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Antinatalist here - the rhetoric in that post is horrible, and is not representative of antinatalism as a whole.
Antinatalism isn’t the belief that a certain group shouldn’t reproduce - it’s that nobody should. The world is fucked, and nonconsensually bringing anyone into it is morally reprehensible. It’s not eugenics, it’s voluntary extinctionism.
For the people that have been born, however, everyone deserves respect and equity. Ableism, or any other kind of discrimination, is just wrong, and makes you a shitty person. Just like the person who made that post.
It’s not eugenics, it’s voluntary extinctionism.
"Don't worry guys, that person doesn't represent us - what they should have said is that they wish for all of humanity to die out."
This is an absolutely insane thing to advocate for. I hope you come to realize that in time.
According to some predictions, climate change will cause up to 3 billion refugees by the end of the century. The world isn't exactly the most stable right now either, in part due to the beginning effects of climate change.
Not that I necessarily agree with it, but coming to the conclusion that it's not necessarily moral to bring a child into that world or contribute to further suffering, isn't particularly insane or inhumane.
It's not a particularly novel or outlandish idea either. From Sophocles to Shakespeare. To be or not to be, is an age old question.
Not that going on about how much you hate children and people who have children all day on the internet, is a particularly healthy hobby, obviously.
According to some predictions, climate change will cause up to 3 billion refugees by the end of the century.
Those are some very optimistic predictions.
Here are some fun links from the World Economic Forum and the United Nations: Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030 and 90% of global top soil and arable land is at risk of depletion by 2050.
And to add to all this, the ice caps will likely be melted completely in the next decade causing the Blue Ocean Event, where massive amounts of previously reflected solar radiation will instead be absorbed by the oceans, causing the release of huge amounts of methane from the sea bed and the earth to cook in it's own atmosphere.
This is a good explanation for anyone interested in further reading on the BOE. Look this up for yourselves with other sources though.
(You'll want to find out how much ice coverage is left at the poles, how much we've lost this year so far, and the loss projection for if the next 5 years are as hot as 2023. Then look up what will happen to the earth with all the unreflected solar radiation we'll be absorbing without the ice caps).Billions of people are going to die in the next 30 years due to climate collapse. There may not be 3 billion of us left to be clinate refugees by the end of the century.
I’m not saying we should kill people, I’m saying making more is wrong.
It is a nonconsensual act whereupon you are forcing life and all its travesty onto another being, when they were perfectly fine not existing.
Call me insane if you want, I couldn’t care less. Humans are a plague upon both other humans and this planet as a whole, and bringing someone else into the world to be both a victim and perpetrator of the issue is wrong.
I think your perspective about life is blinded by pessimism, and you're treating that pessimism as absolute fact. Many people view life as a wonderful thing, are thrilled to exist for the time that they do, and see creating a new life to experience the wonders of living as a gift.
Humans are a plague upon both other humans and this planet as a whole
You're sounding like Agent Smith from the matrix. Come on. Unplug from the negative feedback loop for a bit.
You call it pessimism, I call it realism.
There are good things to experience, yes. If you’re already alive, then by all means, seek to find happiness and enjoyment. Don’t force someone else into that endless struggle. You can make no guarantees that their life won’t be one of pure suffering, and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
And again, we are destroying this planet - not just for us, but for all life on it. We are the problem.
You call it pessimism, I call it realism.
Says every person with depression ever.
I agree with the other commenter recommending therapy. When you don't see it as "life is pain and the future is hopeless", you might sound less like a scifi villain calling for human extinction.
“Existence is suffering” is a foundational tenet for many worldviews and religions, not just antinatalism. Existence is literally the first cause to all suffering - no existence, no suffering.
Acknowledging that doesn’t make me depressed or pessimistic, it’s just acceptance how things are.
You’re free to live in whatever fantasy you want, though. That’s your right.
Also, responding to differing worldviews with “get help” is generally bad form
Your worldview is literally calling for the extinction of all humans. You need to come back to reality and stop convincing yourself that this is normal or healthy.
Yes, it is. And I’m just fine, I prefer not to live in idealistic delusion
Maybe educate yourself on the actual philosophy
Ah, yes the classic "everyone else who doesn't subscribe is deluded" echochamber red flag.
"Voluntary Extinction" is right up there with "flat earthers" and "anti-vax" as the dumbest pseudo-intellectual things I've read on the internet.
Existence is also the source of all joy and wonder
Without any sort of guarantee.
It’s a gamble. Literally gambling with human lives.
If one never exists, they face neither pleasure nor pain. If one is forced to exist - remember, this is never consensual - then one may experience pleasure and pain, and simply hope that pleasure is more bountiful. Hopes, dreams, goals, ideas that may or may not be met. All of it essentially left to chance. Will their life be pleasurable? Possibly. Will life be painful? Certainly. Suffering is guaranteed. Pleasure is not. Are we to keep forcing others to play, simply in the hope that things work out well for them?
No. I don’t gamble with lives. Nor should anyone.
Pain and suffering exists regardless of humans. Do you want to remove the possibility for hopes, dreams, and goals to be achieved while maintaining the existence of pain and suffering?
Why stop at humans? Ducks are pretty reprehensible as well.
And the less said about koalas, the better.
Ducks cannot consent to voluntary extinction
Irrelevant.
Humans are the primary cause for global suffering. Ducks are pretty fucked tho, they could probably go as well.
Mosquitoes I shouldn’t even have to mention. I think we can all agree those fuckers need to go
Dude if people really have such a problem with life, they can in fact opt out of it at pretty much any point down the line.
It's really not accessible for most people and since it's not legally protected. Or maybe just don't gamble on someone's life being a negative experience just because there's a chance it'll be a positive experience
Yeah but like, why not let those with the best understanding of the particular circumstances make that decision on a case-by-case basis instead of unilaterally saying that because some people are probably going to have a shitty life no one gets to make more (people)?
If someone experiences so much suffering that they are pushed to “opt out of it”, it would have been better not to force them to live and experience the suffering in the first place. Just because someone can take themselves out of it doesn’t make the suffering okay to inflict.
And we do, frequently. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for autistic people.
Yes, and I think that is bad. I just also think that this isn't because of anything intrinsic to being alive and/or autistic, but largely due to external factors.
And what control do we have over these external factors? Because it sounds like you're basically summing this up as 'skill issue', you get that right?
Victim blaming autistic people who commit suicide is a great look on you. You should be so proud of this line of reasoning.
Yeah righto bud, I'm not victim blaming anybody. I'm just shit-talking a bunch of sad defeatists on the internet who think they're smarter than everybody else just because they've taken the fucking blackpill when in reality they're so far down this hole that they're running defense for fucking eugenics against their own community.
On the off chance that you were being sincere in your question as to what we can do to actually improve the situation, the answer is to participate in an existing community dedicated to that very purpose. Collective action is generally way more effective than anything an individual can do. Are there barriers to doing this? Potentially. What can you do about that? I guess you'll just have to figure it out; I don't fucking know the specific circumstances of your personal situation, nor those of any groups around you.
So what are you doing? I mean aside from making lots of silly assumptions about me and the other people here who are politely trying to explain our points of view about this.
How are you making the world better for people with autism? And how many kids do you plan on having? Any plans for how you and all the kids will cope with the water and food shortages over the next ten to thirty years?
Genuinely asking here.
What the fuck do you want from me? I don't owe you shit. You asked a question I suspected and am now convinced was in bad faith, and I answered it anyway.
You're talking a lot of shit about me making baseless assumptions for somebody out here asking questions that are entirely premised on baseless assumptions yourself, such as (wrongly) assuming not only that I'm capable of having children (I intentionally had my gonads removed, not that it's any of your business) but also that I'd want to (children have a tendency to be noisy, outgoing and energetic in a way that doesn't jive with my own autism). I just don't have a problem with people who genuinely believe that they can give their children a good life having any, as I'm not convinced that a good life is impossible (yet).
Piss off with your bullshit "politely trying to explain our points of view" civility politics, we were past that when you took the least charitable interpretation you could have done and misconstrued my point of view as somehow placing blame on the victims of the current state of affairs.
Genuinely asking here.
nonono: you're "Just Asking Questions." At least, I believe that's the vernacular.
My position is simple: for as long as there is any positive experience to be had, life can be worthwhile and it's not up to anyone to make a decision based on the contrary view to that on the behalf of anyone else. Also eugenics is fucking vile.
@OurTragicUniverse @STRIKINGdebate2 @BluJay320 @Lt_Worf @Walk_blesseD
So where does birth rank as the leading cause of death?
So if your kid doesn't want to fight in the water wars you're just gonna say "lol kys nerd"? Tragic.
Firstly, I don't have a kid. Being sterile (and also just not wanting any), I am quite unlikely to ever have a kid. Ideally we as a society would work to avoid water wars happening. My point is that we should improve our collective state of affairs somewhat, rather than resigning ourselves to the idea that to exist is to suffer like a bunch of loser doomers.
There's no fixing to this shit and deep down you know this.
I saw how humanity got together to deal with COVID. Spoiler: they fucking didn't.
What a garbage species we are.
This is an incredibly dumb idea. It will also die out for incredibly obvious reasons because everyone else will keep reproducing while antinatalists descend into irrelevancy.
Genesis 1:28 and al-Baqarah 2:187 instruct reproduction. Antinatalists are destined for the fire.
Your fairy tales mean nothing to me
Man I'm so sorry you're so miserable that you can't even imagine how so many, if not most people are glad of being alive.
Really seek help as other say, seeing everything so bleak is no help to nobody.
“Your worldview differs from mine so therefore you must be sad and miserable”
Sure, bud
you think someone wronged you by allowing you to be alive.
A nonconsensual act is not “allowing”, it is forcing
parents can choose for their kids.
Consciousness is required to give consent, requiring consent to be born is a paradox.
This is a philosophical debate of which i see only 2 possible outcomes.
-
Life itself is a fundamental bad and negative the only ethical thing to do is fully halt the circle of reproduction to minimize all harm
-
Life itself is a fundamental good and positive, we must nurture and protect it to minimize harm against it. Prioritizing well being and personal happinesses while finding a “cure” for intolerance, hate and greed.
Alternative:
- Forcing birth upon someone is fundamentally wrong, and the only ethical thing to do is halt the cycle of reproduction to prevent further harm. We should also strive to minimize further harm to those already alive by prioritizing well-being and personal happiness, while searching for a “cure” for intolerance, hate, and greed.
Can you give some context on how that would look like in practice that is not akin to everybody suicide? If we stop the cycle of reproduction then humanity will go extinct in about a century (not considering Longevity escape velocity which would significantly alter the subject context)
Trying to create a better world and to find cures for harm is a difficult challenge, i am willing to sacrifice some of my own life (time, body and energy) for the common good knowing that future generations will be better off. But doing so knowing that in a century none of that work will matter at all would be detrimental to my ability to find meaning and therefore wellbeing in my life. Besides that, knowing that we have collectively chosen extinction rather then trying to archive the vast untapped potential our conscious minds still hold to grow would bring me great pain and sadness.
There is also the matter with what are we going to do with all other species on our planet? Do we respect their ability reproduce because they have no conscious concept of consent or we will we nuke the entire planet in the hope that their is no and never will be any other life out there?
Also a different question with a more spiritual angle: How can you be certain that there was nothing within you that existed before conception which did consent to being born as a human being in a random family. If we halt reproduction then we are forcing non existence on potential consciousness. In absolutes you can chose to end your life when you have it but you cannot give life to yourself when you don't have it.
Parents can choose over their kids until adulthood, for example to have or not a medical treatment or how they should be educated.
Parents should choose if they make a kid or not as well.
-
Ffs having autism sucks, suicide is one of the leading causes of death for us, and on average we die around 50.
It's not eugenics to be sad for 3 new autistic kids being brought into this world to suffer and die in the catasrophic climate collapse we're so dead set on, it's fucking empathy.
You don't know if said persons are gonna have a bad life, you just don't know.
Autism can be bat for some, maybe more than few, but is not for everybody, Humanity always has faced existencial crisis, we will fix climate change on way or another.
People are born neurodivergent but they are not born suicidal, the reason suicide is the leading cause of death is because we are a minority that is not well understood by the dominant majority, that is where almost all the hearth comes from.
Schizofrenia is also understood as a form neurodivergency and has quite some overlap with autosm. Most people know it as a horrible, scary mental illness but this is only the case in modern societies. Where in a big city people experience hallucinations of yelling, monsters and many intens negative emotions in natural communities they experience quite the opposite, visions of ancestors, angels, positive emotions and artistic beauty in things.
Instead of conceding that ‘life is pain, so we should not live,’ we should advocate that ‘society is inflicting pain, and we must reform it to prevent such suffering.’”
Wow, the Church of Shar exists in the real world.
I think your belief system is a rare example actual Evil. You're literally advocating for the elimination of music, of art, of science, of anyone who could even appreciate those things. No more Rembrandt or Dali or Mozart or ... anything. And you've gotten so twisted up inside, ostensibly because some people live sad, hard lives, that you think that's a good thing.
Dude, find a therapist. This is no way to live.
Brother if you think advocating for less population is "actual Evil" you're in for a real hard time out in the world.
How did you read "voluntary extinction" and arrive at "less population?"
Your assuming antinatalism is a plague that will infect everyone with "I aint having kids". 99% of people out here trying to have ten kids it seems. There are more trans people than antinatalists. Y'all are freaking out about a niche philosophy.
They're not advocating for a lower population. They're advocating for human extinction.
As in, we should all let the torch of consciousness burn out. I don't know if I'd call it evil, but it's definitely one of those severely misguided takes that you almost exclusively see on the internet.
It's bound to happen.
At current rate we will never leave this planet, and it will die. If not by climate change then the Sun will go Red Giant and swallow us. Or a meteor. Something. All species will go extinct sometime.
You're here afraid a few people believing that we should go extinct when there are 8 billion people and rising is gonna cause actual extinction. Fucking calm your tits, dude.
The global population will stabilize on it's own before the end of the century.
Isn't it just the belief that nobody should have kids though? I'd have thought the while extinction part would rank higher than the culture loss. And evil seems a bit extreme, sounds more like apathy and loss of hope to me. Not saying there aren't some messed up people in the group though.
sounds more like apathy and loss of hope to me.
Yeah, this. My biggest issue with the fundamental anti-natalist position is that it's a totally blackpilled one that ultimately devalues any positive experiences life brings when compared with even the potential for any bad thing to happen, regardless of magnitude.
Arguing that people must exist so as to maintain art and science is rather silly. Art and science exist for our utility; we are under no obligation to them. If people decide not to reproduce, that is their right.
I’m advocating for the elimination of poverty, disease, death, pollution, war, hate, and all human suffering.
Sure, there are some neat things in this world that are worth experiencing if you were forced to live. If you’re already alive, of course you should seek to find happiness and enjoyment in the little time you have.
Still doesn’t justify forcing more people into the world to exacerbate the problems we have - overpopulation being a major one.
It’s not evil. Things were fine before us, and things will be fine after us.
"Things" were not observable by anything with the capability to designate them as such, so no they were not "fine" in any meaningful sense of the word.
You're literally doing the speech the villain does to make him seem reasonable.
I am literally begging you to find a therapist.
Semantics, but if you really want to get into it, a lack of ability for things to be good or bad is still better than the existence and perpetuation of suffering.
Also, responding to differing worldviews with “see a therapist” and comparing them to a villain is fucking disgusting
How could it be better? There'd be no one around to make that judgment call, so it's a fundamentally illogical statement.
And I calls em like I sees em Mr. Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain Apologist.
Your human reasoning assumes all existence is human, I feel like we may be seeing a slight bias here.
Surely the core arguments that an anti-natalist might bring forward apply to any sentient beings, right? Like, a cat didn't give prior consent to existing any more than a human did. Ergo, I do think it's reasonable to point out that there would be no observer that could witness, much less enjoy any benefit from, the anti-natalist ideal world.
Believe whatever fantasy you want, bud
Antinatalism is evil because it goes against what God instructed.
Lmao yeah and I bet Santa Claus gets real upset too
