How do you explain that not everyone thinks the way you do about procreation?

If your position is one of materialism or something similar (as it seems to be), then how do you explain the differences in the outlook that people have on life?

And on what grounds do you justify the relevance of those differences?

I also think there's no moral problem with that because we're talking about consequences (things that you cause, effects you have on the future) and as far as consequences are concerned, having children reduces suffering more than it creates it. — Isaac

How do you quantify suffering?

And irrelevant of your status of being either a civilian or not, you might be shot, captured, tortured and injured in war. — ssu

That can happen to you in war regardless whether you're a civilian or a soldier. It can also happen to you regardless whether there is officially war or not.

And anyway, you'll probably suffer more harm from capitalists and mean neighbors in peace time than you'd do in a war from an invading force.

@rossii What should I live for or how should I live?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13302/page/p1

A person doesn't live in a socio-psychological vacuum, therefore, the answer to this question cannot be idiosyncratic.

Both created you, of necessity. Neither were done to you. — Isaac

Exactly.

We'd have to venture into a more "exotic cosmogony" in order to be able to coherently claim that the injustice of birth is done _to_ someone.

An "exotic cosmogony" like the one where living beings happily exist as "disembodied souls", but who can be embodied against their will by the act of someone else.

Stuff takes time ...

What causes life to turn on life? — ChatteringMonkey

Not enough return upon investment.

Contrary to the belief of capitalists and assorted others, people do not have an infinite willingness to invest any amount of effort, however great, into obtaining any amount of sensual pleasure, however small. You will not work the entire day just for a morsel of food.

Yes, but it exists to gather all the anti-life stuff in one place, so that it can be easily ignored. Until Baden merged them all into this thread, there were at least two or three such active discussions. We've had enough. Containment seems like the best option. — Jamal

Given the global trend toward legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, will you rethink your negative take on the "anti-life stuff"?

Like I said, I'd love to discuss Buddhism with him. He said he understood the Buddha. To begin with, back in his day, there weren't many translations of the Pali Canon available. I wonder what his source for Buddhism was.

I shall name this village Melancholia, which sits in a flood prone depression next to the River Angst. The dark clouds are confined in the valley by the heights of Mount Despair and Mount Regret, where a true rain never falls, just an eternal cold drizzle.

Only one small path leads out, but its trailhead can only be seen by casting one's gaze above shoulder height, and none have yet looked that high up. They've heard of this Path of Hope, but never having seen it, they scoff and shrug, looking at the ground, firmly denying it. — Hanover

The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+58&version=NIV

"I'll go on" like reading the blackest passages of Cioran — 180 Proof

The irony of living to be 84 years old and die of Alzheimer's!

I'd love to discuss Buddhism with him.

Imagination is good, but living at the moment requires courage. That's it. Courage to face the mundane and the ordinary. — L'éléphant

The courage to lower one's existential standards! Yay!

Escapism has flourished over the last last decade or so.

"Facing" the mundane and the ordinary is yet another form of escapism.

This has nothing to do with peace in life, it's about the cessation of all things. — Darkneos

No, it has to do with the belief that you are your body; and it has to do with the belief that when the body dies, "it's all over".

Note: These beliefs are dogmatic, axiomatic. We're not supposed to question them.

Yet every day, we also act in ways that show that we don't hold those beliefs consistently.

If society had a different mind they'd see that and allow people to exit if they choose.

And they do, the list is growing:

Physician-assisted suicide is legal in some countries, under certain circumstances, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, parts of the United States and parts of Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide

I guess people only rationalize living by stating "precious joys are worth cherishing" is due to death anxiety, as Ernest Becker put it. — Darkneos

It's more the case that we're craving sensual pleasures. We don't fear death per se; we fear that we won't be supplied with sensual pleasures or that we'll run out of them.

Believing oneself to be the speaking organ of objective truth is the death of philosophy.

Well, you won't ever experience death. Death is simply, "The end". You'll experience dying if you're conscious at the time. But that's it. There is no peace, no rest, no etc. — Philosophim

How do you know????

Why bother with philosophy then ...

All of which I learned from individuals.

I have never met the collective, let alone learned anything from it. — NOS4A2

Nor has anyone else. But the things you've learned from those individuals can only work because there is the assumption that those things work interpersonally, within a social group, as opposed to idiosyncratically, as things that would work only between yourself and the person you learned it from.

But enough people do vote. — Isaac

That varies from country to country.

Yeah. I don't object to voting, or with a compulsion to vote where it's necessary. What I object to is the ludicrous notion that I have no means at my disposal to check whether I'm in such a circumstance prior to any given election. It's absurd. I know the political landscape in my part of the world very well. I know almost exactly how much use my vote will or won't be. Where it won't be of any use, there's no point in doing it. It's not magic, it's just a bit of paperwork. It either needs doing or it doesn't.

Again, that varies from country to country. I agree that in some countries, elections are an exercise in futility. In some others, not so much.

When democracy is indistinguishable from tyranny we’ve lost the plot. — NOS4A2

Again,
It seems that what you really want is that your political stance should prevail with ease.

How does a president represent the will of millions of strangers? You can't represent someone's will unless you know their will. Just getting elected by the strangers doesn't grant you some magical ability to know their will once elected. — Yohan

Representative democracy is about the elected people representing those that voted for them. Not everyone.

but wouldn't it be great to have a system for forgetting — Agent Smith

The problem isn't the remembering of painful or embarrassing past events; the problem is not knowing how to think about them wisely, what and how to learn from them.

Forgetting such events wouldn't necessarily help; but it could lead to again acting in ways that brought on those events. So that even if one were to forget the old painful or embarrassing events, if one wouldn't change one's ways, one would just recreate the conditions for those events again, provided it's in one's power to do so. For example, if you do stupid things when drunk, the solution isn't to forget those stupid things; it's to stop drinking.

As for the events over which one doesn't have control: Some studies suggest that catastrophic events like earthquakes, tsunamis, global economic crises are actually easier to cope with than the more ordinary hardships people tend to face (and over which one has much more control).

I don't vote (and never have) — Isaac

I know people who don't vote, as a matter of principle. I vote.

mainly because of the first past the post system in the UK, I probably would if we had PR, but I still would object strongly to any deification of voting. It acts, when treated that way, like an opiate, allowing people to think they 'done' politics by ticking a box once every five years, and can then rest on their laurels for the intervening time.

I suppose some people are like that. But I'm not. Perhaps it's because of the specific situation of the country I live in. Last year, there was a real danger of the then government abolishing democracy. They had gained so much power (seats in the parliament) because so many people were too apathetic to vote. But the situation here is different, than in, say, the US or UK, because we don't have a tradition of two major parties fighting for supremacy. Rather, there has usually been one major party, and a number of smaller ones which have to form a coalition in order to rule. Also, new parties spring up; many are short-lived, but they actually make it into the government. The party currently in rule (and with an overwhelming majority) was only formed earlier this year, shortly before the elections in April.
In a political situation that is this dynamic, voting does make a difference.

I'm fairly certain I'd rather live in a democracy than any of the other available options. — Isaac

Democracy isn't a given, it isn't the default. If enough people don't vote, a minority can, through what is on principle a democratic election, establish a dictatorship and abolish democracy altogether.

By voting, you, at least on principle, benefit from voting. Even if it isn't immediately obvious, and even though you cannot single-handledly change the course of politics.

Anti-social types love to blather on about markets and free trade — they’re simply merchants who lower everything to the level of transaction, because that’s all they know and thus how they see the world. Then they raise transactions among two people to moral heights.

But they always— always — ignore externalities. That’s not an accident. We’re supposed to forget about the outside world, the community, or other people altogether. What matters is ME and MY transactions.

So it goes for this sick, merchant worldview.

I’ll say it as I’ve said a hundred times: the quicker these poor saps die out, the better. For the sake of future generations. — Xtrix

But they don't die out: they stick together, they're solidary with one another. They're just not solidary with outsiders.

It’s nothing other than dressed up justification for greed, the hatred of democracy and, generally, human beings. Who knows how or why they acquired this sick outlook — I suspect early experiences and heavy brainwashing. — Xtrix

On the contrary. They simply see that their strategy works: using it, they get the upper hand, they win, they get what they want.

And they don't hate human beings in general. They are kind and generous to their own kind, to their ingroup, and they have no qualms about destroying the outgroup.

Not worth getting too worked up about. Leave them to their pathologies. — Xtrix

"Leaving them to their pathologies" is precisely what makes their strategy so effective. Letting them do what they do is convicing them that they're not doing anything wrong. And so they continue, and grow ever stronger.

If plan to be more sporty, an advertiser suggests that buying a pair of their trainers will help, I am convinced and so I buy a pair - you're saying it's impossible that I'm wrong. If I think a pair of trainers will help me become more sporty then I've somehow changed reality such that this will be the case? — Isaac

Such is the power of self-actualization.

Which helps to explain why mobilization of the working class is more difficult: its members fail to recognize their own solidarity. — Pantagruel

Solidarity is sometimes counterproductive. The weak and the poor being solidary with one another only keeps them weak and poor.

I am terrible at collectivism, methodologically and in practice. Whether by nature or nurture I lack the necessary neural connections required to see the world as the activity of groups, nations, races, classes, or communities as Stalin did, so giving any priority to these over flesh-and-blood human beings is an impossible task for me. — NOS4A2

Yet you use the English language, you are gainfully employed, you participate at this forum. All of these require communal/collectivist/social reasoning.

Possibly, you don't lack "the necessary neural connections required to see the world as the activity of groups etc.", but, rather, have so internalized communal/collectivist/social reasoning that you don't even realize you have it.

Which assessment of mine do you believe is wrong?

For example, once certain people decided that the way to end their suffering was to kill all the Jews.
— baker
Why was that maladaptive? Why were they mistaken?
— baker
As I wrote in the post you only half-quoted:
Short-term efficacy – scapegoating, genocide – at the expense of long-term sustainability (i.e. forming habits / institutions for 'othering' even their own because (some believe) "that is a way to end their suffering").
— 180 Proof
So if you still have to ask, baker ... — 180 Proof

This is a philosophy forum, not the watercooler.

Why wouldn't destroying an entire social category be "sustainable" in the long term? People have always done this. What reason is there to think that it isn't "sustainable" in the long term?

Can you explain, do you have something more than mere gut feeling for this?

Even you yourself advised that a certain social category should be destroyed by suicide.

Anti-"antinatalism" does not entail pro-natalism. The "moral" arguments in favor of "antinatalism" proffered thus far have been neither valid nor persuasive.
— 180 Proof

An argument can only be persuasive to someone, to a person. It cannot be objectively, suprapersonally persuasive.

Maybe so, but I neither claim nor implied it could be

Yes, you did: The formulation you used isn't one where you'd merely state your opinion, but declares a lot more, namely, that what you're saying is an objective, absolute truth.

To denigrate a question by saying it isn't legitimate may be a way of avoiding its answer. — Tom Storm

This is a philosophy forum, not the watercooler.

The person making the request could say they suffer from asthma or some sort of respiratory illness and couldn't be around smoking. — L'éléphant

And get laughed at or told to leave.

I usually vape these days, but people even complain about that sometimes. — Jamal

Smokers tend to have a diminished sense of smell. They can't tell how bad the smell from smoking is.

It's one of the reasons why it's useless to talk about it with them. They can't relate.

It's about neighbors and coworkers who smoke (at work or in break).

I open the windows in the morning to get some fresh air, and what do I get? The odious smell of my neighbors smoking.

While in the country where I live smoking is prohibited indoors in most establishments, many people ignore that. If I were to say "smoking is not allowed here, please", then, in the best case scenario, I'd get laughed at. (Not to mention that there are not just a few non-smokers who will jump to the defense of smokers.)

The question is about why the state overrides the decision of its citizens about the relative harms. — Isaac

Because for all practical intents and purposes the state owns its citizens. The citizens are subjects of the state.

And as far as it having a purpose, it is the definition of something of an ethics that can be applied, so your assessment is wrong. — schopenhauer1

Wrong how?

The power imbalance in so-called democratic countries is obscene. — NOS4A2

Yet such is democracy.

It seems that what you really want is that your political stance should prevail with ease.

blended no knee.

Heh. I blended no knee either, but I still have a limp.

Why does one do anything? — schopenhauer1

For a purpose.

Does there have to be an achievable goal?

Yes. All other action is irrational/maladaptive.

Does it suffice? — Tzeentch

For some people, it clearly does.

What you're after is objective morality, absolute authority.

Talk about it. — schopenhauer1

And talking about it accomplishes what?