I simply relate this to Jungian Individuation.

This is (very bascially) broken down into four stages where the outward social projection is pretty much nullified - Persona - followed by exploring and accepting your inner ‘dark side’ - incorporating your Shadow - then coming to terms with the feminine/masculine opposite - anima/animus - which then leads the individual to a fuller sense of self by realising they are in fact multifaceted and more complex than they ever first imagined.

This is something akin to realising the ‘ego’ and not exactly kicking it out, but more or less realising the necessity of the ‘ego’ whilst not placing it on a pedestal.

The process of Individuation is likely to be traumatic and at the very least a large mental/‘spiritual’ feat to take on. For some it happens accidentally (like it did mostly for myself) but I guess it can happen through a pure wilful pursuit (although I cannot fathom how this would work).

Whatever … there is no philosophical question in the OP.

Entropy. And this is not exactly a ‘philosophical’ question.

In philosophical terms we ‘die’ because we are alive. Not dying = not living.

I don’t see much of an argument being presented nor a solid position. You do not believe that suffering is necessary for a full life? What is it to live a good life? Is a good life a life absent of suffering? Does ‘meaning’ make a life a full life or is meaning more or less a waste of time? How does meaning relate to knowledge in terms of suffering/woes in life?

I do not really think searching for ‘meaning’ in life is very ‘meaningful’ … I find the whole idea of searching for meaning to be ‘meaningless’ … maybe that is your point?

I do not see how being poor or rich has anything to do with meaning or suffering so some of your points in the OP are empty for me.

I think it is a perfectly reasonable evolutionary function to ‘search for meaning’ when things do not go our way. That is basically a damn fine survival mechanism that allows us to venture beyond our perceived limitations and learn about what is out there.

My point was that they are just words. ‘Suffering’ is no different to ‘meaning’ in the broader picture.

I have had a few discussions on here where some describe ‘suffering’ as being basically anything that requires effort.

Note: a ‘positive’ event can only be called such in relation to a ‘negative event’.

Words are just words. The ‘meaning’ (whatever that means!) is a referential tool for us to navigate around. For you perhaps the ‘meaning’ is to stop looking for ‘meaning’ … kind of self contradictory but most language is so … :D

Maybe if there was no suffering there would be no meaning? By this I mean that knowledge and understanding pretty much tie into some obstacle in life in one form or another.

Maybe meaning is suffering or suffering is just an alternative perspective for finding meaning. Generally in life I have found that suffering increases when meaning/understanding is avoided. The challenge of life should probably be met head-on as much as possible so as to find meaning and circumnavigate unnecessary suffering.

Note: ‘suffering’ seems to be ‘necessary’ for conscious and conscientious living creatures.

Here’s a question … Is ‘race’ a ‘social construct’? :D

I have noticed that people are so quick to say how others are easily offended, ridicule them and then hammer home the argument of people being offended when openly trying to offend them.

Humans are funny creatures.

Is your post here driven by morality. It seems to me that I agree with the gist of what you are saying but any public agreement is necessarily ‘immoral’ as it is tied up in the whole ‘morality’.

Morality is essentially immoral.

Note, every claim I have made is true — Bartricks

You are a moron. That is not ‘true’ it is my opinion. Do you understand the difference? I think not.

Bye bye. Not interested in any exchange with you for at least 3 months. You are officially in my sin bin.

Have fun :)

I can, and will, do better than you have :)

Currently busy arranging trip so it is not exactly the most important thing atm but WILL present an argument for antinatalism and go over several misconceptions on both sides that I have seen others repeat.

Either way:

- You validated what I said about the loose use of terms and I do not assume what is or is not meant by ‘harm’ (meaning if he meant ‘unnecessary harm’ then he should have said that AND been particular about what ‘unnecessary harm’ means).
- No red herring. He argued, quite clearly, that ‘innocent’ people do not deserve ‘harm’. If unborn/non-existent people are somehow different in terms of ‘innocence’ then that is something the OP needs to outline and differentiate between not me.
- I would say that life necessitates suffering and that suffering is necessary for any life-form in some capacity. That is what I would call ‘necessary suffering’ rather than throwing a blanket over all suffering as ‘unnecessary’. You yourself pointed out that there is ‘necessary’ and ‘unnecessary’ harm. If you are not entirely opposed to the idea of ‘necessary harm’ - which would be peculiar as if we call something ‘necessary’ then it seems fairly validated - then must surely admit that some ‘harm/suffering’ is actually beneficial.

In conclusion it seems that the ‘harms’ you berate are the ‘harms’ I see as strengthening peoples and individuals so they can live good lives.

The whole consent issue was not mentioned in the OP sadly. That is another area where there are huge misconceptions cast by both sides and all it takes is to listen and agree or disagree. No one consents to being born and no one (or rarely) consents to dying. I did not consent to gravity either … and it is right there in the hyperbole where the nuances of the argument begin to be lost. Gravity is not exactly a phenomenon of nature like birth is, but picking apart what is similar and different in these two phenomenons might help.

My view is basically formed around the use of hypotheticals and general dislike for ‘ethics’ (meaning something announced to the community as ‘good’ or ‘bad’). My dislike is due to the constant self manipulation we torture ourselves with due to peer pressures and general societal ‘norms’.

My argument for antinatalism (whenI complete it) is more or less going to be about how the argument can benefit us collectively and as individuals.

It would be interesting to see how you could write an argument against antinatalism. Will you attempt that?

You have two options.

1) Express yourself better so you do not constantly find yourself telling others they are ‘not addressing the OP’ when they have and found little to nothing of content.

2) Be constantly ignored and ridiculed due to the inability to react to how people respond to your posts where the blame is put 100% at their doorstep.

If someone reads what you wrote and replies to it then it might help to either point out the misunderstanding (without insulting them) and/or trying to express what you meant more precisely, or just try another approach.

I’m done with you for a month. Bye

:D

I literally just addressed every line of the OP you halfwit :D

Bye bye chump

In the meantime I can hopefully help a little by pointing out several issues raised about the OP.

1) “This is, I believe, a new argument for antinatalism.

To procreate is to create an innocent person. They haven't done anything yet. So they're innocent.”

- Having done nothing neither makes someone ‘innocent’ nor ‘guilty’. It is irrelevant.

2) “An innocent person deserves to come to no harm. Thus any harm - any harm whatever - that this person comes to, is undeserved.”

- You have failed to explain this. If your position is that an innocent person deserves no harm but that is what innocent means then you have no argument. You are just stating something and expecting people to follow.

Either way, it is faulty to paint things so black and white. In a scenario where two ‘innocent’ people’s interests conflict harm is inevitable so your definition does not hold up at all. Such inevitable harm comes about through ignorance/misunderstanding. You can still argue on some level that ‘neither deserve harm’ even though two innocent people have just caused harm to each other, but only if you accept that the judgement of what someone ‘deserves’ is a judgement made with an effort to ignore any blame due to ignorance.

3) “Furthermore, an innocent person positively deserves a happy life.”

- Unsubstantiated claim.

4) “So, an innocent person deserves a happy, harm free life.”

- To repeat. Unsubstantiated claim.

5) “This world clearly does not offer such a life to anyone. We all know this.”

- We know this because life without any degree of ‘harm’ whatsoever is not ‘life’. Life requires learning and learning is always, at some stage, a hardship.

6) “It is wrong, then, to create an innocent person when one knows full well that one cannot give this person what they deserve: a happy, harm free life. To procreate is to create a huge injustice. It is to create a debt that you know you can't pay.”

- None of this follow as you are riding on too many unsubstantiated claims and poorly sketched out terms.

7) “Even if you can guarantee any innocent you create an overall happy life - and note that you can't guarantee this - it would still be wrong to create such a person, for the person deserves much more than that. They don't just deserve an overall happy life. They deserve an entirely harm-free happy life.”

- I might want to be able to fly like a bird or win the lottery. A ‘harm free’ life would not be a ‘life’ at all. This seems to be a rather naive view. It is a bit like expecting a child raised where their every action is praised blindly and expecting a well rounded individual to emerge from such a methodology of raising children. Many parents have attempted to ‘protect’ their children too much and with pretty horrific outcomes. The very same idea of ‘no harm whatsoever’ (regardless of deserving said harms) inflicted upon someone would result in early death due to said person being incapable of looking after themselves. I do not view a ‘happy life’ as a life under the perpetual guardianship of a tyrant whose sole purpose is to shield said ‘innocent’ from every single possible harm.

There is also the embedded problem of putting an ‘innocent’ on a pedestal. An ‘innocent’ person is also a person with no experience, knowledge, reason nor any real understanding of morality. Be careful if your purpose is to prolong such a state of ‘innocence’.

Anyway, I will provide a proper argument for antinatalism and I suggest you provide a proper one against it.

Argue with yourself. Meaning do what I suggest. Make an argument AGAINST antinatalism and see if you can help yourself understand the opposing views given and address them properly.

He was overly sensitive, quick to insult and never showed any attempt to use even a slight degree of charity in any interpretation. Once cast in the role of ‘enemy’ he lost all sense of reasoning.

If he was more thick-skinned it might have played out differently. Maybe after several months of therapy he will learn or maybe not. Either way good riddance!

How can I find ‘karma’ abhorrent’? I said those espousing ‘karma’ as a justification for people less fortunate as themselves as ‘abhorrent’.

It is especially silly when based on a steadfast belief in reincarnation from one body to another.

Where is having the cake and eating it? I don’t quite understand what you are getting at with that line?

I don’t completely agree there, but in general I would certainly agree that in its current guise it is probably no more harmful than Christianity (although several orphanages would probably prove otherwise?).

I was interested in this topic because the philosophical position of ‘karma’ and ‘past lives’ is something that is often swept under the carpet. I think viewing misfortune in this life as some kind of penance for misgiving in some imagined previous life is an abhorrent idea that essentially has some people categorised as ‘deserving their fate’ by simply being born with some form of disability or other.

Several years overdue. He needs therapy more than any other person I have seen on this or any other forum.

Hope he works through whatever his issues are.

I am just surprised he wasn’t done away with years ago tbh. Being knowledgeable is no excuse for open and untamed bigotry and bullying directed towards anyone who happens to share a different opinion.

Are you really that naive? That is like saying violence is not permitted in Christianity and ‘turn the other cheek’ is always employed.

Myanmar. Plenty of instances of violence there openly encouraged by buddhist monks.

Go back several decades and in the UK muslims would pretty much never get involved in violence. The doctrines don’t matter too much when corrupt leaders of institutions wish to flex for political gain. Religious institutions are political institutions.

Merely a matter of geography. Buddhist doctrines can just as easily be used to kill and maim. Extremists can exist in any institution.

The general message in every religion is one of peace and love. Some seem to need more reforming than others … not denying that. A bullet to the head is still a bullet to the head. The gun it comes from generally doesn’t matter too much.

True. It is an argument that every human action is potentially harmful and therefore no action should be taken.

The point being if you follow through the thought it is both impractical and ridiculous.

Procreating can cause increased harm as can walking down a road, breathing too loudly, sniffing a flower or not killing someone in a murderous rampage.

There is something a little clandestine in the thought that innocents deserve no harm because this kind of implies that the guilty deserve harm. Then it is a question of who decides who is or is not guilty. From a stance of newly born children then we can view them not as purely innocent creatures but more or less as vessels for future harm riddled with guilt on the immediate horizon.

Anyway, I will continue to work on my argument for antinatalism I suggest you work on an argument against it.

Karma is simply an extension of known laws of ethics: what goes around comes around, one good turn deserves another, a taste of one's own medicine, you reap what you sow, you get the idea, tit for tat, quid pro quo, a law encapulated in the word "reciprocity". — Agent Smith

Well, if only! The buddhist view is basically that children with bone cancer have bone cancer due to what they did in a previous life. Them having cancer is ‘karma’.

There is a much darker side to buddhist beliefs many prefer to ignore.

You presented a one-dimensional position with no attempt to offer up any other explanations for the existence of ‘religions’.

Your entire argument starts on the assumption that people started religions for purely selffish/nefarious means. That could be true of course, but I see no attempt made to consider any other possibility. Hence, you are arguing/asking from a position of clear bias.

It was nice to see Corbyn actually give another genuine option for the voters. No denying that.

I came to the same basic conclusion. Many questions are still unanswered/unknown but it certainly a position that contends strongly with any other when it comes to the ‘origins of religion’.

I do think there is something to basic human greed and fallacies that have led to ‘opiate of the masses’ and other such views. I do not see these positons as the instigators though. Shamanism, and shamanic traditions, are imbued across all religions yet shamanism is not a ‘religion’.

Altered states of consciousness seem to be where the whole landscape of ‘religion’ stem from. Nothing supernatural but certainly something deeply obscured.

Poor and symplistic analysis based on biases you carry.

There is no Ad Hom. I am quite capable of calling someone a complete cunt and yet taking their argument as an argument detached from said cunt.

Evasion again in response to the first point. People DO NOT derserve either harm nor good. Agree or not? If not why? If you do then why are you focused on harm being deserved rather than good?

I will write something arguing for antinatalism. You will probably be able to follow it but batricks will be left a gibbering wreck I expect … am I being ‘mean’ and causing ‘harm’ by saying so? Who is the judge here? That is the underlying issue.

Anyway, until I write it have fun not having fun or have no fun having fun. Whatever just don’t expect others to sit idle when people are punching themselves in the face and hitting ‘innocent’ bystanders too.

Cake and eat it syndrome.

You speak just as much gibberish.

People do not deserve harm nor good. It is literally that simple. Jumping back and forth between some disembodied ‘ethics’ and then back into human reality as and when suits to avoid any criticism is why people just end up laughing and leaving the discussion because the discussion cannot begin if those posing some idea cannot grasp the most simplistic criticisms throw at their half-baked ideas.

It is WAY more frustrating to see literally dozens of people voice the same criticisms and those criticisms being ignored.

I can argue better for antinatalism than both of you combined. The question is have either yourself or batricks bothered to argue against antinatalism? I doubt it.

That doesn’t follow. If harm is caused by not having children, or being able to have children, then you are wrong. Many would claim that not having children can and is a greater harm than having children.

We could also rightly state that mass euthanasia would prevent all human harm eventually as there would be no more humans left to suffer. It is a bit like preventing someone from being murdered by killing them.

Evil lurks in the guise of ‘just deserts’.

I think this might be a case of ‘let’s stop wasting our time’ :D

Compared to the US the UK had a left-wing government.

Corbin was pretty unrealistic and useless. The only party leader of any worth I have seen in my lifetime was Paddy Ashdown.

The public in the UK will go for labour again, or libs maybe, when there is someone who can stand out. I will give Corbin his dues … he did offer up a clear alternative but it seemed like too much infighting hurt his attempt. If others had supported him and bolstered his ideas with something more solid he may have done a lot better.

At the end of the day people will go for the leader who not only hits home on the policies they care about but also show steely determination in the face of opposition. Boris is still there because he fights on where others with more … integrity … would have resigned.

It is hard to judge with the pressures of social media due to politicians being forced to respond to a rather overly vocal minority on every matter. Paste on top of that the UK press … well, maybe the people who are right for the job are just smart enough not to do it because the risk to reputation and public opinion is too high.

I have always believed that the right person to lead is most often the one who least wants to do it. Once things get desperate they usually have no choice but to stand up and be counted. Until a real crisis hits they will avoid the limelight as much as possible I reckon (whoever they are).

So when someone points out that your use of terms is narrow to the point of being overtly obtuse your response it “I don’t understand”?

You misuse/abuse the term ‘innocent’. To state that innocents do not deserve harm (any harm) is not an argument and it also lacks any depth of meaning.

People do not deserve to live either. So what? See how I use the term ‘deserve’ there?

Mephistopheles would just find another ‘innocent’ group to dupe.

It was badly written because I was half asleep. Still, if you do not see why it is important to show why the innocent should not be harmed it shouldn’t take you much imagination to understand that in a world full of innocent people harm will still occur.

You are not looking at this with any sense of depth it seems.

You may as well ask ‘Does anyone deserve to live?’ … but it not really a solid question because the assumption is that people ‘deserve’ or do not ‘deserve’ something in the first place. It is a common habit of the virtue signalling types to claim that they have an ‘undeserved privilege’ based on their sex, skin tone or perhaps their native tongue … it is taking the term ‘deserve’ and framing it as some technical term where it is actually just a term that can be applied in many ways given on differing situations.

To say that ‘innocent people do not deserve to have harm caused to them’ only makes sense in terms of particular instances involving an ‘innocent bystander’ hit by a car. It makes little to no sense to state they didn’t ‘deserve’ it yet ‘innocent ‘ also crosses into the category of ignorance. Ignorance is not something that can excuse people on one side or another.

In some cultures it may be deemed a threat to life if you wave at someone yet if you walked into the village of people with this cultural signal of ‘threatening death on someone’ by waving to say hello they are innocent if they attack you and you are innocent by being attacked. If both parties are innocent it does not necessarily mean there is ‘no harm caused’.

That is why I asked why you think ‘innocent people’ do not ‘deserve harm’. Generally speaking we all understand what you meant and generally speaking myself and others have tried to point out why your claim is not fully justified because it is parcelling up ‘innocent’ as having a concrete meaning that you insist others adhere to. Hopefully you can see why this is not necessarily the case although in society today it is generally something many people will believe without bothering to question it … just like antinatalists insist what they are saying is something that questions common assumptions.

An innocent person deserves to come to no harm — Bartricks

Why?

I was not spreading misinformation. I used terms and defined them specifically and even just quoted where I did this?

I am extremely open to criticisms and feedback. Trust me there though when I say you have got the wrong end of the stick. I was certainly not backtracking on errors as you put it. I was just telling you that I said I was using the terms as I stated and to then throw that back at me as ‘misinformation’ is disingenuous or misunderstanding - I would usually assume the latter but given that I literally pointed out what exactly I said this may be in vain :D

There is no thesis btw. I was doing precisely what I said I was doing and it would have tied in to the use of the term/concept ‘hammer’ if you had read to the end.

It was part of an attempt to write something within a 2000 word limit but this was a hard task as I could have written practically endlessly. It is far from perfect for sure.

It is a short essay. I defined the terms and how I would use them in the opening section. If you bundle in and argue against how I use them it is useless to read further.

Trust that I mean it when I say:

The difference of ‘perception’ and ‘experience’, in this essay, will be considered thus ... ‘perception’ being the amalgam of sensible ‘experience’, where experiences are ‘after’ sensible input (of content receding into the past and drawn on to form the present context - the ‘perception’). To differentiate with more clarity between ‘perceive’ and ‘experience’ it will serve to view ‘experience’ as that which ‘moves’ back through time; a receding thought. Whilst ‘perceive’ is a reversal fo this; the ‘feedback’ - perceptions brought forward to culminate in the moment alongside, not apart from, ‘experience’. To sum up, Perception ‘drives’ forward and Experience ‘drives’ backward, yet they exist parallel/entwined in the now and are known as one unity pulled in different temporal orientations; attracted as they are toward temporal poles (future and past) yet BOTH in equal possession of said poles. This is akin to the ancient Greek titans, “Prometheus” and “Epimetheus.” The brothers representing ‘foresight’ and ‘hindsight’ respectively; or Perception (perceptive) and Experience (memory). Note: Epimetheus was often depicted as being ‘foolish’. — I like sushi

I have reframe the terms ‘perception’ and ‘experience’ for the purpose of the essay. Do not take it out of context.