To be born is to be forced by one's parents to live. — Tzeentch

Nonsense. There's no 'you' to be forced until you already live.

Can one be born without being alive? :chin:

And more importantly still, what difference does it make? Clearly an act of force took place.

Can one be born without being alive? — Tzeentch

Depends on your belief about when life starts. It doesn't matter. Whatever point one becomes a person, that event cannot happen to a person as there's no person until the event is complete.

what difference does it make? Clearly an act of force took place. — Tzeentch

No it didn't. there's no one to force. You could claim that the parents forced a gamete to become a person. I'd accept that (sort of weird use of the word 'force' but let's not be pedantic). But what does it matter if someone forces a gamete to become something. Gametes don't have any moral status.

You could claim that the parents forced a gamete to become a person. — Isaac

The parents willfully initiated a process which they knew would result in a person being born and thus forced to live.

An act of force.

Note that your argument is about causal chains, and that, apparently, one can only be responsible for the first step.

I only pulled a trigger, I never shot the gun. It's the bullet that killed him, but I am innocent!

The parents willfully initiated a process which they knew would result in a person being born and thus forced to live. — Tzeentch

Nope, still wrong. The person being born was not forced to live. they cannot have been because they didn't exist until after that event. A gamete was forced to live.

I only pulled a trigger, I never shot the gun. It's the bullet that killed him, but I am innocent! — Tzeentch

If I recall, that's your argument. Your the one who wants to avoid all responsibility for anything you didn't directly cause.

Quit with the antinatalism discussion. It's not the subject of the thread but now dominating it.

I hadn't even noticed what thread this was, just responding to 'mentions'. My apologies.

At any rate, and in effect, it always turns out that the “interests of the collective” are only the interests of a portion of the collective, usually those individuals with the power and prestige to act as the mind and mouth of the people they feign to speak for. Other portions, those not of the ruling portion, are subordinate to them. Other portions still, those who dissent or fall into an enemy class, are imprisoned, enslaved, or worse. So much for the collective. — NOS4A2

This is actually profoundly wrong. For the vast majority of history, sapiens lived as hunter-gatherers, collectivist groups based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership.

Collectivist groups? I’m not so sure about that. Band societies, maybe, most of them kin.

If that's your point, then you are arguing semantics.

If what is my point?

Collectivist in ways that matter, such as, again, being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership. Not based on, for instance, a twisted sense of human nature where we’re continually bent on competition for resources and social status.