be brought upon any
potential person should they be imposed into existence.
00:25 you say that the act of having a child does
not "quite manifestly fall within" the boundaries of murder.:: This
just seems like a semantics game. Instead of trying to analyse whether
procreation means murder on a definitional level, we should instead be thinking
about the consequences of procreation, which in some instances, does lead to
the child/adult being murdered. Once we acknowledge that murder takes place in
society, and accept that procreation does in fact encompass all the eventual
harms which may eventually befall a particular person, it is reasonable to
conclude that murder falls within the act of procreation or is at least linked
to it in a causal fashion.
·
You say this is “nothing more than shoddy
antinatalist emotionalism, nothing more than disgusting rhetoric”.:: Murder,
rape, torture, child abuse, war, famine, disease, all of these harms are part
and parcel of the fabric of the reality which we inhabit. Trying to point these
aspects of existence as being of a fundamentally negative character and
therefore problematic, and asking potential procreators to provide a rational
justification for imposing a person into this life where they may eventually
end up becoming victims of murder or rape, is not mere ‘antinatalist emotionalism’ nor ‘disgusting
rhetoric’, as you put it. It is at the very least a reasonable request.
00:40 You say “suffering has no value”. You say,
this is echoing Nietzsche that “there are no moral phenomenon, only the moral
interpretation of phenomenon”.:: I have to vehemently disagree with this
statement. Suffering is an intrinsically negative, bad, unpleasant,
discomforting, horrific phenomenon, depending on the nature and degree of the
experience. When I look at a zebra being shredded to pieces by a pack of hyenas
or a child dying of cancer in a hospital ward, or a soldier on a battlefield
slowing bleeding to death because his legs and arms have been blown off, my personal
knowledge of suffering and pain tells me that those sentient beings are in a
decidedly negative state and I would not want to be in their position for no
good reason.
01:15 re determinism, you say that you have this
“intuitive” sense that “I’ve done action A but I could’ve done action B” which
“determinism denies”.:: Determinism simply states that all of our actions
(including thoughts and behaviour) are the result of physical events occurring
in the brain. So your “intuitive” sense (vague word) that you have made a
choice (such as choosing A over B) is just that, an illusion or sense of making
a choice. There is no contradiction here. The human being acts according to
electrical impulses generated by the brain. The individual human beings’ sense
that they are making choices is just part of the illusory theatre of experience
which the brain generates for the purpose of getting the individual human to
behave in a way that aids its survival.
02:00 You say that we are “attributing value as a
kind of super imposition on a reality that isn’t there”. No, the reality
consists of sentient beings which can suffer. What we are doing here is simply
recognizing that sentient beings exist in this universe, on this planet as
discreet objects, and one of their properties is being able to feel
positive/negative sensations. We are saying that the experience of these
negative sensations is significant in that they are something to be avoided if
possible.
02:10 “value as a transperspectival property”:: I
think you have to stop seeing value as something that is imposed on this
phenomenological reality by the subjective emotive human brain. Instead you
have to see value as something that is discerned or extracted out of reality by
the rational part of the brain. When we say “suffering has value”, albeit
negative value (since it is a liability and not a benefit), we are simply using
our brains to look at the world around us, identify objects and put them in
categories, and making a hierarchical
list of the most important to the least important. We are saying that suffering
is the most important thing that exists in this universe because of the sheer negative
qualitative weight of the experience of suffering. Just imagine what it would
feel like to be tortured. It would be a horrific experience and none of us
would willingly subject ourselves to that experience. This shows that suffering
(intense pain) isn’t something to be messed with. You wouldn’t impose it on
somebody unless you had a good reason, if you are a rational ethical person. It
is important to make the distinction between conferring value and recognizing
value. A person confers value onto some object because they personally like it.
But a person recognizes value by using their brain to draw out from this
reality what seems to have the most significance/weight.
02:15 “suffering is only valuable insofar it is
valued by a valuator”:: why don’t we look at it this way. It is true that only
humans can make value judgements in this universe because only we are endowed
with a rational brain capable of making such value judgments, as far as we
know. However, this does not imply that suffering ceases to be a
negative/bad/unpleasant phenomenon when there is no human person around to
judge an instance of said suffering. Before humans came around on the scene,
there were billions of sentient animals who lived and died on this planet. And
a lot of them “suffered”, meaning they underwent horrific states of agony as
they were tearing each other apart to fulfil their dietary requirements and
territorial fighting. Is this not a “self-evident” fact? When the dinosaurs
were killing each other, were they not inflicting horrific pain/misery on each
other in the process? So suffering (a negative phenomenon) was still being
manifested on this planet even though, as you say, there weren’t any
“valuators” around to explicitly make that value judgment.
02:30 “there is no objective ought that the
antinatalist can appeal to” because suffering is a subjective value judgment::
as I have tried to demonstrate above, suffering is an inherently bad, negative,
unpleasant experience. You don’t need a human being around to validate the
negative quality of suffering. The human being simply recognizes the negative
quality of suffering, that is, the human being shows up, and says, yup,
suffering is a negative and puts it in a separate category called “negative,
bad, unpleasant” to distinguish it from positive pleasurable phenomenological
experiences. Given that suffering is intrinsically negative, the rational human
being will then endeavour to act in a way that eliminates or minimizes
instances of said suffering. You don’t even have to be an antinatalist to
concede that we do this and have been doing this for millennia, just look at
our attempts to cure disease, build bridges and generally engage in attempts to
alleviate the quality of life of human beings and other sentient beings (let’s
leave aside exploitation through capitalism, for the present moment). So how do
we get an “ought” from an “is”? If we accept that suffering is an inherently
negative/bad/unpleasant phenomenon, and I’ve tried to show how that is the
case, then the rational next step would be to find ways to eliminate or
mitigate instances of said suffering. The antinatalist is simply saying that
since life is futile and there is no need for sentient beings to exist in this
universe, the best solution to the problem of sentient suffering is to not
create sentient beings and impose them into this existence where they will be
exposed to risks of suffering and certainty of death. It seems irrational to
create a sentient creature which can be harmed without having a good reason.
Trying to alleviate the suffering of sentient creatures once they are imposed
into existence, while a worthwhile goal, seems like a waste of effort when the
simpler solution is to not create such harmable vulnerable creatures in the
first place.
02:40 “there is no value in objective reality
that the antinatalist can appeal to”:: value is a word we are using to describe
something in reality that is “precious”, “significant”, “expensive”, “costly”.
Again, we are not “imposing” a subjective personal conception of value onto
reality. We are simply saying that the only thing which a rational mind can
discern as possessing the traits of “preciousness”, “significance”,
“expensivenes” and “costliness” is the suffering (negative sensate experience,
i.e. qualia) manifested in the consciousness of sentient beings. Just imagine
someone slowly sticking a knife in your gut and moving it to and fro. The sheer
magnitude of that negative horrible experience is hard to digest. We are saying
that such phenomenological experiences are “costly”, “expensive”, “significant”
and shouldn’t be trifled with. This is all we’re saying. It’s a simple but
profoundly important point.
02:50 re “physicalist theory of reality”:: I just
don’t see how physicalism or materialism precludes 1) the recognition of
consciousness as a phenomenon tied to the neurology of sentient beings and 2)
the recognition of the qualitative difference between suffering and pleasure.
In a material physical deterministic world, that is, in this very reality which
we inhabit, there are arrangements of matter-energy which have the property of
consciousness (sentient creatures) and one property of consciousness is the
capacity to manifest positive/negative sensations, which are “felt” and
“experienced” by the individual sentient being. In this universe, in this reality,
on this planet, there are living things which we have identified under the name
“sentience” which have this capacity to feel pain/pleasure. This is an
objective description of the physical material world of which we are a part. This
description contains within it an account of consciousness as an integral part
of those sentient creatures which have the neurology to manifest it. So there
is no contradiction between saying that consciousness exists in this universe
and is tied to the neurology which makes up sentient creatures, and that
suffering is an inherently negative phenomenon experienced by said sentient
creatures.
03:00 “value is kind of like numbers, numbers do
not exist in some abstract realm, right?”:: But sentient creatures do exist in
this physical universe, right? It’s not an abstraction to say that sentient
creatures exist on planet Earth, and sentient creatures can suffer or be
harmed. If I see a dog limping with a broken leg, it is not an abstraction to
say that this particular dog is in pain and in need of comfort. The dog exists
in this universe and it is in pain, i.e. in a negative unpleasant bad
experiential state.
03:20 re nature is broken, you say such a
statement is made “only within the context or boundaries of a value and thereby
says more about the evaluator than it does anything about nature”:: The
statement ‘nature is broken’ is a rhetorical device used to get people to see
the problems in nature. Humans possess a rational brain. This brain makes
judgments all the time. It evaluates data it receives from the body’s senses
and makes calculations designed to put the organism into a better feeling
state. But our human brain is a little more sophisticated that our animal
counterparts. We can using this evaluative machinery and apply it to other
processes as well. Sure, nature does not have a brain and cannot judge. Nature
is neither evil nor good. But we can judge nature because we have a brain to do
the judging, in fact, in some ways it could be argued that we cannot help but
judge nature. The point we are trying to make here is that we should use our
brain and judge and make sure that are judgments are informed and not based on
ignorance, and they are reasonable and not based on bigotry. The
antinatalist/efilist is saying that the process of nature produces outcomes
that are inherently destructive, wasteful and unnecessary. Nature (the DNA
molecule combined with the process of evolution, in particular) created a
sentient creature which can suffer. Nature is reckless. It is not an intelligent
designer, nor does it have any ethics. So even though we cannot “blame” nature
for creating a lot of suffering and misery, we can certainly recognize that
nature does in fact create suffering and misery. And since we can make this
recognition and we have the capacity to do something to alleviate or eliminate
instances of said suffering and misery, which we find in nature or which owe
their origins to nature, we do something about it, to “fix” it, as it were. Evidence
for such attempts at fixing or treating the conditions we find in nature can be
found in our attempts to develop vaccines to get rid of diseases, for instance.
Why did we do that? Because we recognized that such diseases were a problem
because of the suffering they wrought on particular sentient beings and took
steps to mitigate it. To say that “nature is broken” is simply a shorthanded
way of stating the obvious:: the products of the natural process are going to
work to an inefficient standard because they were designed by a crude and unintelligent
mechanism (a replicating DNA molecule combined with evolution by natural
selection). To say that “nature is broken” is to emphasize that if life was
engineered by an intelligent creator, it would have been done so in a way that
did not engendered unnecessary waste, inefficiency, even callousness. No
intelligent rational ethical creator would have created the wasteful spectacle
that we see everyday where billions of sentient creatures are chewed up to
propagate a replicating piece of chemistry and for no worthwhile rational end.
Hence “nature is broken”.
03:35 re life is futile; says less about life
than an individual subjective response to life:: first, let’s look at the
statement “life is futile”. Is this a true statement or a false statement about
life? Before we do that, let us define “life” so there is no confusion here.
When I use the word “life”, I am using that word to explicitly refer to all
those things in existence which owe their origins to abiogenesis (replicating
DNA-molecule) and which have the properties of consumption and reproduction. So
any ‘thing’ in reality whose origins can be traced to that single first event
(abiogenesis) and which displays the properties of consumption (taking in
nutrients from the surrounding environment as dictated by its genetic code) and
reproduction (making a copy of itself either through the process of asexual or
sexual reproduction) is called “life”. I am not using the word “life” to refer
to a subjective individual human person’s appraisal of his or her life
experiences. That is, I am not using the word “life” in a colloquial sense to
refer to what you and I may say about our personal lives, whether it’s good or
bad, meaningful or unfulfilling, etc. I am using “life” in an explicit
scientific sense to refer to things that exist in reality which have certain
properties, namely consumption and reproduction, as dictated by the relevant
DNA molecule. Having defined “life”, let’s now analyse the statement “life is
futile” to determine whether it is true or false. Now “life”, meaning all the
things on this planet which have the properties of consumption and reproduction
and which owe their existence to abiogenesis and evolution is the product of a process
(DNA replication and evolution) that does not have any rational goal in sight. Life
is allowed to evolve simply because there are enough nutrients in the
environment to facilitate its growth and expansion. When the nutrients needed
to sustain and maintain this growth is exhausted, life will cease to exist. A process
which starts off in an unintentioned way and evolves through an undirected
mechanism with no goal in mind is purposeless. Life, meaning all the things
which have the properties of consumption and replication, does not have a
purpose. The things that have evolved, are evolving and will evolve into the
future are all doing so only because the environment facilitates this process.
It is set in motion by a DNA molecule whose sole function is replication for
the sake of replication. Hence, life, its product, is purposeless, futile. If
there was some kind of rational mission statement to be served by this process
of replication and evolution, then you could say that life had that particular
purpose. But since there is no such mission statement, and since life is like a
virus that infests and exploits the environmental resources simply to replicate
and grow with no other objective in mind, it is futile. We can, therefore,
conclude that the statement “life is futile” is an objective and true
description of the state of affairs of the things in existence on this planet
which have the properties of consumption and reproduction, and whose origins
can be traced to a replicating DNA molecule.
·
Your next point was that when we say “life is
futile”, it is referring to “an individual subjective response to life”. As I
mentioned above, when I use the word “life”, I am using it in an explicit
scientific sense to refer to those things in reality which have the properties
of consumption and reproduction, and NOT to an individual’s subjective
assessment of the quality of his or her life.
03:40 “life is only futile for those individuals
who are seeking some sense of meaning or purpose or validation external to the
boundaries of life, that is, as Nietzsche would say, for those still living in
the shadows of a dead god”:: I think I dealt with this point in my previous
response to you, but I’ll go over it again. What you are referring to here,
namely the sense of despair that comes about when one searches for meaning or
purpose in life and finds none therein, usually comes under the term
“existential angst”. While existential angst is a problem – a very real one
that can befall any rational thinking person who has to confront the fact that
life does not indeed have any meaning or purpose built into it – can cause a
lot of depression, angst and misery in its own right, which are forms of
suffering, to me, and perhaps to other antinatlists/efilists, the bigger
problem is that it is hard to honestly subject yourself to a process that exists
merely to further a replicating DNA molecule. Whatever personal meaning or
purpose I give to my own life is not going to change the fact that I am simply
a vessel to propagate a gene. When I factor into this recognition of futility
the acknowledgement that my existence also comes at an enormous cost, both to
myself in terms of the amount of effort and energy needed to sustain my life
and perhaps obtain a modicum of comfort, and to the billions of other sentient
beings whose welfare will be impacted, either negatively or positively by what
I do, the problem of this wasteful sentient existence is only magnified.
Existential angst is a human problem that can cause a lot of despair, which is
another reason not to create a human person who may suffer in this way. But
suffering is not limited to existential angst, it also comes in more crude and
intense physical forms and emotional/mental torment as well. We have to,
therefore, put existential angst in perspective. It is only one of the myriad
of ways in which human beings can suffer. It also does not address the physical
and emotional suffering which all sentient beings can undergo. I would urge
people to see beyond this human-centric type of suffering and look at suffering
in all its forms.
·
Another point you make here is that this type of
existential suffering is only experienced by “those still living in the shadows
of a dead god”. I think people who suffer in this way are being honest to the
facts of reality. It is very condescending and belittling to characterize their
suffering like this. Perhaps they are honest enough not to want to delude
themselves into adopting some kind of fake purpose or meaning or write a neat
little fable for themselves to live in, a narrative that will shield them from
the disconcerting recognition that existence is a waste and their emotions
(love) are contrivances engineered by a crude piece of chemistry just so they
can propagate a gene. I think it would be more accurate to say that we are
living under the “shadows of a dumb DNA molecule”.
04:00 re “varying degrees of badness”:: In order
to understand this statement properly, you have to understand the mechanics of
the pain/pleasure system which drives the behaviour of sentient organisms. This
statement is not intended to reflect any particular person’s perception of
life, such as, a personal view that life is only made in shades of gray. It
refers to the mechanics of pain/pleasure. This can be illustrated as follows.
Every sentient creature imposed into life, that is, from the moment of its
birth, is placed in a negative state of need or deprivation. The clearest way
to visualize this is to imagine a baby crying when it enters the world. The
baby is immediately in need of comfort (food, protection) which the mother usually
provides. When the baby is provided food and protection, some of these needs
(for food and protection) get satiated, and along with the satiation comes
relief or pleasure, which is felt by the infant, such as when it is breastfed
or lies in the warm embrace of its mother’s arms. As this illustration demonstrates,
‘pleasure’ is what the baby (and sentient beings in general) experience when it
goes from a negative to a “less negative” state. The phrase “less negative” is
used to outline the fact that there is always a state which is more
satisfactory than the state one is currently engaged in. In other words, there
is no complete satiation of one’s needs and deprivations as sentient beings,
only levels of satiation, going from the most unsatisfactory up to levels of increasing
satisfaction. Negative -> less negative -> less less negative -> less
less less negative, and so on. While this conceptualization may seem crude on
its face, it works well to present the general point that in life there are
only varying levels of satisfaction or negativity or “badness”, and pleasure is
the sensation of relief we experience when we go from an unsatisfactory or
negative state to a less unsatisfactory or less negative state, and so on.
Therefore, to say that the statement “varying degrees of badness” refers to the
psychological perception of particular person’s (bleak) outlook on life is
false. The statement “varying degrees of badness” is intended to illustrate the
underlying mechanism of the pain/pleasure system which drive the behaviour of
sentient beings.
04:55 You say that anyone who says that life is
“varying degrees of badness” “bespeaks of a lack of empathy which swings both
ways, both to another suffering and to those things in an individual’s life
that for that individual render life something worthy of affirmation, even
despite of suffering or much suffering sometimes”. This statement can be
critiqued on two levels. First, as noted above, the statement that life is
“varying degrees of badness” or negativity or unsatisfaction is intended to
refer to the mechanics of how the pain/pleasure system in the sentient organism
functions. It is meant to be a scientific description of the underlying biological
workings of sentient organisms. It is not intended to be a personal bleak point
of view on life. So your characterization of this statement is flawed, a straw
man. Second, even if we accept that the statement life is “varying degrees of
badness” is a reflection of a particular individual’s personal psychology, albeit
a bleak one, it is still far from clear how this is an erroneous representation
of the reality of the lived experience of the average human. No one who has
lived, is alive and will live in the future experiences complete satisfaction
or contentment or nirvana or a state of bliss. People are always wanting more.
This shows that as long as we are alive and sentient, our lived everyday
experiences are always going to be agitated by levels of discomfort or
dissatisfaction. This perfectly accords with the statement that life is
“varying degrees of badness”.
05:00 “it bespeaks of a lack of empathy to engage
in this kind of qualitative parentalism, that is, taking one’s own experience
and attempting to super-impose it onto everyone else’s experience”:: Everyone
suffers. This is an undeniable fact. To acknowledge that suffering is an
intrinsic feature of sentient experience is not to engage in some kind of
psychological “projection”, as you seem to be suggesting here. Antinatalists
also do not deny that people can experience pleasure. The point we are trying
to make here is that suffering (need or deprivation) is the default state and
that pleasure is what you experience when you go from a negative to a less
negative state. It may well be the case that some of these movements upward
along this pain-pleasure arc may be accompanied by intense bouts of pleasure.
Just imagine what it would be like to go without food for days on end and then
come upon an oasis with fresh drinking water and plenty of sumptuous food
arranged on a table for you to eat. So it is wrong to say that antinatalists
deny the existence of pleasurable or positive sensations. We are simply trying
to accurately describe these positive sensations for what they are, that is,
built upon mountains of need/deprivation and frame their operation within an
evolutionary context.
05:20 “you’re duped by the DNA molecule”...
“rhetorical nonsense”:: what does it mean to say “you’re duped by the DNA
molecule”? This statement is rhetorical but it has value. It is intended to get
people to recognize that their needs, wants and desires are based on biological
and psychological programming by the DNA molecule. It does not imply that our
thoughts are dictated by these crude biological and psychological impulses
because we can indeed think in a way that is counter-productive to those biological
needs, wants and desires, even though it is our biological needs and desires which
motivate us all the time. So when we say, “you’re duped by the DNA molecule”,
we are trying to get people to see their biological needs and desires for what
they are – crude mechanisms developed by the DNA molecule and evolution to
create a sentient organism that will be driven by these needs and desires to
seek after their fulfilment, which in turn may promote survival behaviour and
thereby raisesthe chances of reproduction and propagation of the DNA code. So,
even though the statement “you’re duped by the DNA molecule” is a rhetorical
device, it is not “rhetorical nonsense”. It has a lot of rhetorical value that
is intended to promote a truth, namely that crude biological needs and desires
motive us as sentient beings, and we should use our thinking rational brains to
contextualize these drives and put them in place, so we are not “duped” or
“owned” by these biological mechanisms.
06:00 re addiction metaphor:: There is a
difference between thought and feeling. While both originate as the product of neuronal
interactions in the brain, the substance of thought is different in character
and value from the substance of feeling. All we’re doing here is asking people
to differentiate between these two processes of the brain. Thought that is
informed and rational can be used to contextualize, control and use feelings,
which are cruder in character. The human brain can think in a sophisticated way
because of its capacity to hold more symbols. It can make models of reality and
logically play with those models to create a coherent rational picture. The
addiction metaphor is simply a way to contextualize feelings, specifically the
needs and desires which animate sentient behaviour. We share these needs and
desires with other sentient organisms, though some of these have been refined
by human culture, which make them seem more elaborate, even though their
origins are fairly crude. For instance, two lions fighting each other for
territory can be easily translated to nations going to war over something as
simple as needing resources to sustain the health and wealth of its people. I
don’t see the addiction metaphor as being intended to deceive people into
accepting an inaccurate representation of our biological reality. It is meant
to convey the truth that we are driven by biological needs and desires, and
they are addictive in character.
06:15 re “better never to have been”:: why should
one sentient creature suffer so a thousand can live a relatively ‘normal’ life?
What right do you have to take the chance and procreate knowing there is a real
risk that the person you bring into existence will experience a lot of
suffering and who may regret being alive? Where is the justice for those so
imposed if all you can give in return is “why don’t you kill yourself”? If
there was some necessity to procreate because there was some need being served
by procreation and the existence of sentient beings, then you could say it is
reasonable to take the chance, even knowing that some brought into existence
will suffer horribly. But since there is no rational need to procreate and
there is no need being served by the continued existence of sentient beings, which
would include humans off course, then the decision to procreate is reckless at
best and sadistic at worst. David Benatar makes the claim that coming into
existence is always a harm, and this is a true rational statement. It is not an
emotive statement, such as yours: “to demand that because I got a bad shake, so
to speak, that the stars stop in their course” [07:35].
07:45 re “demand the penalization of those
responsible for my coming into being”:: Let’s think about this statement under
the conditions of present society. Imagine a couple who are thinking of getting
pregnant. One or the other of the prospective parents was told by their doctor
that if they decide to have a child, there is a 25 percent chance that the
child will be born with a debilitating genetic condition that will cause them
intense suffering during the first eight years of their life, after which the
child dies. Now, if this couple decide to go ahead with the pregnancy and
decide to have the child and the child ends up having this genetic condition,
is it reasonable for the child to sue their parents and seek some kind of
compensation? Why should that legal right not be adopted? What right do parents
have to place dice with someone else’s welfare?
07:50 re “eradication of the biosphere ... in
light of my own plight would express the height of selfishness. Any selfishness
embodied in the parent who would bring an entity into the world is multiplied
times a million in that individual”:: In these three instances, where we are
saying that it is not right to play dice with procreation because the suffering
of one does not make up for the ‘normal’ existence of a thousand, demand
penalization of parents for bringing someone into existence who feels imposed
upon and eradication of the biosphere, you are claiming that the people making
these claims are doing so out of ‘selfish’ reasons, such as the pain they personally
feel with life, or any dissatisfaction with existence. First, ask yourself the
question. Why are we saying that you should not procreate if there is a chance
that one in a thousand will suffer badly? If you accept that all of the
sentient beings imposed into existence have equal value, then why should one
person pay a heavy price so that the many can live a life that was not
necessary in the first place. The key here is the lack of need to create all of
these persons. None of them have to exist, the suffering one and the “normal”
many. If no one needs to come into existence, it seems unethical to procreate
knowing that one out of 10 or a hundred or a thousand will suffer horribly in
the process. But in the real world, we know that many more than just one out of
10 will suffer. And even the lives of those who are supposed to be ‘lucky’ are
also going to be infused with grief and harm of various kinds and intensities,
and death befalls them all. Considering all those facts – the lack of need to
create sentient beings, the negative quality of suffering and certainty of
death – any rational open-minded person would conclude that it is simply better
never to instigate this process through procreation in the first place, that it
is better never to have been.
08:30 re the “selfish fucking wildebeest”:: First
of all, a wildebeest does not have the intelligence to make the value judgment
that it is better never to have been. Heck, even many humans on this planet
right now don’t have the knowledge to make that value judgment as most are
still caught up in the god delusion. In order for the charge of selfishness to
be lifted from any person making the claim that it is “better never to have
been”, it is important to understand the context for that judgment. The
judgment “better never to have been” is a true judgment. However people can
make that judgment for the wrong reasons. Some may do it for personal reasons
(life has failed to live up to their goals), others may do it because their god
or fable failed to give them what they want. So even though people in these
instances are making a true judgment (better never to have been), their reasons
for doing so are personal, and in some sense, ‘selfish’. And it would be unjust
for these people to claim that the world should end simply because life has
failed to live up to their personal expectations or has imposed unjust
suffering on them. It may well be the case that these very same people who
lament their own personal existence can nonetheless validate the existence of
someone else they envy or look up to. So it would be similarly wrong for me or
any other antinatalist to claim that the world should end simply because we
feel like life has not worked out for us personally or we feel like we’ve been
given the short end of a stick. If I said the world should end because I
personally hate my life, that would indeed be ridiculous. So even though my
conclusion that the world should end is a true conclusion, my reasons are false
or less than credible. I guess this goes to a question of credibility. Are we
saying the world should end for logical rational reasons or are we saying the
world should end because of personal ‘selfish’ reasons? As I’ve endeavoured to
demonstrate, the reason the world, and specifically the sentient life on this
planet, should cease to exist is because sentient beings suffer and suffering
is an intrinsically negative experience. And since there is no need for
sentient beings to exist, all things being equal it would be better that they
did not exist, as this will remove the unnecessary suffering and death that is
being manifested in this universe and on this planet. This is a logical reason.
It is reason that is based on a true appraisal of the facts of life. It applies
whether there are humans around to make the judgment that it is better never to
have been or not. Even before Benatar wrote his book, even before human
civilization began to develop, even before humans began to draw pictures on
rock caves, the statement “better never to have been” is true and applicable to
the conditions of life on planet Earth because there were sentient beings
around (like dinosaurs, for instance) which suffered and died for no good
reason. So this accusation of selfishness should be cast aside, as our reasons for
wanting the world to end is ultimately grounded in the ethical goal to end
unnecessary suffering and death.
·
Another point I would like to make about
“selfishness” is that you do need to be personally motivated to advocate for
any political or civil cause. I suspect that people who advocate for
antinatalism have a personal incentive to see life ceasing to exist as this
would prevent future people from being imposed into life who would similarly
find it intolerable and be in the same predicament as they currently find
themselves in. It could be conceded that anyone who has advocated for any
political cause has had a personal “selfish” reason to see it through. So if
you are going to charge antinatalists with selfishness, then you should
characterize every person who has fought for every civil and political struggle
with that description as well.
09:00 “the aversion to death in the antinatalist
seems a bit strange to me”:: I think you should differentiate between the
process of dying and the state of death or non-existence. It is the process of
dying which is loathsome as most sentient beings will die in painful ways. This
is what needs to be feared and addressed, such as through the provision of
readily available euthanasia to anyone who desires. Death and non-existence is
not painful at all since no one literally exists to suffer and feel pain.
09:40 “again not the process of dying but death
itself”:: this is a strawman. I don’t think antinatalists are saying the state
of death or non-existence is to be lamented. It is impossible to lament a state
in which no suffering takes place. It is the process of dying which engenders
much unnecessary suffering and is yet another reason why coming into existence
is always a harm, and much considerable harm at that, as most sentient beings who come into existence will
die horribly and painfully.
09:50 “love can have a redeeming effect”::
perhaps, but only to those brought into existence and never to those who are not
brought into existence. Love stands for “good feeling”, pleasure, comfort,
security, it has so many meanings. Love can also stand for jealousy,
possessiveness, rage. Love is not a good word as it can be interpreted in many
ways. Even if we concede that good feelings can take some of the pain away,
there was no need to create that pain in the first place, which is what happens
when someone procreates and imposes a sentient being into life. All of us
brought into existence will suffer and there was no need to bring us here. Love
is an inadequate temporary compensation for the harms that will befall us, and
many may not get to experience good feelings.
10:15 re love, “affective realm” &
phenomenology:: all that can be said here is that good feelings exist and bad
feelings exist. Deal with this: no one is deprived by not being brought into
existence. But everyone who is brought into existence will always suffer and
die, and there was no good reason to subject them to this process. Even if
love, family, other life affirmations take some of the pain away, there was no
need to create that pain in the first place. Also, most of the suffering that
takes place on this planet happens in nature, out there in the animal kingdom.
It doesn’t matter how much you love another person, how much meaning and
fulfilment your family gives to you, none of that is going to stop the horrors
that are taking place on this planet right now. Learn to think of the problem
of suffering as a problem that plagues sentience and not just human beings.
Also, love cannot cure cancer, no matter how hard you try.
12:00 does suffering have a redeeming quality?::
I will ask you to present this question to a child dying of cancer, someone
living with AIDS, or to a person on the edge of a bridge about to commit
suicide. Please, do ask them, will you: “does your suffering make you
stronger?”
