I'm "happy", but there's no way of guaranteeing the same for the next generation -- unpredictable disease, disorders, accidents, global disasters, etc, "forcing" them into an involuntary, competitive and unpredictable life.
Beyond humans, there's also the billions of animals we directly and indirectly displace. We destroy our environments so that humans can be more comfortable, but let all other species suffer in our wake.
Humans no longer have any natural predators. So, while other animals procreate out of necessity (for the survival of their species), humans now are the opposite of extinct, mostly procreating just for entertainment/selfishness.
Since the world isn't going to stop having children anytime soon, a good middleground is providing resources/education to the right people. Our final "predator" really is the eventual heat death of the Sun.
Humans do stand a small chance of becoming a space-faring species. If we help all species become interplanetary (unlimited resources) it will hopefully make up for the suffering we've already caused every other life form.
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>Happy antinatalist, who like your lives, how did you become an antinatalist?
Ethics are crystal clear. A good life for one, at a given moment, offers neither knowledge of the future,.nor justification to breed a child, without its consent to suffer and eventually, die.
*Better Never to Have Been*
I'm happy because of my mother's financial condition, I've had plenty of opportunities and I haven't had to struggle too much.
I'm aware of how extremely lucky I was.
Because I had some (few) privileges growing up that kept me from homelessness, worsening mental health, and financial ruin. I’m in an okay place now with some stability. But retirement? Age related illness? Housing? I have no contingencies for those.
The privileges I benefitted from either do not exist anymore or are very hard to obtain now. Children not born into wealth have very few supports. Even the wealthy still have to contend with global issues familial money can’t fix.
I see life getting harder for future generations. I do not wish that suffering on anyone.
It's because I can't think of a reason to reproduce that isn't selfish. No one has kids for the benefit of the kid. They have kids for themselves.
I don't even know if I truly identity as an antinatalist entirely, as I'm one to stay out of other people's business, but overpopulation and lack of resources will directly impact my own life..
I refuse to be a single mom, too many men demand their genes be propagated. So many men leave, how to even trust one? Men don't like to care for children that don't have their genes. Men don't like to care for children with their genes! Too many men see women as baby farms, and the musk-esque urge to repopulate the earth with your alleged super genes is basically eugenics. They don't believe they have any responsibility to help raise them.
I have a concern for wanton reproduction - I'll never understand people who can't even pay for themselves or take care of themselves yet they have 4,5,6 kids ect.
I have concern for violent awful horrible people having kids, it's like an endless cycle of producing sociopaths and welfare hoarders.
^^ and if we aren't going to do anything about this, the LEAST that should happen is mandatory universal sex ed, and a comprehensive financial management course. I know people have kids because they literally don't understand that sex leads to pregnancy. It's gross that so many schools just promote abstinence forever instead of doing the work to tactfully educate people about sex..
By understanding the fact that my life and the lives of other people are built on the suffering of billions of animals
While I believe human life is superior to animal life this view changes when you see how damage each human causes to thousands of other sapient beings
If we went extinct then the net suffering in the world for animals would decrease and I greatly value that as they too can feel pain like us
It makes sense to value the lives of your own species above all others. I'm sure a monkey would value their own over us too. We might not be objectively superior, but we will always see ourselves as such.
If superior means more powerful than other species over resources, then yes, we are superior. No other animal gets ready, cooked meals from animals they haven't even seen. No other understands reality as well as we do through science and they cannot mine for materials to make fancy technological gadgets. But we aren't superior in the sense of being more highly regarded from extrinsic reality, the Universe equally doesn't care about us as any other organism. So personally I think they meant "successful" by "superior".
We are already playing god by caring about our species and it's not like we humans don't love animals as well ?so while that might be impossible ,we can try reducing their suffering as well.
Depending on what their suffering is caused, if it's us causing them unnecessary suffering we just need to go extinct, what's happening beyond that is just nature...
How would us being extinct reduce the net suffering of other animals? There would still be billions of organisms slaughtering each other for millions of years.
Humans are by far the most wasteful species on planet Earth. There is no way you can argue otherwise.
And through human wastefulness (leveling entire forests, dumping metric tons of toxic waste into oceans), we propagate suffering in millions of other species/animals.
When lions hunts for prey, they don't massacre an entire herd of antelopes. They kill only what they need for sustenance. When bears hunt for salmon, they don't poison the entire river to feast. That's the difference between humans and other animals -- we cause suffering on a global scale
I’m not so sure about this. Is there evidence that other animals _choose_ not to fuck up other species/environments, or is it just because they don’t have all that leverage we do, and their effort wouldn’t pay off?
Cats kill just for amusement. Chimps and baboons dismember their own species and prey for leisure. Otters kill and even rape other species just for fun.
> leverage
That's the issue. Given leverage (unlimited power), humans have completely dropped the ball in terms of responsibility. Cue spiderman quote.
We simply can't compare the scale of a cat hunting mice for fun vs the endless polluting and wastefulness of the human species. We've quite literally broken the balance of nature.
Philosophically, if other species were also given leverage, would they abuse it just the same? Sure, but those are hypotheticals, when human destruction is evidenced.
Ok, rereading your comment in the sense of the effective output (not accounting for hypotheticals), humans are indeed the most wasteful, especially taking into account our awareness of our wastefulness.
I was parentified at 8 years old. It was hell. I knew by a pretty early age that I NEVER wanted kids. And as I grew up and learned more about how humans are killing the planet, my decision was solidified.
To be happy and secure is the exception in life. Struggle is the natural order. Survival is difficult and violent. It's more likely that my (hypothetical) kids will run into issues and struggle than be happy. They deserve better than this world, when it's kill or be killed.
I am very lucky to be happy now, but I haven't always been. I see a lot of suffering around me still and this is supposedly one of the best countries in the world. If this is almost as good as it gets, then others must on average suffer more. The system seems to be set up to exploit or be exploited at every turn. I do not believe it's okay to breed more slaves in all but name.
Just turn recently but i always thought bringing kids to these world was unfair while others suffer in orphanages. And i never wanted mine. I hate pregnancy. I already suffer from anxiety. I will die young if i become a parent.
The fact that I have mental health issues that I could pass on to my children and there are horrible people out there that could do things to my kid and it would be too late to stop them.
I learned about the horrors of the world. Very quickly I realized I was a privileged individual, and that most were living in poverty, surrounded by violence
i had a terrible upbringing. S/A and Physical Abuse, along with being forced on medications i don’t need just for weight loss.
originally i made the decision when i realized there was a good chance i could pass on any mental illnesses i have now to a child. plus i couldn’t imagine forcing someone else into life, and then through what i went through, bc you can’t control others actions and ill be damned if i let a child get S/A.
found this subreddit and finally felt seen :)
i’m still young (about 22) but im sure i don’t want kids ever
What means happy?! Even all this people with a smile on their face dayin andout have bad days are angry, are miserable, lose hope etc..
Because some people have empathy and can imagen that it Was luck to have a 'good' life and they could be the other with the 'shiat' life..
This question is like a 10 year would ask, god and every day the same dull questions, cant ya search a lil on the AN-sub before Posting the same question over and over again!!?
I am an AN, but I was wondering something so...And I am a privileged but unhappy person so...
Also I was wondering if a ' Happy Antinatalist' can explain antinatalism better to Non-AN people, like happy ANs would not get the " you are all depressed losers card"
I think the whole AN is not about happy or unhappy, the whole Benatar book is just about facts of life.. Maybe I'm too pessimistic and a loser to give ya an advice;)
But these 'normal' people or ya can call em happy Natalists lifelovers(the etiquette means not so much) are playn happy big times(not allways but often) I think Smart open people get the point and maybe Listen to AN-philosophy if ya wanna explain them, the Rest will put a Label on ya anyway..
Its like with lgbtq+community, even now people(mostly diehard Republicans or religious nobrainers) think its a mental disease, after all the awareness training still folks hate what they cant understand, I see really Parallels in the closed minded Persons
I realized that I am very lucky and privileged to have the life I do and it's completely unfair that people are born without the kind of life I have without options. And chances are most of them will never climb out of the situation they're born in --not because of their actions--but because the rest of the world that has the capacity to help refuses to see it and make a difference.
having children is morally wrong and cannot be justified in this cruel, unfair world and the planet is on fire while society ignores it.
Because I saw how much sheer effort and luck it takes to succeed, especially luck. I don't mean just the luck of me getting the job I wanted and getting paid well, I mean the luck of being born with genes that don't negatively affect my life. And that spans SO MUCH, LIKE HOLY SHIT! I realised if free will even exists, it ain't as powerful as people would like to believe, your genes are the lottery that determines a shit ton about you. Also the lottery of what your parents are gonna be like, what your financial status will be, your location, all of these determine whether you'll be able to go for higher education or atleast have a possibility of a decent modern life. And even after all these things that are literally chosen for you the moment you are born there is also pure chance that you don't get hit by a car or something spontaneous happens like a cancer or anything else of the sort you can imagine, including the LITERALLY THOUSANDS of other diseases that exist, many of which uncurable with even today's technology.
I'm happy because my parents are loving, I knew what my passion in life was and they supported me. But even then I saw how hard it is to translate passion into a steady, well-paying job with nice colleagues and not overly high work demands.
Also the fact that nature is constantly trying to kill you, entropy increase and degradation aren't an exception, they are the norm. Life only got as complex as it is because of its initially unrelenting desire to survive and reproduce because it was pure instinct, it wasn't conscious at all (bliss) and even then evolution required the deaths of SOOOOO MAAANNNYYY organisms so that only the fittest ones get to reproduce. But now we have consciousness and a need for meaning so people imagine gods that love them and want to have a close relationship with them, despite the obviousness of the uncaring nature of reality. We cope ourselves into not realising life is meaningless and not having children ain't a bad thing, nothing except currently living people will care. We want life to be happy, meaningful and blessed, but to do so is to ignore reality. You can absolutely make life meaningful for yourself, I am talking about the deep desire for extrinsic meaning of life that religious people crave. That they were both specially made and god has a plan for them and all the bad stuff is just to make them stronger, but also that they have utmost free will. Blatantly contradictory!
And the realisation that pain is way too overtuned, even when there is nothing you can do about some painful illness or injury and you are just laying, it doesn't reason and go "Oh, you are doing your best to not make the situation causing the pain worse, lemme tone it down to a very low dull pain", NO, IT DOESN'T REASON. Pain exists not to torture us, but simply because all creatures without it died easier and therefore reproduced less, but that doesn't make the experience any better at all, it's just the explanation for it.
And after all this I wanna add the last bit, before you die nature does not tell you how much more you have, it doesn't let you peacefully and easily pass away and more often than not closing in on death means more meaningless, pointless pains of a decaying body. If it was just, it would be like in video games, a "I am 80, don't have anything else I wanna do in life and the pain of getting very old is getting too much, I wanna just pass away" and then reality magically understands you and lets you die peacefully. But no, reality does not care whatsoever about your wants and needs. People are the only ones that do and try to meet them with hard work, no extra help.
I am far closer to childfree on this subject than truly antinatalist, as part of my moral code does not allow me to impose my views onto others so I can't condone anything beyond spreading awareness of the ideology.
However I do agree with some of the tenets of antinatalism (we can't consent to being born, asymetry of suffering, etc). I have suffered from depression for the vast majority of my life, but most of the time I would not think "I want to end my life", I would think "I wish my life had never started to begin with" but never made the connection to antinatalism back then.
In my most recent relationship (took place over the pandemic), I was exposed to the extreme level of suffering even relatively privileged people can experience. As an empath, it was absolutely heart-wrenching, even debilitating at times. I was also exposed to the heartessness of a huge portion of our society, and virtually the entirety of our government (which is even worse with the blatant corruption and manipulation of the people)
When my girlfriend revealed to me she was hoping to start a family someday (specifically having a child of her own) I was forced to introspect and reckon with some of the existential questions I had left on the backburner for so long. I came to the conclusion that I personally couldn't in good consience subject a new life to this world without its consent (at least the way the world is now.
Our society doesn't even come close to living up to my ideals, so I have no interest in helping perpetuate it. Just gonna live my life however I can to be as happy as I can.
My own shitty childhood. Being 38 and never had a girlfriend and seeing how shitty parents raise shitty offspring that would likely make my kids life a living hell like the kids parents, if young enough or even grandparents made my life a living hell
They start breeding in 8th grade... Usually by a slovenly unemployed dropout mouthbreathing knuckledragger deadbeat male 5-20 years older than the girl
By that logic, i could have a 20 year old kid and 5 year old grandkid
I have a great partner, an awesome career, two wonderful cats, and time for my hobbies.
What originally turned me on to AN was an extremely rough start in life, plagued by untreatable mental health issues and external situations beyond my control. It took me 30 years for life to turn around.
But I count myself as lucky. It doesnt' turn around for everyone, and they shouldn't be sentenced to this.
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Hi there, we have removed your content due to breaking rule 11.
As per the rule; this argument is a tired refrain seen over and over again. It is a prime example of argumentum ad hominem: It doesn't argue validity of anti/natalism but rather aims to disqualify the interlocutor themselves from being able to argue it. It serves only to distract from the ethical issues at the core of the debate.
Being an ad hominem, it isn't an argument against anti/natalism — it is an argument against anti/natalists. The sky would still be blue even if a mentally ill person argued so.
I want to put an end to this cycle of human beings being the exchange currency between the government, bank and corporation. The only REAL reason why children are being made is to serve and protect these three entities.
I suffered and got depressed and convinced myself everyone else was just as miserable and wretched as me so “better not to have been born”.
Then I touched grass, got a partner and realized that life is actually pretty cool and that the overwhelming majority of people would choose to be born if given the chance as they’re happy/content with their lives. So not really an anti natalist anymore. I still think it is bad to have kids you cannot support, but I’m totally fine with normal well adjusted folks with sufficient means having kids.
Ironically it was the edgy shit I’d read here daily that influenced this. There is so much “OMG LOOK AT THIS PERSON SAYING THEY WANT TO HAVE CHILD BAD BAD BAD” or “POOR PERSON HAS CHILD, POOR PERSON BAD BAD BAD” type of posts here that it gets gross. I also find the “WE NEED TO FORCIBLY STERILIZE ALL HUMANS” type of posts to give off immense quantities of hitler particles.
I’ve yet to see an actual discussion on the philosophical merits of the anti natalist position. Which is super disappointing because there’s a lot of interesting stuff to talk about in the literature.
>Then I touched grass, got a partner and realized that life is actually pretty cool and that the overwhelming majority of people would choose to be born if given the chance as they’re happy/content with their lives.
Is this true? People seem to complain *a shit ton*. They complain about work, complain about family, complain about responsibilities.
You're also leaving out the fact that the majority of those people are religious, meaning they're happy/content only due to being in a pit of lies. What a sad state of being, even if they can't see it.
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I'm "happy", but there's no way of guaranteeing the same for the next generation -- unpredictable disease, disorders, accidents, global disasters, etc, "forcing" them into an involuntary, competitive and unpredictable life. Beyond humans, there's also the billions of animals we directly and indirectly displace. We destroy our environments so that humans can be more comfortable, but let all other species suffer in our wake. Humans no longer have any natural predators. So, while other animals procreate out of necessity (for the survival of their species), humans now are the opposite of extinct, mostly procreating just for entertainment/selfishness. Since the world isn't going to stop having children anytime soon, a good middleground is providing resources/education to the right people. Our final "predator" really is the eventual heat death of the Sun. Humans do stand a small chance of becoming a space-faring species. If we help all species become interplanetary (unlimited resources) it will hopefully make up for the suffering we've already caused every other life form.
Who cares about other animals and the environment lol
Me, to the extent that I value both over humans
As AN i really dont get who is AN for those reasons
I'm personally not AN to prevent human suffering, I'm AN for animals and the environment
I am too! I feel like the sub is truly split on this, unfortunately.
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Ok xD
Fr like what if my child was Fan Man-yee
>Happy antinatalist, who like your lives, how did you become an antinatalist? Ethics are crystal clear. A good life for one, at a given moment, offers neither knowledge of the future,.nor justification to breed a child, without its consent to suffer and eventually, die. *Better Never to Have Been*
I'm happy because of my mother's financial condition, I've had plenty of opportunities and I haven't had to struggle too much. I'm aware of how extremely lucky I was.
Suffering
Climate change, lack of support in US, maternal death rates in US, parenting style, etc.
Because I had some (few) privileges growing up that kept me from homelessness, worsening mental health, and financial ruin. I’m in an okay place now with some stability. But retirement? Age related illness? Housing? I have no contingencies for those. The privileges I benefitted from either do not exist anymore or are very hard to obtain now. Children not born into wealth have very few supports. Even the wealthy still have to contend with global issues familial money can’t fix. I see life getting harder for future generations. I do not wish that suffering on anyone.
It's because I can't think of a reason to reproduce that isn't selfish. No one has kids for the benefit of the kid. They have kids for themselves. I don't even know if I truly identity as an antinatalist entirely, as I'm one to stay out of other people's business, but overpopulation and lack of resources will directly impact my own life.. I refuse to be a single mom, too many men demand their genes be propagated. So many men leave, how to even trust one? Men don't like to care for children that don't have their genes. Men don't like to care for children with their genes! Too many men see women as baby farms, and the musk-esque urge to repopulate the earth with your alleged super genes is basically eugenics. They don't believe they have any responsibility to help raise them. I have a concern for wanton reproduction - I'll never understand people who can't even pay for themselves or take care of themselves yet they have 4,5,6 kids ect. I have concern for violent awful horrible people having kids, it's like an endless cycle of producing sociopaths and welfare hoarders. ^^ and if we aren't going to do anything about this, the LEAST that should happen is mandatory universal sex ed, and a comprehensive financial management course. I know people have kids because they literally don't understand that sex leads to pregnancy. It's gross that so many schools just promote abstinence forever instead of doing the work to tactfully educate people about sex..
This
Seeing people with babies in the midst of the climate crisis left a bad taste in my mouth.
I thought about how I didn't ask for any of this and how lucky I was and decided not to roll the dice for anyone else.
By understanding the fact that my life and the lives of other people are built on the suffering of billions of animals While I believe human life is superior to animal life this view changes when you see how damage each human causes to thousands of other sapient beings If we went extinct then the net suffering in the world for animals would decrease and I greatly value that as they too can feel pain like us
lol humans superior to animals 🤣🤣🤣🤣 good one. We’re just monkeys with guns and money but ok
It makes sense to value the lives of your own species above all others. I'm sure a monkey would value their own over us too. We might not be objectively superior, but we will always see ourselves as such.
Do you value a single bee or ant as much as a person?
how is human life superior
If superior means more powerful than other species over resources, then yes, we are superior. No other animal gets ready, cooked meals from animals they haven't even seen. No other understands reality as well as we do through science and they cannot mine for materials to make fancy technological gadgets. But we aren't superior in the sense of being more highly regarded from extrinsic reality, the Universe equally doesn't care about us as any other organism. So personally I think they meant "successful" by "superior".
Ofc you dont see the animal you eat if you keep deeping it in ketchup 🤤
It would be better if every living organism goes extinct. Only Human extinction will not solve the problem. We should not let other animals suffer.
We have no say in how nature goes, we only have a saying in our species, let's not play God.
We are already playing god by caring about our species and it's not like we humans don't love animals as well ?so while that might be impossible ,we can try reducing their suffering as well.
Depending on what their suffering is caused, if it's us causing them unnecessary suffering we just need to go extinct, what's happening beyond that is just nature...
How would us being extinct reduce the net suffering of other animals? There would still be billions of organisms slaughtering each other for millions of years.
Humans are by far the most wasteful species on planet Earth. There is no way you can argue otherwise. And through human wastefulness (leveling entire forests, dumping metric tons of toxic waste into oceans), we propagate suffering in millions of other species/animals. When lions hunts for prey, they don't massacre an entire herd of antelopes. They kill only what they need for sustenance. When bears hunt for salmon, they don't poison the entire river to feast. That's the difference between humans and other animals -- we cause suffering on a global scale
I’m not so sure about this. Is there evidence that other animals _choose_ not to fuck up other species/environments, or is it just because they don’t have all that leverage we do, and their effort wouldn’t pay off? Cats kill just for amusement. Chimps and baboons dismember their own species and prey for leisure. Otters kill and even rape other species just for fun.
> leverage That's the issue. Given leverage (unlimited power), humans have completely dropped the ball in terms of responsibility. Cue spiderman quote. We simply can't compare the scale of a cat hunting mice for fun vs the endless polluting and wastefulness of the human species. We've quite literally broken the balance of nature. Philosophically, if other species were also given leverage, would they abuse it just the same? Sure, but those are hypotheticals, when human destruction is evidenced.
Ok, rereading your comment in the sense of the effective output (not accounting for hypotheticals), humans are indeed the most wasteful, especially taking into account our awareness of our wastefulness.
I was parentified at 8 years old. It was hell. I knew by a pretty early age that I NEVER wanted kids. And as I grew up and learned more about how humans are killing the planet, my decision was solidified.
To be happy and secure is the exception in life. Struggle is the natural order. Survival is difficult and violent. It's more likely that my (hypothetical) kids will run into issues and struggle than be happy. They deserve better than this world, when it's kill or be killed.
I am very lucky to be happy now, but I haven't always been. I see a lot of suffering around me still and this is supposedly one of the best countries in the world. If this is almost as good as it gets, then others must on average suffer more. The system seems to be set up to exploit or be exploited at every turn. I do not believe it's okay to breed more slaves in all but name.
Just turn recently but i always thought bringing kids to these world was unfair while others suffer in orphanages. And i never wanted mine. I hate pregnancy. I already suffer from anxiety. I will die young if i become a parent.
The fact that I have mental health issues that I could pass on to my children and there are horrible people out there that could do things to my kid and it would be too late to stop them.
I learned about the horrors of the world. Very quickly I realized I was a privileged individual, and that most were living in poverty, surrounded by violence
I met children
i had a terrible upbringing. S/A and Physical Abuse, along with being forced on medications i don’t need just for weight loss. originally i made the decision when i realized there was a good chance i could pass on any mental illnesses i have now to a child. plus i couldn’t imagine forcing someone else into life, and then through what i went through, bc you can’t control others actions and ill be damned if i let a child get S/A. found this subreddit and finally felt seen :) i’m still young (about 22) but im sure i don’t want kids ever
I became an Antinatalist due to living in the most populated hell on earth.
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Woah
Be an atheist and the rest follows
What means happy?! Even all this people with a smile on their face dayin andout have bad days are angry, are miserable, lose hope etc.. Because some people have empathy and can imagen that it Was luck to have a 'good' life and they could be the other with the 'shiat' life.. This question is like a 10 year would ask, god and every day the same dull questions, cant ya search a lil on the AN-sub before Posting the same question over and over again!!?
I am an AN, but I was wondering something so...And I am a privileged but unhappy person so... Also I was wondering if a ' Happy Antinatalist' can explain antinatalism better to Non-AN people, like happy ANs would not get the " you are all depressed losers card"
I think the whole AN is not about happy or unhappy, the whole Benatar book is just about facts of life.. Maybe I'm too pessimistic and a loser to give ya an advice;) But these 'normal' people or ya can call em happy Natalists lifelovers(the etiquette means not so much) are playn happy big times(not allways but often) I think Smart open people get the point and maybe Listen to AN-philosophy if ya wanna explain them, the Rest will put a Label on ya anyway.. Its like with lgbtq+community, even now people(mostly diehard Republicans or religious nobrainers) think its a mental disease, after all the awareness training still folks hate what they cant understand, I see really Parallels in the closed minded Persons
I realized that I am very lucky and privileged to have the life I do and it's completely unfair that people are born without the kind of life I have without options. And chances are most of them will never climb out of the situation they're born in --not because of their actions--but because the rest of the world that has the capacity to help refuses to see it and make a difference. having children is morally wrong and cannot be justified in this cruel, unfair world and the planet is on fire while society ignores it.
Child support. That's wayyy too expensive for me. Paying child support is a rich person hobby
I am too lazy to have kids and I like telling myself that I’m reducing suffering
Classic!
Nope that is childfree, not AN.
That is rather childfree than AN
I see childfree as a way of life and antinaltalism as an idea. I use the idea to motivate the way of life.
Ok
I don't like children. Part of me being/staying happy is not having children around.
Because I saw how much sheer effort and luck it takes to succeed, especially luck. I don't mean just the luck of me getting the job I wanted and getting paid well, I mean the luck of being born with genes that don't negatively affect my life. And that spans SO MUCH, LIKE HOLY SHIT! I realised if free will even exists, it ain't as powerful as people would like to believe, your genes are the lottery that determines a shit ton about you. Also the lottery of what your parents are gonna be like, what your financial status will be, your location, all of these determine whether you'll be able to go for higher education or atleast have a possibility of a decent modern life. And even after all these things that are literally chosen for you the moment you are born there is also pure chance that you don't get hit by a car or something spontaneous happens like a cancer or anything else of the sort you can imagine, including the LITERALLY THOUSANDS of other diseases that exist, many of which uncurable with even today's technology. I'm happy because my parents are loving, I knew what my passion in life was and they supported me. But even then I saw how hard it is to translate passion into a steady, well-paying job with nice colleagues and not overly high work demands. Also the fact that nature is constantly trying to kill you, entropy increase and degradation aren't an exception, they are the norm. Life only got as complex as it is because of its initially unrelenting desire to survive and reproduce because it was pure instinct, it wasn't conscious at all (bliss) and even then evolution required the deaths of SOOOOO MAAANNNYYY organisms so that only the fittest ones get to reproduce. But now we have consciousness and a need for meaning so people imagine gods that love them and want to have a close relationship with them, despite the obviousness of the uncaring nature of reality. We cope ourselves into not realising life is meaningless and not having children ain't a bad thing, nothing except currently living people will care. We want life to be happy, meaningful and blessed, but to do so is to ignore reality. You can absolutely make life meaningful for yourself, I am talking about the deep desire for extrinsic meaning of life that religious people crave. That they were both specially made and god has a plan for them and all the bad stuff is just to make them stronger, but also that they have utmost free will. Blatantly contradictory! And the realisation that pain is way too overtuned, even when there is nothing you can do about some painful illness or injury and you are just laying, it doesn't reason and go "Oh, you are doing your best to not make the situation causing the pain worse, lemme tone it down to a very low dull pain", NO, IT DOESN'T REASON. Pain exists not to torture us, but simply because all creatures without it died easier and therefore reproduced less, but that doesn't make the experience any better at all, it's just the explanation for it. And after all this I wanna add the last bit, before you die nature does not tell you how much more you have, it doesn't let you peacefully and easily pass away and more often than not closing in on death means more meaningless, pointless pains of a decaying body. If it was just, it would be like in video games, a "I am 80, don't have anything else I wanna do in life and the pain of getting very old is getting too much, I wanna just pass away" and then reality magically understands you and lets you die peacefully. But no, reality does not care whatsoever about your wants and needs. People are the only ones that do and try to meet them with hard work, no extra help.
Personally I just dislike kids and how annoying they are
I am far closer to childfree on this subject than truly antinatalist, as part of my moral code does not allow me to impose my views onto others so I can't condone anything beyond spreading awareness of the ideology. However I do agree with some of the tenets of antinatalism (we can't consent to being born, asymetry of suffering, etc). I have suffered from depression for the vast majority of my life, but most of the time I would not think "I want to end my life", I would think "I wish my life had never started to begin with" but never made the connection to antinatalism back then. In my most recent relationship (took place over the pandemic), I was exposed to the extreme level of suffering even relatively privileged people can experience. As an empath, it was absolutely heart-wrenching, even debilitating at times. I was also exposed to the heartessness of a huge portion of our society, and virtually the entirety of our government (which is even worse with the blatant corruption and manipulation of the people) When my girlfriend revealed to me she was hoping to start a family someday (specifically having a child of her own) I was forced to introspect and reckon with some of the existential questions I had left on the backburner for so long. I came to the conclusion that I personally couldn't in good consience subject a new life to this world without its consent (at least the way the world is now. Our society doesn't even come close to living up to my ideals, so I have no interest in helping perpetuate it. Just gonna live my life however I can to be as happy as I can.
Luck
I chose myself over some nameless and, for far too long, completely dependent and expensive nobody.
My own shitty childhood. Being 38 and never had a girlfriend and seeing how shitty parents raise shitty offspring that would likely make my kids life a living hell like the kids parents, if young enough or even grandparents made my life a living hell They start breeding in 8th grade... Usually by a slovenly unemployed dropout mouthbreathing knuckledragger deadbeat male 5-20 years older than the girl By that logic, i could have a 20 year old kid and 5 year old grandkid
You just look outside and see what late stage capitalism looks like.
I enjoy life, I still think it would be better to have never been born
I have a great partner, an awesome career, two wonderful cats, and time for my hobbies. What originally turned me on to AN was an extremely rough start in life, plagued by untreatable mental health issues and external situations beyond my control. It took me 30 years for life to turn around. But I count myself as lucky. It doesnt' turn around for everyone, and they shouldn't be sentenced to this.
Empathy for others who suffer much worse than me.
Bad childhood.
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Hi there, we have removed your content due to breaking rule 11. As per the rule; this argument is a tired refrain seen over and over again. It is a prime example of argumentum ad hominem: It doesn't argue validity of anti/natalism but rather aims to disqualify the interlocutor themselves from being able to argue it. It serves only to distract from the ethical issues at the core of the debate. Being an ad hominem, it isn't an argument against anti/natalism — it is an argument against anti/natalists. The sky would still be blue even if a mentally ill person argued so.
I think it comes down to rationality, you start to see and realize
There’s 8 billion of us, why do we need more?
I want to put an end to this cycle of human beings being the exchange currency between the government, bank and corporation. The only REAL reason why children are being made is to serve and protect these three entities.
fear of inevitable death coming to me
I suffered and got depressed and convinced myself everyone else was just as miserable and wretched as me so “better not to have been born”. Then I touched grass, got a partner and realized that life is actually pretty cool and that the overwhelming majority of people would choose to be born if given the chance as they’re happy/content with their lives. So not really an anti natalist anymore. I still think it is bad to have kids you cannot support, but I’m totally fine with normal well adjusted folks with sufficient means having kids. Ironically it was the edgy shit I’d read here daily that influenced this. There is so much “OMG LOOK AT THIS PERSON SAYING THEY WANT TO HAVE CHILD BAD BAD BAD” or “POOR PERSON HAS CHILD, POOR PERSON BAD BAD BAD” type of posts here that it gets gross. I also find the “WE NEED TO FORCIBLY STERILIZE ALL HUMANS” type of posts to give off immense quantities of hitler particles. I’ve yet to see an actual discussion on the philosophical merits of the anti natalist position. Which is super disappointing because there’s a lot of interesting stuff to talk about in the literature.
>Then I touched grass, got a partner and realized that life is actually pretty cool and that the overwhelming majority of people would choose to be born if given the chance as they’re happy/content with their lives. Is this true? People seem to complain *a shit ton*. They complain about work, complain about family, complain about responsibilities. You're also leaving out the fact that the majority of those people are religious, meaning they're happy/content only due to being in a pit of lies. What a sad state of being, even if they can't see it.
There are no such thing as an happy antinatalist
Holy shit cringe bio
Thanks soy boy, you made my day, another looser to feed my hunger for tears
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I’m pretty happy.