But then those same people are apphaled by rapists, murderers, totaitarian governments, terrorist groups, etc..... That's the inconsistency here.

It is ONLY ever the main theme for them when it comes to birth as I’ve asked them to come up with one other example where they think this type of thinking is acceptable and they have yet to come up with one. — khaled

I agree. The agenda is more important than causing the conditions for an individual's harm. They think it is acceptable, justified, and perhaps even desirable to create more people for their "growth-through-adversity" model coupled (unwittingly) with undue harm (the GTA-UH Standard Model). This is the agenda that somehow must perpetuate the generations in perpetuity over time.

I'd go with B. The people in A might turn out to be nagging antinatalists. The other 100 might be able to drown them out. :grin: — Terrapin Station

Also the point is that they WILL become an existing being with opinions and their opinions of the world may be highly negative. So simply don’t take the risk for them when you can avoid it. — khaled

What's interesting about the implications of this type of thinking is that humans are sort of a "group-think" entity which is working towards..."something" (humanity? scientific advancement? to go where no man has gone before? to maximize happiness throughout the cosmos? to increase the amount of "stuff" we create?). This "something" is not quite clear, but certainly the agenda here is that the group-think entity must carry on and box-out and stamp-out any questioning of the agenda. It certainly stems from unconscious cues taken from socialized norms.

But the problem here is the reality is a lot of "dealing with". A group-think entity that desire's more individuals to be challenged with the "dealing with" game. Here is the thing- what are people trying to get out of the new people? What end result is there? What is it that people must experience? Here is how this looks:

Person A needs to experience X because I like experiencing X and they must like X too.

Person A won't experience more undue harm (more harm than one would want for reasons of "meaning" or "growth".

The parent knows neither of these things as a 100% true, so now the person moves to statistical thinking. Statistically, people seem more well-adjusted than not well-adjusted, they like being alive, and do not experience more undue harm than is deemed too much. Thus the "dealing with" game must be the default for people to desire. Even if 68% of people like the dealing with game, this is deemed enough of a green light to have more people apparently.

This all reminds of Plato's notion of The Good. It's like everyone thinks they are a form of the Good and creating more people is participating in The Good. Good is that which we are striving for. Virtuousness, balance, peace, tranquility, flow, self-actualization- these are all words we try to convey for experiencing The Good. So really natalists (at their most philosophical and least selfish) are like Platonists thinking they are spreading more of Good by having more people. Harm is just something to be incorporated into The Good or to be overcome for the sake of the Good.

As @khaled stated though, anything that causes harm for another when it wasn't necessary, is causing harm to an individual for an agenda. But the natalist will say, if the the agenda is The Good (or some other positive synonym), isn't that justified? Because certainly, no one prior to existence needed any experiences. Thus the experiences themselves come BEFORE the personality that will develop and HAVE these experiences. Thus it is an agenda of some sort of concept- The Good or something of the like, that people want to be propagated.

The outcome is more work, more dealing with situations, more strife, but supposedly the strife is supposed to be good for the person as it can be incorporated and in some sort of Hegelian dialectic, make the person stronger with the negative incorporation.

People also do not think the fringes. They don't think of the worst case scenarios- the person with the mental disorders, the person with the physical setback, etc. This is deemed as collateral damage, and will simply be post-facto justified as part of the incorporation of pain to become better. Thus the natalists will have their own self-provided airtight case. They will not consider that:

1) Harm is unnecessary to create for someone
2) Causing individual harm for an agenda is not justified (even The Good)
3) As long as a majority of humanity say they like life in any self-reported formal or informal way, it is justified that future people should be born
4) Collateral damage of the worst case scenarios are overlooked as long as it can be incorporated into an overcoming or learning experience for that person and they will be deemed better for it.

As we see here, there is no way this type of thinking cannot be overcome as long as harm can be justified on behalf of a majority of people reporting they like life, and think that agendas are more important than causing individual harm unnecessarily. That seems to be the main themes here it seems with natalists.

I would like to conjure the ghost of @Bitter Crank and @Baden and @csalisbury for their input.

Let me ask you this, if you were in a state of oblivion and someone explained to you the risk of harm, and gave you the choice to be born and have a life, would you choose to do it?

Wrong answer, either way. Because you don't have the frame of reference or even the consciousness to evaluate the proposition, in fact you don't even exist. You would actually have to be born and live some extent of this life thing to be able to determine whether it was worth living or whether it was better to remain in the oblivion of not existing.

If you don't exist, no action such as "forcing" can be executed against you. — staticphoton

This is called the "non-identity" issue in philosophy and it really doesn't apply here in the case of antinatalism. A future person will be born if a set of conditions is met, we both agree on that. Procreation is what brings life about. As you admit, there CANNOT be a situation where someone can do anything about the situation of being born. That is what is mean by "forced" here. The default is always "being born".

Now, I am going to couple this idea with the decision to procreate. At the procreational decision, you can prevent ALL future harm by simply refraining from procreation. There is NO deprivation experienced from any actual person either. OR you can procreate, and create the conditions for definite harm.

Please see the David Benatar asymmetry here before we go any further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar

No its not wrong. — staticphoton

As khaled was stating...Let's say I like my job- I'm just going to "allow" you to have to do it for a life time (obviously the job being a metaphor for the conditions of life itself). You eventually say, "eh, I guess it is not that bad a job". I still say this is wrong. Consequences be damned, it was wrong to force (um, I mean "allow") it.

A life worth living has nothing to do with "life is good" — staticphoton

Way to ignore almost every other thing surrounding that statement. But, since you focused solely on this particular part, I'd like to explain that forcing others into a model that you agree with or even someone else identifies with later on (because, ya know, someone MUST go through the growth through adversity thing, and of course they will always identify with it is worth it) is wrong.

That's why I said the values are learned from the parents or the environment. I should have also included the pre-existing genetic makeup, which is actually a direct contribution of the parents. — staticphoton

And my point is there is no absolute 1:1 ratio that this is the case. In fact, this is painfully reductive. As you would admit, the human experience and amount of contingency in it, allows for way more than genetic, parental, and environmental enculturation to predict. Any of which case, ALL would be wrong to signal "life is always good", as there is MARKED evidence for the Polyanna principle (people overlooking things that truly are harming them in the present when projecting on harmful events in the future). Anyways, the point is no, that is empirically wrong that genetics, parents, and environment will guarantee people who say they are happy, NOR does it prevent contingent harmful situations to befall that person. Oh, AND did I mention when interviewed, people tend to say what people want to hear (life is good) rather than be perceived as "debbie downers", even if their whole day was something like "fuck my life!" or in fact, the majority of their days were "fuck my life!"?

The whole thing is about making the possibility of harm the pivotal point of the argument, which is an incredible simplistic way of evaluating the meaning of life. — staticphoton

What is really simplistic is this idea that parents + genetics + environment guarantees people that have no thoughts or experiences of their own, only what is "programmed". Laughable and reductionist.

You're saying that after life evolving for 2 billion years and finally acquiring the power of reason, that reason is used to conclude the whole process was morally bad and should be ended.

I'm saying that's just silly. — staticphoton

So evolution is "unthinking".. Don't worry we are not hurting "its" feelings. As khaled was saying, I/we have no obligation to an impersonal concept (like humanity), but we do have obligations to individual people (like future people that are brought into the world). And in the case of procreation, ALL harm can be prevented and no person is actually around to experience deprivation of good..win/win.

You realize, by having the child DESPITE the the harmful outcome (guaranteed in some way), you are using the child for an agenda (whether that be humanity, progress, civilization, your own desire to parent, etc.). Using people's harm for your agendas is also not good.

ALSO, life indeed presents itself with adversity. In fact, we usually say growth comes from adversity. Whether YOU like this or not, throwing people into adversity (even if in order for them to grow from it), when it was UNNECESSARY is not good either.

The child will learn a set of values either from his parents or the environment he is raised in, before then he is not capable of deciding whether his life is worth living or not. Once he has a developed a set of values he will. You can come to him at that point and ask him whether he wishes he was never born. — staticphoton

This is just not causally taking into account what is going on. The child is born via the parent. If the parent is not abusive, the parent tries to habituate child along with society (schools, social and economic institutions, other adults, other kids, etc.). The child still has a personality, experiences, and thoughts of its own. There is no 1:1 correlation here between parent's values and childs, besides which the parents values to themselves versus modelled behavior is different, also indicating that the child will have personal thoughts that have nothing to do with what is being modelled. This is all straightforward obvious stuff.

But this is all BESIDES the point. The point is, the harmful situation IS brought about by the parent procreating the person- it does not matter whether that person has self-consciousness at birth, or at some other time. The factor that brought about this person into "existence" or "life" or the "universe" was the parent. The self-consciousness comes from that. So this specious argument in no way negates the claim that procreation is the cause of this person being born, and the conditions for which suffering/being harm will take place for that person. The point is, the deed was already done, long before self-consciousness and cannot be reversed (suicide is not the reverse of never being born). Thus, this line of reasoning is bunk.

@khaled I think you might agree here.

And your child might have something different in mind than preserving the human race. I’ll just leave it at that. The whole POINT of the example is that working as a janitor is something most would say has no greater purpose. All I did was reduce the probability someone finds purpose in the activity in question and suddenly for you it went from “yea it’s ok to force them to do it” to “no it’s not ok, who’d ever want to be a janitor”. — khaled

Very good example.

And actually, antinatalism is one of the few moral theories where believing in it blindly, even if it turns out to be wrong, doesn’t hurt anyone. Natalism on the other hand.... — khaled

Haha, also good point.

But other than dismal scenarios, from my perspective the foundations don't hold. — staticphoton

Even what are considered minor negative conditions can really fuck with someone's well being and adjustment in the world, far beyond what others, even a parent would expect or deal with themselves. This idea that only the worst conditions merits avoidance is no big deal for ones own estimate of ones own state, but when considering that this is then applied to another person altogether is misguided at best. Being that the alternative is no harm nor person who is deprived, there is no other argument here.

Ending humanity is not my ideal. It’s a side effect. “Humanity” is not a person. I’m not actually harming anyone here whereas one can be harmed severely by being brought into a world where harm is possible — khaled

Great point.. I don't know why people always make that error.

So I was trying to make it easier for you. — staticphoton

No you can't do that. Khaled was trying to understand what you meant by "Nature". You were unclear- was it that nature only has one way and we are against it? If so, Khaled was trying to show that this was clearly wrong because as humans who are PART OF NATURE, we clearly can do any number of actions, including not procreate, which means that antinatalism is "part of nature" too.

In the end it is all a matter of belief, and we are free to believe what makes sense to us. — staticphoton

The key here is "us" in your quote. You are making a decision on behalf of someone else, and then hoping post-facto that they will agree with your decision, or that harm is not greater than pain for them. It is always the case though, that you made this decision for someone else that cannot be reversed. Prior to birth, no person existed. No person with needs or wants, or with harms to experience. Sure, there are no neutral/good experiences either, or chances to grow from pain. But then, the assumption is, that people HAVE to experience some sort of cycle of growth through pain, along with occasional happy experiences and probable undue harm (what I call the GTA-UH model). It's like the standard model people project will be their future child's life. No one ever has a good answer why this model should be carried out- why the agenda of the GTA-UH model must be experienced by another person, at the cost of creating (literally) unnecessary needs and wants, challenges/adversity, and certainly undue harm. If you go back and say, "it's nature", that is false as someone can simply not procreate and defy this idea that it is some all abiding force that just makes it that way. You can go back and say that you like inflicting challenges on other people, and seeing them go through undue harm, but then that could be deemed as mildly (at best) sadistic. You could go back and say that you feel that you are a missionizer for humanity to continue, but then that could be deemed as messianic and unfounded. So yeah, no good justification for the GTA-UH model being carried forth again and again and again at the cost of harming new people.

I prefer to not pretend my personal moral judgment is above nature's design. — staticphoton

That makes no logical sense. Nature's design? Humans have freedom of thought and can do any number of actions. Nature here implies there is only one path someone can or should follow. If it is "should follow" that is the naturalistic fallacy.

but I'm finding it to be nothing but an exercise in idealism based on a dim view of the human experience. — staticphoton

Why does the "human experience" need to be lived out in the first place? It sounds like a knee-jerk idea of "because existence has some good points, or because I have grown from pain, existence must be good for people to have to live through". That however, does not logically cohere.

It appears to me that humans, actually all life, is constructed to process and resolve suffering as a means to progress not only evolutionarily, but to enrich self worth (at least in the case of humans). Assigning moral value and therefore placing judgment on something that has no will of its own such as are natural processes seems misguided. — staticphoton

So I wrote a post that works as good as any as a proper response:

....I have this idea that this world can be characterized as "growth-through-adversity coupled with undue harm".

Growth-through-adversity is defined by challenges faced by someone in order to attain a particular goal. For most people this at least involves survival/work along with goals involving entertainment/family-pursuits outside of survival/work.

Undue harm would be overriding illnesses, circumstances, accidents, disasters, etc. that otherwise would not be asked for outside the usual growth-through-adversity.

To be concise in these posts I am going to call growth-through adversity GTA and undue harm UH.

The GTA-UH model that is our reality, most people think is good to force other lives into. When a parent chooses to have a child, they are really saying, "I approve of the life of GTA-UH onto this new person and believe they should live X number of years of life in this kind of reality". There is no escape from it outside suicide. But no one asks why this is good for someone who doesn't exist in the first place to put this reality onto a new person. Oddly, the parent is an existential missionizer force-recruiting new people who, like religious families tend to do, try to enculturate the new recruit into identifying with the GTA-UH model so as not to regret being recruited....

So the real question is, why foist the GTA-UH model on another person, when this does not need to take place? To use "nature" or some "force" as a reason, is to discard your responsibility as a decision-maker who can self-reflect. It is bad faith (not using your own freedom of thought), and the naturalistic fallacy if you think it is natural and we should do what is natural.

A life with zero suffering is as idealistic a concept as it is unattainable, furthermore, a "neutral" life without natural good/bad cycles seems to appear utterly meaningless...what would be the point of pursuing such a goal? — staticphoton

This is circular reasoning, as prior to anyone's birth, meaning is not required or necessary. After birth is only when humans look for meaning. So that question is a bit invalid from that perspective. The real question is why is it important to add new people who desire meaning in the first place? In fact, why does "meaning" need to take place at all in a universe? Because you imagine a lonely universe and need people to bring "meaning"? This is a fallacy of imagination (my neologism).

The first political act was that of being born in the first place. Suicide is not the reverse of never being born. Certainly some form of harm challenge, and struggle is part of the deal. "Flourishing" is the nice word people use for all this. That of course justifies force-recruiting people into a contract. People need to be born to follow this contract and flourish. Flourishing needs to take place. There was no right never to be a part of it. Someone else gets to decide for another that this structure is to be lived out by that other person. The first and most important political act is having been born in the first place. The agenda of "something" is now foisted on the individual who must be thankful for being put in this situation. Society somehow needs individual sacrifice for its perpetuity, and this is deemed as appropriate and right.

The whole point is harm is only subjective to a particular witness and can by dynamic when we shift to another. Subjectivity makes sense only within the consensus group. The larger the group, the more sense it is.
But even with the largest group, say 7-8 known billion currently, it's nothing compared to divinity for a theist group. — Dzung

Again I will ask, why should individuals suffer on behalf of a divinity?

If considering only for conscious agents, then you have constraints from the society and environment that you'd better follow. As you have free will you can opt not to, say opposite of #4 and the consequence may be severe. — Dzung

I agree there are constraints by society and environment/circumstances. So why put people in these restraints in the first place by having them be born?

As far as I am concerned, it is just too easy to sign a contract that will financially burden other people who are not even born yet. Therefore, the millennials are completely exempt from paying for any of that. Just don't pay! — alcontali

You almost bring up a good point. That is to say, everyone is in debt due to being born in the first place. Political science starts often with "state of nature". That is assuming that people should be born in the first place.. in the Enlightenment this was an abstract notion of "happiness", "progress", or simply, "life". None of it makes sense in the light of the fact that, being born is forcing another person to live out life in the first place. The starting place for all politics should be "state of being born", not "state of nature" which assumes some "other" agenda is what is necessary for all people to live out. That was the mistake of all these "enlightened" thinkers. Being forced into existence is the first political act. It is forcing another to live out life or die. I'll include @Bitter Crank on this one too.

When the push of ideals meets the pull of economic necessity, it's always a risky bet to assume that ideals will rule the day. — Bitter Crank

Undoubtedly, but my point was that the concepts of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness being some sort of universal or fundamental right, originated from Enlightenment thinkers. So, you blame the people who started the very concept you can blame them on... I agree, based on the standards they created, and were further elaborated upon, what they did was against their own policies, but again, they made them up in the first place! You are using a standard they created for the rest of humanity to place on them, and deem them accused. Fine, I am okay with that. But realize, they gave you the rope to hang them with in the first place. The very notion of "universal rights" was nothing before this.. I don't care what revisionist history tries to say.. It wasn't until the 1600s that this idea came about.. It wasn't until the 1800s that it really came to fore with the idea that all people from all cultures fell under this purview..It was an unfolding in cultural, historical, political time..not an all at once thing that was there all along.

Before this was tribe vs. tribe, religion above "other" religion, ethnicity against ethnicity, elite vs. peasant, dominant vs. weak, and so on. If you want to say, there are tribes somewhere doing their hunting-gathering egalitarian thing, great.. Maybe there were/are.. but that is a small contingent. The others had agriculture, nomadic herding, and other styles which lead to the whole something vs. something in the first place. So yeah, it went full circle..egalitarian..all one, etc.

As far as I can tell, the Founding Fathers NEVER intended an egalitarian distribution of wealth. Most people (like 94%) couldn't vote in the US in the 18th century. White men who didn't own property finally gained suffrage in all of the states around 1850. Black men didn't get voting rights till after the Civil War. Women didn't get the vote until 1920. The political and economic elite of the United States has neither liked nor trusted working class people. Most people (at least 80%) are working class. That there is a huge population of "middle class" people is a falsehood aimed at class division. There are some middle class people -- maybe 10% - 15%of the population. — Bitter Crank

Were universal rights something that the Founding Fathers and their Enlightenment brethren made up? If they made the idea of "rights" up, and they didn't live to their own ideals, it is probably because they were still trying to fit it into their world scheme. When you make up the very thing that others will use as a standard against you, it is very interesting... The idea of "progress" and "self-criticism" and "living up to ideals (made up by the very people who will be critiqued for not following them" all came from Enlightenment thinking. What was before this? Tribe against tribe. Religion against religion. Monarch against monarch, elite vs. peasant, dominant vs. the weak, etc. Give the Enlightenment people a break...they were making this shit up as they went. But the point is, they made this shit up. It is damn useful and it makes damn sense. But it is a cultural thing from a set of people, starting in the 1600s that we elaborated on.

So what does it take to mobilize the collective will? Look at D Trump or R Ford - demagogues don't work. We need to start with better education. — Pantagruel

You are assuming that people need to exist in the first place. The first act of aggression is having people, which confines them to the "realities" of living itself. You can say it is "self-evident" that people "should" be born, but then you have already crossed the line of what other people should be doing. The problem with all first principles in political science, is it already assumes procreating new people is good. Thus, they discount that the first political act is forcing new people to deal with existence itself. Long story short- start with the problem of being born first in your political philosophy, THEN move on from there.

All your arguments now work equally well to prove the exact opposite of the Anti-natalism stance. — DingoJones

But they absolutely don't. I direct you to the asymmetry if you really need it:

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

I've addressed this line of questioning from you about a million times before. You must like going around in circles to the point of absurdity. — S

Sometimes, only a handful of questions really matters. Everything else stems from those assumptions. I go back to first principles and do not jump to (yawn), why this or that is like this or that, without this crucial one first. Since no one ever has a good answer... I go back to it... But if you look, I do dabble in the other mundane/minutia/trivial shit that we discuss here. Yep, I can have an opinion too, just as you.

I want to start a family because of the joy it will bring — S

That is so myopic. You know the line of argument I will say: no harm to anyone, no deprivation for anyone vs. harm for someone (and unknown amounts of undue harm). As I've mentioned in another post: I have this idea that this world can be characterized as "growth-through-adversity coupled with undue harm".

Growth-through-adversity is defined by challenges faced by someone in order to attain a particular goal. For most people this at least involves survival/work along with goals involving entertainment/family-pursuits outside of survival/work.

Undue harm would be overriding illnesses, circumstances, accidents, disasters, etc. that otherwise would not be asked for outside the usual growth-through-adversity.

To be concise in these posts I am going to call growth-through adversity GTA and undue harm UH.

The GTA-UH model that is our reality, most people think is good to force other lives into. When a parent chooses to have a child, they are really saying, "I approve of the life of GTA-UH onto this new person and believe they should live X number of years of life in this kind of reality". There is no escape from it outside suicide. But no one asks why this is good for someone who doesn't exist in the first place to put this reality onto a new person. Oddly, the parent is an existential missionizer force-recruiting new people who, like religious families tend to do, try to enculturate the new recruit into identifying with the GTA-UH model so as not to regret being recruited.

All of this you already know. You are presumably just feigning ignorance as some sort of rhetorical tactic. I know that you have your own answers, and that you disapprove, but why do you feel the need to repeatedly express this? Is that normal behaviour, do you think? Do you think maybe you would benefit from counselling? — S

Again, first principles. If dissatisfaction and dealing with are our orientation, why should this be embraced because it is the reality? I never understood equating what is the case with simply what is good. I only accept it as what people do as a coping strategy, but certainly not a reason it is deemed "good" or approved.

It's not a craving, that's just more rhetoric from you. It's simply our natural inclination towards problem solving. — S

No problem solving is the response to the situation. So it is not rhetorical, it is how life orients every person. Sometimes things are so obvious, they seem rhetorical. We only answer the details but not the actual question that is posed at us from which all the details are flowing from or to.

If we unite all into a compound witness, it's a different scenario — Dzung

So we negate people's individual's harm by aggregating it into some utilitarian calculus? What's the point?

under views of higher beings if there were, it's a completely different scenario. — Dzung

Wait, the point is all the aggregating suffering might be worth it to some "higher beings"? Why should the individual care about that perspective? The individual is the one being harmed.

On the other side, "no life" state is invalid in any sense from the very ground. At least there then no meaning is possible. — Dzung

Why does it matter if there is "meaning" in the world?

Any coin has two sides, so golden mean is always the answer for the best, no extremes should. Lives flourish themselves so any intention to put them under control, either direction, is discouraged. — Dzung

If no life = no harm, and life = harm + possible "flourishing", why should flourishing take precedence over no harm?

No, not necessarily. What I'm getting at is that a lot of antinatalist argument rests on an assumed view of self which is essentially, "I did not exist prior to my birth, at which I came into being to live a lifetime as the same ongoing self (which suffers and is harmed), and when I die this self will be annihilated forever." Yet there's nowhere stable within the flux of conscious experience for this self to be located. And so if it doesn't exist, to whom does birth harm?

Does procreation create selves? — Inyenzi

It is odd to think about- you could not be anyone but you. But in the argument does it matter if you were a changing self? This argument is slippery slope into anything, right? So the person at point X is not the person at point Y. However, I can see if someone is so dramatically changed, that it would appear they are really not their previous self. I think the harm does not matter for any individual self, but that it is happening to a self at all that matters.

I use paper plates, but, after a week, I have to take out the trash. — PoeticUniverse

:lol: Good point. Deal with now, or deal with later

How is this question any different than "why do I exist?" — matt

It's very closely linked, except existing means something... I am claiming for human existence (human nature?) there is a self-aware "dealing with" orientation and asking, why is this a good thing?

I don't really care that you believe that it's not right. I don't agree with you, obviously. And if nothing can be done about it (not true), then I say put up and shut up. — S

Clearly, we disagree. Shocker. But, at the end of the day, I am creating no fuss or mundane things for someone else. Answer me, why is it needed in the first place? But you cannot. You will just fall back on attacking but you won't answer the question. You will mention something about "good" or some other experiences you deem needs to take place for someone else. You will speak on behalf of the democrac council of humanity against schop 1. Yep. Agendas for someone else combined with me making a "fuss about nothing" amounts to shit, when the other side is NO harm, no agendas foisted on anyone else. You have made no case for the other side, but I have made the case for no harm to any future person. Except for dramatics, trolling, and rudeness, you have no case.

And yeah, it sucks for us. We are here and have to... deal with it. Of course we identify with the game chosen for us. Again, the assumption is what is it about the dealing with that we crave? I am asking to look deeper than your own knee-jerk anti antinatalism and pessimism. But you don't engage, so I'll just expect more theatrics from you.

Again, the question in the OP is:
Why are we assuming it is good to "deal with" anything at all? Why is this such an ingrained baseline notion that this is a right/good existential state, besides the fact that it is inescapable?

Oh my god! The dishes! What a nightmare! We should all just kill ourselves on the spot! But no, like your namesake, you don't advocate the most logical course of action if life really was that bad. You just complain more, exaggerate more, because that's your thing. — S

So, now who is exaggerating for effect? Again, why are you picking up this shit-pile of a reasoning. So life is just doing dishes only then? Also, EVEN washing dishes "zen-like" doesn't negate my initial claim that life is oriented for "dealing with".

I advocate antinatalism, yes. I believe it is not right to put others in "dealing with" situations, when they don't need to be.. even, gasp, doing the dishes! Other courses of action- there is none. Another reason against it. A lot of these problems are simply structural or too big to change.

Yes, mild dissatisfactions add up. But that still doesn't justify your ridiculous conclusions. — S

No, this whole course of reasoning that Terrapin and now you are following is ridiculous. He used an example of something that wasn't a "dilemma" to prove that life isn't that bad or something like that, and now you are picking up his mantle. No rather, the bigger conversation here, is at root there is dissatisfaction as motivating factors. In other words, we are always in a "dealing with" situation when born. That is how we are oriented towards things to be done. This is pervasive in every aspect, even washing the dishes. However, to take "washing the dishes" as all that there is in life or all the kinds of activities that there are in life, is itself a red herring or straw man, and that is what I object to here really. But we can keep discussing it.

Is this a joke? Are you pretending to be someone from another planet? — S

Stop trolling. In the context, it was about what is motivating the action. That's all I am getting at. Discomfort, dissatisfaction of some kind. To take the argument that cleaning the dishes is no big deal, thus life has no big deals is a red herring and you know it. However, I was reversing this argument and saying, even mild dissatisfactions add up. So there.

hey’ve found a way to escape the value structure you believe is a permanent fixture — Possibility

No one has escaped anything.

There is no ‘already-established’ that cannot be changed, except that your subjective value structure renders it so. You’re actually railing against a system that it is within your capacity to deconstruct for yourself, and for others, simply by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with anything that challenges its reality. — Possibility

We cannot change our natures, and we cannot change larger social and economic structures. Yes we definitely habituate in them.

But all your ranting about ‘propaganda’ and ‘force-recruiting’ only reinforces what you find so abhorrent. — Possibility

Le me be clear- "force-recruiting" here means the act of procreating new participants. By procreating new people, that is forcing more players into the game by default.

It’s like a prisoner constantly claiming their innocence, declaring that they shouldn’t even be in jail and complaining about the walls and the guards and the restrictions - it does nothing to change the reality, it only becomes tiresome to those around you. It’s not like we don’t see this already. — Possibility

This I don't care about. I will complain about the conditions of the game.

Whether we agree with your interpretation or not makes no difference - we’re all in the same physical situation. If you believe there is nothing that can be done about that, then why even bring it up? If others choose to interact with the world in a way that brings a more satisfying structure to their experience of the same situation, who are you to say that it’s false, when the structure within which you continue to interact with the world renders you a prisoner? Is it because the sense of purpose and joy they may express as a result only reinforces your feeling of hopelessness? — Possibility

I can let people know the wiser choice of antinatalism. I can let people know that indeed, existence itself is the problem and that more minutia mongering isn't going to dig your way out of the existential situation.

You seem to be a prisoner of society’s apparently ‘already-established’ value systems. I’m not. I cannot change what others do, but I can demonstrate a way to experience reality that strips the so-called ‘recruiting’ of its apparent force, rather than just complaining about it. — Possibility

Unfortunately, you experiences come on the behest of people who need to focus on widgets. You think this modern standard of living comes from only happy circumstances, for example?

Where you see nothing here, I see potential. Where you see culturally created values, I see attempts to map a value structure that reflects our current level of awareness, connection and collaboration with reality. And where you see the promotion of insufficient value structures by many who want to keep it that way, I see fear, denial and avoidance of the striving-after - the pain, loss and humility - that informs our existence. — Possibility

Force-recruiting more people into an inescapable game to strive-after, deal with that "informs existence" is all that matters here. The burdens of the "thrownness" of our situation (what is already-established and cannot be changed at all or readily changed by one person certainly), is all that matters. Potential is a propaganda tool to recruit yet more people to this existential scheme.

The emphasis on family planning as an environmental fix distracts us from making essential investments in people and the environment. This includes supporting clean energy, food security, and mass transit, along with accessible comprehensive health systems infrastructure, education, and employment" — StreetlightX

Yeah, the emphasis should be on reducing all births for reason of not creating suffering for another person, and force recruiting new lives to an inescapable game :D.

Heraclitus would be proud, as would Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer thought, metaphysically, all was unrest, and this makes for a pessimistic human existence. In the West, if you are not bound by religious cons, you are most likely an unawares Nietzschean. Will to power (transform yourself!), Be the person you are!, Eternal Return (change your life so you would want it to be its most beautiful version of itself), Beyond Good and Evil (essentially be virtuous in your own way), the Ubermensch (climb the mountain, go on your crazy travelling adventures, build the monument, produce something incredible, etc.). It's all what the modern mindset is driven on in the post-industrial world. Like it or not, we live in a Nietzschean-mindset world. This bodes poorly for me, who is a Schopenhauerean through-and-through. What do you think about that notion @Bitter Crank?

If you don't consciously think that, it's not the case. That's the whole point. — Terrapin Station

I am not arguing it's a "dilemma". But please, what is the reason you are washing the dishes?

"have tos" or needs always hinge on wants. I want to do it. — Terrapin Station

Cool..and why?

I felt a sadness for this beautiful butterfly and also a very close connection to it. Was I also like it, in the wrong place at the wrong time and all my life a futile nothingness, empty and pointless? — TheMadFool

Yes we all are.

But you didn't have to clean it. Something cultural and personal compelled you.