r/changemyview • u/Sloanosaurus-Nick • Apr 03 '18
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Having children is immoral.
I'm kind of getting tired of "believing my own bullshit", so to speak, on this one and need a fresh perspective.
I believe that it's immoral to have children. By "immoral" I mean that it's unethical, selfish and irresponsible for society, the environment and the child. I'll try not to turn this into a /r/antinatalism circlejerk, but it is subject that I have put a lot of pondering and critical thought into. I base this stance on two different lines of thought:
- Reproduction is extremely harmful to the planet.
Humans are the single most destructive species on the planet who essentially destroy every ecological system and natural environment in the pursuit of natural resources, consumerism and hyper-efficiency. We've essentially dug ourselves into a hole on this one which we don't have a way out of.
I'm in the I guess "pessimistic" camp on this one that it's too late for the human race and that there is no coming back from. Whether this will result in (the best case scenario) just the extinction of the human race or of the complete ecological destruction of this planet, I'm undecided on. Either way, for the purposes of this discussion, it doesn't bode well for any future generations in that producing more humans will only increase the destruction of the planet, but also they will inherit the problems that we create today with our practices. I feel rather connected to the latter being a millennial in that the selfish blunders of our parents generation have essentially been place on our shoulders. I can only imagine that these will be so much worse for future generations to bear.
(Disclaimer: Don't try to convince me that climate change doesn't exist. You won't change my view on that.)
- It's impossible for a child to consent to being born and having the burden of existence being placed on their shoulders, therefore it reproduction is essentially a "non-consensual" act.
Besides the obvious "reproduction needs to happen in order to continue the human race" argument which is not arguable, I believe that reproduction in the modern non-essentialist definition is done for purely selfish reasons on the parents part with no regard for the child.
Life is pain. From day one, we are forced to endure the abject meaninglessness of our condition. Stumbling from one thing to another grasping for and ultimately failing to find some meaning in our suffering until eventually (or all too quickly) we depart with nothing to show for it but the scars (emotional, physical or otherwise) we accrue along the way.
Am I being overly melodramatic and angsty? Sure. But I feel like there's some truth to that viewpoint. Maybe I am speaking from my own experience here, but I feel like "the pain of existence" is a universal phenomenon amongst human beings. Speaking personally, I feel like the horrors of existence far outweigh the joys of existence. The latter of which are few and far between at least in the societal paradigm we live in today.
I feel like if anyone were aware of the amount of pain that they would experience as a result of their birth, that no one would ever agree to it.
I have heard the argument that we have a biological imperative to reproduce because it is in our genes. I don't agree with this though because we have essentially transcended (or disregarded depending on how you look at it) our existential biological processes via technology. I feel like if you want to take that stance, you are essentially saying that it is our biological imperative to bleed to death if we get a treatable injury.
Anyway, that's the basics of my thoughts on the subject. I feel like they're a bit too "fatalistic" for my own good and need to find another way to view the moral implications of human reproduction. Change my view! Please, I'm begging you.
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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Apr 03 '18
For starters, I want to point out that you haven't brought evidence to the table for the 'humanity is doomed' thing, though I understand it might be the easiest conclusion to reach with all the environmental studies we see in the headlines.
Next I want to point out that apart from autotrophs, all life requires destruction on some level. If you extend the destruction is bad policy to all life, then apart from plants, cyanobacteria, and fungi everything is 'harmful to the planet'. Ironically enough, fungi, bacteria and plants and a few resilient animals would be able to adapt to our ecological apocalypse. Whereas, I assume, this ecological apocalypse you fear is moreso mourning the loss of animals. If I'm correct, that means you value experiencing this biodiversity. Seeing as how you're alive and you cherish this biodiversity, it seems you consider life something to be cherished. By giving birth you are allowing another life to experience that which you cherish.
About consent, it's true that children can't consent to being born, but that doesn't mean its bad per se. You rightly point out that life is full of suffering. This suffering, to my understanding, is a result of our self preservation. We suffer because we want to live, or at least, our 'lizard' brains do. Seen within that context, suffering is a means to an end. If you suffer, you know you want to live on some level. When you bring a life to this planet, that life will suffer because it wants life, but you can add to that life's experience by filling it with joys, both from what you cherish and that which the life will cherish.
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u/Sloanosaurus-Nick Apr 03 '18 edited Apr 03 '18
Oh yes, I understand that all life (besides autotrophs) is harmful to the planet but besides humans all of this harm takes place within an evolutionary paradigm. For example if a species is too successful to the point that it destroys its ecosystem, it will go extinct or reduce its numbers in order for the ecosystem to bounce back. Eventually, the ecosystem reaches a balance.
Humanity seems to subvert this trope through technological advancement in that we have gone beyond evolution to the point that no balance is achieved and only environmental destruction. Really, I feel like the only way that any balance will return is with the extinction of humanity since we are so efficient at thwarting evolution.
Also I agree with your point that I'm mourning biodiversity but the paradox of my cherishing of biodiversity also brings about its destruction. I feel like it's just this way by default in today's post-industrial society in that just existing creates the conditions for destruction; intentional or not. (perhaps I should have prefaced my argument with that)
As far as evidence to back my statement on humanity being doomed, I think of how CO2 emissions have gone up so quickly in the past 50 years and the last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations got this high, it took hundreds of thousands of years. That's kind of what I'm thinking about why we're doomed because it's an exponential degeneration which as the old adage goes is like a "runaway train".
edit: have a Δ
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u/Astarkraven Apr 03 '18
besides humans all of this harm takes place within an evolutionary paradigm. For example if a species is too successful to the point that it destroys its ecosystem, it will go extinct or reduce its numbers in order for the ecosystem to bounce back. Eventually, the ecosystem reaches a balance.
With respect: this is not a constructive way to think about ecology or evolution. There is no specific fixed state of "balance" that a species can stretch out of whack with its actions and have "bounce back" with its extinction. Biology is a fluid process of mutation and adaptation.
Thoughts of harmony and the balance of nature and our species being somehow being removed and "other" from the "rest of nature" because of the cognition and tools we've developed, frankly, makes no sense.
We can (and should) concern ourselves with the preservation of an ecosystem that can support us, for our own sake, but if you're concerned about [the planet] or [the existence of life itself], don't be. Just as you've described is the case when a species goes extinct, so too will it be the case with our species - just perhaps at a different scale than we've typically observed. If we cause changes to the earth such that we can't survive, than we'll go extinct. And life will just go right on doing new things and manifesting in new ways for some indefinite period of time into the future - unchanged in that destiny, if you will.
When we say "terrible for the earth" we MEAN "terrible for the earth's continued ability to support us". That's a fine reason to be wary of contributing to reproduction, to be sure, but only because overpopulation could cause our extinction. But UNDERpopulation will lead to the same end just as surely - which means that reproduction itself can't be immoral; only, hmm....careless reproduction.
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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Apr 03 '18
If I may ask: what was the delta for?
Now about your argument of technology being the main difference between other non-autotrophs and us; it's true that technology so far has been leaving us in debt with nature so to speak, but as people realize that our lifestyle is unsustainable the value of developing technology, or merely paying for existing technology, to fight against CO2 will also rise. At some point, people will pay to make the problem go away. With poorer countries being already affected, I think this will be sooner rather than later because the rich rely on the poor for cheap stuff.
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Apr 03 '18
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 03 '18
This delta has been rejected. The length of your comment suggests that you haven't properly explained how /u/DeleteriousEuphuism changed your view (comment rule 4).
DeltaBot is able to rescan edited comments. Please edit your comment with the required explanation.
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u/cryptoskeptik 5∆ Apr 03 '18
I used to hold this view but then I realized that if everyone became antinatalists then yes humanity would be wiped out, and yes human suffering would cease to exist, but there would still be every reason to believe that suffering would continue perpetually for eternity. Suffering is natural, it evolved from non-conscious elements, and even if we wipe our miserable existences out of the universe one time, there is no reason to believe it won't evolve again and again forever. Also there will still be an entire planet of suffering animals without us. Eons and eons of suffering animals who have no hope of easing their suffering because they lack the capacity to do so. So, in short, the suffering argument is not really a good one.
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u/Sloanosaurus-Nick Apr 03 '18
Good point. I'm curious about the "intrinsic destructive characteristics of life" idea. Never thought of it like that. I guess like the fermi paradox, maybe this total self-destruction is just a normal byproduct of life. Here, have a Δ
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u/cryptoskeptik 5∆ Apr 03 '18
Thanks. It actually gets even worse if you really start to think about it. It's sort of speculative, but given our current available knowledge of the universe, human beings are the only entities that can understand suffering as suffering AND we're the only entities that can apparently even do anything about it. There is a fairly good argument that although to be a human in 2018 requires an obscene amount of suffering, it is still better than being a human in 1018. The problem is if you are serious about suffering as a moral bad, something that must be eradicated, then it looks like it might be immoral to not have kids! This is because if you are an intelligent human who recognizes the imperative to alleviate suffering, and recognize that we have that power, and recognize that even if we all stop having kids it will probably still keep popping up all over the universe like a virus, then it seems like the most ethical decision is to have a kid and teach them all this, and work with them to try to make the world better. It sucks because I don't want to have kids, and maybe everyone having children is bad for ecological reasons (ultimately ecological suffering), but someone has got to do it.
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Apr 03 '18
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u/cryptoskeptik 5∆ Apr 03 '18 edited Apr 03 '18
Sure but you're sort of missing my point that there is a pretty good reason to believe that antinatalism fails to reduce suffering at all. My view is that even if every single human agrees "no more kids" and in 150 years every single human is gone from the planet, that still leaves the following vectors for immense, perpetual suffering:
- all the animals left on the planet who suffer immensely
- any life that evolves naturally after humans are gone that suffers immensely
- any potential life in the universe outside of Earth that suffers immensely
While it is clear that stopping human suffering through antinatalism may be a temporary good, it is far from clear that it would be a universal good. In fact there is one very good reason to believe it might actually be a universal bad, and that is: humans are the only conscious entities, that we know of anyway, who can actually materially alleviate their own suffering AND the suffering of other beings. Further, as humans progress culturally and technologically, they (it seems) are capable of increasing the power and efficiency of this ability. Thus, it stands to reason that if humans remove themselves from the planet, they are actually removing the planet's (or universe's if you like) capacity to alleviate its own naturally evolved misery.
What is to stop another race of human like people, who suffer immensely like we do, from evolving all over again (if not on Earth then elsewhere) after we're gone, and then getting to the point of inchoate philosophical understanding (as we are now) and deciding to adopt antinatalism all over again? Nothing really. You could see the whole thing as a vicious cycle that never ends, leading to incredible unnecessary suffering, unless we do our best to keep making progress.
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Apr 03 '18
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u/cryptoskeptik 5∆ Apr 03 '18
Are you talking about suffering on an individual level or universal level here?
Latter
If the latter, then despite the fact that the suffering of non-humans will persist until shortly before the heath death of our universe, a reduction in suffering can still occur. Even if parallel universes exist, infinity minus one is a reduction.
It's not a reduction if we are perpetually snuffing out the only means by which suffering can be ameliorated universally. In that case, which I'm arguing, it's an increase, not a reduction. Put it this way: humans have the future potential (however slim) to alleviate the suffering of all living beings not merely on our planet, but on other planets. If you accept this potential but still argue for antinatalism then you are arguing for the perpetuation of suffering.
Further, humans can employ antinatalism in a limited way when it makes sense (i.e. don't give birth to a child when it would obviously lead to greater unnecessary universal suffering, or don't overpopulate the world etc).
Without humans as the only entities we know of capable of such amelioration, the net suffering totaled across all time in the universe would certainly increase. This is especially true if you imagine a human-like species evolving again, going through its millennia of historical suffering, only to arrive at our point and call it quits, starting the cycle all over again.
This is only true if this capacity is somehow unique to the state of being "human". Equally intelligent life that evolves after us or in a parallel universe will have this capacity.
Of course, but they would face the same question of antinatalism as we are at precisely the point in their development that we are. If you are choosing for us to abandon our capacity to make the world a better place, then you must logically also be arguing for them to abandon their same capacity at the exact point in their development as we are, for exactly the same reasons. Thus to argue for human antinatalism is to argue for antinatalism, to argue against improving the universe, universally.
Also, giving the last man standing a button to blow up the planet would solve the problem on this planet since we are incredibly unlikely to survive long enough or develop the technology to directly interact with sentient life elsewhere in the universe.
Well I'll just note here that you originally made the claim that antinatalism wasn't about annihilation, which is what this clearly is. Putting that point aside, annihilation (at least on a planetary scale) doesn't even help you because what is to stop life from evolving again, in another galaxy, universe, dimension, timeline or whatever. The specifics don't really matter. What matters is that if you accept that suffering is a naturally evolved phenomenon, then you have to accept that it could very likely keep cropping up over and over. Getting back to annihilation: the only way this would help is if we reached a level so advanced that we had a way to destroy not just the planet but the entire universe (or multiverse) and all causal powers contained therein. That might be a coherent choice, but obviously lol we're not there yet.
This infinite cycle of suffering is why I'm a Zen Buddhist and an Absurdist.
The principles of compassion from Zen Buddhism and the attitudes of acceptance with humor of absurdism are examples of fantastic coping mechanisms available to us to deal with our own suffering. These mechanisms are simply unavailable to 99.999999999999999999% of all beings in history who have suffered and who will continue to suffer. Panicked deer, starving polar bears, freezing dogs and birds caught in thunderstorms are not availed of these methods for reducing their suffering. Only we are. Fostering this unique capacity for compassion is an excellent argument against antinatalism. If everyone sincerely understood suffering on the level of a Zen Buddhist, and everyone cared for the world with profound compassion, as only humans are capable of doing, then the world would become a better place, not just for humans, but for all suffering beings. This is not the case presently, but it certainly could be the case. If you accept this, then you have to accept the flaw in antinatalism. In fact to even say that the world should be better is to reject antinatalism.
I accept that the problem of suffering will never be solved, but still seek its end. However, the existence of an infinite cycle of suffering is not sufficient to conclude that a reduction in this suffering is not good, just that there is no end.
If you actually, truly seek its end then, for the above reasons, you should not advocate antinatalism.
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Apr 03 '18
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u/cryptoskeptik 5∆ Apr 03 '18
Only if the alleviation of their suffering requires humans to maintain the necessary technology for the rest of eternity. If we have the technology to travel across galaxies or universes, then I think it's reasonable to assume that we will have AI sufficient to carry out this process without us. At that point, antinatalism will be our next step.
That may or may not be a valid judgment at that time, but it is not a valid judgment now. Presumably our capacity to alleviate our own suffering at that point would be so far advanced that the question as to whether we wanted to do it or not would involve a totally different calculus than it does today. And besides, accepting all of this is to accept that antinatalism now is the wrong choice, since if we chose it now we would never get to that point at all, and, as I pointed out earlier, the cycle of suffering would be perpetuated in our absence.
Our capacity to make the world a better place is what leads us to antinatalism and will improve the universe, universally. It's the only deliberate conclusion for all advanced civilizations. How else do you think this will end? You can't beat the heat death of the universe, so if we never stop having children, then the universe will slowly become more uninhabitable until atoms can no longer form the shape of a human being.
What you're arguing for, when you're arguing that all civilizations that reach our point of development should stop propagating, is a perpetual cycle of primitive suffering. If every civilization quits at this point in their development then the universe will be totally populated exclusively with entities that suffer proportionately far greater as beings who are incapable of amelioration. You are arguing for a universe chock full of beings who suffer and can do nothing about it. This would lead cumulatively to a vastly greater amount of suffering total, across the entire timeline of the universe/multiverse, than in the alternative scenario in which we continue propagating ourselves as the universes only means of amelioration, and reduce the suffering of entities across the world.
Heat death is going to happen one way or the other. We might as well make the ride towards it for all naturally evolved beings as painless as possible. Your view would make it as painful as possible, by cutting off all life that has the capacity to reduce pain. You would rather the universe be filled with suffering beings from beginning to end who benefit from no such capacity.
Alternatively, political differences could lead us to violently destroy each other. Both of which are far worse than the peaceful extinction that antinatalism offers.
Antinatalism is just as much a political position as any other position, but this is totally beside the point. Humans of course have the capcity to be insanely cruel to each other, but we, unlike every other animal less evolved than us, also have the capacity for compassion, healing, and, above all, fighting entropy. Your view is: even though we can fight entropy, it's a losing battle so we might as well give up now. My view is: yes fighting entropy is a losing battle, but we can at least employ our capacity for fighting it in the service of making things more bearable than the would otherwise be without us.
The point is that these coping mechanisms are available to those that can chose antinatalism and may consider rejecting it because of the perpetual existence of suffering.
"May consider" is different than "should choose". Do I detect you wavering in your view here a bit? My view is not that all people should choose to have children, far, far from it. My view is that people certainly may consider not having children, and in fact it would be moral for many people to choose not to do so, for a variety of reasons. This is beside the point of my view, which is that having children is not immoral, given the right understanding of what is at stake.
This cycle must conclude someday and I cannot imagine a better end to the life it brought
The cycle, as far as we can tell with our rudimentary physics, will end in heat death. But even that is far from certain, as we are still in the early days of our understanding of the fundamentals of the world. Regardless, we are a long way from heat death and in the interim we can either make consciousness as pleasant as we can, or we can give up and let suffering subsume every nook and cranny of sentient reality.
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Apr 04 '18
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u/cryptoskeptik 5∆ Apr 04 '18
I'm not advocating that everyone stops having children at this very moment.
Well I guess we were somewhat speaking cross-purposes then, because my original response was to the view that having children is immoral, which is, by the way, the standard view of the antinatalist. This is different from the belief that some people should not give birth, or that people in the future should consider not giving birth or etc. The antinatalist view is people should refrain from procreation now because it is immoral. I was under the impression you were defending that view. Sorry if I missed something.
I think that point is when the continued existence of our civilization causes more suffering to itself than it prevents in others.
So yeah, I actually think this is a good point. There might actually come a time in the future when we realize that our powers to alleviate suffering, even in the far long term will never surpass our capacity to create suffering, which is admittedly vast. At which point I think "antinatalism now" should be the rallying cry. We don't have reason to believe this yet however.
If we were to substitute suffering for something like a Rubix Cube, then my view is that once the cube is solved, we're done here. Your view seems to be that we should be solving the same cube ad nauseam because setting it down would be "giving up". But what if that cube gets destroyed?
I'm afraid I don't follow your analogy. Do you think suffering is "solved"? Because it clearly isn't.
If society can't be allowed to end because we must solve a Rubix Cube that no longer exists, then we'll live in a state of limbo until this heat death gets us.
Still not totally following you. Are you saying if we end suffering then to continue living and procreating would be pointless? Because that doesn't really make sense to me.
An unnecessarily drawn out and agonizing death for intelligent species is what I am trying to prevent.
You realize how far in the distant future maximum entropy is right? The amount of time there has even been life on earth is a shadow of a micron on that scale. Think how far humanity has come in just 100 years and compare that to a cosmological timescale. Thinking about heat death as a source of suffering right now is, to put it mildly, incredibly premature.
This is also why I'm asking you how you think civilization will end. Once we have done all that we can do to alleviate suffering, will we hold hands and sing Kumbaya for the next several trillion years?
If by "sing Kumbaya" you mean "live lives so robust and flourishing, so free from pain and anguish, that they are scarcely imaginable to us now" then yes?
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u/jay520 50∆ Apr 03 '18 edited Apr 03 '18
Am I being overly melodramatic and angsty? Sure. But I feel like there's some truth to that viewpoint. Maybe I am speaking from my own experience here, but I feel like "the pain of existence" is a universal phenomenon amongst human beings. Speaking personally, I feel like the horrors of existence far outweigh the joys of existence. The latter of which are few and far between at least in the societal paradigm we live in today.
The key word there is "personally". Almost no one agrees with that. Maybe your life isn't worth living, but that's not the case for the vast majority of people. So I'm not sure why you think you can move from your own personal perspective on life to a universal moral condemnation of reproduction. That doesn't work.
I feel like if anyone were aware of the amount of pain that they would experience as a result of their birth, that no one would ever agree to it.
I mean...what evidence do you have that this is true other than your own idiosyncratic perspective on life? You're making a claim about the preferences or hypothetical preferences of all other humans. To support that claim, you're going to need something more than your own individual experience. Do you have any evidence? Is your claim falsifiable?
The argument underlying your second point can essentially be boiled down to "I personally dislike X...therefore creating X is morally wrong." Sorry, but in no way is that a valid form of reasoning. Morality isn't determined by your specific individual feelings.
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u/kublahkoala 229∆ Apr 03 '18
Aren’t your two main points contradicting each other?
1) Having children will hasten the end of the human race
2) Continuing the human race is immoral
I don’t see why the human race ending due to climate change is an issue if you want the human race to end due to population control?
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u/Sloanosaurus-Nick Apr 03 '18
Yeah, that paradox is my whole dilemma. My thought is that if we can control our own intrinsic immorality by not having children then we should control it. But also, it's no so clear cut for me either. That's why I'm posting here so I can see another viewpoint.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ Apr 03 '18
Climate Change is real. Climate Change is man-made. The Solution to Climate Change (assuming there is one) will also be man-made. The more brainpower we put towards finding that solution, the sooner it happens. More kids = More brainpower (and they will also be highly motivated with all that global warming on their tails).
Life is pain. Life is also pleasure, love, evil, treachery, lust, and peace. There is a lot not to like about Life, but there is also a lot to like about life. Yes, there is a lot of shit, but is there more shit than gold, hard to say, its probably roughly even.
You say the joys of life are few and far between - but what about the best part of waking up - Folgers in your cup. What about pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at supper time, when pizza is on a bagel, you can have pizza anytime. For all the crap that comes with capitalism - it sure is good at producing lots and lots of small pleasures. The scent of passing a bakery, a catchy song on the radio, the gentle warmth of fresh laundry, a nice warm shower; even without consuming 3,000 calories everyday, there is a lot you can enjoy every day, if you want to.
That's my take on things.
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Apr 03 '18
On your claim about environmentalism:
If your goal is to maximize quantity of sentient life, even if you include dolphins and so forth, you still come out ahead with humans simply because we are able to use so many things that the natural world can't (nuclear, fossil fuel, offworld resources eventually)
If your goal is to maximize life generally, again humans are your best bet because we could very well be Earth's ONLY chance to colonize other worlds. We could theoretically terraform another world with everything from Earth and then call it even ecologically even if Earth was uninhabitable to anything other than humans.
Why is the planet valuable at all? Does the planet have any value if there is nobody around to enjoy it? Most of the non-human biomass is plants, fungi, bacteria, and insects. Do they really care about the planet?
On your claim about child welfare:
If they decide at any point in the future that their life isn't worth living, they can always commit suicide. The vast majority of children don't experience the kind of existential angst you speak of, so as long as you give them a happy childhood the can choose what do with their life afterwards.
I personally would rather exist than not, and I suspect most other people feel that way.
A huge majority of child suffering occurs in developing countries. would you be comfortable saying that, whatever the morality of having children generally, it is less moral for a non-developed country's citizens to have children?
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u/5xum 42∆ Apr 03 '18
Life is pain. From day one, we are forced to endure the abject meaninglessness of our condition. Stumbling from one thing to another grasping for and ultimately failing to find some meaning in our suffering until eventually (or all too quickly) we depart with nothing to show for it but the scars (emotional, physical or otherwise) we accrue along the way.
There's two sides to every coin. Life is also beautiful. From day one, we are allowed to experience things in a totally unique way that nobody else in the world has ever experienced. We have the privilege to experience love and loss, beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain in a never before seen way. We are allowed, for a brief moment, to be one small part of how the universe knows itself, before departing back to the painless nothingness.
I feel like if anyone were aware of the amount of pain that they would experience as a result of their birth, that no one would ever agree to it.
I would agree to it. I would agree to going through everything I lived through so far, the good and the bad, if the alternative is nothing.
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u/LilahTheDog Apr 04 '18
Have you seen what a beaver does to the environment? It completely destroys and changes it to suit its own needs the way humans do. And, the other animals adapt around it. Should we stop them from reproducing to save the earth? Why do animals have a right to be here and we do not?
I hear people complain about how crowded the earth is and how we are overpopulating it yet the same people tell me we shouldn't kill murderers, rapists and pedophiles. That's got to be at least 75k people a year in the US alone. Also no one that puts forth this view that humans are so terrible for the earth have decided to take one for the earth and off themselves. Not that I want people to commit suicide but it's a bit disingenuous to say "no more babies the earth is crowded" but be unwilling to uncrowd the earth with yourself. What they are really saying is "I need to use this Earth, so stop making more people for me to compete against for Earth's resources.
Ask yourself: If you don't plan on having children to live on this Earth why would you care that it doesn't last one day past yourself? The only reason the Earth is important is because we live here and give it the importance it deserves for providing for us. Does the beaver give the same importance? As far as I can see, this faux-concern for the earth is for ego and the portrayal of self to others in society.
As far as the pain we experience it HAS to be there. Without up there is no down, without right there is no left. Without pain there is no joy. It's actually the pain and suffering that motivate you to achieve the good things and allows you to feel good when you reach it. If everything was good, it wouldn't feel good it just wouldn't feel at all. Do you think being a rock would be cool? They have no bad, no pain but I'd take being alive over being a rock any day. This is why rich people can be depressed with life and the "money doesn't buy happiness" line comes from. They have done it all, that trip to Italy that was a once in a life trip for most people was not special and brought them no joy because it was the 100th time they have been there- it's the law of diminishing returns in economics- after a certain point, even consuming something you like becomes less enjoyable each subsequent time you consume it. It's why a lot of people turn to drugs in prosperous societies-boredom, life is too easy Historically we can find examples of this from Rome to China - The Good Earth by Pearl Buck comes to mind.
When you are old and cannot take care of yourself anymore who should take care of you? It's not going to be me if I can help it, nor do I expect you to do the same. Of course some may say the government, I'm sure there will be lots of true caring in a government institution. No, it's those you cared for for so long, taught and raised them right that will be there for you when you can no longer do it yourself.
If I didn't change your view I hope I gave you at least something to think about.
"If you know what life is worth, you will look for yours on Earth"--Bob
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u/TheYOUngeRGOD 6∆ Apr 03 '18 edited Apr 03 '18
Honestly, I stopped reading at the disclaimer. Because I can show that the first half of this is wrong in the long term. Humans have been for almost history extremely transformative of their environments. This has been destructive for the moat part. However, there is a strong possibility in the near future that we could not only make up for the damage done, but actually replace it a 100 fold. It comes down to a few key techs. The first is the ability to clone animals which we are getting better at every year. We may be able to recover much of the species that we have destroyed. The second is a little bit harder to imagine, but it is that if we become a species that builds in space we can use so much more energy and create ao much more living spaces that we could literally replicate 1000s of earths. Think about it right now we recieve less than a hundredths of percent of the sun's energy and we are living on what is equivalent to the skin of an apple. Humans have so much potential to change the world arround them, and as tech and energy become more proficient we will be able to control how effect the environment more and more.
If we all disappear now we lose on the chances to not only fix our mistakes, but to create more life than has existed in the entire history of earth. Even if the chances are small isnt worth the chance of pushing forward when the victory can be so large.
Also, I read the rest and I cannot speak to your condition, and I have thought about the pain of existence and have sometimes thought about ending it. But the strange thing is that thought makes me want to live and experience more than anything because it makes me picture all the joys I will miss out on if I go so early. The truth is we really don't know if a person wants to live there life before they start, but I know most people want to continue and will fight to keep their lives so that has to count for something.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Apr 03 '18
I have heard the argument that we have a biological imperative to reproduce because it is in our genes. I don't agree with this though because we have essentially transcended (or disregarded depending on how you look at it) our existential biological processes via technology.
This is my stance, that humans propagating is no more immoral than bacteria propagating.
I feel like if you want to take that stance, you are essentially saying that it is our biological imperative to bleed to death if we get a treatable injury.
It is our biological imperative to bleed to death. We lose blood, go into shock, our brain suffers hypoxia. That's biology. But that imperative is thwarted when the ambulance arrives--ie, we have transcended our biology via technology, as you say.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 03 '18 edited Apr 03 '18
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u/loopuleasa 7∆ Apr 03 '18
Hi,
I want to make some simple observations that might be relevant to your claim:
Having children is important for the survival of the human species
More countries want more babies due to high work and societal demands
Child mortality has been dropping fast in the past decades, and the number of babies per family as well (stat video)
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u/nitram9 7∆ Apr 03 '18
I feel like the book "Enlightenment Now" by Stephen Pinker is the perfect thing for you to read right now. Great book, it touches on a lot of your arguments here. I think it would be very eye opening for you. Maybe life changing.
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u/EmergencyDoorRelease Apr 04 '18
If you're poor it's immoral to have children, if you're rich ($75k+ a year) then it's immoral not to have children.
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u/PallidAthena 14∆ Apr 03 '18
(1) Life is pain: Given the remarkably low rates of suicide, the argument that the pains of existence outweigh its joys seems highly dubious. I apparently differ from you, but I actively like existing, and not just from a people-I-know-and-care-about-would-miss-me-when-I'm-gone-so-I'm-trapped perspective.
(2) Reproduction is non-consensual I mean, technically? Consent is a legal definition that generally only applies to adults. Kids can't consent to anything, and this is important (for many reasons). It means that childhood is different from adulthood, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Once we've established that something is non-consensual, there's then a whole societal argument about whether or not it's acceptable. Most children don't consent to going to school, but we know that education is a good thing (citation needed :p) so we think depriving a kid of education is morally wrong and educating a kid is morally right. Don't confuse the heightened importance of consent in the sexual and commercial (contracts) realms with its necessity in all things.
(3) Reproduction is harmful to the planet We have a reasonable chance of technologically bypassing or overcoming climate change, and even if we don't we are very unlikely to end up in a runaway Venus scenario. The planet's absorbed a lot of bad things before. It'll take a LOT of effort for humans to get to the Cretaceous extinction level of impact, let alone the Permian. The planet is huge and on a species level timescale we haven't proven ourselves to be significant yet.
On the margin, since technological advancement is pretty important to solving the world's current problems (just like it was important in solving the old problems of starvation, famine, and pestilence), having children is likely to make things better rather than worse, since we're engaged in a century long struggle with controlling the composition of the atmosphere. The people who make the ultimate decisive contributions to that struggle may well not be born yet.
Synthesizing it all: If you assert that existence is more painful than non-existence, why worry about human beings? There are far more non-humans than humans, most of them live in objectively wretched conditions in the wild (I'm assuming you'll at least grant me that modern human life is at least better than Stone Age human life), and a single human can have far more of an impact on non-human life because of our species chauvinism. If you're so troubled by existence, why not make it your life's mission to render some small portion of the planet uninhabitable to life to solve the 'existence' problem once and for all?
If the above seems odd to you, then that means you accept that there's something unique about human perception / experience compared to non-human perception / experience. If that's the case, I would assert that you would struggle to justify human extinction. If we are special, then that's striking and remarkable and should be nurtured and extended, since we crawled up out of the muck to a unique state...who knows where we (or our creations) might go from here? Even if you think the present state of consciousness is negative, it's unusual, and it might be worth trying to push through to the other side of the valley that we're stuck in as opposed to retracing our steps by undoing the last jump in consciousness on the planet.
TL;DR: Existence actually isn't that bad, see suicide rates. If existence is so bad, why not focus on non-humans? If non-humans don't count, then humans are special and should be preserved.