Besides that, wouldn't it be better to actually work on the causes of pain disease and unhappiness, and mitigate, and arrest them where they are in excess, rather than forgetting and dooming them in favor of a future "intelligently designed" eugenics project? — Wosret
You say that we can't have the meaning that makes life worth living without a real risk, and then say that it is precisely because there is a risk that life isn't worth living. A catch 22 indeed, the justifications for living, and not living being identical. I'ma arbitrarily side with the living. — Wosret
I don't know if it is really necessary to be actively opposed to birth (or, really, any position for that matter), unless of course one has the passion and dedication to do so. — darthbarracuda
Life is hard, and often miserable, so why demonize one of its few pleasures? — Wosret
To practice contraception is to be practically 'anatalist' — John
The cause of all these is birth. — The Great Whatever
Forced chemical happiness, bliss as the response to every foreseeable circumstance isn't hollow, and somehow promotes personal growth and deep insight? — Wosret
In terms of the relevance of this statement to my thread, I don't care about whether one is passionately opposed to birth but whether this entails that one is an anti-natalist. I think it does, and so because I am not opposed to birth qua birth (there's nothing immoral about an organism leaving a birth canal), I don't feel I can call myself an anti-natalist despite the fact that I know of no morally justifiable reasons for having children. — Thorongil
It looks to me like you're the one playing word games -- your post all but admits that birth causes suffering and then special pleads to say it doesn't (i.e. the one who introduces a seeming non-distinction between 'causing' and 'enabling' is playing the word games). It's not relevant to the point, and drawing a terminological distinction, even if you could justify it (which I don't think you have) won't help. — The Great Whatever
But living is a lot like being tortured: for example, it forces you to go through a series of complicated and painful tasks in order to secure food, or be subject to a horrible pain of starvation. If some agent were likewise forcing you to go through those tasks or some equivalent, but inflicted the pain in a different way, say by whipping you to death rather than starving you to death, this would obviously be a case of torture. — The Great Whatever
I don't think that's a far comparison. Tripping over a stick and scrapping one's knee isn't like being pushed maliciously to the ground by an asshole. We're social creatures, the emotion, and intention in their eyes, their cruel motivations are far more traumatic than the physical injury inflicted. — Wosret
Birth is against one's will because one cannot choose to be born. By the time one is born (not before), it is something that has happened without consent. — The Great Whatever
It looks to me like you're the one playing word games -- your post all but admits that birth causes suffering and then special pleads to say it doesn't (i.e. the one who introduces a seeming non-distinction between 'causing' and 'enabling' is playing the word games). It's not relevant to the point, and drawing a terminological distinction, even if you could justify it (which I don't think you have) won't help. — The Great Whatever
Like I said, building a house in Florida does not cause the destruction of the house. The hurricane causes it. Can it be a bad idea to build a house in Florida right in the middle of a hurricane red zone? Yes. But that does not cause the destruction of the house, it only enables it. — darthbarracuda
Enabling can be just as bad, but it would be misleading to say that birth causes suffering because it conjures ideas that as soon as someone flies out of the womb, they being suffering when it's nothing like that. External happenings cause someone to feel suffering, which is ultimately enabled by birth. — darthbarracuda
That's nonsense. As a necessary (though insufficient) precondition, there must be a will for it to be against. There were innumerable events which occurred without my consent and of which I could not have chosen, but it would be blatantly inappropriate to say that all of them happened against my will. You ought to take the connotations of that phrase into consideration. Consider, for example, "You cannot force me to come with you against my will!" and "Police searched my mother's bags against her will". — Sapientia
Of course the hurricane is too. — The Great Whatever
One suffers just by virtue of being alive; there is no way to be alive without suffering or being threatened with suffering by that very fact. You would have to change very basic material circumstances, like ending the notion of hunger, to change this. — The Great Whatever
According to your logic, parents must be murderers because they condemn their children to death since every life form dies. It's a nifty, catchy, angsty little aphorism that you might see in the works of Cioran or Ligotti and co., but outside of that it's really just desperate special pleading. — darthbarracuda
In a magical time long past, and still in many places in the world today, having children is an economic investment: they provide labor, care for the elderly, the continuation of the family unit, and so on. When you're wealthy and don't need to have children to survive (and your culture does not value having them for any reason but personal choice/fulfillment, since the extended family is a weak institution), one of your major incentives goes away.
And the idea that sex is mostly a recreational activity for fun is hugely historically blind. Life was not always post-1965 America, and in many places it still is not.
I agree that when people have material circumstances that don't force them to have kids, they generally stop doing it: because having children is awful for everyone involved. — The Great Whatever
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