Anti-Natalists are anti-human basically. It's a similar vein to incels, ecofascism or the "overpopulation" crowd. They attempt to fight capitalism with...not building families?
So already deeply alienated people with no sense of community now have no familial ties when their parents die off and feel no shared sense of humanity to the next generation as they grow older and increasingly bitter that they can no longer empathise with someone that's just lost a baby?
Deeply reactionary, a hopeless and miserable strain of ideology with zero revolutionary optimism to build a better world (and merely to "stop more slaves!" which involves checks notes celebrating babies dying)
So gross 🤮
If I ever fell pray to this kind of reactionary demagogy I'd just shoot myself rather than live in that ideological prison of misery that disembowels your soul of any humanity
yeah I'm glad most comrades here don't fall for this eco-fascist bullshit
(OP wasn't clear about how this post was made critically so it kind of gave me a scare)
Wow you just summarized why I hate antinatalists way better than I ever could
I’m not an anti natalist, nor an eco fascist, but you must understand, Joey, that the environment has already been decided, and there won’t be any life in earth in a few years.
In the history of all declining empires in their dying years of their order their writings and culture are permeated with gloom and apocalypse on the horizon.
Todays US is filled to the brim of writings of gloom, doom, misery and hedonism
Whilst the environment is the challenge of our times I don't think it will lead to human extinction
Althought mass misery is very likely
However the Russian/Chinese and Korean communists lived through world war 1 (40 million dead), Russian famine 1921 (5 million dead), Famine again in 1932 (5 million dead), World war 2 (85 million dead, atomic bombing of 2 civilian cities then the Korean war with another 8 million dead
They walked through a period of history that couldn't be closer to hell on earth if you tried.
Imagine if they just gave up?
I respect your spirit, and you are right about many things. However, this was over before it began. Trotsky sold us all out. I blame him most for this. If it weren’t for him, Stalin would have grown, seized control of Europe, and we would have had worldwide communism by 2000
They seem like douchebags, imagine looking at that post and thinking yeah, I'm glad the kid died.
What the actual fuck, be an actual human for once in your life if you think that way.
This isn't really antinatalism though; the belief that humans shouldn't procreate is very different from the idea that it's a good thing that a child dies.
I thought antinatalism was "Someone can not consent to being born, thus i should not have children" as a moral point, not "HAVING CHILDREN IS LIKE OWNING A SLAVE"
That's true but the economy doesn't necessarily have to operate on the same principles as a pyramid scheme.
I don't know why I clicked on that link thinking it was going to be theory...
Something doesn't necessarly have to be a bad for your consent being important in receiving it.
why are we assuming as a default that birth is bad
Again, we're not. Consent is important, that's the only assumption being made here. No consent? Don't do it!
Not necessarily. The argument goes like this.
- There is no moral obligation to produce a child even if we could be sure that it will be very happy throughout its life.
- There is a moral obligation not to produce a child if it can be foreseen that it will be unhappy.
- Because the quality of a potential child's life cannot be accurately predicted, the moral decision is to avoid having children.
As someone who has spent a lot of time wishing they were never born, I agree with this to the extent that I don't personally feel comfortable bringing a child into the world. That's as far as I'm willing to extend this ideology, however, because it's far too easy to use the same logic to justify eugenics.
It's neither better or worse - it's nothing. You wouldn't feel good or bad because there would be no you to experience feelings at all. For many people who have largely experienced existence as suffering, the idea of non-existence can actually be a comfort. It's totally fine if you see it differently, though.
I'm an anti-natalist specifically because you cannot consent to being born. I however hate that the anti-natalist movement (is it even a movement?) is taken over by ecofash
I am extremely privileged. I have never been hungry. My parents were loving and kind. I have never wanted for anything. I have no student debt. I'm am paying off my first mortgage. I am young. I have a loving significant other. I am a programmer.
Even with all these things, I have always regretted being born. I wish I never had to deal with the burden of life. I have held these opinions since middle school. I can't kill myself because it wouldn't be fair to those who are attached to me. I am locked into a 70-90 year long ride I never chose. My parents' little miracle where they got 1 more chance to raise a child for the fifth time is my curse.
I would never curse another with this. I never gave consent to be born. Now I am here. Now I will struggle with my comrades to free ourselves from our chains. I sure wish I didn't have to.
My story is similar. I think for many people they have not suffered so deeply or so long that they can comprehend what it is like, the fear that I could doom a single other person to this fate. And I'm glad for them. No one should have to experience what I've felt, and I haven't had anywhere near the worst of it. When you make a kid you make a gamble for them that their life will be worth living, and I think many just don't understand how badly things can really go. I care too much about my hypothetical children to roll those dice for them.
That's really cool and all, but it doesn't invalidate what @gonxkilluaotp said.
That's a dangerous way to think about consent, imo. In general, when someone is unable to consent to something, we err on the side of caution and don't do that thing. Animals, intoxicated people, intellectually disabled people, etc can't consent; that doesn't mean you get to fuck them, it means you don't get to fuck them.
in order to be able even to not consent to something you have to exist
But why?
Consent is really important for all sorts of things, and it's something we take very seriously. But bringing a life into existence, literally the most important decision one can make, is somehow the one decision that need not concern itself with consent?
what are you asking for consent?
I mean, we're obviously not literally asking an unborn baby for consent, that'd be crazy. We simply recognize that an unborn baby can't consent, so we don't make the baby.
as they don’t exist they can’t have an opinion or preference
I totally agree, but this doesn't address my question. Why is it that existence is a prerequisite for the importance of consent? Why is it that a lack of consent means not performing an action in every case except this one?
the entity in question exists and is capable of having a preference.
Why is having a preference a prerequisite for the importance of consent?
we assume non-consent when consent is unclear
I'm with you here.
in this case both non-consent and consent are impossible as both pre-suppose existence
So we have a case where consent is unclear, why aren't we assuming non-consent like in every other case? I'll ask again, why is existence a prerequisite for consent?
it’s incredibly different
In what ways is it different?
The way I look at it non-consent is the default state. Consent is an action you take, non-consent is simply the lack of consent. For someone to consent of course they have to exist, otherwise they've not consented by default. The whole idea of someone choosing to not consent is nonsense.
contrastedly if I was to ask an unconscious person people would tell me to assume they don’t want a glass of water and that I shouldn’t pour it down their throat
This is exactly my point! When given neither direct consent nor direct non-consent, we assume non-consent. The difference is I apply this same logic to an unborn person, and you don't. Why not?
and again if I was to offer a non entity a glass of water it could neither want or not want said water as both presuppose existence
In this case it wouldn't make sense to involve an unborn person because the question being asked is a question exclusively for existent people. But the question of whether to bring a person into existence is a question exclusively for non-existent people; it wouldn't make sense to ask that question of an existent person.
Antinatalists are some of the most narrow minded and misanthropic people I've ever met and I'm always concerned when support for it pops up in CTH
Not all anti-natalists are trying to enforce their views on others. I'm an anti-natalist, I won't be making any babies and I'll argue with folks to try to convince them that natalism is bad. But I'd also never force someone else to have or not have a child.
:D I'm an antinatalist, pretty active on the sub too. It can be a little moral high ground-y, but yeah I feel that antinatalism and political leftism have a lot of shared ideals.
Anti-natalism is an OP to reduce the number of slaves made useless to the capitalists due to automation before they revolt.
You probably shouldn't judge any ideology based on a random post on a reddit sub dedicated to it.
Also, actual honest to god ecofash like Pine Tree Party are really into outbreading the undesirables.
I think it would make sense to differentiate antinatalism the philosophy, which is basically a very narrow philosophy that suggests that being born sucks even if you are privileged and doesn't suggest any totalising course of action, and antinatalism the reddit meme, which as I pointed out in another reply kinda sucks.
I share your concerns that this kind of rhetoric is going to be used by the right, but antinatalism as a stand-alone thing seems to have been born in the 2000s and I feel like "the poors shouldn't breed as much poors for their own sake" is an older idea than that.
It’s suggesting a solution,
It's just a critique.
Antinatalism doesn’t address the problems that it’s purported to solve
lol how can it solve anything it's completely obscure and irrelevant
I've only seen the cringe side of it I guess...what do you think those shared ideals are?
Just the general dislike for capitalism and preventing the creation of more wage-slaves
Just the general dislike for capitalism
plenty of reactionary folks that also dislike capitalism. I honestly don't see anything leftist about anti-natalism unless you really stretch that definition
If anything, I see communism as very hopeful for humanity. That seems at odds with anti-natalism.
Not that I knock the personal choice not to have kids, but that's all it really is: personal choice. Basically as impactful to the world at large as choosing not to use plastic straws anymore.
Basically as impactful to the world at large as choosing not to use plastic straws
All of humanity is descended from individuals, so your moral relativism of "it's personal choice' is literally the first step towards everything bad that has ever happened
It's not a moral argument, it is an empirical one. Individual people choosing not to have kids will not solve anything if capitalism, the real source of waste and pollution, is not challenged. Individual people subsisting is not the source of pollution, it is the econmic system.
plenty of reactionary folks that also dislike capitalism
More precisely, I'd say they dislike the symptoms of capitalism. If you ask them directly they'll say they love capitalism, and they likewise love all sorts of policies that perpetuate capitalism. They see the problems but reject the unifying framework.
I honestly don’t see anything leftist about anti-natalism
Environmental sustainability, perhaps. Though of course a mother from, say, Ethiopia could pop out 80 kids in her life and the impact would still be less than even a single US child in terms of emissions and environmental degradation; it's mainly in developed countries right now that anti natalism should be applied.
Nah that's dumb. You wanna help the environment? Fight alongside indigenous peoples, fight for migrants, fight to dismantle the police, fight to dismantle the US military. Not having a kid, even in the first world, is as impactful as fuckin consumer choice.
I could drive 20 Hummers, and I still wouldn't be having the same impact on the environment as having one kid does.
You could have 20 kids and I'm not sure if they'd actually put more carbon into the atmosphere than a single fighter jet does across its lifecycle. ;)
Though the math gets trickier if one or more of them ends up contributing to the manufacture of said aircraft.
Alright, at this point it's only you that's going to see this, so I'll give my response to the whole everything. Yes, antinatalism takes a defeatist approach to a lot of these issues. But, genuinely, do you see these issues being solved within your lifetime? Do you think the proletariat will rise up and seize the means of production, violently uniting to throw off the shackles of the bourgeoisie? I can definitely tell you my opinion, that they will not. We are on an on-fire planet, jokingly saying "this is fine" to quell our own fears. Most likely outcome is that the rich will all escape via space, leaving the poor behind to die on this burning shithole of a planet. So, yes, while the military-industrial complex does contribute more to the end of humanity than having one kid does, unless you are somehow certain that your kid will be some combination of Che Guevara and Albert Einstein, I'm saying it's wrong to bring them into this world.
Fight alongside indigenous peoples, fight for migrants, fight to dismantle the police, fight to dismantle the US military
You can do all of these and still recognize that the situation is dire enough that any potential new source of emission (and in developed countries, a newly born person will emit quite a lot during his life) is not a great idea. Moreover, I'm not convinced the planet can support so many people without ongoing ecological damage. Nor am I convinced it's impossible, mind you; perhaps no meat and massively decentralized and sustainable agricultural practices like permaculture could do it.
A more valid reason to me these days, though, is the fact that putting a kid in the world right now means they'll likely suffer immensely and won't live past 30 due to the impending ecological catastrophe.
You can do all of these and still recognize that the situation is dire enough that any potential new source of emission (and in developed countries, a newly born person will emit quite a lot during his life) is not a great idea
Again, this is nothing more than consumer choice. I choose not to have children. I choose to buy a hybrid. Maybe if enough people make this choice, it would solve the problem! Inadequate and ineffective. I do not criticize your choice, but I do criticize your reasoning.
Moreover, I’m not convinced the planet can support so many people without ongoing ecological damage.
Maybe. Hard to really assess when capitalist societies have done almost nothing but make the problems worse for their entire existence.
A more valid reason to me these days, though, is the fact that putting a kid in the world right now means they’ll likely suffer immensely and won’t live past 30 due to the impending ecological catastrophe.
But if they never exist, then who is being saved from suffering? And presupposing that this child-who-never-was still has some sort of moral weight, how can you be sure you possibly know what the sum total of their life-that-never-was would be? I'm growing more and more sure that people who make this argument just feel bad saying that they're saving themselves trouble. Which, y'know, I get it. It makes you sound like a dick to put it that way, but it's much more morally consistent and probably correct. Kids are a liability in the best of times.
Maybe if enough people make this choice, it would solve the problem
I haven't said that, of course the problem is systemic.
I’m growing more and more sure that people who make this argument just feel bad saying that they’re saving themselves trouble. Which, y’know, I get it. It makes you sound like a dick
I'm absolutely not trying to defend my choice to not have kids under a guise of environmental protection or preventing suffering, if that's what you're saying. Personnally I don't want kid because I've never seen the point, even if I had some I'm convinced I wouldn't have the free time to raise him properly, and finally I don't want to decrease the aforementioned - and already limited - free time I have for something that seems pointless to me. I also don't think it makes me sound like a dick, to each his own. But I still believe there's still good reasons even for people that want them to not have them today.
how can you be sure you possibly know what the sum total of their life-that-never-was would be
I can't. One can make a reasonable guess, though. Modern civilization as we know it is on its last legs, and what's coming won't be pretty.
I haven’t said that, of course the problem is systemic.
Then don't bother with the ecological pretense. That's all I'm really saying.
I’m absolutely not trying to defend my choice to not have kids under a guise of environmental protection or preventing suffering, if that’s what you’re saying. Personnally I don’t want kid because I’ve never seen the point, even if I had some I’m convinced I wouldn’t have the free time to raise him properly, and finally I don’t want to decrease the aforementioned - and already limited - free time I have for something that seems pointless to me. I also don’t think it makes me sound like a dick, to each his own. But I still believe there’s still good reasons even for people that want them to not have them today.
Okay, so you just don't want to have kids because you don't want to have kids. That's fine. And for the record, I should have put more emphasis on "sound like a dick". I think it's perfectly okay to look at the future and reason that having children will make it harder to survive, fight, and harder to protect the people you already care about right now. That argument does not require any big leaps of logic or even really a commitment to a particular philosophical notion of "good" and "suffering".
I can’t. One can make a reasonable guess, though. Modern civilization as we know it is on its last legs, and what’s coming won’t be pretty.
Okay. Some people will still have kids though and some of them will be lucky--eh y'know what if I keep this up I'll wind up arguing myself full circle into a moral responsibility to have kids, which is not what I believe.
Then don’t bother with the ecological pretense. That’s all I’m really saying.
Again, there is a valid ecological reason: maintaining a population of billions of people is potentially impossible no matter the system they exist under, not without long term environmental damage and resources exhaustion. I think it is now likely impossible given the damage that's already been done (and I'm not talking about climate change here, more like ecosystems destruction). It's not a pretense.
Okay, so you just don’t want to have kids because you don’t want to have kids.
Yes, and I still think there are potentially valid reasons to want to avoid promotion of natalism / to promote antinatalism under a leftist lense. That's all I'm saying.
if they never exist, then who is being saved from suffering?
All of the potential combinations of sperm and egg
What do you do about your anti-natalism other than not have a child yourself? Do you talk to your friends and family and discourage them from having kids? Do you write articles about it to try to spread the idea in hopes that it would prevent births? Do you form political orgs with these people in hopes to better raise awareness or pass legislation to further anti-natalist aims?
Do you talk to your friends and family and discourage them from having kids
Yes, but mainly for the suffering aspect I mentioned above; like you rightfully said yourself in other comments, the environmental point has less standing - though again, even in a communist utopia, far less consumption, decentralized production and so on, whether or not maintaining a population of billions in a sustainable way without damaging ecosystems or exhausting resources is possible is definitely not a settled matter. We don't know.
The point about the kid suffering, to me, has more standing though. As for your question, admittedly that's about the extent of it, though.
Here's the thing, whether those people close to you have kids or not, people will continue to have kids. Unless anti-natalism is made a political end-unto itsef (a scary prospect), it won't stop being anything more than individuals choosing not to have kids because they're scared for the future. However, there 100% will be human births right until we go extinct, whenever that may be, so we must fight for the new generations with the life-affirming and extrmely practical aims of socialism.
I also don't want children, but I don't think that anyone is morally at fault for having children during hard times and even existential crisis. It's a completely normal human urge and desire to have a family which isn't totally selfish, it's just some of us don't have that but we shouldn't make it some abstract moral position or, god forbid, a political one.
That's one of the topics where I often disagree with people on CTH (here and on the old sub). I absolutely understand the leftist hate about antinatalism since it's very often parroted by malthusian ghouls that want to implement eugenics or genocide, or used as a cover to deport the problem to individuals and avoid doing anything more when it comes to our environmental impact; but there are valid reasons today to not have kids even if you want them.
This completely misidentifies the main source of environmental harm, which is not in the energy, resources, and emissions associated with sustaining any individual person. The issue is in the economic system, that is becoming increasingly more wasteful despite being able to meet everyone's basic needs more efficiently due to the more advanced productive forces. If you understand that, then the idea that it should be "turned back" on the developed world has no basis because it wouldn't even help much
Leftist want to prevent the creation of wage-slaves by ending wage slavery though, not people. I feel like to be anti-natalist is to admit defeat to some extent, which I can get sometimes, but to be a socialist or whatever like...generally you want to overthrow capitalism and build a new society and you need people to do that and you need future generations to inhabit that society.
This is why I'm an anti-natalist. More or less. This and the fact that the Earth is pretty fucked and maybe we shouldn't bring children into this world to suffer outright like we all acknowledge they will.
But if they never exist, then there isn't actually a recipient of that benefit/someone saved from suffering. :thinky-felix:
Edit: what I do understand is the sense that increasing one's responsibility to another life/lives as the world deteriorates may cause oneself more suffering as opposed to sticking with their current number of connections and responsibilities. A child can be a liability in hard times; that's undeniable. But again, that's really a personal choice, not a choice for another person
But if they never exist, then there isn’t actually a recipient of that benefit/someone saved from suffering.
That's the point, though ? you're not adding a conscious being that would've suffered had you done so. There is thus objectively less suffering in the world as a result.
Objectively? How do you measure suffering and does it negate joy/pleasure or are those separate counts?
That's getting on more philosophical questions where I feel I'm less informed / knowledgeable to answer; perhaps you're right and there is joy to be had in a world of resources wars, mass migrations the like of which the species has never seen, lack of food and water, potential nuclear exchanges, and wholesale misery.
There might even be. I'll just wrap this up with a rare hot, but imo good, :amber: take. (Yes I know. Amber.) Completely forget where she said it, but she makes the point that plenty of people, perhaps even the ancestors of you or I, have still had kids during hellish present conditions with no real reason to think the future conditions for the kids would be any better. Not really making a moral judgement about that one way or another, but it supports my belief that some people will be trying to have kids no matter what, and that it's best just to treat the general concept of having kids as value-neutral.
Sorry, I think my comment sounded like sarcasm but it was genuine: I genuinely don't know and you're right that there might be happiness in such a world. If you're in a tight loving community even under hardship in such a world, maybe there's some happiness to be found. Still think it's less likely than under better conditions, though.
It did come off that way a little, but no worries. There's no elegant way to articulate that uncertainty. :rat-salute:
It's a strange sub. Half of people there are leftist buddhist vegans. The other half are edgy teenagers reposting memes from r/childfree.
I guess it has a similar problem to atheist and anticonsumerist subs. On a site chock-full of middle class white dudes any ideology that isn't specifically leftist (and even some of those) gets expressed in a reactionary way. That's why antinatalist sub is so into bitching about poor people having children, atheist sub is way into shitting on Muslims.
I've left the sub because I got tired of explaining that "sterilising the poors" isn't a good idea to yet another teenage eugenicist, but who knows, maybe forums like this are the ones that need leftist perspective the most.
you are now on the potential terrorist section of my community watchlist
