‘We Are Creatures That Should Not Exist’: The Theory Of Anti-Natalism

We Are Creatures That Should Not Exist

The Philosophy of Anti-Natalism

By Professor David Benatar (The University of Cape Town)

July 15, 2015         Picture: Aleksandra Lech/Behance.


This article is part of The Critique exclusive No Exit From Hell: The Philosophy Of True Detective.


It used to be a rare occurrence for my students to ask me whether I had seen a particular television show. That changed when True Detective aired and students began inquiring whether I had seen that series. What prompted these questions, I came to learn, were the anti-natalist musings of Detective Rustin Cohle as well as the acknowledgement, in an interview, by writer Nic Pizzolatto, that my anti-natalist book, Better Never to Have Been [1], was among the works that had inspired Rust Cohle’s worldview [2].

It certainly came as a surprise to me, as it seems to have been to others, that “such a big hit features so prominently a dark philosophy which suggests …[as anti-natalism does] … that we should stop reproducing” [3]. A wide audience was introduced to this grim view of the world.

There is a danger, however, that anti-natalism will be too closely associated with the character of Rust Cohle by those whose only exposure to this view is via The True Detective. The danger is that anti-natalism might be confused with or regarded as conjoined to other dark features of the Rust Cohle character. These include nihilism, violence and alcoholism.

Anti-natalism is the view that we ought to desist from procreating – that it is wrong to have children. There are various routes to this conclusion. Some of these are what we might call “philanthropic” routes. They emanate from concern for the humans who will be brought into existence if we do procreate. According to these arguments life is filled with suffering and we ought not to create more of it. Many pro-natalists balk at this suggestion and claim, at the very least, that the good in life outweighs the bad. They should pause to remember the following.

First, there is ample evidence from psychological research that (most) people are prone to an optimism bias and are subject to other psychological traits that lead them to underestimate the amount of bad in life [4]. We thus have excellent reason for distrusting most people’s cheery assessments of how well their lives are going.

Second, when we look closely we notice just how much suffering there is. Consider, for example, the millions living in poverty or subjected to violence or the threat thereof. Psychological distress and disturbance is widespread. Rates of depression are high. Everybody suffers frustrations and bereavements. Life is often punctuated by periods of ill-health. Some of these pass without enduring effects but others have long-term sequelae. In poorer parts of the world, infectious diseases account for most of the burden of disease. However, those in the developed world are not exempt from appalling diseases. They suffer from strokes, from various degenerative diseases and from cancer.

Third, even if one thought that the best of human lives were good (enough), to procreate is to inflict, on the being you create, unacceptable risks of grotesque suffering, even if that occurs at the end of life. For example, 40% of men and 37% of women in Britain develop cancer at some point. Those are just terrible odds. To inflict them on another person by bringing him into existence is reckless. Rust Cohle expresses this idea when he says that he thinks “about the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of nonexistence into this … Force a life into this thresher …” [5] (His talk of souls should obviously be taken metaphorically.)

Another route to anti-natalism is via what I call a “misanthropic” argument. According to this argument humans are a deeply flawed and a destructive species that is responsible for the suffering and deaths of billions of other humans and non-human animals. [6] If that level of destruction were caused by another species we would rapidly recommend that new members of that species not be brought into existence.

Although Rustin Cohle does not explicitly employ misanthropy in support of his anti-natalism, he is certainly misanthropic. For example, he observes astutely that “people incapable of guilt usually do have a good time.” [7] His inferences from misanthropy are not ones that an anti-natalist would necessarily endorse. For instance, in justifying his own (“righteous”) violence, he says that the “world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.” [8] Anti-natalists are not committed to any particular views about when violence is and is not justified. Anti-natalism is not a complete moral theory, but only a view about the morality of procreation. However, it is unlikely that vigilante violence, in which Rustin Cohle and his partner Martin Hart engage, would pass muster if relevant moral considerations were applied.

Nor does anti-natalism imply that we should resort to alcoholism. Consumed to excess, alcohol tends to make life not better but rather worse – both for those who imbibe it and for those who come in contact with the alcohol abusers.

There is a common tendency to regard anti-natalists as nihilists. Rust Cohle claims to be a nihilist. However, despite that claim, as Nic Pizzolatto himself has noted, Rust is no nihilist [9]. Nihilists (about value) think that nothing matters, but Rust and anti-natalists in general, think that that there is much that matters. It matters, for example, whether people suffer. Anti-natalism is grounded in deep concern about value rather than in the absence of any value.

It is not only humans but also animals, or at least sentient animals that are harmed by being brought into existence. The basic curse of consciousness applies to all sentient beings. However, many anti-natalists focus on humans. The reasons vary. Among them is that (normal, healthy, adult) humans face an additional curse of self-consciousness. For related reasons, most humans are also able, at least in principle, to reflect on whether they should create offspring.

However, it should also be said that many humans give shockingly little if any thought to their procreative actions. This may be because humans are not as different from non-human animals as they would like to think. Like other animals, we are the products of evolution, with all the biological drives that such products can be expected to have. Rust recognizes this obstacle when he says:

“I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction one last midnight. Brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.” [10]

It is important to note that anti-natalism, while favouring human extinction, is a view about a particular means to extinction – namely non-procreation. Anti-natalists are not committed to either suicide or “speciecide”, as some of their critics insensitively suggest. Nothing is lost by never coming into existence. By contrast, ceasing to exist does have costs. Suicide in particular is really difficult, which is why Rust responds to Marty’s question “So what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning” with the disclosure “I lack the constitution to commit suicide” [11]. Murder and speciecide carry additional moral problems, including but not limited to violating the rights of those who may prefer not to die.

As an anti-natalist, Rust Cohle was a late bloomer. He became an anti-natalist too late to spare his daughter from coming into existence. Indeed, it took her death for him to realise just how hubristic it is to inflict the risks of existence on one’s offspring. He is thus mistaken when he says that “as for my daughter, she spared me the sin of being a father.” [12] The sin of being a father is a sin of creating a child, not the sin of rearing one.

Spoiler alert: Disappointingly, there is some, although by means definitive reason, to think that Rust veers away from his anti-natalism by the end of the first season. There is certainly evidence of increased optimism. He and Marty are gazing at the night sky and Rust speaks about “light versus dark”. Marty, who does not share Rust’s grim views, notes that “the dark has a lot more territory”. Rust first agrees, but then retracts. In what is the final line of the season he says: “Well, once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winning”. Well, if you ask me, it is not. It remains dwarfed by the dark.


Footnotes & References

[1] David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

[2] Michael Calia, “Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’, The Wall Street Journal, 2 February 2014, http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/02/writer-nic-pizzolatto-on-thomas-ligotti-and-the-weird-secrets-of-true-detective/tab/print/ (Accessed, 26 February 2015).

[3] Michael Calia, “The most shocking thing about HBO’s ‘True Detective’”, The Wall Street Journal, 30 January 2014, http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/01/30/the-most-shocking-thing-about-hbos-true-detective/tab/print/ (Accessed, 23 March 2015)

[4] I survey some of this evidence in Better Never to Have Been, pp. 64-69.

[5] The True Detective, Episode 2.

[6] This argument is presented in Chapter 4 of David Benatar and David Wasserman, Debating Procreation: Is it Wrong to Reproduce?, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

[7] The True Detective, Episode 3.

[8] The True Detective, Episode 3.

[9] Michael Calia, “Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’”, The Wall Street Journal, 2 February 2014, http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/02/writer-nic-pizzolatto-on-thomas-ligotti-and-the-weird-secrets-of-true-detective/tab/print/ (Accessed, 26 February 2015).

[10] The True Detective, Episode 1.

[11] Ibid.

[12] The True Detective, Episode 2.

David Benatar
David Benatar
David Benatar is Professor and Head of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford, 2006) and The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
  • davidpearce

    Most people would probably agree with Woody Allen: “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.” Choosing not to have children, and perhaps adopting instead, might seem the responsible way forward. However, by choosing not to have children, we impose even stronger selection pressure in favour of the predisposition to “go forth and multiply”; and conversely, strong selection pressure against any predisposition to be ethically responsible. For evolutionary reasons, one source of immense misery today is involuntary childlessness. We witness the extraordinary lengths that some childless couples will go to in order to have children. For better or worse, human extinction via voluntary childlessness seems a pipe-dream.

    So what is the solution? Any policy proposal to end suffering worldwide must be both technically feasible and sociologically realistic. For the first time in history, mastery of our genetic source code in principle allows one uniquely intelligent species to phase out the biology of suffering, initially in humans, but ultimately throughout the living world. Universal access to preimplantation genetic screening and counselling, followed by true genetic engineering, can potentially impose strong and intensifying selection pressure against genes predisposing to misery and malaise, and in favour of genes predisposing to gradients of bliss.

    Perhaps the biggest obstacles to such a genetic revolution are ideological – and simple status quo bias. Yet unlike species suicide, such a policy option isn’t inherently sociologically incredible, at least in the longer term. Let’s agree: today, coming into existence may always or typically involve harm. Yet in future, there is no technical reason why life can’t be inherently wonderful – and perhaps sublime.

    • Cinesociology

      Humanity has had the technology needed to build adequate housing for many centuries now, yet there are thousands of homeless people. There are many more who are one paycheck away from homelessness. Something so basic is still a pipe-dream for so many people. Should new lives be added to this terrible situation simply based on the idea that some hypothetical future tech will come along and make everything sublime? Instead, why not focus on actually delivering on these promises for the billions who are already here?

      • Carla Delastella

        It depends on where one is born. In some countries, like Sweden or Denmark, housing is as good as a guarantee. Should a couple in Denmark decide not to procreate, because in other parts of the world people are homeless?

        • Cinesociology

          Carla, my comment was only trying to point out to David that he is being a bit too optimistic about technology. I’m sure he’s aware of that and thinks it’s still consistent to believe this.

          Homelessness, although quite traumatic, is not even close to the ultimate horrors that can befall a person. It doesn’t matter where they live. The fact that you don’t see this tells me there’s no point in trying to convince you of it. People will do whatever they want to do. I don’t believe the Anti-natalist position can be arrived at simply by hearing logical arguments. It’s something that happens to you.

      • davidpearce

        Cinesociology, I completely agree – as I’m sure would David Benatar – that we should do everything possible to ensure adequate income, housing and healthcare are available for all. We should also respect people who choose not to have children. My point was different. It’s possible to share David Benatar’s bleak diagnosis of life; and yet draw a radically different conclusion. We are not going to get rid of suffering by means of anti-natalism. Human extinction via voluntary childlessness simply isn’t going to happen, not least because of selection pressure. Just witness the extraordinary lengths to which some childless couples today will go in order to have children, not to mention religious folk who believe they have a duty to “go forth and multiply”.

        I very much hope David Benatar will respond to what we may call the Argument From Selection Pressure. Either way, assuming that the argument is correct, its bleak-sounding conclusion doesn’t mean we should fatalistically accept that millions of more years of suffering lie ahead. Rather, we should aim to use the tools of biotechnology to edit our terrible genetic source code. Naturally, we don’t know today if this is really going to happen on a global scale. Perhaps humanity will decide to conserve the biology of suffering indefinitely. I’d just add that if misery and malaise still exist several hundred years from now, this won’t be because getting rid of their biological substrates proved too computationally difficult, but instead because our descendants choose – for whatever reason – to conserve them.

        • Cinesociology

          Hi David,

          Yes, I’d like to hear Prof. Benatar’s views on transhumanism and the fact that humans and their descendants MIGHT be able to alter or even transcend their biology.

          But, I don’t understand why you’re reluctant to fully endorse the anti-natalist position. You keep using the word “we” – “we should aim to use biotechnology”, “we are not going to get rid of suffering by means of anti-natalism” and so on. There is no “we” in this. Anti-natalism is not a movement that’s out to rid the world of anything. That would be like trying to rid the world of rocks or glaciers.

          Let me give you an example. Just recently, I was badly injured in a road accident. Where is this “we” you speak of that’s going to come in to help me? If I’m unable to work because of my health, and I don’t have health care because I can’t work, and I can’t pay rent because I’m broke, what am I supposed to do? If I’m not completely unlucky, I might have loyal friends or family members who will step in to support me. If not, where am I supposed to go? Who is this “we” that’s looking out for me? Where can I speak to them?

          You don’t have to experience one or many such desperate circumstances to see the point of anti-natalism. Even a perfectly ordinary life is so full of miseries and disappointments that any sensitive person will be able to realize that it’s best not to inflict this on another human being.

          Anyway, to summarize, all I’m saying is, perhaps you should change your stance to – No to life, and, if possible, No to Suffering and Death as well.

          • davidpearce

            Cinesociology, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. Why bring more suffering into the world? Many people think the world would be better off if population sizes were smaller. So they either decide not to have children themselves or adopt. Yet David Benatar’s position is much more radical. As outlined “Better Never To Have Been”, David Benatar argues for phased human extinction via voluntary childlessness. My worry with David Benatar’s argument isn’t what most critics have focussed on, i.e. the terrible nature of life, but
            rather his proposed solution. Whether or not human extinction by voluntary childlessness is ethically desirable, the idea simply won’t work. Selection pressure, if nothing else, dooms such a policy proposal to failure. Therefore we need to explore alternatives.

          • Cinesociology

            Okay, I think we’re pretty much in agreement. Only, I’m sure Prof. Benatar isn’t expecting the public to be receptive to his suggestion of extinction via voluntary childlessness. These ideas have been around for a long time and haven’t gained traction. Schopenhauer said essentially the same things a hundred years ago.

            Also, note that the birth rate has been dropping all around the world on its own. Pretty soon, it’ll be below replacement rates i.e. just 1 child per couple. If this trend continues, in 50 to 100 years, there won’t be enough people. But, I suspect this will line up quite well with the advances in Machine Intelligence.

            The birth rate seems to be inversely correlated to quality of life. So I feel like the best thing to do is simply focus on the engineering and technical challenges of improving quality of life – this would lower the birth rate AND bring closer the technological utopia you’ve described. No need to convince anyone of anything. :)

      • farmertom2

        It should maybe be noted that there has been tremendous progress in reducing poverty in the last fifty years. Gone ? No. But reduced enormously? Yes. Progress seems slow, to us, but it happens. We have a distorted notion of time. Think seven year olds and Christmas…

    • I knew I’d find you here :)

      • davidpearce

        KhanneaSuntzu, indeed. As you know, I’ve a lot of sympathy for David Benatar’s ideas on the harm of coming into existence. I’m just concerned we don’t squander our energies urging unworkable solutions.

    • Peter

      Sounds like a utopia. Every utopia ends in tears. This is because humans are problem solving animals and a utopia frustrates this. In a utopia there are no problems. So the human animal will invent some problems or imagine them into existence. We see this in political utopias. Once an “enemy” has been identified and routed like “Satan” “witches”, the “bourgeois” or the “patriarchy”or whatever it is the next step is to turn on each other. Humans were designed to build utopia but we were not designed to live there.

      Technological utopias will also be similarly disappointing. Why do we have “stranger danger” hysteria and helicopter parents and litigation happy lawyers who will sue over a chipped finger nail? Because children do not suffer measles, diphtheria or whopping cough. We need the drama. We need the grief and suffering. That’s why we have books and movies. We did not find happiness in the absence of these maladies from our lives. We found happiness in the satisfaction of solving the problems involved in eliminating. As life gets better in a technological utopia the worries will still be exaggerated, fabricated or imagined. This is a biological imperative. Where is the “rape culture” hysteria the most strident? On the richest campuses in the richest nation concerning the safest group of humans who probably existed, white upper middle class females. They NEED to be frightened even if they have to imagine the danger. Expect more of these hysteria in the future.

      The part about genetic engineering is distinctly frightening.

      There is a big bogey man looking over the top of your technological optimism and his name is the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Entropy. The grand master who will shut down the whole show. Why do humans exist? Because there is a sufficient flow of high grade energy to sustain complex life. Life exists to return high ordered energy into a state of more entropic energy. Initially a chemical reaction which stops except if there is an energy flow to sustain it and allows for more complexity. Humans have returned more entropy than any other living organism. That is our job. Only the very high gradient of energy is being flattened by by the 6th great extinction event as we speak. When that is done then so are we. We are basically a fire to burn combustible fuel. This is true even if we leave the earth. A space travelling species will need to keep ahead of a wave of entropy behind them and can only do that for just so long.

      • davidpearce

        Peter, recall I’m asking how we should behave if (1) David Benatar’s bleak diagnosis of life in Earth is broadly accurate (2) selection pressure, if nothing else, ensures Benatar’s proposed solution of human extinction via voluntary childlessness is unworkable. Suffering and malaise exist because they helped our genes leave more copies of themselves in the ancestral environment. Mercifully, as the reproductive revolution gains momentum, the biological-genetic basis of suffering will become optional. One advantage of recalibrating the hedonic treadmill is precisely that recalibration _doesn’t_ involve imposing your values and preferences on others: life can feel wonderful by default without sacrificing your existing values and preference architecture – unless of course your values entail commitment to a life of involuntary suffering by other sentient beings. In short, we aren’t talking about “utopia” as you put it, just a replacement of today’s genetic crapshoot by responsible parenthood.

        The second law of thermodynamics? It’s no more energetically expensive to sustain life animated by information-sensitive gradients of well-being than information-sensitive gradients of ill-being.

        But the point of my response wasn’t to sell you some particular blueprint (abolitionist.com in my case) but rather to highlight that Benatarian anti-natalism won’t solve the problem of suffering. Insofar as we are ethically serious, we must engage with the world, not opt out.

      • Deon

        Your argument basically is a defense of the status quo. But those who defend the status quo in theory, don’t actually do so in practice. That’s because you’re against utopia meanwhile equating the status quo with utopia. It’s a catch 22, which incidentally is probably what inspires antinatalism. Catch 22 = suffering.

      • charlesSpeirceCLONE

        and pass them on and pass them and pass them on: you think life is getting better and better and better every day after day after day till surely the dead will rise again and all will live pain free forever. The universe got along fine without your values or knowledge for over 13 billion years and despite our species feverishly deluding itself that a perfect life is just a few more generations away only two diseases have ever been eradicated; 99.9% of all species that ever existed are extinct; and 3 species of human are already extinct. Pass along? You do not know, without researching it, what was your great, great grandfather’s first name and occupation nor where his grave is located. Yet at birth he too was someone’s precious bundle of joy. Likewise, in 3 generations you and your beloved children will be not only decomposed in your graves but totally forgotten forever as if you never existed. As if passing anything along would be of any comfort but for the fact you worry for those now stuck in life because you foisted it upon them: you have no doubt, I am sure that you will not be there for them when they lie dying on a bed, afraid, suffering and not wanting to die! Neither I nor my ilk are nor can be made the problem: we did not make you mortal and we did not create your children.

        • Steven Rogers

          All of us will die and most of us will be forgotten. If you think that means nothing we do with our lives matters, why not just toss yourself from the nearest bridge, while others get on with the task of trying to make the next generation just a little bit better than the last one?

  • Carla Delastella

    I have reviewed the evidence you cite for support of your thesis that
    people’s self-testimony about how well their own lifes are going can be
    dismissed (under the condition that those are positive accounts, since
    you on the other side readily accept any self-testimony of people who
    report their lifes to be bad without any criticism whatsoever, although
    the counter-part to “optimisim bias” , “negativity bias”, could be
    equally well be used to dismiss those reports on the same basis, which i
    however don’t).
    The evidence doesn’t support your thesis at
    all. Since the psychological phenomenon of “optimism bias” as well as
    “pollyannaism” refers merely to people’s tendency to overestimate their
    own abilities and to underestimate or be ignorant of statistical medical
    data concerning risks, such as the risk to get cancer as a smoker, not to a tendency to misjudge the quality of their experience of life. Since it is impossible to objectively measure the quality of someone’s experience of life anyway. I
    don’t think that the studies you cite in your book warrant the
    conclusion that one can just glibly dismiss anyone’s evaluation of their
    own life in cases where this evaluation is positive. I think that your
    book is heavily biased and not written from a neutral, honest
    perspective of someone who is interested in truth, but from the
    perspective someone who has an agenda. I noticed that you hide yourself
    from public scrutiny and hide yourself from cameras on public events,
    even if those are sponsored by tax payers money. Your agenda is clear, Mr. Reptilian.

  • David Nyman

    Is this meant to be humorous? What’s the point of ‘advocating’ something that hasn’t the slightest chance of coming to pass? It may well be that our species will ultimately succumb, as so many others have, to some extinction event, but the idea that there’s any prospect of the species as a whole voluntarily choosing to cease procreating is too ludicrous to discuss. In any case, the author shows feeling for the history of our species, or for the conditions most humans tolerate outside the first-world, if he thinks that an unpleasant life situation acts as a disincentive to procreation.

  • EZR

    Terrific article and a view I’m coming around to myself, as much by observation and experience than by a conscious choice. And for me, it has nothing to do with suffering, misery, or pain, which are relative states that do not exist unless sustenance, joy and comfort also exist. To judge these states is as pointless as judging nature. Why should any creature procreate if only to become old and fall to the food chain? If there is an imbalance of goodness and badness in how we judge these states – in our sense of “fairness” – then that is a different problem, with a different solution.

    Where we agree is that we must care for our people, our selves and the planet that sustains us, and there is no need to add to our numbers. Whatever a natural “human experience” was, whether you go back millions, tens of thousands, or just tens of years, today it is endangered. There is no push to preserve a merely human way of life, to understand it in the first person, or even to understand what it means to be in balance with the places we live, eat and breathe. In broad strokes our humanity has been replaced with something else, and as much as we try to regain a natural perspective, we can only do so as tourists. This part of our story is as old as original sin, though it really does seem that this time, something is irreversibly different. Somewhere the game itself became corrupt, and anti-natalism is a reaction not to fuel it.

    “The way to be rid of the cancer is to embrace it.” Our duty isn’t to abandon the species any more than it is to rescue it. If anything we ought to recognize just how far we are from any sense of balance, and do what we can to set that right, even as our species accelerates towards the hard wall of reality.

  • GPhilippe

    Humanity is about discovering in ourselves the richness and incredible possibilities of life. I would destroy the philanthropic point of view by simply expressing that there is no happiness without the experience of suffering. One could easily remember the experience of a kid blessed with loves and presents and yet bored, while the very same kid isolated from his parents for a while feels so happy when he comes to see them.
    The misanthropic element is a much difficult case so I would just come to its practicalities. Knowing the terrific attachment of one for his kin, depicted by Homer and the war for the beautiful eyes of Helen, how can one imagine the horrors that the powerful will do to avoid the possibility of not having their child. Not only, the outcome will never happen but the attempt will cause devastation.

    I do not know anything of Mr Benatar, but I’m quite surprised he could be a philosopher for I had always expected philosopher to give us keys to wisdom not to advocate for self destruction.

    No later than yesterday, I passed by a mother and her child sleeping in street, just laying on carton, no protection nor anything. The young kid was just close enough to his mother to feel protected. I would not take a picture but it was one of the best depiction of love I have seen in a long while.
    This is the one that makes the lives of the both of them worth living.

    People have survived doom and taught us the power of life, they had to live, despite the despair, just in memory of those who have fallen.

    I’ve just read again the paragraph on self extinction by non-procreation rather than suicide. If one really believed in Pr Benatar’s view, he should go ahead and kill all of his kin, for the least himself since human life is not worth it. But he is afraid to do so. It takes a solid constitution our philosopher lacks. It is easier to advocate, sells books and get famous than living by one’s ideas it seems.

    In another TV show, Channel 4’s Utopia, the plot revolves around non-procreation views. The view is there very malthusian, too many people on earth and the solution is found through sterilization. Why sterilization? Because the plotters find it feasible to inoculate a sterilizing virus into people without them knowing it.
    Is that what Mr Benatar dreams of?

  • DC

    A very interesting read. Having watched the series, and reading this post factually, I see it differently now. In a more utilitarian view, one could argue that the potential value of each human life, prior to it’s existence, has infinitely more possibility to add value than it would were it to not exist though.

    • Peter

      And infinitely more to lose than one never born.

      • Man V

        So true.

  • Steven Rogers

    The claim that “Nothing is lost by never coming into existence” is patently bonkers. If you fail to procreate, all of your values, all the lessons you’ve learned, all of those lovely pro-planet sentiments… they die with you. In the real world, there will be a whole bunch of people who don’t share those sentiments cheerfully procreating away, because the number who adopt voluntary non-procreation will be relatively small, and limited to those most capable of raising offspring. Those least capable will continue.

    • Peter

      No. If you do not reproduce then nothing is lost. Quite logical.

      • Steven Rogers

        Logical if you take an incredibly superficial perspective, I suppose. The loss is the opportunity to pass on your values, your knowledge, and the lessons you’ve learned to those who will hopefully add to them and be part of a solution.

        • ThsIsNotReal22

          But one does not need to procreate to pass on one’s values and ideas. One need merely to communicate, via writing and other means. When the right idea is put forth at the right time and in the right way, it has the possibility to spread through a population and impact the thinking of large numbers of people.
          Procreation will yield a very low number of people (perhaps 30 maximum) to carry your torch, and there is no guarantee that they will all do so. But if you could convince 1,000 people by writing a single book, you can create 1,000 torch carriers in one year.

          • charlesSpeirceCLONE

            I up clicked but I agree with both Benatar and Legotti that passing anything on is utterly beside the point: only extinction will do.

        • charlesSpeirceCLONE

          and pass them on and pass them and pass them on: you think life is getting better and better and better every day after day after day till surely the dead will rise again and all will live pain free forever. The universe got along fine without your values or knowledge for over 13 billion years and despite our species feverishly deluding itself that a perfect life is just a few more generations away only two diseases have ever been eradicated; 99.9% of all species that ever existed are extinct; and 3 species of human are already extinct. Pass along? You do not know, without researching it, what was your great, great grandfather’s first name and occupation nor where his grave is located. Yet at birth he too was someone’s precious bundle of joy. Likewise, in 3 generations you and your beloved children will be not only decomposed in your graves but totally forgotten forever as if you never existed. As if passing anything along would be of any comfort but for the fact you worry for those now stuck in life because you foisted it upon them: you have no doubt, I am sure that you will not be there for them when they lie dying on a bed, afraid, suffering and not wanting to die! Neither I nor my ilk are nor can be made the problem: we did not make you mortal and we did not create your children.

          • Steven Rogers

            All of us will die and most of us will be forgotten. If you think that means nothing we do with our lives matters, why not just toss yourself from the nearest bridge, while others get on with the task of trying to make the next generation just a little bit better than the last one?

          • Simon Elliot

            Oh for crying out loud, man! Have you not read Benatar’s book? I’m so tired of newbies like you repeating that damned “why don’t you just kill yourself” cliché!

          • Dom Silva

            Most people are not miserable like you are and are glad to be alive.. Life is more like a benefit than a harm for most of us.

      • charlesSpeirceCLONE

        agree, see my reply above and a few below as well

      • charlesSpeirceCLONE

        why get bogged down in categories instead of simply addressing premises?

    • charlesSpeirceCLONE

      nothing is lost to the child: because that which does not exist cannot have anything predicated about it! The nonexistent are not even so much as potential: they cannot regret or suffer and they will never die: there is no identity, thing or person to feel or do those things. You may lose things you want: but do your children know they exist to spare you that? Every conception of a fetus is a unilateral decision that life is good enough for a human and that your child cannot possibly disagree. You require your children to grovel in gratitude for a gift they never requested and to both love you and obey you. If your child does disagree you reject it as mental illness but not as a differing view of existence.

  • Blind Eye Cooper

    The Augustinian argument without God or Heaven. This stance is based on an assumption that life is about enjoyment, when the majority of life we have as comparison to ours is about survival. Suffice it to say, what human life better represents is the continuity of experience in consideration of humanities communicative ability and relative powers to direct our evolution.

    • charlesSpeirceCLONE

      Benatar believes it will never happen. I agree. I think most, e.g. Legotti also agree. But, amidst sound and fury signifying nothing there is still this satisfaction in fighting the good fight. And, so, I express the anti-natalist view nonetheless even as I suffer until I die. There will never be a celebration of the triumph of this view even if it happened but then its adherents feel no need for the optimists’ interminable self delusions.

  • Tara Smith

    Logistically the concept of the human species non-procreating into nonexistence cannot happen unless everyone is rendered physically incapable of reproducing (ex: sterilization). Eliminating the desire to have sex would also definitely reduce the population dramatically, but it would not necessarily lead to human extinction – at least not for a long time. This is why the human sex drive evolved to its current point – to help reduce the likelihood of people consciously reproducing. Although many people do consciously reproduce, it is a myth that most children are “planned.”

    The reality is that only adherents of Anti-Natalism would not reproduce, so ultimately it is actually the extinction of Anti-Natalists – not the human species. Everyone else would continue to reproduce.
    The extinction of Anti-Natalists could be negative or positive. For example, it could be negative if the majority of people who adopt this belief system are highly intelligent, morally conscientious, well-educated, etc., because that would leave those that are less intelligent, less educated, less (pick a perceived beneficial characteristic to society), etc. to reproduce, which could have a strong impact on the human species. Some may argue that we already have that scenario in place, where those with the most education, talent, resources, etc. that would benefit raising other humans, actually do not reproduce or reproduce less than those with less education, talent and resources. One could also argue that the human species is coded to survive and may not “favor” genetically those with the intelligence level to try and “evolve out” – one way is to have less of an urge to reproduce.

    In addition, when we say that we choose to not reproduce in order to prevent a child’s eventual suffering, we are predominantly trying to prevent our own sense of suffering as a result of imagining and/or experiencing someone we love suffer. This is similar to the pain we feel when someone dies – it is not about their death, but about how we feel about no longer having that person in our life.

    • Peter

      Google “mouse utopia” and “john Colhoun” and the “beautiful ones”. Then read what is happening in Japan at http://www.techinsider.io/herbivore-men-in-japan-are-not-having-sex-8-15

      The first sentence is a good summary.
      Only 1.001 million babies were born in Japan in 2014 — a record low — and 1.269 million people died.

      You don’t need everyone to not procreate. You only need a deficit.

      • charlesSpeirceCLONE

        I up clicked but I agree with both Benatar and Legotti that passing anything on is utterly beside the point: only extinction will do.

      • charlesSpeirceCLONE

        Benatar believes it will never happen. I agree. I think most, e.g. Legotti also agree. But, amidst sound and fury signifying nothing there is still this satisfaction in fighting the good fight. And, so, I express the anti-natalist view nonetheless even as I suffer until I die. There will never be a celebration of the triumph of this view even if it happened but then its adherents feel no need for the optimists’ interminable self delusions.

    • Deon

      “The reality is that only adherents of Anti-Natalism would not reproduce, so ultimately it is actually the extinction of Anti-Natalists – not the human species”.

      Um no. That’s the same erroneous belief people hold when discussing homosexuality. It doesn’t work that way. Both things will continue as long as there are people reproducing. Therefore, Antinatalism will come back.

      “So long as women bring forth, for I come to end the works of the female”

    • charlesSpeirceCLONE

      agree, see my reply above and a few below as well

  • pragmatizm

    You know what I can’t stand? People who have coffee mugs, bumper stickers or t-shirts that say “Life is good.” Who’s life is “good”? Your’s? Life, to many people, is nothing more than a perpetuate state of misery and suffering. And then to top it off we tell them they can’t end their own suffering and misery. We force them to live with the suffering and misery until they die by some other means. In my opinion, this idea compulsory existence is the most immoral human concept ever.

  • AntiBullshitMan

    Ongoing conflations between AntiNatalism and (meta)ethical nihilism are indeed puzzling, but so is Benatar’s counter to them, from the looks of it:

    “Nihilists (about value) think that nothing matters, but Rust and anti-natalists in general, think that that there is much that matters. It matters, for example, whether people suffer. Anti-natalism is grounded in deep concern about value rather than in the absence of any value.”

    Is it possible that someone as decorated as DB can be lost on the fact that virtually no one advocates for a first-order brand of nihilism where “nothing matters” hands on? I hope not. He should be fully aware that when we debate nihilism vs. realism in ethics, we’re not arguing over first-order (normative) ethical theories in opposition. We’re instead arguing over second-order (meta) ethical theories in opposition. This really shouldn’t be that difficult to compartmentalize conceptually.

    AntiNatalism vs. Natalism is a debate grounded in normative ethics. Realism vs. Nihilism (or relativism, subjectivism, quasi-realism, etc..) is a debate grounded in meta ethics. Nothing has to overlap here. Just as the normative Natalist can be a realist or a nihilist in the second-order sense, so can the normative AntiNatalist can be a realist or a nihilist in the second-order sense.

    The whole thing is analogous to the epistemic/ontological split with regard to Agnosticism (epistemic position) followed by Atheism (ontological position) and how it’s possible to be an Agnostic Atheist (or a Gnostic Atheist, Gnostic Theist, Agnostic Theist). Same with this.

    Philosophically untrained folk tend to associate AN with a sort of *colloquial* nihilism (i.e. “it’s like totes darkness brah!”), adding an additional layer of confusion and sloppiness to the mix. This stems from people’s inability to grasp how what they perceive as “grim” isn’t interpreted that way by those who weren’t raised on conventionalism in the first place. I for instance often find myself cheered up by pessimistic literature. Nothing “nihilistic” about it!

    Also, those of us with a sentiocentric take on ethics actually viewed Rust Cole’s humancentric AntiNatalism as counterproductive from the get-go (even before he dropped it like a bad habit). For anyone interested, I have a post explaining this in detail titled “VHEMT Is Worse Than Humancentric Natalism”.

    • charlesSpeirceCLONE

      why get bogged down in categories instead of simply addressing premises?

  • bulbous1

    I endorse the misanthropic anti-natalist position, though I am not a complete misanthrope. Human society is second-rate theatre; full of bad-acting, insipid dialogue, unsympathetic characters, and redeemed only by the fact that everyone dies.

    I don’t want everyone to die out of cruelty, I just don’t want the wicked to torment others in perpetuity and the comparatively good to be tormented likewise in perpetuity. Anyway, what could be more horrendous than being condemned to immortality, to see duration of our life prolonged indefinitely and the alluvial deposit of suffering and despair the river of time sediments thereupon accumulate to infinity? Deprived of the consolation of knowing that Nature has set a temporal limit to our suffering is what, inter alia, gets us through it. Without this, straitjackets would surely become the latest fashion, for the very knowledge that our misery would never end would make it intolerable, amplify our pangs out of all proportion to our capacity to deal with them, and bring welling up an inexhaustible yet previously untapped source of despair and agony, finding an outlet only in the oceans of tears our lachrymal ducts would secrete, and in the grim symphony of wails, howls, and shrieks sent reverberating through the cosmos and the heart of every living creature by the contemplation of never-ending existence. It would be terrible to see, a doomsday chaos without a doomsday.

    Misanthropy is used as a term of abuse, yet what man of sensitivity could possibly fathom the depths of human depravity and be anything but disgusted by our fanaticism and iniquity? To the lovers of humanity I would say; which part is it that you love exactly? Is it the fact that we are the most destructive animal on the planet? People puff themselves up with pride at thought of their supposedly boundless love for humanity (which often takes the form of killing them, for men who profess a love of humanity have furnished the world with far more tyrants than those who don’t, which Anatole France amply illustrated in his novel, “The Gods will have blood”), just as do apologists for brutal regimes and institutions steeped in human blood when they whitewash their crimes. To love the human race is to pledge a loyalty oath to gangsters, tyrants, and bullies. It would be much better to say that one pledges an allegiance to its victims, be they amongst the species itself, or amongst the rest of the animal kingdom.

    I would class myself as a misanthrope insofar as is understood by that a condemnation of man in the collective, not inappropriate given the historical and statistical record of man’s peerless cruelty and arrogance. Nevertheless, that doesn’t imply a hatred of everyone; as Chamfort said, the devil can’t be everywhere at once, but overall I think the record against the species is pretty damning, a record no anthropodicy can vindicate.

    That we are the most cruel species is certainly not a matter of contention. To look into the eyes of some men is like peering through two windows that open out onto an ocean of blackness, whose waters are never troubled by even the incipient stirrings of mercy and upon the surface of which not even a ripple of compassion is to be found, no, for in some men, the example of no fine sentiment nor good deed is allowed to go unpunished, and all those things that should appeal to our pity and enjoin merciful deeds only excites their malice further. As Schopenhauer pointed out, for such men, only by setting beside the motive to do evil a much stronger counter-motive to desist therefrom can they be expected to do good, that is, good against the sinister currents that move them when they are not hedged about by restrictions.

    One of the most disturbing aspects of the darker side of human nature, is the tendency of men to herd together, whereupon it is found that they miraculously sprout a pair of balls, and feel so emboldened and buoyed up by their preponderance over some other group or individual, they become almost unrecognizable.

    Which brings me onto another disturbing aspect; the tendency of men to exploit their advantages, a tendency little troubled it would seem by a man’s supposed intuitive moral sense. So, for example, men are found to shamelessly exploit the power that numerical advantage confers. Get into any argument even with people well brought-up and in whom you would expect a sense of justice to reside, and they shamelessly gang up on you; the sidewalks of life are teeming with gangs of thugs bullying and terrorising others.

    Be it the advantages vouchsafed by Nature or conferred by society, rare is it to find a man who does not exploit them, and who is not thereby corrupted by them.

    Then we come to schadenfreude and katagelasticism, the former referring to the pleasure men take in others’ misfortune, and the latter laughing at other people maliciously for our own pleasure, a cruel laughter to which all misfits of all varieties are subjected in every age, and without a shred of empathy shown for its object by the men who laugh cruelly at others when they should be laughing at the joke that is themselves, insight whereinto their ignorance and boundless amour-propre shields them against.

    The list could go and on and on.

    In every age, for example, you find the weak, the vulnerable and the infirmed being mistreated. Rene Girard has shown that it is from amongst their ranks that people are conscripted into the role of scapegoats. It is often said that a society must be judged by how it treats such people. Then it stands indicted in every age. The history of psychiatry, for example, is replete with examples of man’s inhumanity to man; psychiatric patients, often deeply vulnerable, traumatized individuals, are as victimized by their helpers as they are by the persecutors.

    • Deon

      I love your last sentence. I was just saying today that the “mentally ill” are our modern day scapegoats, offered up to the Gods as a trade for more “time”. But time may be running out.

      • charlesSpeirceCLONE

        the so called mentally ill are a myth about aberrant behavior and about a cure for illness that entails magical conversation. Like heresy and demonic possession: if it works (exorcises the “problem”) it is the credit to the process but if it does not then it is because of the evil of the subject. They are a threat to the genetically cheerful. Depressed people correctly perceive existence: they lack one or more of the cheerful genes that engender optimism no matter the plain facts and the usual inability to carry out a resolution to be dead. They challenge the outlook and values of humankind and must be shunned, stigmatized and penalized; and silenced! They are in humankind’s face and it is hated because all of life is a futile effort to anesthetize oneself and push to the back of the brain consciousness of one’s mortality and the horrific nature of existence. The mentally ill pressure the herds to confront the facts. They must be crushed or utterly blissful extinction would ensue. No one would be here right now if human procreation were not every bit as mindless and instinctual as that of the species. Procreation is the singular act that entails the least genuine forethought and is greatly motivated by the most selfish and narcissistic “reasons” that truly make of babies mere chattels to be had; possessed; used. One of the results is the phenomenon of parents who abuse, torture and kill the babies they carried to term: not one of them encouraged to use contraception and each of them encouraged to do it, do it, do it, by persons who had no clue what type of parents they would turn out to be. As if there is not and cannot be any minimum standard of what a child is entitled to before one decides to create one. Life, cheapened not exalted! If anyone pondered what a child is entitled to they would find themselves assaulted by the insoluble dilemma: the more you truly love children the more you must not create one!

  • farmertom2

    I remain unpersuaded and even were I pre rather than post nataling, I would still choose to have children. I have been aware–and was aware prior to our first– that some rabbis came to the conclusion that it is better never to have been born but that once born it is better to stay alive. I rejected that notion as well.
    On an individual basis, yes, there is pain and suffering and misery, and in aggregate there is a lot (as you might expect when talking about seven billion of anything.) What both the rabbis and David miss is the progress. People are living longer and better than at any time in the past. It is reasonable to believe that there will continue to be progress and that humanity will reach a point where the scales tip heavily onto the life-is-good side.
    And of course, aside from that, there are practical reasons why people should have at least one child. Those reasons cannot be made to vanish by philosophical reasoning.
    Meanwhile, I am happy we had a clutch of children and have done what I can to encourage my children in having offspring of their own.

    • Deon

      You seem to be applying post hoc reasoning. You’re forgetting something as well. Just because an obstacle is overcome doesn’t mean the obstacle was a good thing. What doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger. It could simply be that IT wasn’t strong enough to kill you.

  • Deon

    I simply looking at the primitive dynamics of the sexual encounter itself for clues or “supporting evidence”. Forget the ‘what ifs’ after a person is born. The negative pattern of excusing suffering starts before then. It starts the moment we decide that the pain of initial sexual intercourse (for the woman of course) is justified. By all accounts this should be considered abuse, but par the course we inconsistently apply standards of morality in order to defeat the truth. So perhaps the problem is not so much procreation, as it is the fusion of sexual intercourse (not necessarily all sex) and procreation, and by extension the inability to “engineer” happiness. Of course there is the counter argument that if we are happy while living, then will we be able to accept death, thereby inadvertently creating a world of blissful zombies. Ultimately however, that really doesn’t seem that much different that the Christian narrative, which posits that the dead will be brought back to life in the end.

  • farmertom2

    It should maybe be noted that there has been tremendous progress in reducing poverty in the last fifty years. Gone ? No. But reduced enormously? Yes. Progress seems slow, to us, but it happens. We have a distorted notion of time. Think seven year olds and Christmas…

  • LG

    I take antinatalism to a higher level. I am an antinatalist and am also pro-suicide. I feel those that are able to override their survival instincts and kill themselves are much better off as the sooner you die the less harm you will experience. Of course, committing suicide is difficult as it is very difficult to override one’s subconscious yet highly irrational survival instincts.

    I also apply the tenets of antinatalism to other species. It would have been better for all sentient creatures, regardless of species, to have never existed.

    • charlesSpeirceCLONE

      I strongly agree with you. The unfettered right to suicide without approval, without explanation, with excuse, without apology and without even a good reason is the single most important right of all: to own one’s own life and dispose of it as one wishes no matter how much of a tragic mistake 7 billion officious, do-gooder strangers think you are making. If you do not have a right to be free from such scrutiny then you are subject to scrutiny at every breath and turn in life and not free at all. You are also right that there are powerful genetic impediments to carrying out a logical decision. see my other several remarks above. Conscious life is nature’s most horrific mistake. The lives of the species are arduous, repetitive, fearful, grubby lives of fleeing predators, mindlessly procreating and forever planning and hunting for food. Not to mention being imprisoned and enslaved in zoos, drive through parks, aquariums, and circuses; and being tortured in laboratories. Many species when caught by others die of hypovolemic shock while being eaten alive.

    • PubliusII

      So why are you still alive then?

      • LG

        One reason only: the risk of a failed suicide attempt. Should I attempt suicide and fail the results could be catastrophic and render me worse than I am already. Ultimately no suicide method (with the exception of physician assisted suicide which is only legal in certain places under certain circumstances) is 100% guaranteed to work and there is always a risk of failure.

        • oldlongdog

          Oh, come on! That’s really not true. There are plenty of ways to guarantee to kill yourself. There are any number of tall structures or natural features to jump off that would guarantee your death. The list of ways is frankly endless. You just don’t want to die, which is perfectly understandable and I’m glad. Just spare us the disingenuous excuses.

  • LG

    I take antinatalism to a higher level. I am an antinatalist and am also pro-suicide. I feel those that are able to override their survival instincts and kill themselves are much better off as the sooner you die the less harm you will experience. Of course, committing suicide is difficult as it is very difficult to override one’s subconscious yet highly irrational survival instincts.

    I also apply the tenets of antinatalism to other species. It would have been better for all sentient creatures, regardless of species, to have never existed.

    • charlesSpeirceCLONE

      I strongly agree with you. The unfettered right to suicide without approval, without explanation, with excuse, without apology and without even a good reason is the single most important right of all: to own one’s own life and dispose of it as one wishes no matter how much of a tragic mistake 7 billion officious, do-gooder strangers think you are making. If you do not have a right to be free from such scrutiny then you are subject to scrutiny at every breath and turn in life and not free at all. You are also right that there are powerful genetic impediments to carrying out a logical decision. see my other several remarks above. Conscious life is nature’s most horrific mistake. The lives of the species are arduous, repetitive, fearful, grubby lives of fleeing predators, mindlessly procreating and forever planning and hunting for food. Not to mention being imprisoned and enslaved in zoos, drive through parks, aquariums, and circuses; and being tortured in laboratories. Many species when caught by others die of hypovolemic shock while being eaten alive.

  • charlesSpeirceCLONE

    kind of sort of funny in re genetic cheerfulness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qty7IP8wlXM

  • charlesSpeirceCLONE

    kind of sort of funny in re genetic cheerfulness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qty7IP8wlXM

  • Simon Elliot

    Hello David, I have been wanting to contact you for some time. I agree with your theories and am an existential pessimist myself, but I was recently talking with someone about the anti-natalist position and they responded to me in a way that I hadn’t predicted. They said that anti-natalism is based on an “inverted morality”; the reason we have an aversion to pain, suffering and death is because we are evolutionarily programed to fear these things, in order to ensure the continuation of each individual of our species. It follows, therefore, that anti-natalism as a solution to human suffering is inherently contradictory. How should we respond to this?

  • PubliusII

    I invite every anti-natalist to follow through with the logical consequences of his/her philosophy — or continue to live as self-admitted fraud.

    • daffon

      “Benatar: No. There is a difference between coming into existence and ceasing to exist. Those who do not exist have no interest in coming into existence and there is thus nothing lost by never existing. However, those who already exist have an interest in continuing to exist. That interest may be overridden when life becomes unbearable. However, until life does become unbearable, suicide may not be appropriate even though the prospect of choosing later between unbearable continued existence or death can make it better never to have come into existence.” http://www.thecritique.com/articles/why-we-should-stop-reproducing-an-interview-with-david-benatar-on-anti-natalism/

  • Fat_Man

    Another white “environmentalist” who thinks the world’s problems are caused by an excessive number of brown babies. Environmentalism is just the last socially acceptable form of racism.

  • GnomeCoach

    Many humans act as if it wouldn’t matter if our species led to the extinction of most of the life on Earth because why should they exist if there are no longer humans to admire them. Such members of our species tend to have little, to no, backgrounds in fields such as evolutionary biology and ecology.

  • Nymphalis

    Best debate I have followed in a long while, I’ll just write here for a reminder. Also, what’s scented meat? 😀

  • Bruce Johnston

    I had a child and lost him before he was two to a car accident. It was awful. Though this amounts to little more than emotionalism, I can say at least right now that I’ll never do that again. I loved him more than anything. And though I knew what could happen to him before he was born I went ahead and did it anyway. I had no right; I could not ask and did not think. Now he’s dead, it’s my fault (not for what happened, but for bringing him into a world where that can happen and I cannot prevent it completely) and I’ll probably never get over the grief and the guilt for having brought him into existence and him dying so young and so violently. Once he was born, I could do little to ensure his safety, as life and the universe is a lot stronger than even two parents and a community who loved him dearly, but I could have thought it through better. Lots of harm to everyone, little good for anyone involved. It did not have to go that way, I must say; he could have survived as he was and we could have continued to enjoy a very fortunate and happy existence together.

    Now I am a crushed, despondent and increasingly rage-filled and nihilistic man, and my wife manages not to go there only through a terribly self-delusional belief system in my opinion. Our lives are over. Though with the political and environmental climate in the USA being what it is, he probably skipped a lot of suffering. Bless his little, beautiful heart.

    I can’t tell people not to have kids. Won’t succeed anyway, doesn’t feel like a right, et cetera. What I can tell you is this: the worst can and does happen with alarming frequency. Be prepared and “check yourself”. The universe and world is completely indifferent to you and your children’s success, at least as individuals, and as a species as well. If you lose them young, it can be crushing with piling-up losses. Human misery is real.

  • neelsn

    I have not seen the term anti-natalist until now, but I would identify as one. I have said for a long time that there are no living things on Earth that cause more harm and pose a greater risk to all other living things than people. Recently, at a presentation about Critical Modernity in Prague, I asked: because of the population crisis, should all the hungry be fed, should all the sick be cured, should all the untechnological be developed? The questions remain unanswered.

  • Christopher Adshead

    How can you accuse someone of misanthropy as if it’s a bad thing? Of course hurting another humans, or any creature that is harmless is wrong and I would never do it.

    Look at the big picture. Consider all the species that we have made extinct due to our selfishness. We are so obsessed with our self-preservation that many protected areas are endangered. Many endangered animals get killed for the supposed benefit or the creature on this planet that is at least risk of extinction.

    This planet has sustained life for billions of years. There’s species on this Earth that have lived here for millions of years that have gone extinct for stupid reasons I.e particular species of rhino, the passenger pigeon.

    We inherited a world teeming with fastincating beasts, and are leaving behind a planet clogged in plastic, oil and waste.

    All of natures vibrant colours are fading to concrete grey.

    Human extinction is a necessity.

  • This play called life I (meaning we) stage and develop depends upon others (meaning you) in agreement. Without others (meaning you), there is no agreement, and I (meaning we) evolve either not at all, or excruciatingly slowly.

  • Anand Awasthi

    Suffering from the Half-filled/empty Glass Syndrome, Antinatalists are innately losers, ARTIFICIALLY claiming a moral high ground while justifying their lack of guts to fight off the Darkness of their Mind. They abhor the Evolution as a NATURAL process, wishing it never existed. Or do they advocate a deliberate/scheduled disappearance of the same? Remember, LIFE is SYNONYMOUS with STRUGGLE. UNIVERSALLY & ETERNALLY. Period.

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