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[Music]
what's up wisecrack michael here and
today i'm gonna once again try to put a
philosophy phd to its ideal use
talking about anime specifically today
i'm watching attack on titan
now i'll be honest this is not a show
i'd previously seen but some of the
fellow wisecrack staff said michael
we need your big galaxy brain take on
this crazy show
specifically how it gets into
philosophical arguments for why the
planned extinction of your own people
is a good thing so today i'm going to
take a look at some recent episodes and
see if the show has anything
interesting to say about whether or not
we should keep having kids
so let's find out and this philosopher
reacts to attack on titan season 4
and spoilers ahead
and before we get into it i want to give
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now back to the show okay we're gonna
check out a couple moments from the
final two episodes of the first half of
season four
starting with a flashback scene where
zeke the ultimate parental snitch
comes up with a brilliant idea to end
the suffering of his people the aldians
aka the subjects of ymir
which is well i'll let him explain
[Music]
me
pretty heavy stuff for a game of catch
he's basically arguing that if his
people had never been born
they never would have had to experience
so much oppression and suffering so
naturally
if he could sterilize all of his people
they'd slowly cease to exist
and could no longer pose a threat to
others or be victims themselves and
this touches on a debate currently
taking place in philosophy ethics and
environmental studies
anti-natalism simply put anti-natalism
is the belief that procreation and
bringing human lives into existence
is morally wrong so as far as
anti-natalists are concerned
your parents did something objectively
unethical when they had you
uh to be clear i don't think that i
think you're wonderful so keep up the
good work
like daniel kaluya said at the oscars i
think it's amazing that your parents had
sex
now if these people had a slogan it
would be something like
it would be better not to have been born
and while anti-natalism has gotten more
attention in recent years it traces back
to ancient greek tragedies
sophocles wrote never to have been born
is best but if we must see the light the
next best
is quickly returning once we came um if
you want to write that in a card for
your crush and let us know how that goes
we'd
love to hear about it in the comments so
drop it right there
um but for now let's keep going
you never want to lie in a relationship
[Music]
i don't i don't like when he picks up
the bloody baseball um
that made me feel bad and i'm never
playing catch again so apologies to my
future son for not doing that with you
but
we can at least see the motivation for
this plan as simply by being born as
eldians
these people are thrown into lives of
unavoidable pain and suffering now
this is a good point to talk about where
anti-natalism gets tricky
in the context of the show for one
antinatalists don't advocate for killing
your kids
uh taking the life of something is a lot
different than choosing to not bring a
life into this world and as we'll see
uh this isn't the only messy conflation
the show attaches to
anti-natalist attitudes
foreign well okay then
um now zeke's anti-natalism is specific
to his people and this is different from
contemporary anti-natalism
which is universal in its scope and
applies to all of humanity
in the show however the belief that kids
should not be born to suffer gets
applied to a specific group of people
and that gets us into some pretty big
yikes territory remember the
marlians want to exterminate the aldeans
for
regular gross genocide reasons but let's
at least
look at zeke's idea of preventing
needless suffering for his own people
while acknowledging at the outset that
we're still gonna be swimming in
yikes territory so david benatar a south
african philosopher and the most notable
contemporary anti-natalist
thinks sparing humans from suffering is
one of the key arguments for bringing
the circle of life to a hard stop
in his book better never to have been
the harm of coming into existence
he argues that while good people go to
great lengths to spare their children
from suffering
few of them seem to notice that the one
and only guaranteed way to prevent all
the suffering of their children
is not to bring those children into
existence in the first place
he takes the type of argument that zeke
is using to defend
ld and anti-natalism and uses it to
argue that existence
as such creates unnecessary suffering
for humans who
never asked to come into existence in
the first place it's as simple as
all humans suffer so if you have a human
child it will necessarily
live a life of suffering so like why do
you want to do that now
in zeke's case he wants to prevent
suffering among a specific
group of people this is less benatar's
take and more what some thinkers would
like into eugenics
anyway now that zeke has become a weird
version of an anti-natalist let's see
how good he is
at getting others on board
foreign
okay so so that line um there's no
greater salvation
than not being born into this world is
pretty intense but once again
um they are talking about salvation from
a very real suffering
if you've watched this show i doubt you
ever found yourself thinking man it
would rule to be an aldian
that seems like a super sick life
zeke and aaron know that the future of
their race is likely to stay engaged in
endless war
so if they can end it they think they
should because
best case scenario for an eldian you get
to live in a wild ghetto with the chance
to earn a better life by contributing to
the genocide of your own people
worst case scenario you get a shot in
your spine and become a titan that eats
people so
by sterilizing the aldean people zeke
would be
in theory at least saving them from two
options but also it's worth noting the
difference between advocating and say
a book that having kids is immoral and
forcibly
sterilizing people which even if you
agree with the former is ethically
very very bad of course others in the
show agree that forced sterilization is
bad and
rather than preventing the birth of
future children they they just want to
they want to kill zeke
right now
um
so let's say hypothetically this
argument might make sense
in a reality where people can transform
into bloodthirsty giants but
not in the real world right i can see
where you're coming from however
according to some or you know like all
scientists
our planet is trending downward pretty
rapidly
and whether it's rising temperatures and
sea levels an increase in catastrophic
weather events devastating droughts and
increased air pollution and toxicity
the forecast for human flourishing is
not good
if they're right we're basically doing a
societal upper decker in the toilet tank
of the future
i'm not saying for going having kids is
necessarily good
but as you can see there is some logic
to these arguments but also
when you really compare zeke's position
to actual anti-natalism
he infuses lots of other ideas that reek
of fascist eugenics
let's keep going
on
okay um now here i want to point out how
some
of zeke's logic isn't quite as
anti-natalist as
he might think at least if we're talking
about the work of theorist lee edelman
see zeke isn't just trying to prevent
the suffering of his own people
he's also trying to make a better future
for the non-extinct marlians
and this is kind of problematic in his
book no future
edelman lays out his argument on the
destructive tendencies of the
figure of the child for example think
about how often we hear stories about
people
sacrificing their own lives so that
their children can have better lives or
arguing
that their political or environmental
agenda is so important because it'll
help
future generations but for edelman the
child is an
end that's endlessly postponed meaning
that so much of human existence is aimed
at some
magical infinitely deferred future and
in the name of future children we go to
war
we we persecute people basically all the
gross and messed up stuff the world has
ever done was framed as
doing it for the future generations and
that's the problem with zeke's plan
when he talks about the pain of titans
he means both eldians and non-eldians so
erasing the future of eldian children
creates a brighter future for
non-eldian children and to that end he's
concocted a
a very not chill plan to sterilize
people against their will
but as as we're about to see not
everyone is
immediately down with all of this
material
i mean that's that sounds relatively
fair to me now there are similar
responses to anti-natalism which argue
that life
probably won't be so great for the last
folks remaining but i don't know tom
hanks had a decent time when when he was
alone with that volleyball on the island
also did tom hanks that volleyball
[Music]
but making love to a round inanimate
object while no one is watching aside
philosophers like benatar and theorists
like edelman argue that the suffering of
the last humans would be a small price
to pay
for the unknown amount of suffering they
would be avoiding by doing a massive
vasectomy to the world's collective
semen tube wait
is the volleyball chat haze's mom so
it's it's it's like white
white balls white ball summer white ball
okay okay
let's wrap this up before i go too far
down the hanks rabbit hole let's play
the last clip
well at least one person was convinced
by the plan so there's that
unless he's lying unless unless he has a
plan because in this
in this show you think you understand
one plan but then someone is like
they have like a a covert plan inside
the plan so
he could be up to some right there so
let's get the second half of the season
and see because i'm putting my money on
he's he's scamming the scammers
okay but what do you guys think is there
an anti-natalist streak to the show
or is it just getting into real creepy
fascist territory
let us know in the comments and please
let us know if there are
any other shows or movies you think
could use a philosophical reaction
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later
[Music]
the elena does have a much chiller vibe
like you know i would find her more
convincing
than zeke so you know okay um
yeah she would be a better spokesperson
for the no more babies movement
definitely i think that's the main thing
you need a good spokesperson