First thing to be clear about is that people don't want to, everyone, without exception, loathes, suffering. A certainty there's no point arguing about. The OP wants to make a case for antinatalism on the basis of how people prefer to sleep rather than be awak engaging in dull and boring activities. and the parallel being drawn is crystal clear - sleep is nonexistence and being awake is existence. If one prefers to sleep then, this argument concludes, one must prefer death. — TheMadFool
I’m not sure if that’s the intended message or parallel, but since death is simply the end of life, and Antinatalists are against birth – the start of life, they are of course against its forced end as well – death.
I think more accurate would be to characterize Antinatalists as in favour of absence of imposed existence (short nonexistence), not because nonexistence is inherently good, but because suffering is inherently bad, and the only avoidance of all kinds of sufferings is not to be forced to exist.
At the same time nothing is lost because the craving for what we refer to as "good experience" is suffering too.
And I see the starting post is as a way to start getting aware of how much of life really is bad or neutral and how few moments are something we actually would consciously chose to experience.
I don’t think one needs or should force an analogy of sleep=nonexistence and being awake=existence.
So far so good.
The scenario you describe puts us in the position of having to make a choice: — TheMadFool
The post was to present a scenario where one wouldn't wake up from sleep again but still avoid suffering, even though you claimed nobody would do that.
Either have your foot cut off and meet your end OR sleep and meet your maker. I presume what you really want to offer as choices are: be awake and suffer OR sleep and don't suffer. It's quite obvious that the latter is a preferable alternative but, the catch is, for that choice to be always the best, to be awake must always involve suffering, not just suffering but intolerable suffering.
Is this an accurate description of reality? — TheMadFool
The everyday experience of most people isn't something to be excited about, but it probably isn't something to immensely fear either. But that doesn't mean that most people won't or aren't suffering severely. Immense suffering doesn't need to be your baseline to be bad, every single instance of it is one too much.
Also the degree of how much you actually suffer varies from human to human and is dependent on your circumstances and age (and a lot more of course). I think a lot of over 80-year-olds aren't particularly excited about their future experiences.
And every infant is in pretty much in constant agony as far as I'm aware, that's all they ever communicate.
But I honestly think you are very privileged if you seriously believe that immense suffering is something abstract as it can literally happen at any moment. You may have been spared until now but this is not too common.
For many it is very real, so real in fact that they overcome the strongest instinct humans have and go against their own survival instinct and manage to somehow kill themselves, while having many obstacles in their way (external and internal ones) while still fearing death, pain and uncertainity as much as everyone else, or even more so.
But even more fundamentally,
this post by @dukkha makes an excellent point of how pleasure is just the avoidance of suffering, meaning life isn’t the carrot and the stick, but doesn’t even have a carrot, it’s in fact only beating with the stick (suffering) and temporary absence of the stick (pleasure).
Here are my choices: 1)awake and having the time of your life — TheMadFool
What does that euphemism actually mean - “having the time of your life”?
That you suffer through craving something and get a release for that suffering, until you are bored again? Like being pained and obsessed by a craving to visit some special place and then finally after many months you were actually able to visit that place and get your problem that life imposed onto you temporarily fulfilled (=release of suffering), until the next craving will be forced upon you?
You can only "enjoy" something if you suffer through a craving for it, f.e. the more you crave food, the "better" it will taste. And without any craving whatsoever the same food won't taste good at all.
The "pleasure" you may(!) get is always a release of your own suffering, and if the suffering is particularly great, you may(!) get a big release, thinking you profited, when in reality, you went from -5 to -0.5 again.
The same applies to thirst and drinking, constipation and going to the toilet, the urge for sex and an orgasm etc. Dukkhas' post I linked explains it really well.
OR 2) asleep and dead to the world? — TheMadFool
Something tells me this is meant to be an obvious “that would be totally bad”-option, but I really can’t see it. Wherein lies the harm in being unconscious?
There is no harm whatsoever if you aren’t conscious/suffering, you don’t miss out anything if you aren’t pained by a craving for what you then think you will miss out on.
My scenario, if it does anything, should blow the lid of clear off the antinatalist agenda. — TheMadFool
The antinatalist “agenda” (disphemism) is to end suffering. It is the most important thing you could possibly solve.
The choices available to us aren't limited to live and suffer or die and not. — TheMadFool
We don’t have any choice, since we have to exist and were forced into this life. You are exactly one moment of immense suffering away from being actively suicidal, because being suicidal isn’t a choice either. It’s just another suffering-avoidance mechanism.
Antinatalists forget that we can live and be happy — TheMadFool
No you can’t live and be happy. You can suffer (and be a bit unaware of its exact extent) and then get a
temporary release off that suffering and call it "happiness", but that’s it.
and if this wasn't true in the past and even if it isn't true in the present, the future is unpredictable - tables may turn, unexpected things may happen.. — TheMadFool
Yes concentration camps may return rather sooner than later, another argument for Antinatalism.
You don't need the bandaid (paradise) if you aren't stabbing people in the first place (dragging them into life).
Well as far as I'm aware there are countless sucessful suicides every few seconds. — Zn0n
You're correct of course and I won't, can't, deny this truth but don't forget how many don't take their own lives. — TheMadFool
None of those who don’t take their life would have missed out anything if they didn’t come to be, so their existence is completely irrelevant to that equation, but what is actually important is that uncountable numbers of real victims would have been spared immense suffering/torture if they wouldn’t have been dragged into life.
Also
(temporarily) happy people don’t make up for torture victims. That was what I’m asking in my previous post. How many torture victims do you think are justified for someone elses’ temporary happiness?
(And how can you even be happy in such a brutal world in the first place, but that's another topic.)
Every single of those victims of life is one too much, and it’s all for absolutely nothing, because the ones that don’t want to kill themselves (assuming they could, which is very unlikely btw) couldn’t have missed anything whatsoever.