(electronic music)
- What's up guys, Michael here to talk about people,
but make them small and bald.
That's right, babies.
And specifically, is it good to have them?
Because increasingly, people are starting to think,
"Not so much."
Recently, public figures
like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are starting to argue
that having fewer or even zero children
might be the most moral
and/or most responsible thing to do.
Of course, for folks who've always dreamed
of birthing a little tyke or two or a baker's dozen,
contemplating the idea of not bringing life
to an adorable monster like this
is understandably upsetting.
So, it's worth asking:
is having a kid, or even a lot of them,
a positive way to pass down your superb head of hair
and green thumb?
Or is there something irresponsible about bringing life
into this slowly sinking Titanic of a planet?
Let's find out in this Wisecrack Edition:
Is Having Babies Ethical?
So, how has procreation historically been regarded?
Well, Christian morality has long held
that having children, if you can, is a good thing.
In the Bible, God tells a bunch of people,
like Adam and Eve, and also Noah
to be fruitful and multiply.
And obviously, some people do still take this imperative
very seriously.
If you don't believe us,
go meet some Midwestern Catholics
or just rent "Cheaper by the Dozen 1 and 2."
But it's also an imperative
that's been challenged by philosophers.
For instance, take Schopenhauer,
a crotchety pessimist who thought
that we may as well be living
in the worst of all possible worlds.
And he didn't even live
to see the season finale of "Hawkeye."
He believed reproduction
was little more than an unwelcome side effect
of humankind's endlessly failed attempts
to satisfy our desires.
A moment of physical pleasure, then,
i.e. doing sex could result in offspring,
thus continuing the human race
and the misery of its existence
via kids that will grow up and be just as miserable as you.
It's like your middle school health teacher told you,
"Sex has consequences."
Meanwhile, in his book, "The Birth of Tragedy,"
Nietzsche paraphrases the Ancient Greek wisdom of Silenus,
which was given to a tragic king
by a man with the ears of a horse.
"It is best not to be born at all;
and next to that, it is better to die than to live."
To be clear, we do not endorse this message
and we hope that Silenus' friends
gave him a big hug after he wrote that.
Philosophers call this view, that it is bad to be born
or to have children, antinatalism.
The most prominent contemporary proponent of antinatalism
is the South African philosopher David Benatar.
We talked about him in our video on "Attack on Titan,"
if you wanna check that out too.
Benatar, like Schopenhauer,
thinks the world is really, really bad.
But interestingly,
he argues that it would still be morally wrong
to bring new human life into existence
even if the world wasn't a greenhouse filled with farts.
See, Benatar thinks that there is an asymmetry
between pleasure and pain.
We all know it feels good to experience pleasure
and bad to experience pain, but Benatar argues,
it's only bad not to experience pleasure
if you are conscious that you are being deprived
of said pleasure.
Like, if you didn't know
that this 24-karat gold ice cream existed,
you couldn't be sad
that you will likely never have the pleasure
of indulging in it.
But now you know about it
and we can all be depressed together.
Conversely, it's good not to be in pain
even if we're not conscious of that lack of pain at all.
We don't have to be thinking about how (beep) it might feel
to sit on a cactus
to be enjoying the state of non-cactus sitting.
But now you are, so you're welcome.
Thus, the asymmetry between pain and pleasure.
bringing people into existence, then,
gives them the ability to feel pleasure and pain.
And this, for Benatar, is morally bad
because no amounts of pleasure
could ever outweigh the wrong we've done to someone
by giving them the ability to feel pain.
So, thanks mom.
As it happens, Benatar argues our own world
is characterized more by pain than it is by pleasure.
And if you don't believe us,
just ask Ben Affleck's face.
But even in a hypothetical world
where everyone only experienced pleasure,
it still wouldn't be right
to bring someone into existence, says Benatar.
That's because he thinks such a life
would be about as good as a state of total non-existence.
For this reason, Benatar argues having kids
can never be anything other than a selfish act.
At one point in his book, "Better to Have Never Been:
The Harm of Coming into Existence,"
Benatar even compares having children to taking hostages
as people can use their children
to leverage better treatment in society.
One of his examples is if two women need a kidney,
but there is only one available
and one of those women is a mother and the other is not,
who does society thinks should get the kidney?
But people aren't all questioning
the morality of baby-making
because they've read David Benatar.
For the most part,
it's because they've been watching the news.
With this crappery greeting us every night,
it's no wonder one in four child-free American adults
say they plan not to have children
because of climate change.
As we all hopefully know,
the climate disaster is being caused by the pollution,
in particular, the carbon emissions of human beings.
It therefore makes sense
that reducing the number of humans would help the crisis,
especially the number of humans in developed countries
who are responsible for the bulk of emissions.
For more on how to fix the climate crisis,
check out our Wisecrack Labs video on carbon capture.
Over the past 200 years,
the Earth's population has gone from 1 billion people
to 8 billion, and it's only going up.
Perhaps it would be right to see this sort of growth
as unsustainable.
Now, Exxon is obviously way more responsible
for this large-scale pollution
than you and your Honda Civic.
Still, individual solutions for combating
or at least mitigating climate change to some extent
have become more well-known.
We're all aware we could be reducing our carbon emissions
by eating less meat, flying less often,
or investing in an electric car.
Though, not a Tesla.
Please, never a Tesla.
We know that we should be buying zero-waste products
or conscientiously sorting our recycling,
but empirical studies have found that
of all of the climate-friendly changes,
by far, the most effective would be
don't make any new little polluting machines.
In other words, have fewer kids.
If you get rid of your car, for instance,
you might save 2.4 tons of carbon a year,
but if you have one fewer child, studies have argued,
you save on average 58.6 tons a year.
This is what Harry and Meghan are supposedly doing
by limiting their family to only two children,
which we have to applaud.
If the average child emits 58.6 tons of carbon a year,
just think of how much pollution
the average Prince emits.
Who knew that ending the monarchy
was such a climate-friendly move?
But having children might not be bad
just because they're bad for the planet.
Benatar goes so far as to argue
that having children is bad
for the sake of the children themselves.
This makes sense.
I mean, climate change?
Now, maybe you don't think that existence right now
is necessarily a bad thing.
I mean, you can order sushi while you go to the bathroom
and we're getting to J.Lo romcoms in the first half of 2022.
But you might be able to agree
that existence in the age of climate change
already is or might eventually become not great.
Even in the best-case scenarios,
life over the course of the next few decades
is likely to get really difficult for much of the planet.
Who's to say that a child born today
wouldn't eventually really vibe with George Bailey?
- I said, I wish I'd never been born.
- It's generally understood
that parents feel it's their duty
to ensure their children have the best lives possible.
But who can honestly make that guarantee today?
So, this is getting pretty depressing,
especially if you like babies or your name is Anne Geddes.
- [Anne] This is what it's all about,
the sense of joy that comes with babies.
- So what hope is there?
Well, some philosophers would argue, plenty.
For many, arguments like Benatar's
don't really hold up because human beings
just don't work like that.
Consider, for instance, the views of Hannah Arendt.
For Arendt, every human action always meant a new beginning.
People, for the most part,
don't just do the same stupid things
over and over again for no reason,
unless their name is Sterling Archer.
- Lana, introspection is the enemy of happiness.
So, my advice is don't always work for me.
- Has it, though?
(Sterling laughs)
- I don't know, that's the beauty.
- Rather, they are constantly striving,
if often imperfectly,
to do something new and hopefully better.
And this theory of Arendt's doesn't just apply to adults.
It's also about children.
Children, after all,
are never simply carbon copies of their parents.
They might resemble them in certain ways,
sharing similar experiences, backgrounds, and proclivities,
but they are not identical,
and therefore, they are able to do things differently.
Arendt used the word natality to signify this fact:
"The new beginning," as she called it, "inherent in birth."
For Arendt, natality was incredibly important
because it's what helps save us from disaster.
And she was making this optimistic argument
after the horrors of World War II.
After all, if everyone really was identical
to their parents,
if there was no new beginning inherent in birth,
then we would always be doomed to do the same things:
too set in our ways to ever stop doing the things
that we know are causing everything to go wrong.
Luckily, that's not the case.
I mean, just look at the suburban teens on TikTok
posting videos about why Frantz Fanon rips.
Their lame-ass parents would never.
Because children have the capacity to do things differently
and better than their parents, Arendt argued,
the birth of new children is not only a morally good thing,
it's our only coherent source of hope.
Sure, things are bad now,
but our children are not doomed
to emit as much carbon as we do.
They can choose to be different.
Life in the age of climate change might suck,
but that doesn't mean our children
will be incapable of rising to the challenge.
Nothing, of course, is inevitable.
Natality does not mean
that our children are necessarily destined to succeed.
They might grow up to host a YouTube channel.
Who put that there?
It's not funny.
It's what I do and I'm proud of my job.
I'm proud of this.
But from the perspective of the human species, at least,
continuing to have children, despite everything,
is the only course of action that really makes sense.
In this view, reproduction isn't selfish,
it's hopeful.
So, what do you guys think?
Are children a source of hope
or is this just wishful thinking?
Is it okay to bring new human life into existence
or would we be doing our children a favor
by never having them?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
And if you're interested in learning more about this topic,
check out "Infinitely Full of Hope" by Tom Whyman,
who just so happened to write this very video.
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And as always, thanks for watching. Later.
(upbeat electronic music)
I know about birth control pills 'cause I'm a man.