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So what is wrong with that says a man who has no children of his own? The risk of the life of the child not working out is less than it is of it working out. I risked falling in love and so far that has brought me over 40 years of happiness, not without trials and problems of course. I have also enjoyed most of my life and am glad that the doctors saved me when I was close to not making it my first day of life. If they were not able to do so of course I would not have known any better but I have had a good life. I have never thought of having children as providing a favour to a sperm cell.
The crucial point here is that regardless of what the percentages are, an unborn life-form cannot be deprived of anything. Just the same as if someone successfully committed suicide for a trivial reason, they would not regret that action post-mortem. Your post kind of disregards that issue, then acknowledges it in a rather dismissive fashion. As someone who probably hasn't experienced any form of extreme suffering, it is easy for you to blithely brush the issue aside. However, the majority of the planet's human population is suffering a great deal more than it is experiencing joy. And even if you are financially well set for bringing up a child, that does not immunise your child against mental illness, disability or any of the events that can throw a person's life off the rails. Even rich people with many friends and good relationships can suffer from depression and feel that life is not worth living.
As someone who probably hasn't experienced any form of extreme suffering, it is easy for you to blithely brush the issue aside.
I know you aren't talking to me here but I have to jump in -- it is indeed my observation that people who have more personal suffering in their life tend to see the antinatalism argument much more clearly.
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Originally Posted by micC
However, the majority of the planet's human population is suffering a great deal more than it is experiencing joy. And even if you are financially well set for bringing up a child, that does not immunise your child against mental illness, disability or any of the events that can throw a person's life off the rails. Even rich people with many friends and good relationships can suffer from depression and feel that life is not worth living.
True, but as I said, most of humanity chooses to soldier on, so while I personally agree that what you are saying is technically true, natural selection has wired us to take a licking and keep on ticking. That is why we overestimate benefits and underestimate difficulties. That is why we think that better times MUST be just around the next corner or three. That is why when you get to be my age and start running out of corners you are brought up short by that reality and realize that it's just your mind fooling you. And it doesn't bother to fool you past a certain point. Why should it, you have already reproduced, and that is all that natural selection cares about.
Reality bites, but it bites way too late to put any brakes or standards of decency on the primal imperative of human reproduction.
In my experience 1 and 2 are dicey propositions as they don't take into account the freedom of choice of the child. There is no guarantee for example that your child will be both able and willing to support you in your old age, or that this would be fair to them. I have also seen wonderfully loved and parented children, more than once, return that love with cruel indifference, and horribly parented children who have been wonderful human beings and, to the extent it isn't codependent, do the right things by their parents with great compassion. So there are no guarantees with children, nor arguably should there be. I'm old fashioned enough to think that children owe even workmanlike parents a certain debt, but then again I have to admit that I was content as one among four siblings, and the youngest, to let my eldest brother do the heavy lifting in my parent's final years -- even allowing for the fact he was much closer and at a better place in life to do that lifting.
Put this together with the preponderance of recent research which strongly suggests nature trumps nurture almost every time, that parenting matters less than we fancy it does, and the whole immortality project of having children becomes a lot less attractive than pop culture makes it out to be.
All that pragmatic stuff aside, the fierce love a good parent has for their child is something there's only one way to experience -- in all its potential reward AND disappointment. I salute parents and am happy for those who are rewarded and have great empathy for those who are disappointed. It is not for me to either judge or control people's decisions around having kids.
As a theoretical stance the philosophical appeal of antinatalism is that nonexistence is never a harm and existence always is, to some unknown and fairly unpredictable degree. So whether you think having kids is a good idea is mostly a function of whether you think the human experiment should be cancelled and judged a failure. If you believe that humanity will climb mostly or entirely all the way out of the deep hole of ignorance and superstition that it's currently clawing its way out of, if you believe that humanity can ultimately overcome most of the downside of the human condition, then in the great sweep of history, including the future, all the misery is arguably worth it. If you think it's already a failed experiment than the ... er, humane thing to do is to end the experiment.
The problem of course is that no one person can make that decision for the whole of humanity and since humanity by and large continues to reproduce, it's clear what the general consensus is: it's all worth it, at least in some ultimate sense.* Therefore, it would be immoral to impose antinatalism on society. I personally don't see just my life as a rational proposition and would have preferred not to have experienced it overall -- speaking entirely selfishly. But that doesn't mean everyone will or should arrive at the same conclusion. Nor does it indict my parents as selfish. Unaware and conventional, maybe, but not selfish. Although actually, I was an unplanned accident, 10 years after my next older brother, so it is fair to say that both I and my parents would have been better off overall if I had not come along.
But such "what if" games are kind of pointless. Things are what they are, we make the best of what is, and humanity makes its collective decisions about what's best for itself and how to make the best of what is for it collectively.
Antinatalism is a powerful logical argument but has no practical application in the real world that I can see, other than this: people should be more mindful and respectful around their decisions to procreate than they most often are. The main drivers of such decisions are to satisfy primal reproductive impulses, to solidify and obligate one's relationship with one's significant other, and a sort of unfocused but largely unrealistic expectation that you will some day die with your grateful and adoring family gathered 'round, full of laughter and tears for your contributions to their lives. People should have more realistic expectations and should consider the potential harms to their children.
For instance, I happened to make a spectacularly bad choice of gene donor for my own children, as she had very significant mental health issues. One of my children has distinct narcissistic tendencies and at least one of my grandsons via her has what looks to be executive function disorder and maybe some autistic issues, the other has recently started having epileptic seizures. My other child is a schizoid personality who will never reach anything resembling his full potential in society. I should have been way more realistic and mindful than I was, but my head was full of religious magical thinking -- I thought that love was both healing and redemptive when by itself it won't move the needle for anyone in regard to their brokenness.
There are no guarantees but if people would really and truly set the stage to give their children the best possible chance at fulfillment -- which I did not -- then the antinatalist argument will have served a purpose as a cautionary tale for prospective parents.
* And yes even unbelievers can talk about "some ultimate sense" because we have the arc of all time, including the future, to use for perspective. No gods needed.
Thanks for your post. To address a couple of points, I do not consider all parents to be selfish, as most will not have considered the antinatalist philosophy at any time during the process of deciding whether to have kids, through to giving birth.
I agree that in terms of practical application, anti-natalism is a lot of philosophical navel-gazing. The instinct to 'go forth and multiply' is so foundational to the human experience, that we will never succeed in stamping it out.
Even atheists are roundly rejecting the notion of anti-natalism (as expected). However, the one practical application that I feel that it has is in the cause of the right to die. I believe that if this idea were allowed to circulate freely, it might give us more compassion for those who wish to seek an exit, for any reason. A lot of proponents of the right to die do tacitly accept the anti-natalist proposition on some level, correctly observing that nobody chose to be here, so that we should at least have the right to choose to exit if conditions are less than agreeable.
I don't agree with the notion that it is logically consistent for atheists to talk about 'some ultimate sense', because if there is nothing to confer upon human lives some kind of objective purpose, then the ultimate goal is pointless, whatever it is. If man colonises another planet 100 years after I'm dead, I'm not going to care about whatever my (or my own's) contribution to that might have been.
I know you aren't talking to me here but I have to jump in -- it is indeed my observation that people who have more personal suffering in their life tend to see the antinatalism argument much more clearly.
It probably just isn't something most people would think about unless they were having a wretched time of it. Or at least, it would be a lot easier to intuitively dismiss anti-natalism without necessarily having an effective counterargument. Certainly, I think that an atheist's outright denial of the validity of anti-natalism has a lot in common with the cognitive dissonance of an intelligent Christian.
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True, but as I said, most of humanity chooses to soldier on, so while I personally agree that what you are saying is technically true, natural selection has wired us to take a licking and keep on ticking. That is why we overestimate benefits and underestimate difficulties. That is why we think that better times MUST be just around the next corner or three. That is why when you get to be my age and start running out of corners you are brought up short by that reality and realize that it's just your mind fooling you. And it doesn't bother to fool you past a certain point. Why should it, you have already reproduced, and that is all that natural selection cares about.
Reality bites, but it bites way too late to put any brakes or standards of decency on the primal imperative of human reproduction.
I would never have any expectation for this to gain traction in such a way as to have an observable effect. Moreover, in practical terms, it would be a bad idea for all of us living humans if atheists across the board decided to embrace anti-natalism. However, I do feel that that should be the concern of the people living at that time and not something to foist upon someone who hasn't asked to be born. If this philosophy is to have some kind of observable effect, the best that I could hope for is a humane and liberal right to die.
The crucial point here is that regardless of what the percentages are, an unborn life-form cannot be deprived of anything. Just the same as if someone successfully committed suicide for a trivial reason, they would not regret that action post-mortem. Your post kind of disregards that issue, then acknowledges it in a rather dismissive fashion. As someone who probably hasn't experienced any form of extreme suffering, it is easy for you to blithely brush the issue aside. However, the majority of the planet's human population is suffering a great deal more than it is experiencing joy. And even if you are financially well set for bringing up a child, that does not immunise your child against mental illness, disability or any of the events that can throw a person's life off the rails. Even rich people with many friends and good relationships can suffer from depression and feel that life is not worth living.
During my wife's child rearing years we normally made less than what was considered the poverty line in Canada. My brother has a child who contacted a virus of the brain at three days old and now is an 18 year old severely mentally, medically and physically handicap, knows only a few words, cannot even eat needs to be tubed feed and has very limited sight and understanding. I did not create my post without knowing that there are risks, but most of us on this forum live in developed countries and have some support for raising kids. We also did short term foster parenting of teens in either trouble or whose families are issues and the kids and parents needed to be separated from each other for some healing and mending time. I have also had two cousins who committed suicide. I have had thirteen year old girls who had done prostitution living in our house, kids who abused others and kids who were abused and some little angels with jerks for parents.
For the majority of the planet's population children are the means for them to be looked after when they are old. I have studied human geography and am aware that the main reason for large families and why boys are perferred over girls is that children are insurance against being without the means of providing food when the parents are old. And that is why the birth rate drops when those countries become more developed.
Just because my opinions on the issue are different than yours does not make me a thoughless person who no knowledge or experience of the situation of others. I could just as easily and just as falsely accuse you of not caring that the adults in the third world will suffer and die due to the lack of having offspring to look after them in their old age. You do not know me or why I think that there is nothing wrong with adults bringing children into this world even if they believe that it is the only world there is for them. I have tried to help those who did have difficulties in this world. The only thing you know about me is that I do not agree with your opinion. I have knowledge, empathy, and experiences that you do not know about. I am not a naive 18 year old. I know nothing about you however I am not going to assume of where you are coming from.
During my wife's child rearing years we normally made less than what was considered the poverty line in Canada. My brother has a child who contacted a virus of the brain at three days old and now is an 18 year old severely mentally, medically and physically handicap, knows only a few words, cannot even eat needs to be tubed feed and has very limited sight and understanding. I did not create my post without knowing that there are risks, but most of us on this forum live in developed countries and have some support for raising kids. We also did short term foster parenting of teens in either trouble or whose families are issues and the kids and parents needed to be separated from each other for some healing and mending time. I have also had two cousins who committed suicide. I have had thirteen year old girls who had done prostitution living in our house, kids who abused others and kids who were abused and some little angels with jerks for parents.
For the majority of the planet's population children are the means for them to be looked after when they are old. I have studied human geography and am aware that the main reason for large families and why boys are perferred over girls is that children are insurance against being without the means of providing food when the parents are old. And that is why the birth rate drops when those countries become more developed.
Just because my opinions on the issue are different than yours does not make me a thoughless person who no knowledge or experience of the situation of others. I could just as easily and just as falsely accuse you of not caring that the adults in the third world will suffer and die due to the lack of having offspring to look after them in their old age. You do not know me or why I think that there is nothing wrong with adults bringing children into this world even if they believe that it is the only world there is for them. I have tried to help those who did have difficulties in this world. The only thing you know about me is that I do not agree with your opinion. I have knowledge, empathy, and experiences that you do not know about. I am not a naive 18 year old. I know nothing about you however I am not going to assume of where you are coming from.
I'm not accusing you of being a thoughtless person and I am sure that you have tried very hard to do right by your children. However, you have still failed to reconcile pro-natalism with a position of aspiritual atheism. That does not make you a bad person and I did not mean to come across as being sanctimonious.
I don't mind if you do consider me callous for ostensibly having failed to consider the condition of third-worlders who do not have a younger generation to care for them. I have reflected on that problem in my original post (the economic argument for having children), however I do not feel that the needs of those currently alive should trump the suffering and problems that will be visited upon beings that did not asked to be thusly burdened. In fact, if no new children are born, at least the cycle of suffering will end in those countries. To bring new lives into that mess and laying a burden upon them for which they may not have been inclined to agree to, you are simply perpetuating the cycle.
If this philosophy is to have some kind of observable effect, the best that I could hope for is a humane and liberal right to die.
I grant you that right-to-die, aka rational suicide, would be a more effective practical counterbalance to the fact that existence is unasked for. I had frankly never considered it in that context. I believe in right to die more for pure humanitarian reasons -- the most relatable argument in its favor seems to be, why do we consider it selfish to keep a suffering pet alive, and then noble to keep a suffering human alive?
I think rational suicide should be as available and matter of fact as pet euthanasia. But that causes cognitive dissonance for people who think humans aren't "mere" animals, or even those who recognize we are part of the animal kingdom but that we are somehow going down a slippery slope by allowing people to choose the time and manner of their own deaths.
Can this philosophical argument against suffering move the needle for end of life self determination? I don't know. Doesn't seem likely but maybe that's a failure of imagination on my part. I'll have to give some thought to how that notion could be worked in without people simply thinking it's some sort of despairing nihilistic notion.
I don't agree with the notion that it is logically consistent for atheists to talk about 'some ultimate sense', because if there is nothing to confer upon human lives some kind of objective purpose, then the ultimate goal is pointless, whatever it is. If man colonises another planet 100 years after I'm dead, I'm not going to care about whatever my (or my own's) contribution to that might have been.
I look at it this way. If you consider only the past up to the present the human suffering and deprivation is staggering. However it has begun to ease considerably and that easing seems to be accelerating despite the efforts of some to concentrate wealth in, shall we say, unegalitarian ways. I believe it will proceed unevenly, with setbacks, but proceed it will.
The actual situation is that we have the indefinite future. IF we assume that mankind will continue to ease suffering and increase living options and resources overall, and survives to the point that we have some sort of relatively utopian society with overall unlimited resources and technology and much longer, possibly indefinite lifespans at its disposal, and that this in turn continues for many times longer than the time period from the dawn of man to now ... then in THAT ultimate sense, people of the future will regard life as a far more compelling proposition and will hopefully be grateful to be standing on the soldier of pioneers (us) to allow them to live that way.
As you point out, of course, this is meaningless to my concerns as an individual in the present, but you have to remember that what most everyone strives to do is to make meaning by being part of something larger than themselves. I rationalize my existence in part because I have made an impact on how credit is extended in the business world, an impact I feel is substantially for the better. Minuscule and obscure as that contribution is, it is my contribution and it makes me feel somewhat better about, say, the fact that my son will join us for Christmas dinner tomorrow but will be largely nonverbal and indifferent -- merely functional. Not the vision I had for my son, trust me. So I compensate in other ways. And I also derive some glimmer of hope that I am contributing to a humanity that I'm just optimistic enough to think is advancing to a much better future existence. My life may not be rationalizable, but some are, and I have hope that many more will be.
I'm not accusing you of being a thoughtless person and I am sure that you have tried very hard to do right by your children. However, you have still failed to reconcile pro-natalism with a position of aspiritual atheism. That does not make you a bad person and I did not mean to come across as being sanctimonious.
I don't mind if you do consider me callous for ostensibly having failed to consider the condition of third-worlders who do not have a younger generation to care for them. I have reflected on that problem in my original post (the economic argument for having children), however I do not feel that the needs of those currently alive should trump the suffering and problems that will be visited upon beings that did not asked to be thusly burdened. In fact, if no new children are born, at least the cycle of suffering will end in those countries. To bring new lives into that mess and laying a burden upon them for which they may not have been inclined to agree to, you are simply perpetuating the cycle.
You missed the part where I said I did not have any children. My wife had one which she gave up for adoption so now we have two wonderful grandchildren and an extended family that includes her adoptive parents and all their relatives.
I do not share your pessimistive view of life for ourselves or others nor do I look at it as my right to decide for whole entire nations that they should no longer reproduce. You are also assuming that the people in the third world who are hungry and impovished would be happy not to have been born. I will not assume that for anyone especially for those living in conditions that I do not and for people I am unlikely to ever know.
But the original post was if not having children is connected some how to athesism and no matter what your view on having children I do not look at the two as having connections. Those Syrian refugee children arriving in our airports look happy to have left the camps behind and to be here. Who am I to thing that they would be better off to not have been born so that they did not have to live in those camps.
I'm of two minds on this one: I believe that choosing to procreate is a largely a selfish choice... but at the same time, when we look past the individual choice, every species on this planet is biologically driven to reproduce in order to avoid extinction. The problem is, too many bring children into this world without the ability to provide a stable, loving environment.
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