You'll have to forgive me as I've given myself an existential headache reading up on the pessimist views of Benatar, Schopenhauer, and yourself, so I probably won't do the best job responding/clarifying your position (but in retrospect, I think I did a pretty good job actually).
I think I gleamed the most of your position from the thread
It is life itself that we can all unite against (which, by the way, wasn't even one of the links you gave me
:wink:), particularly
this post.
On the unborn being used, you say:
Being born is being used, period.
We are born for our parents, and with the inevitable enculturation process, this means for society's means to be used for labor.
Anyways, procreating more people so that they can be used, is not good, period. The ends here, don't justify the means, when, someone didn't need to be born to experience any harm in the first place, and no actual person prior to birth exists to be deprived.
I may agree that being born is being used, but like I said, we are not
merely used. Nor do I think we are merely being used for labor. Yes, in a way, we are being used; society is what keeps human life healthy and flourishing, and in order to maintain society, we all must play a role, but the reason I don't find fault in this is because (1) I think procreation is a necessity for the good of current human life and (2) the existence of goods in life justifies the creation of new humans that will inevitably experience at least some suffering.
Notice, I might (strong might) agree that, if procreation
wasn't necessary for the good of current life, then bringing in new life, even if they'd experience more good than bad, wouldn't be justified. Another thing to note, the necessity of new life is for a similar reason that anti-natalists don't promote suicide or active methods of removing human existence: because for the people that are living, we should still minimize suffering, in some sense. New life is necessary for this reason because, like it's been mentioned before, if we imagine a world where we stop procreating, even if its not all simultaneous, eventually our social structures preventing suffering will degrade and cause suffering to the final generations. Is this not indirectly an action we are taking that causes suffering?
I mentioned that I think there is good in life which allows us to comfortably procreate despite the inevitability of suffering. On this, you say:
Even so, there is built in systemic suffering not related to the usual contingent (read common) notions of suffering. There is the subtle suffering of the human psyche of desire, which is simply inbuilt.
I'm not sure how to respond to this as of yet. Although I agree that the pursuit of life is not to pursue happiness (for happiness is never achieved, as we continually desire something new), I believe that this state of mind may be fixed with a change in internal attitude. In general, I'm not convinced that if suffering merely exists, life isn't worth living, as you seem to claim. That is, that if there is any form of suffering, even suffering that ultimately leads to a greater good, then that's bad and no one should have to experience that at all. Perhaps you can argue why any suffering at all is bad? I'd like to also get into a discussion on some of these terms, because I think a lot of the terms like suffering and society are rather lofty and could do with a more precise and fundamentally rooted understanding.