“Don’t blame me!
I didn’t ask to be born!”
In 2023, the world population is set to hit eight billion people.
All eight billion of us have lives and emotions and thoughts and memories as complex as your
own – think about how many people have the best and worst days of their life, every day.
But this pales in comparison to the number of people who have ever lived.
Estimates range from a hundred billion to a hundred and twenty-five billion throughout
all of human history, since the days of cavemen banging on rocks.
But not one of these people – from mighty kings, emperors, and millionaires, to lowly
peasants, slaves, and farmers – ever asked to exist.
They were cosmically press-ganged into it by their parents, for better or for worse.
For a small but not insignificant group of academics, this is a horrendous moral crime.
What right do you have to force someone into existence?
For if you had not done this, they would have been spared all the inevitable pain and suffering
that comes with the great journey of life.
Everything from scraping their knee as a child to painful dental work, stress created from
the pressure of school, spending 8 hours a day in an office, paying taxes, broken bones,
broken hearts, poverty, muggings, being too hot, being too cold, wearing itchy socks,
eating a bad meal, all before the inevitable stroke or cancer diagnosis that ends your
pathetic, short, worthless existence.
None of these would have ever happened if this person had never been born.
One common argument against this is that you would also be depriving them of all the good
things in life – but for these so-called “anti-natalists”, the bad always outweighs
the good, and if you had never been born, you wouldn’t know what you were missing
so it wouldn’t bother you at all.
While God said “Go forth and multiply”, don’t expect religious arguments to save
you either.
– Bad people get sent to eternal torture in Hell, but you know who doesn’t go to
Hell?
People who don’t exist!
Yeah they would lose out on the chance to go to Heaven too, but again, they wouldn’t
know what they are missing.
The ultimate goal of anti-natalists is to eliminate entirely the human race.
Usually not through mass extermination or ritual suicide or anything, although there
is a small subset of cranks such as Finnish eco-activist Pentti Linkola who advocated
World War III on environmentalist grounds, saying
“We have to recognize the service that fascism made…
when it freed the Earth from the weight of tens of millions of overeating Europeans by
an almost ideally environment-preserving means”.
But this guy is just an outlier.
Most anti-natalist want a managed and gradual extinction of humanity through refusing to
procreate until the last humans die off after a century or so.
So nobody else is forced to exist and experience sadness and pain.
Of course, this is logistically impossible.
Like I said, there are eight billion people alive today.
Convincing them all to never have children is never going to happen.
Failing this, most anti-natalists take up a personal vow to never to procreate and make
the most of their supposedly horrific lives before the sweet release of death.
So overall, that’s quite a sad and depressing view of the human race.
And if you’re a long-time viewer of the channel you’ll know I’m chronically addicted
to hopium.
[SNIFF] Also views are down and nothing drives clicks
like picking fights with small yet highly motivated groups.
Today I thought I would give my response to the anti-natalist position.
Not a debunking, just my thoughts on why I’m not completely sold on the idea.
Also all the loudest opposition to this philosophy comes from weirdos like Jordan Peterson, who’s
only arguments are “Why do you want to kill everyone on earth”
(most of them don’t) and
“Why don’t you just kill yourself” (because jumping off a train is not the same as never
getting on it in the first place) And if you’re an anti-natalist and you’re
not convinced, that’s fine.
Just don’t have kids.
It’s probably not your decision anyway, my viewer base is just a.
It’s just a sausage-fest.
Part I: Who Can Kill a Child?
Let’s start with Graham.
Graham does not exist.
He’s chillin’ like an antagonist in the void of abyss.
He has one human right, according to the anti-natalists; the right to consent to existence.
However, as he doesn’t exist, he cannot exercise that right, so it would be best to
just leave him alone instead of potentially violating that right.
Meanwhile in the realm of existence and painful suffering, the anti-natalists’ dream comes
true and everyone agrees to stop having children.
Several months later, the world’s population has declined for the first time since World
War II, and the plan is going swimmingly.
Then, of course, as they do, some foolish teenagers mess around, and one of them gets
pregnant.
Accidentally.
Baby Graham is pulled out of the void against his will and turned into a baby inside his
mother.
His one human right – violated!
What is Graham or his mother to do?
From Graham’s perspective, nothing has changed yet, but on the outside, it’s pandemonium
in the anti-natalist world.
Many people suggest she gets an abor – STOP.
Don’t you DARE touch that comments section.
This isn’t about politics.
It’s about abstract philosophy.
I swear to fucking God I will turn off the comments if you people can’t behave.
Many people suggest she gets rid of the baby, to prevent Graham from ever achieving the
horrors of sentience, but now the anti-natalist dilemma is flipped on its head.
Because by their own logic, anti-natalists are more extreme than any hardcore Republican
or fundamentalist Christian when it comes to this issue.
No, don’t do it.
Please leave my comments section alone you guys it’s really delicate.
Because if people who don’t even exist yet have rights, surely they maintain those rights
after conception.
Graham’s mother still cannot ask Graham if he wants to exist.
But by getting rid of him, instead of forcing a “Yes” choice on him, she is forcing
a “No” choice on him.
Graham cannot consent to having his life cut short any more than he can consent to having
his life extended.
And unlike an abstract concept of a future person who might exist, here’s something
that does exist.
I see you scrolling to that comments section – don’t even think about it.
The way I see it, there are only two ways out of this dilemma.
The first is that anti-natalists admit that the only option that spares Graham this life
of suffering, would be to let his mother make the choice on his behalf, terminating him
and sending him back to the shadow realm.
This is kind of self-defeating, because it admits someone else can choose if you are
allowed to exist, violating the first principle of the philosophy.
The second way out is for anti-natalists to admit people just don’t have that right
to choose Yes to being alive, the choice vanishes at moment of conception.
Which, aside from reopening some ‘lively historical debates’, doesn’t actually
solve the problem, as we will see.
Let’s fast forward a few months.
Nobody in Anti-Natalist World could decide in time what to do with the baby.
Graham is now born, he’s beginning to feel all the suffering that comes with life.
But for the first five months of his life, Graham is still not sentient or self-aware.
This provides the perfect opportunity for the anti-natalist society.
Kill Graham.
After all, he is not yet sentient.
He has not yet experienced the horrors of the real world.
In fact, we are perpetuating his suffering by not killing him now!
For he will no doubt go on to become an adult and suffer even more pain.
Save him now through a quick and painless death!
What?
Oh!
Oh no!
Mister Morality over here doesn’t want to go around giving babies the lethal injection!
But why not!?
A year ago, you were advocating in getting rid of the thing.
You chose option two, some people aren’t allowed to say yes to being alive.
What changed, other than he has moved environment?
He’s still the same on the inside – he isn’t.
Could it be that human life actually does indeed have meaning and value?
At least enough value that killing baby Graham would be morally wrong?
I was told life was a meaningless pit of despair that we should avoid at all costs.
Which isn’t true, by the way.
Part II: Life is not a meaningless pit of despair that we should avoid at all costs
Maybe it isn’t logically consistent and maybe we can trade hypotheticals all day.
Fact of the matter is, life is terrible and it’s better to have never existed at all.
Graham’s gotta die.
But is this true?
For most people probably not.
In fact there are no cultures in the world today who see existence as, on the whole,
a negative experience.
The closest you get is probably Buddhist culture that says existence is a constant cycle of
suffering but it can be overcome in the search for Nirvana.
Even people in the crappiest places in the world still celebrate birthdays.
The anti-natalist community write this off as our silly monkey brains being pre-programmed
with an evolutionary desire to procreate and be optimistic.
Which is a bit of a reach to suggest the vast majority of everyone who has ever lived was
delusional about their own subjective experience and only this small group of academics are
seeing things clearly.
If anything the human ability to disregard small inconveniences while appreciating small
pleasures is a testament to how life is more pleasant than unpleasant.
And yes, while people do have suffering in their lives, I doubt most people would choose
non-existence over being stuck in traffic or having the flu.
There also doesn’t seem to be much of a connection between suicide and human development,
showing most of us are happy no matter our material wellbeing.
But most is not all.
The anti-natalists argue that there’s no way of knowing if your child is going to have
a life of suffering, it’s a roll of the cosmic dice, but if you lose it’s not you
who pays for it.
And you know what?
For some people, pain is completely inescapable.
Where every moment is agony; people with serious diseases, manic depressives, Labour party
supporters.
In fact, one of the most influential anti-natalists, Thomas Ligotti, suffers from a condition that
makes him almost completely unable to feel happiness.
When he says it would have been better if he had never been born, he’s probably right.
These people clearly need help, whether it’s assisted dying or touching grass.
But cases like Ligotti are few and far between, and even people who do live these objectively
crappy lives manage to find happiness and satisfaction.
Paralympians, for example.
This woman doesn’t have any arms or legs and she won a silver medal at Tokyo 2020.
Do you think she resents her parents for bringing her into this world?
Does she think it would have been better if she had never been born?
No, because I sent her a message on twitter to ask her.
Or African-Americans in the Jim Crow south, who still found the time in their obviously
miserable lives to write some of the best songs ever created.
And even the very depressed find reasons to live – 70% of suicide attempt survivors
never attempt it again, and most are glad their initial attempt failed.
But again, people will still feel pain if they are born.
Having a child is undeniably exposing someone to suffering, and not only that, you have
to force them to make the most of it?
That’s still immoral!!!!
Well folks, I’ll let you in on a little secret of these anti-natalists.
These premises?
They’re not universal enlightened logical truths – they’re opinions.
Those who subscribe to the Stoic philosophy, for example, believe that pain and pleasure
are not good or bad by themselves – they’re tools.
Tools to obtain virtue; wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation, all in accordance the laws
of nature.
Pain is a tool to indicate an unhealthy body.
There are some people who have physiological conditions that mean they cannot feel physical
pain.
While this may seem like a real life super power, these people end up damaging themselves
in countless other ways.
They put their hands in boiling hot water to pick out dropped spoons, they walk for
days on fractured ankles without knowing it, and damage their eyes by not noticing there’s
something stuck in it.
Pain is a tool, given to us by nature, that must be embraced to live a full life.
Not just for ourselves, we can also use our suffering to improve humanity.
People jump on grenades, killing or severely disfiguring themselves to save the lives of
others.
Musicians practice instruments until their fingers are sore, just so they can make music
that thousands or potentially millions of people can enjoy.
A teacher puts in the extra hours to make sure their students are learning and best
prepared for life.
We put hard work into everything that makes life worth living, from music to art to freedom
and friendships, sports and knowledge.
These victories and values, the reason anyone bothers to do anything, are clearly worth
risking pain.
Why can’t we extrapolate this to an entire life?
We no longer need to procreate to have an extra hunter in the tribe or farm worker on
the team.
In the modern world, good parents have children because they’re up to the challenge of raising
that child in an environment that fosters these values – where the pain they experience
is not the blunt force of war, poverty, or sickness, but the pain of virtue.
Do parents always get it right?
Clearly not.
We all agree that people should think really hard about if they’re capable of raising
a child properly.
But if you don’t do something just because there’s risk involved, why do anything?
Is it morally wrong to become a pilot?
Because if everyone stopped flying planes it would cut the risk of plane crashes to
zero.
I think it’s far more amazing that despite a hostile, uncaring universe of chaos and
suffering, that happiness does exist, we can almost always obtain it no matter the situation,
and make good use of the little time we have.
If life truly were an overall negative experience that nobody enjoyed, we would celebrate funerals
and mourn birthdays.
We don’t.