Anti-natalism is the philosophical value judgment that procreation is unethical or unjustifiable. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from making children. Some antinatalists consider coming into existence to always be a serious harm. Their views are not necessarily limited only to humans but may encompass all sentient creatures, arguing that coming into existence is a serious harm for sentient beings in general. There are various reasons why antinatalists believe human reproduction is problematic. The most common arguments for antinatalism include that life entails inevitable suffering, death is inevitable, and humans are born without their consent. Additionally, although some people may turn out to be happy, this is not guaranteed, so to procreate is to gamble with another person’s suffering. WIKIPEDIA
If you think, maybe for a few years, like 10-20 years, no one should make babies, and when things get better, we can continue, then you are not an anti-natalist. Anti-natalists believe that suffering will always be there and no one should be born EVER.
This photo was clicked by a friend, at Linnahall.
In a society whose official ideology is that “There is No Alternative”, antinatalism is basically a dressed up version of “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”.
It’s basically just lack of imagination. Doomerist defeatism.
I think you’re misunderstanding anti-natalism if you believe it’s about envisioning the end of the world. It’s not that grand, nor that pessimistic. It was never meant to remedy shitty living conditions. It’s not a tool for embettering society, it’s a philosophical exercise that questions one’s right to create a person and subject them to sentience and suffering.
Imagining non-existence is anything but lacking imagination because it so abstract to our minds. To be anti-natalist, you must first have attempted to imagine that in order to compare it to existence before asking if you feel it is right to subject a human to that.
It’s a philosophical exercise that challenges social conventions about child-rearing. Don’t forget that it’s an excruciating ordeal for women too. There is suffering involved for all parties. Not all kids are born healthy, secure, and provided for.
Ask anyone with disabilities, abusive families, trauma, financial hardship, and generally going though too much shit in life and you’ll find that it was never about a lack of imagination. We suffer because we are able to imagine how things could have been so much better. It is because we can imagine ourselves in a better place that we ask if not being born is necessarily any worse. That isn’t a statement made with just pessimism, it’s made with genuine curiosity towards thinking back what ‘life’ was like before being born, and deciding that it is the greatest gift you can give to your hypothetical children.
You’re contradicting your own argument:
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This is a contradiction. You are literally picking the antinatalist option because of shitty living conditions.
And of course, the lack of imagination is not whether you can imagine things being better but whether you can imagine things becoming better starting from where we are here and now.
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If you can imagine such a place, steelman your argument then, try making it without a premise of shitty living conditions. Pick a convivial world, and make an antinatalist argument from that world. Does it still stand?
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Finally, the argument that says nonexistence might be better is literally vacuous: False implies True. Nonexistence therefore is trivially whatever you want it to be, but not In any meaningful sense.
You are misinterpreting a crucial point. It’s not about remedying your own shitty living conditions, it’s about not creating one for others.
I don’t know how to state this more simply, but anti-natalism isn’t centered around improving the quality of life for yourself, it’s about not giving the opportunity to suffer for others.
It doesn’t change absolutely anything in my argument, it remains exactly the same. Antinatalism absconds not only the responsibility to improve the world but even the possibility of a better world existing in the future, it assumes à priori that existence is and will remain insufferable.
Nothing about anti-natalism rejects the possibility of improving the world.
To iterate a Buddhist belief, suffering is an inevitable part of existing. The point of anti-natalism is to avoid causing more people to suffer than necessary.
We are no where near the threat of extinction if most of us stop having children. The world is beyond overpopulated and there is no ecologically sound reason to have more kids.
Think of why we sterilize cats and dogs. It’s not because we are absolving ourselves the responsibility of improving their lives, it’s because we do not want them to create more just to suffer on the streets.
Anti-natalism is a response to natalism, a popularly held religious belief that one should have as many children as possible. It’s about rejecting social and cultural pressures to have kids on people who don’t want to.
This is just wrong. There are more than enough resources to go around. More homes than homeless, more food production than food insecure, more clothes than anyone could ever wear in a lifetime; things like transportation, energy, and production could be greatly optimized via collectivisation; and so on. The problem is endless profit-seeking and exploitation, not overpopulation.
The people that have access to these resources, many of which are extracted from the global south, consume way more than their fair share because of the infinite growth drive of capitalism. There is never “enough”, regardless of population; because to stagnate or to shrink is to fail under capitalism. Overconsumption is a problem that could be solved, quite comfortably I might add, if we were enabled collectively to put our minds to it.
You would do more to lessen suffering, by having kids and raising them to fight for that world; because that world is in fact possible; than to prevent their personal suffering by simply not bringing them into existence. Assuming anti-natalism is the only thing stopping you from having kids, of course; not everyone wants or needs to reproduce and I completely agree with destigmatizing that decision, but at least be honest that you just personally don’t want to be a parent. Don’t introduce new stigma for people that do want to be parents.
I take issue with this universal suffering idea. Sounds eugenics-ey. Cause it’s reasonably predictable which children will struggle more than others simply based on material conditions of their parents. It’s less of a “gamble”, for certain people who, often enough, just so happen to be directly responsible for some amount of suffering in the world. Even if I grant you that suffering is universal even in the most optimal conditions, it’s not like someone with optimal means is questioning the ethics of becoming a parent. And if they are, it’s most probably in the hyper-natalist, “populating the world with my superior spawn” direction like the musks of the world. Doesn’t anti-natalism kinda indirectly suggest leaving the world in those kinds of hands?
Also, humans are not cats and dogs and any ideology that leads you to make this comparison, especially w/r to population control and euthanasia, should be rejected just on the face of it. Point blank period.
There’s a certain degree of arrogance in thinking that you are contributing to a greater cause by potentially birthing and raising the next Einstein.
On paper, we may have enough resources to sustain the world population. In practice, we are no where nearly socially and politically progressive enough yet to support said population. Social progress doesn’t happen overnight. Birthing the next Nobel prize winner doesn’t instantly resolve climate change or end world hunger.
Of every person born, there will be far more people putting strain on a system that isn’t able to adequately distribute resources to those who need it. Most people make for dog shit parents.
I’m not talking about “birthing the next Einstein” or “nobel prize winner”, types who again, likely had above-average means that contributed to their positions and therefore are less likely to fundamentally question the system that afforded them that. There’s a certain level of arrogance in assuming that only a “great man” in a great position could come along to change things. There’s even more arrogance in acting like you’re taking on some noble cause to “reduce the world’s suffering” by simply deciding not to have children.
I’m talking about collective struggle. You don’t need to be anyone special to engage in that, it just doesn’t work that way. No, that is not the world we have, and it won’t be easy, but is it not one worth fighting for? Does it need to be “instant” to be worthy? Population control isn’t some quick or easy fix either, by the way.
The system is able to adequately distribute resources, that’s what I’m saying, it simply lacks interest in doing so. It’s not the number of people that is straining it. Even with fewer people, it will be strained, because that strain is by design and necessary to the system. The people in power, the ones who design the system, are the ones that design it to fail in that way because they benefit from doing so. The more of our class who are conscious of the class war raging around us, to fight with numbers rather than capital, the better.
Other places like cuba, china, and the USSR have had revolutions that created what they could of that world on a national level, under worse conditions. Haiti was a literal slave colony under one of the most powerful nations at the time of its revolution. It’s on the rest of us to learn from their examples and bring our corners of the world to meet them, to complete their revolution. It won’t be overnight, but we can make revolution in our lifetimes. In the grand scheme of things that is not a long time, at all, and each successive generation can build on it if we only teach them our struggle and enable them to have greater power over their own lives.
You’re definitely showing on full display here, some commenters’ points about eco-fascism and “giving up” on improving the world because you’re too small-minded to imagine a better one and and acknowledge your own role in fighting for it. So might as well just cull the working class population, who use the fewest resources but who you personally find less worthy of life; including your own potential children; to make it more comfortable… (for exactly the people who cause the suffering you seek to address.) Up to and including literally putting them down like dogs, apparently. Real classy thing to gloss over btw. Yes, this is a fascist ideology.