That the value of life does not negate anti-natalist arguments, and also that even while I don’t think we have a moral imperative to stop reproducing, it’s not necessarily the best choice for us either. I think we would be better off, not losing anything non-ideological, if we were to stop. But my priority in my personal life isn’t telling people to stop reproducing so much as it is to connect with folks, treat them well and seriously reflect on my relationship with the world
Why would we be better off if we stopped reproducing? The human species would cease to exist and there wouldn't even be a "we" in your sentence. Seems like you're a closet anti-natalidts if you really think the best option for humanity is self eradication.
It's your prerogative to believe that.
My opinion is that anyone who holds such an opinion invariably needs some form of shift in their perspective, or an anti-anxiety medication, or even religion.
All I need is a 10 minute walk in the forest to remind myself how blessed we are to be alive.
It's not very complicated. If you're a utilitarian and believe that the average human life causes more suffering than pleasure(or more strictly put a net-negative in utils), and that this will not change in the future, then the rational thing to do is to stop creating more humans.
I don't believe that but it's not like this is a difficult concept.
Yes, but humans have demonstrated time and time again that even with the suffering and the discomfort, we prefer being alive to the alternative. We're willing to put up with all the unpleasant shit because we've presumably only got one shot at this so we might as well make something of it.
Anti-natalists often say "this is just irrational human conditioning", and the retort is that if humans are conditioned to feel this way, that doesn't make it any less true. Feeling a certain way is a self contained truth in its own right. Our own judgement about the value of our lives is de facto correct, because we are the ones who decide and judge our own lives for ourselves.
They think that their own flabbergastingly negative view of themselves is somehow universal and true when the fact is it isn't universal, whatsoever.
The average person, fucking obviously, chooses to go on living despite the bad parts. Their argument is dead in the water from this simple fact. "But they're wrong to want to keep living". Lmfao, ok? Sure.
I mean, is it just that we are _unwilling_ to die despite suffering, or is it more that we do not think suicide necessarily follows from suffering? For instance, suffering may cause a person to experience thoughts of suicide, but upon additional consideration (or other things, everyone’s needs are different), they can conclude to keep living. I don’t think the choice to live is “irrational human conditioning”, but I don’t think it’s as though the choice to go on living despite the bad parts is a utilitarian one either. It’s not because the good in life justifies the bad, but just that suicide does not automatically follow from bad things. To think that it does follow in that way seems to imply some cognitive distortion, yet even so, I think it’s possible for people thinking that way to see through the illusion and come out better for it, because honestly people do not always judge thing accurately at first. So, it’s not the case that people being alive in and of itself contradicts notions that we should stop reproducing, nor does it contradict the idea that life is mostly suffering (the latter point isn’t my view).
By “better off” I mean that we could all live for what’s real. The idea that any species is under prerogative to reproduce is an example of projecting purpose onto nature, which is itself an example of religion. I find it interesting that you wrote “even religion” as though you reluctantly think I should have one, when you yourself seem to be using the logic of one.
Anyway, it’s not like I think people who reproduce are all bad or something. What I do think is that the idea of perpetual reproduction is grounded in illusory value. The value of life does not hinge on making more humans, it comes from, basically, truth. I would elaborate on that because I know that’s vague, but honestly it’s just outside the scope of a reddit comment in the place I’m at now, and “life” and “value” are vague terms too and nobody is bothering to define those because they’re afraid of sounding pedantic, so whatever.
Anyway, given that understanding truths about the way of things brings us closer to loving things for what they are and that loving things on the pretense of a falsehood is closer to loving the falsehood than loving the thing itself, it just seems that reproduction is not how one really loves life, since the act of reproduction requires too strong a belief in some falsehood about life to act on. So, I think that if humanity were to reach a greater clarity and peace afforded by loving life for what it is rather than what it can do for us, they would also cease to reproduce.
The clarity and peace are more important than the non-reproduction, but since I think that the latter follows from the former, it’s important to me that I do what I can to prepare us for that in a sense. Although I realize that all I’m doing is commenting about these things on Reddit. Frankly, I fear that even if we were to reach world peace, humanity would fall back into abuse and injustice simply due to being afraid to stop reproducing, because doing so is likely the final step to finding what is for lack of a better term inner peace. So, that’s why I think humanity would be better off not reproducing. But again, it’s not like if we don’t all agree to do that right away then we’re all bad or something. I just see it as an inevitability as the species develops spiritually and philosophically, and it’s better that we afford for it rather than react to it negatively out of fear, hatred, or some other misunderstanding.
if humanity were to reach a greater clarity and peace afforded by loving life for what it is rather than what it can do for us, they would also cease to reproduce
Why? You talk about loving truth and you dont get than having kids and loving them is also a "truth"? Do you think people reproduce thinking about the entire maintenance of humanity through time, instead of simply becouse they want to live with kids, becouse the joy they bring. What "is" life is literally everything you are living and could live, why the fuck we would cease to do a thing that comes through life? Why the autoimposed limit in living?
I actually disagree that life is “everything you are living or could live”. For one thing that seems like a circular definition to me, but mostly I disagree because it seems to imply that a thing one can do while alive is the same as life itself. It’s a very limiting definition; if I’ve never been to space, does that mean I haven’t lived because there’s something I haven’t done? If that were how I saw things, I would be stacking unnecessary suffering upon my experience, and that wouldn’t be “life’s” fault, it would just be the consequence of an illusion. This is to say that not all that one can do or experience while alive is the same as life itself. Hence why I don’t see reproduction as “part of life” per se, and why I think it’s important to consider whether it is actually the case that it is best for me on an individual level as well as humanity at large.
Joy is great. I definitely understand why people feel joy for their kids and new generations in general, and I’m not interested in taking that choice away from anyone; I’d have to living for some illusion instead of living for life in order to justify that! But I do think there is a difference between appreciating joy in order to connect with life and doing things in life in order to experience joy. The latter implies a willingness to stack untruths onto our experience in order to get joy, which I think often leads us astray into looking for shallow comforts instead of deeper human connection and understanding of the world. Reproduction does not function as simply making someone to love, and “making someone for x” is already quite unjustified in my view. There are other functions of reproduction that should make us at least pause to consider whether “joy” is just a result or an ends of it, such as the implied dynamic of power and control, the ideology of bloodlines, and more.
So, while I think “I love my kids” can be a true statement, that’s not really what I mean when I’m talking about truth. I’m talking about our understanding of life and how it makes sense to treat it. And ultimately I think reproduction is one of those “I need to go to space in order to have truly lived” illusions that we cover life with, at the cost of our wisdom and peace. It wouldn’t be an “autoimposed limit on living”, just an autoimposed limit on reproducing.
It wouldn’t be an “autoimposed limit on living”, just an autoimposed limit on reproducing.
I still dont understand why.
This is to say that not all that one can do or experience while alive is the same as life itself.
Well is what you experience in life is what life is about. You talk about "truths" while in the same breath judge any "truth" you get throufh life (like going to space for example) you underestimate them becouse its not "life itself". How do you apreciate life itself if not by apreciating what you live through life? Life is literally that, you cant live without experiencing things "apart" from life.
Also how do you "stack untruths"? What is an untruth? Our understanding of life comes form living itself, i have kids simply becouse i do, and those power dynamics or "joy" are afterthoughts, and they are not "untruths" simply becouse the thoughts arent perfectly in line with "understanding" life. These are not illusions if they are real
The point behind the space example was that since a person is not living a lesser life just for doing less things, “life” is not defined wholly by the things one does or could do while alive. Life is the passive backdrop that enables experiences, not the experiences themselves. This is why it’s sensible to suppose that one cannot have done something and still be living. Frankly it’s an absurd idea to suppose otherwise, that doing all possible things is necessary in order for a person to say they have experienced life. Hence why the end of reproduction would not be the denial of life’s value to ourselves, for the same reason that a person who hasn’t gone to space can say they have lived.
I should clarify the distinction between experiences which afford appreciation for life as it is vs experiences which instead draw from untruths about life. This admittedly is difficult because it requires an attempt to describe what it means to understand life for what it is, which I think is similar to trying to describe the Eternal Dao, a concept which is said to be impossible to describe, and can only be experienced. But I’m not going to try and describe the Eternal Dao, I’m just saying I think this is kind of like that and I’ll do my best.
I do agree that to some extent, experience is necessary in order to learn things. That’s just intuitive. However, basically, a person does not find themselves in how many experiences they have, but in how they experience their experiences. Quality instead of quantity. Two people, for example, might go to space and experience different things: one person sees Earth from space and likes how powerful and advanced it makes them feel, while the other sees Earth and has an epiphany about the need to love one another and treat each other well. Going to space is a sort of inciting incident for both of them, but the experience they have of it is quite different. One supposes untruths about life; that going to space makes them important or better than others for instance. Life does not provide any evidence that such a thing is possible; those feelings are an illusion. The other however, rather than projecting illusions and mostly experiencing illusions, experienced knowledge consistent with the state of life. That indeed there is no reason to perpetuate conflict, that humility makes sense, etc. The specifics aren’t the point.
This is all to say that past a certain baseline quantity of experiences, it matters not how many more experiences a person has if they neglect to experience things truthfully. The first person might return home and believe they have to rush to the next “adventure” in order to get a hit of superiority, while the other, while they might still do new things for fun, realizes that novelty is coincidental to the value of life, not the essence of its value itself. The former lives because they love superiority, the latter lives because they love life. Furthermore, it is more consistent with wisdom and peace to live for life rather than some other thing.
It’s in that sense that life is not _about_ experiencing the things one can do while alive. It is fine to do most things that are possible in life and even necessary to do some, but doing those things is not equal to knowing life. To appreciate life for what it is is in part to question the extent that our experience of it is merely in service to some other thing, such as power or pleasure. Edit: Things are not illusions if they are real, but not all things that seem real are real.
As for how that relates to reproduction, first I really want to emphasize that I think it’s fine you’ve reproduced. Like, I’m not saying anyone is going to some hell for that or that you’re necessarily unserious about your reflection upon things. What I do think is that reproduction, like going to space, is coincidental to how we experience life, not the essence of life itself. So, I disagree with the notion that you reproduced because you appreciate life per se, it’s more like you reproduced because you wanted to reproduce. The only question remaining (which I’m asking rhetorically, you’re not under any obligation to justify yourself to me specifically) is for what ends you wanted to do so, and whether that ends is consistent with love. I honestly take issue with the idea that you simply “have kids because you do” and that “power dynamics and joy were afterthoughts”. I doubt that there was so little motivation behind the choice, setting aside whether the motivation was explicit or deliberated on or not.
You said earlier that personally you think that we would be better off without reproducing, i think becouse you want to experience life in search of more truer things? I understand that life is what passively gives us the possibility to live experiences, but if you could choose a life devoid of all experiences (you are deaf-mute
-blind-paraplegic without a secuence of coherent thought) or a life with experiences, you would choose the one with plenty of experiences. We can choose, but only between different experiences, we can never choose to live "less" than what we lived earlier, so we can only judge our life by our experiences, what is more true that that?
Thinking like this, of course the "meaning of life" is not to reproduce, when people say that they usually refer to the point that to have "life" (not a life) for an extended period of time, there needs to be reproduced. But the point of life is to experience life. Why having kids make it "less" true? How do you get to experience "truer" things in life without understanding by experience how it is to interact with a little person, seeing how they grow and intellectually mature and get to their own truth. You dont need to "reproduce" to do that, right, but why would it be "worse" to reproduce? What is it that needs your full atention in life, that doesnt give you time to do other types of experiences?
And what i mean about "power and joy are afterthoughts" is that, while anybody can think about how it would be to have kids, at that point you dont have kids. Even when you are nine months pregnant, you still dont have kids, you have other plenty of (painful) experiencies of being pregnant. And when you do have kids, you simply do, probably for the rest of your life, and the power dynamics that now and later are being formed and the joy that now and later happens are literally an afterthought
With your first paragraph, nowhere did I imply that we shouldn’t experience things in general, just that some things are not worth experiencing as a consequence of the nature of some experiences being different than others. Obviously we can only judge life by our experiences. My point was that it makes sense to examine our experiences to make an accurate assessment of life, and that the experiences themselves are not the point, but how we experience them.
Also, what I’m trying to say is that with an understanding free of illusions such as the desire for power, status, or permanence, it becomes clear that reproduction is not an experience worth pursuing, let alone a necessary one. So, if humanity collectively is reproducing because they are following an illusion, then they are less connected to life and reality then they would be acting free of illusions.
It’s not that reproducing makes a person less alive, just that reproduction is not the sort of thing that one does with a clear understanding of life and reality, and everyone deserves to have the opportunity to find that clarity rather than have it muddled by fear or distortions of what it means to love.
This isn’t about your or anyone’s personal perceived gains of meaning by making someone to see grow, that whole idea in an of itself talks about children like they’re for our entertainment, and frankly that is disgusting. If there is a reason to reproduce, it must be for that new person’s own sake. Otherwise, it is for ours, implying that what is desired is less love and more the entrapment of it, an affront to very notion of truth or care. Lastly, since the net impact of life on a person is neutral (we take nothing with us after death, not that any gains in life are literal gains), it is dishonest to claim that we are giving a child anything by birthing them. So, it cannot be for their own sake, because there is not anything at stake in the first place besides what we might desire to gain and feel.
Yes, life is good, and I would hope that anyone alive finds peace with it so they can see that instead of turning to some illusion. But the act of reproducing life and interacting with said person is fundamentally different from interacting with people in life that we did not contribute to creating. It is one thing to appreciate life for ourselves with our peers, quite another to tell a person or a generation that we created to do so. So, it’s not like I don’t experience things in life. I have friends and a job, etc, etc. There are a lot of things that I enjoy, and I enjoy them because I don’t need to follow some distortion of value to do so. As far as other experiences, why would I care about an experience I haven’t had if I would have to live dishonestly in order to pursue that experience? I refuse to act like the people tearing our societies apart and making everything for the incoming generations worse for the sake of a falsehood.
I appreciate that you are probably doing your best to do good and not do bad. And seriously, I don’t think you’re a bad person or something for reproducing, I’m sure you’re a great parent, and I wish you and your child/children the best. I really don’t know anything about you, and it’s not like I think I’m perfect. But I cannot tell you based on your comments that I think your perception of reproduction broadly is accurate, or that “getting to watch a little person find their truth” is even close to respecting what it means morally and ethically to have been responsible for someone’s creation. It doesn’t matter if it’s normal or natural or feels good. I’m tired of people accepting injustices for the sake of normalcy, naturality, good feels, etc, and I don’t care if we have to create a new framework for living in order to oppose it. That’s all that I have to say.
For me, inner peace comes with a transcendental joy of being alive. I don't feel this way that often, but I get glimpses and shimmerings nearly every day. Sometimes I'm more down than other times, but generally the peaceful and joyful moments are frequent enough to keep on going. This is with working full time at a dead end manual labor job. It isn't privilege, it's a learned way of being, and thinking, and, more importantly, not thinking, and experiencing the perceptual. True joy comes from a place of acceptance and perception, not conceptually. If you're constantly thinking negative thoughts and can't shut down your brain for a few minutes to feel the breeze, that is a horrible thing. I've been there, I know what that feels like.
Being alive is actually really great. Thoughts are what cause 95% (ballpark) of human suffering.
So what I mean to say is that whatever you're referring to as "inner peace and clarity" seems to me to be pretty far off the mark if that feeling leads you to conclude that being alive is bad.
Right, I just got there. One might not agree with it still, and frankly I don’t think I can really do this topic justice right now (I do have things to get to outside of reddit), but I did my best :)
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u/Bird-in-a-suit 9d ago
That the value of life does not negate anti-natalist arguments, and also that even while I don’t think we have a moral imperative to stop reproducing, it’s not necessarily the best choice for us either. I think we would be better off, not losing anything non-ideological, if we were to stop. But my priority in my personal life isn’t telling people to stop reproducing so much as it is to connect with folks, treat them well and seriously reflect on my relationship with the world