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Bearbeitet von Verbatim:
11/22/2014 4:05:08 AM
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Anti-natalism
Because I'm in such a rabid mood tonight, I thought I'd try out another one of these threads to see what the new members think of this philosophy.
Anti-natalism is, in the simplest terms, the belief that all childbirth is wrong, from an ethical standpoint. To put it bluntly: Having kids is bad. This philosophy is predicated under the notion that life is an imposition--that is, it is something [i]imposed upon[/i] you. You did not [i]choose[/i] to be born; you were forced into existence by a biological process conducted by your parents, either intentionally or not, without your consent, which is the crux of the issue.
If birth was a choice, I'd have no problem with it, but because it isn't, we do have a problem. Giving birth is synonymous with giving somebody the capacity to feel pain and suffering--and I'm not talking about stubbing your toe or being insulted over the Internet; I'm talking about experiencing physical trauma, abuse, warfare. Cancer. [i]Ebola[/i]. Harlequin ichthyosis. That type of thing. Life is rife with strife, and the human race has been getting nowhere near any hope of stopping even a modicum of that suffering. The only ethical decision for us to make is to not have kids at all.
Yes, this means the human race will go extinct. But who cares? Really. We don't have any grand purpose here except to make a mess, and then clean it up. Make a mess, clean it up. Make a mess, clean it up. Make a mess, clean it up. That's all we've been doing for the last couple thousand years on this rock, and we've never come close to doing anything else meaningful, because there really isn't anything else we can do by nature. You might be happy with your life the way it is, but your own opinion on your own life really doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme, either, because it's all that you know. If my sister was swimming in a pool of shit and I said, "What the goddamn hell are you doing!? You're swimming in a pool of SHIT!" and she said, "Oh, no, it's fine! I'm having fun, see?" and she splashes around in it for awhile, am I supposed to be like, "Oh, okay!" and move along? Or should I perhaps do something more rational and pull her the hell out of the damn pool of shit because she's gonna get sick, among other things.
There's nothing we can do on this planet that could ever justify continuing our existence. Your petty desires, whatever they may be--seeing your grandchildren grow up, watching us land on Mars, seeing the next great video game console invented--these are all egocentric desires that have no intrinsic value and are not worth the truckloads of suffering incurred. Yes, for every one of your pleasures, at least one sentient being suffered for it. It's all over our culture. If you eat meat, you're kind of a piece of shit. I'm sorry if that bothers you, but it's just the truth. Torturing other organisms for your own pleasure will never be justifiable, and it's one of the larger reasons why the human race sucks and shouldn't continue. We're all just selfish assholes, to the core. And I'm not exempt from this criticism, either. I'm a vegan at heart, but I get temptations all the time, and I STILL cave in every once in awhile (I only just started veganism last month, so I'm still in a weak transition stage...).
But I digress. This, among many many other reasons which are obvious to me, but may not be for you, are reasons enough to stop the human race from reproducing. If I had the red button, the red button that would wipe out all life on Earth, I'd press it, no questions asked. No pain necessary; just a clean wipe. Everything's over. But until that button gets invented, which it never will, I can only hope that this philosophy catches on in the future and we can all just peacefully exist, having no kids, and just quietly dying off. As for the rest of the organisms on Earth, I'm really not sure what to do about them, but they appear to be millions of years away from achieving a level of consciousness tantamount to the human race, so I'm not sure if I should worry about them too much.
Oh, also, if you're a religious nut, you may as well skip this thread. I'm not gonna argue God with you people. In order to be an anti-natalist, you basically have to concede two things: that there is no god and that the theory of evolution is an accurate description of nature.
Thoughts?
English
#Offtopic
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3 AntwortenBearbeitet von Tosevite 187: 11/23/2014 7:19:14 AMWell you could argue that it is their choice as they once existed as two separate molecules the sperm and the egg. The sperm made the choice to fertilize the egg and the egg made the decision to implant itself in the uterus. Another argument is that in refusing to procreate you are denying life without its choice as well. You can only give someone the option to be given life by creating it for them and letting them choose to keep it or not. While I do agree us humans really offer nothing to the planet, If we were somehow able to create life on a currently barren planet I think that'd be worth our existence. My personal philosophy is that we are all just energy existing in a 'nothingness'. When I say nothingness I mean it has no bounds of what we recognize as reality. No time, space, structure, anything. It's simply chaos. In this space we are like Gods we can create whatever we can imagine however living in complete nothingness with nothing to base any existence off of we struggle to produce anything alone. I then believe either one energy (Our God) was creative enough to create the universe we live in today out of nothing or as a group all of us energies were able to create this universe. Since this plane of nothingness is infinite with an infinite amount of energies many 'universes' have been created. These created universes exist in small pockets of this nothingness. As energies we come to and cling to these universes that have been created or we even helped create in order to help bring order and purpose to our existence. The universe we pulled into is often due to other like energies choosing that said universe drawing you toward it. We do everything we can as individual energies to build and contribute to this 'universe' with our main objective to trick ourselves into believing it is real and the only thing in existence as our 'human' nature fears the chaos. I could go on but I doubt many of you care I just got carried away
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1 AntwortenMr. Underhill brought up a good point. By denying a baby existence, you deny it choice as well. Therefore, there is no moral act by your worldview in the context of procreation. By procreating, you bring a life into the world without giving it a choice, an immoral act by your standards. But the same is true of denying existence to a possible child by not procreating. The theoretical human still has no say in the matter. Will you continue to argue in circles? Or will you concede your arrogance?
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1 AntwortenSooo how does one give consent to such a thing?
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3 AntwortenWhy don't you kill yourself then?
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1 Antworten2 things... doesn't a newly born infants inability to comprehend right/wrong, good/bad, yes/no make it incapable of choosing? Also, doesn't survival instincts go beyond choice? Wouldn't those instincts contradict anti-natalism?
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6 AntwortenIt's an interesting concept, indeed, but I think it relies far too much on philosophical and emotional input rather than factual and biological evidence. As you said right off the bat, anti-natalism is: "the [i]belief[/i] that all childbirth is wrong, from an [i]ethical standpoint[/i]". This introduces an element of personal interpretation, a lot of which runs contrary to physical proof. For example: humans can reproduce. This does not merely prove that humans [i]may[/i] procreate if they so choose, or [i]can[/i] procreate theoretically, it means that humans are [i]meant[/i] and [i]expected[/i] to reproduce. Since you also say: [quote]the theory of evolution is an accurate description of nature. [/quote] I don't understand how you can ignore this sort of thing. Not to mention animals. They are driven to reproduce the same way we are, but they don't live much better than we do. True, the overwhelming majority of animals never needs to worry about taxes, wars, genocide, or slavery. Most animals also do not have the same emotional baggage as humans, so they perhaps don't "suffer" in the same definition of the word as we do. But bunnies have been procreating since they evolved, and so have we, so there is clearly something amiss in this philosophy. Furthermore, anti-natalism ironically involves the imposition of your ethics onto others. Most human societies have more or less held, to varying degrees of officiality, that life is an inalienable right. You are essentially saying that life is burden that all humans should seek to relieve themselves of as soon as possible. It's well illustrated by the example you provided: [quote]If my sister was swimming in a pool of shit and I said, "What the goddamn hell are you doing!? You're swimming in a pool of SHIT!" and she said, "Oh, no, it's fine! I'm having fun, see?" and she splashes around in it for awhile, am I supposed to be like, "Oh, okay!" and move along? Or should I perhaps do something more rational and pull her the hell out of the damn pool of shit because she's gonna get sick, among other things. [/quote] Unfortunately for you (and for anyone who thinks) everyone has their own philosophy. In fact, for humans in particular, I would say we are more entitled to our thoughts than our lives. Anti-natalism takes both, which is why I cannot agree with it. Which I guess leads me to my next question, one that I hesitate to ask, but will given the context: why are you still here? I am not telling you to kill yourself, I am genuinely asking, if you are so convinced that your life was unfairly forced upon you, and has been full of nothing but misery, what purpose does it serve to continue living? Conclusion: life is not ethical. Now, don't take that to mean "life is unethical", because there is a difference. "Unethical" is defined by one's ethics, and is necessarily non-universal. "Not ethical" indicates that life cannot be understood in terms of right and wrong, just and unjust, beneficial and malevolent. Life is a fact, the same way that rocks are a fact. Rocks are neither good nor bad, and saying "this particular rock is bad" or "all rocks are good" is invalid. That said, I don't reject your philosophy. I may not agree with it, but ethical codes, much like life, are facts, and cannot be held as anything other than a product of our intelligence, neither bad nor good. However, it is undeniably true that there are happy moments in anyone's life. Whether or not you believe they are far outweighed by the bad moments is irrelevant; other people enjoy their lives. Just because you don't doesn't mean no one should try to. [spoiler]Also, as a post-script, I see no reason why you must concede that there is no God as an anti-natalist. Deism (or "God as the clockmaker") seems to fit quite nicely, or the belief in God as the Eternal Douche, who just enjoys our suffering. [/spoiler]
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really, the best argument against antinatalism is humanity's overwhelming support for its own existence. ask anyone, even those in horrible conditions, if he is happy to be alive, and the chances are very, very good that he will say yes.
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6 AntwortenLook! Somebody built a statue of verbatim. :D
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6 Antworten[quote]There's nothing we can do on this planet that could ever justify continuing our existence.[/quote] Didn't know you were a fortune teller. One of the main reasons I keep living on,is really for the next generation. I want to have Children. I want to be able to give them choices and options that were not given to me. I swear there are times when I have the exact same thoughts as you. Everyone should just die. The world would be better off without us. I honestly lose my faith in the Human race at times but I always keep my faith of the Human Race's potential. I'm not sure what your own definition of justifying one's existence is but I'm sure for every individual,it's different. And I believe that my children,and my children's children if I'm ever so lucky will do something or help to truly eradicate all of Humanities faults. It's a pipe dream,I know it is. A utopia has always been said to be impossible. But one of Humanities greatest traits is to dream and hope. And even more to someday achieve that dream with that hope. 2,000 years ago,the mere prospect of being able to Fly,to travel to another object in space was unfathomable. I can only wonder what we will achieve 2,000 years from now. All in all,the Human race will survive and will grow. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks "I want to kill myself" or actually goes through with it when they have hope. Our time on this world is short,and if Oblivion,non-existence really is what awaits us and there is no afterlife,no reincarnation,then I might as well spend a good amount of it paving the road for future generations.
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8 AntwortenYes that's right; scrub away this horrific mess that is us. No baby r@pe, no murder, no suffering for humanity at all. Perfect. A nice clean rock. Except that by thinking that way you've missed the whole point of life in the first place. Why should we need to justify our existence? Trees don't need justification to exist, neither do cows or streams or volcanos or black holes or quasars or photons or daffodils or slugs. But alas we are 'special' because we are intelligent, sentient beings who can self-reflect and have existential crises at highly inconvenient moments. Why do we always think we're special? We aren't; you yourself admit we aren't special but you still treat us differently from everything else. We don't need justification to exist. We exist, that is just a fact. People are born; people will die. In between the two there will be ups and downs, but down implies up just as up implies down. There will certainly be downs but just as certainly there will be ups. You cannot know if there will be more of one than the other, but let me put this to you; you cling to the very bad things in life like a limpet clings to a rock. This is because you have been taught that they should not happen and so you make every effort to resist them; therefore you remember them more. Yet the good things pass you by as if they never really happened at all. You ate a great sandwich just a few minutes ago, and you were happy, but you now notice the dog shat on your new carpet and you're in a foul mood for the rest of the day. The sandwich happened, but you resist the dog shit more so you remember it more; so you claim you had a bad day when in fact you had both good and bad things happen today. But the dog shit was more important, you claim. Why? Why choose to value bad things over good things? Pessimism is wrong. Optimism is wrong. They are both equally unhelpful viewpoints in regards to knowing the truth. But at least optimism makes you happier. Denying someone the good parts of life is just as immoral as forcing them to experience the bad parts, as far as I'm concerned, so do what you will; all I ask is that you at least try to stop being so miserable about life; it's only miserable because you're letting all the good things pass you by.
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3 AntwortenThat was a good read, thank you for bringing this philosophy to my attention. And as pessimistic as it sounds, I really cannot say anything that would refute the idea that, yes, we are completely and utterly useless. It's simple really, just not something as easy to come to terms with as having a false hope of something greater. However, the one problem I have with this is, it [i]sounds[/i] bad. What I mean by that is, subconsciously while reading this, whether the reader accepted this philosophy or not, it will almost always sound negative. I'm just simply drawing the question, why? Why does our brain make us want things, make us hope. Why do we have these great innovators and inventors and scientists, if in reality we have no purpose? Now like I said beforehand, I'm not trying to refute this philosophy, it is completely logical and sturdy. However, maybe it's just my mind hoping for a purpose, our minds still make us improve. We evolve into better and more efficient organisms. The "universe" grows as we can see more. We are always in a cycle of life and death, where we instinctively hold on to life as tight as we possibly can. I'm simply throwing the aforementioned question out there to see your response to it, why do we improve if our improvement is not a) necessary for life and b) has no real effect on anything.
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1 AntwortenHow does one choose to be born? Time travel?
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3 AntwortenYour logic: Suffering exists now, so we must stop the people who might figure out how to stop it from being born.
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8 AntwortenLook, I'm all for intellectual debates, but some things must be met head-on with the only response appropriate. Here it is... This is literally, and I mean literally, the stupidest thing I've ever read. Not your post, but the concept. I literally cannot think of a worse concept than this.
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4 AntwortenRemember everyone; if you eat meat you're a piece of shit because some guy on the Internet said so.
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12 Antworten[quote]If you eat meat you're kind of a dick[/quote] We're omnivores for a reason, right?
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1 Antworten[quote]Thoughts?[/quote] You're trying too hard.
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2 AntwortenEh I just think you take everything so negatively. Did I have a choice in being born? No, but I made use of what the life I was born into gave me. Are there moments in my life where I was having a hard time? There sure was. Are there moments in my life where I was having a good time? There sure was. However, unlike your extremely negative mindset, I choose to remember those happy memories and look forward to having more of them, and accept the fact that with those happy times there will also be bad times.
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Also,I had a bunch of fun reading some of the more intellectual debates in this thread. Kudos to some of you.
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Bearbeitet von Pheonix: 11/22/2014 6:52:27 PM-redacted-
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16 AntwortenTl;dr version: [quote]I'm Verbatim and I'm retarded[/quote]
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Well, In the case of there being no God (and I think even in most religious cases ) there is no form of existence before birth and therefore it is impossible to choose to live until you are born. Therefore I would argue that in the mindset that it is unethical to impose things on others, anti-natalism isn't a particularly good view point, as giving life to a baby is to give it the freedom to choose to refuse to continue at somepoint, or to live until they die by some other means. If you refuse to give birth to a child however, the theoretical baby remains non existant when it could have potentially lived a good life, or backed out if it hadn't. This is a very poorly phrased answer, but I think my viewpoint is still easy enough to see in it.
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Well, In the case of there being no God (and I think even in most religious cases ) there is no form of existence before birth and therefore it is impossible to choose to live until you are born. Therefore I would argue that in the mindset that it is unethical to impose things on others, anti-natalism isn't a particularly good view point, as giving life to a baby is to give it the freedom to choose to refuse to continue at somepoint, or to live until they die by some other means. If you refuse to give birth to a child however, the theoretical baby remains non existant when it could have potentially lived a good life, or backed out if it hadn't. This is a very poorly phrased answer, but I think my viewpoint is still easy enough to see in it.
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10 AntwortenI agree with the whole anti-natalism thing.
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Holy shit
