On marriage and having children

[Carl-Richard]

31 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Well I'm actually a nihilist and an antinatalism advocator.  I believe existence as whole in general is a scary and awful place full of misery and suffering.  Despite few moments of pleasure here and there..the overall tone of existence is negative.  So who's us to force these babies to come to this fucked up world without asking for their permission? 

Children are the only thing that makes the world not awful.

[Someone here]

22 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Children are the only thing that makes the world not awful.

Lol. How cute ??

Seriously tho..are you planning to get married and have children?  Its so much responsibility. And you have to not cheat on your wife .whereas if you don't marry you get to have sex with whoever you want.

But more importantly..having a children  is unethical  .Not only are these children going to grow up and contribute to global warming but we don’t really have a fun future ahead of us. At this rate we’re looking at extinction. Apparently in 100 years clouds may actually start to disappear. It’s not ethical to bring creatures into existence knowing what the future holds. And most of us know. We’re aware. But unfortunately, people don’t think about that. They think in the now and their own future. “But I WANT babies!” Yeah and your kid is gonna want air to breath after you leave her in this world you helped destroy.

Life is bleak even if we weren’t facing extinction. We’re very aware of death and it drives much of what we do. Living knowing that you’re going to end, maybe horribly, maybe slowly, is terrible. You’re going to face the death of those you love. Your parents. Your spouse. Your friends. It’s inevitable, unless you die early. 

Edited September 10, 2022 by Someone here

[Someone here]

@Judy2 this is not something new I come up with . I've had similar ideas about reproduction and not bringing new lives into this world for almost 12 years now,and I was almost always ridiculed for that by my friends and family. I didn't know back then that philosophers old and new have spoken along the same lines. Now having read the works of Schopenhauer,Cioran and Benatar I'm more than convinced that I am right,but I also do not want to impose this view on anyone else.if someone wants to bring a child into this bleak and mostly hopeless world,they should do it and let their most prized creation suffer. Even Jesus could not avoid the excruciating misery of this world so a mere mortal will most certainly face very serious hardships here.

my main question here..:

is it ethical to bring a new life into existence without asking for their permission to live in this bleak  world? 

I think that it becomes immoral to have children when one realizes how screwed the world is, that it is going to be a trying place for future generations, and yet one’s selfish desire to be a mom or dad outweigh the likely challenges their children will experience when they’re gone. 

I think having l children is one of the most selfish acts you can do bringing another life to this world when there are other children out there in need of a loving home.

I hope I’ll never see the appeal of having a genetic mini-me. To deny a child a home in order to fulfill your fantasy of having a DNA descendant is entirely self-serving. People don’t bear children because they want to sustain the species, they do it because they want a child.

Overpopulation is already a problem. There are already too many children and not enough safe, adequate homes. I can’t see why people aren’t screaming this from the rooftops; why there aren’t billboards everywhere telling people to adopt.

[Danioover9000]

@Silodium

20 hours ago, Silodium said:

I am American, and my wife is Indian. We met at a local Indonesian café when I was visiting, and that's how our relationship began. I'm not going to go into too much detail, and I'm going to be blunt. I brought her back to my home country, and we had a beautiful wedding in a cabin in the smoky mountains. We loved everything about it, and we invested $20,000. Honestly, I want to move to Indonesia with her and start a new life there. But that's not the point right now. I want to share that even though we married her, marriage remains optional. It was just that for us, our couple. It was something meaningful. We were curious about each other's wedding traditions, so we decided to have one wedding in America, Tennessee State. Our second wedding was in Karnataka, Indonesia.

All in all, it was a significant event for us that was significant. We were happy before marriage, and after the wedding, we were even more optimistic. However, still, I do not impose my own opinion, and I think it is a purely personal choice of each couple, and everything depends on Their' moral values.

   That's nice!

[Carl-Richard]

Anti-natalism is like being forced to go to a dinner party with your parents, getting served free food and cake, and then after you've eaten the cake, you decide that it was unethical because you didn't like the vegetables.

[Carl-Richard]

There is no justification for life. Life is life. Only humans need justifications for things, because they're selfish. What if for there to be something greater than your selfish little self, you must sacrifice something? What if for there to be anything at all, there must be something that is unjust?

[zurew]

@Someone here Why are you an anti natalist ,what is the main reason? 

The avoidance of suffering, or what other principle(s) are  you using here?

2 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Only humans need justifications for things, because they're selfish

Creation of life doesn't change the selfish aspect though. I would argue that in 99.9999% of the cases, people want to have children because of selfish reasons.

Edited September 10, 2022 by zurew

[Carl-Richard]

14 minutes ago, zurew said:

Creation of life doesn't change the selfish aspect though. I would argue that in 99.9999% of the cases, people want to have children because of selfish reasons.

When did I say humans aren't selfish?  

[zurew]

1 minute ago, Carl-Richard said:

When did I say humans aren't selfish?  

I assumed, you tried to make a point, that you are less selfish or a better person in general if you want to have children.

When I say "you are a better person" I am talking about people in general.

Edited September 10, 2022 by zurew

[Someone here]

23 minutes ago, zurew said:

Why are you an anti natalist ,what is the main reason? 

The avoidance of suffering, or what other principle(s) are  you using here?

This world is horrible and when you bring an innocent person into this world just because you want to, that’s equally as horrible.

There are kids who are already here (the ones in foster care and adoption agencies). Why does no one care about those kids?

The world is overpopulated.

Humans contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases, which are harmful for the planet and us.

They say childfree people are selfish, but yet they’re having kids all because they want to. To submit someone to something as bad as existing is extremely selfish. 

My ethics are utilitarian. I’m the most pure utilitarian I’ve ever met. When people ask me the gotcha! questions that are supposed to trip up utilitarians and make them realize that they actually think murder is wrong (or whatever), I’m never tripped up. My mind just seems to naturally work along utilitarian lines, and when I first started studying Moral Philosophy, I had a shock of recognition. Oh! There’s a word for what I am.

To a utilitarian, the only moral principal is maximizing universal happiness and minimizing universal suffering—with everyone’s happiness and suffering having equal weight.

By my utilitarian calculus, it would be better if no one was ever born. Not all utilitarians agree with that. It depends on some subtleties of how you balance happiness and suffering and whether or not you care about potential happiness of beings that don’t exist but could. My calculus says that the Universe would be better off, on balance, if no one was born into it.

But I literally never think about this..and barely care about it..except as a dorm-room Philosophy discussion. I don’t walk around thinking my friends shouldn’t have children (I don’t even secretly think that) and I certainly don’t lecture anyone about that. Well, I never lecture anyone about anything. I mostly apply my ethics to myself. I’m not really a judgmental person.

The main reason why antinatalism is a non-starter for me is because I’m(I don’t know if there’s a word for this) what I’d call an ethical realist. Or a practical ethicist. I’m not a utopian idealist. I’m only concerned in what it’s likely people will reasonably do.

People are not going to stop having children. There’s no possible argument that will make people stop. We’re biologically wired to want to procreate, and that’s not likely to change. I don’t expect it to change. It seems so unrealistic, I don’t even wish it would change. And, while I agree with antinatalism intellectually, I’m so profoundly convinced people will always want to have kids, I don’t even find myself wanting an antinatalist outcome. I can’t feel it emotionally.

[zurew]

5 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Humans contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases, which are harmful for the planet and us.

With reasoning like this, we are going to end up with reasons to kill all humans, I don't think we want to have a moral system where we end up killing everyone.

 

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, zurew said:

I assumed, you tried to make a point, that you are less selfish or a better person in general if you want to have children.

Nope. I was only pointing out how the idea that you need someone's personal permission to justify bringing that person into life, while it's indeed virtuous, is likewise born out of selfishness.

[zurew]

1 minute ago, Carl-Richard said:

Nope.

 

Ohh , okay, then I am sorry, I misunderstood your post.

4 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I was only pointing out how the idea that you need someone's personal permission to justify bringing that person into life, while it's indeed virtuous, is likewise born out of selfishness.

I agree with you then.

[Carl-Richard]

In fact, I think anti-natalism taken to its ultimate conclusion is unethical, because it's ultimately anti-life, and ethics is about figuring out how to live a good life.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

20 minutes ago, Someone here said:

To a utilitarian, the only moral principal is maximizing universal happiness and minimizing universal suffering—with everyone’s happiness and suffering having equal weight.

You need to choose between the 'minimization of suffering' and the 'maximization of happiness', because when it comes to choosing between the two, you can't make your choice. You need to find a fundamental axiom here.

Sometimes those two are mutually exclusive.

Edited September 10, 2022 by zurew

[Someone here]

2 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

In fact, I think anti-natalism taken to its ultimate conclusion is unethical, because it's ultimately anti-life, and ethics is about figuring out how to live a good life.

Bringing a conscious being into this crazy world without consent is saddstic and selfish. When many people think of having children they picture the child only. They don't picture the adult. the years of working in menial jobs and living in mediocrity, uncertainty and desperation. Most parents are under the illusion that their child will be special, that they will have a good life. Then the child doesn't turn out as they expected and you then have miserable parents and miserable children. Having a child is akin to playing roulette, you are gambling with someone's future.

[zurew]

7 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Bringing a conscious being into this crazy world without consent is saddstic and selfish.

Why do you put more weight on potential suffering compared to potential happiness here?

[Someone here]

3 minutes ago, zurew said:

You need to choose between the 'minimization of suffering' and the 'maximization of happiness', because when it comes to choosing between the two, you can't make your choice. You need to find a fundamental axiom here.

maximizing happiness does not guarantee that suffering has actually gone down, just that the ratio between the two has tipped in happinesses favor. You could turn one area into a complete utopia while another part remains a third world wasteland, the suffering in the third world wasteland hasn’t decreased

[Carl-Richard]

16 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Bringing a conscious being into this crazy world without consent is saddstic and selfish. When many people think of having children they picture the child only.

And I would also say that you're also only thinking about the child, but in a different sense. Because once we stop having children, the amount of lives you're going to put through a 100% certainty of hell is certainly not ethically neutral. Once you run out of young people, you're stuck with a bunch of lonely and helpless old people in a collapsing society. The last person that will ever be born will experience a life only describable as death and decay. So which one do you value more: personal consent or global suffering?

Edited September 10, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

5 minutes ago, Someone here said:

maximizing happiness does not guarantee that suffering has actually gone down, just that the ratio between the two has tipped in happinesses favor. You could turn one area into a complete utopia while another part remains a third world wasteland, the suffering in the third world wasteland hasn’t decreased

So why should we value the minimization of suffering over the maximization of happiness?

Edited September 10, 2022 by zurew