:D I'm an antinatalist, pretty active on the sub too. It can be a little moral high ground-y, but yeah I feel that antinatalism and political leftism have a lot of shared ideals.
I think it would make sense to differentiate antinatalism the philosophy, which is basically a very narrow philosophy that suggests that being born sucks even if you are privileged and doesn't suggest any totalising course of action, and antinatalism the reddit meme, which as I pointed out in another reply kinda sucks.
I share your concerns that this kind of rhetoric is going to be used by the right, but antinatalism as a stand-alone thing seems to have been born in the 2000s and I feel like "the poors shouldn't breed as much poors for their own sake" is an older idea than that.
plenty of reactionary folks that also dislike capitalism. I honestly don't see anything leftist about anti-natalism unless you really stretch that definition
If anything, I see communism as very hopeful for humanity. That seems at odds with anti-natalism.
Not that I knock the personal choice not to have kids, but that's all it really is: personal choice. Basically as impactful to the world at large as choosing not to use plastic straws anymore.
Basically as impactful to the world at large as choosing not to use plastic straws
All of humanity is descended from individuals, so your moral relativism of "it's personal choice' is literally the first step towards everything bad that has ever happened
It's not a moral argument, it is an empirical one. Individual people choosing not to have kids will not solve anything if capitalism, the real source of waste and pollution, is not challenged. Individual people subsisting is not the source of pollution, it is the econmic system.
plenty of reactionary folks that also dislike capitalism
More precisely, I'd say they dislike the symptoms of capitalism. If you ask them directly they'll say they love capitalism, and they likewise love all sorts of policies that perpetuate capitalism. They see the problems but reject the unifying framework.
I honestly don’t see anything leftist about anti-natalism
Environmental sustainability, perhaps. Though of course a mother from, say, Ethiopia could pop out 80 kids in her life and the impact would still be less than even a single US child in terms of emissions and environmental degradation; it's mainly in developed countries right now that anti natalism should be applied.
Nah that's dumb. You wanna help the environment? Fight alongside indigenous peoples, fight for migrants, fight to dismantle the police, fight to dismantle the US military. Not having a kid, even in the first world, is as impactful as fuckin consumer choice.
Alright, at this point it's only you that's going to see this, so I'll give my response to the whole everything. Yes, antinatalism takes a defeatist approach to a lot of these issues. But, genuinely, do you see these issues being solved within your lifetime? Do you think the proletariat will rise up and seize the means of production, violently uniting to throw off the shackles of the bourgeoisie? I can definitely tell you my opinion, that they will not. We are on an on-fire planet, jokingly saying "this is fine" to quell our own fears. Most likely outcome is that the rich will all escape via space, leaving the poor behind to die on this burning shithole of a planet. So, yes, while the military-industrial complex does contribute more to the end of humanity than having one kid does, unless you are somehow certain that your kid will be some combination of Che Guevara and Albert Einstein, I'm saying it's wrong to bring them into this world.
Fight alongside indigenous peoples, fight for migrants, fight to dismantle the police, fight to dismantle the US military
You can do all of these and still recognize that the situation is dire enough that any potential new source of emission (and in developed countries, a newly born person will emit quite a lot during his life) is not a great idea. Moreover, I'm not convinced the planet can support so many people without ongoing ecological damage. Nor am I convinced it's impossible, mind you; perhaps no meat and massively decentralized and sustainable agricultural practices like permaculture could do it.
A more valid reason to me these days, though, is the fact that putting a kid in the world right now means they'll likely suffer immensely and won't live past 30 due to the impending ecological catastrophe.
You can do all of these and still recognize that the situation is dire enough that any potential new source of emission (and in developed countries, a newly born person will emit quite a lot during his life) is not a great idea
Again, this is nothing more than consumer choice. I choose not to have children. I choose to buy a hybrid. Maybe if enough people make this choice, it would solve the problem! Inadequate and ineffective. I do not criticize your choice, but I do criticize your reasoning.
Moreover, I’m not convinced the planet can support so many people without ongoing ecological damage.
Maybe. Hard to really assess when capitalist societies have done almost nothing but make the problems worse for their entire existence.
A more valid reason to me these days, though, is the fact that putting a kid in the world right now means they’ll likely suffer immensely and won’t live past 30 due to the impending ecological catastrophe.
But if they never exist, then who is being saved from suffering? And presupposing that this child-who-never-was still has some sort of moral weight, how can you be sure you possibly know what the sum total of their life-that-never-was would be? I'm growing more and more sure that people who make this argument just feel bad saying that they're saving themselves trouble. Which, y'know, I get it. It makes you sound like a dick to put it that way, but it's much more morally consistent and probably correct. Kids are a liability in the best of times.
Maybe if enough people make this choice, it would solve the problem
I haven't said that, of course the problem is systemic.
I’m growing more and more sure that people who make this argument just feel bad saying that they’re saving themselves trouble. Which, y’know, I get it. It makes you sound like a dick
I'm absolutely not trying to defend my choice to not have kids under a guise of environmental protection or preventing suffering, if that's what you're saying. Personnally I don't want kid because I've never seen the point, even if I had some I'm convinced I wouldn't have the free time to raise him properly, and finally I don't want to decrease the aforementioned - and already limited - free time I have for something that seems pointless to me. I also don't think it makes me sound like a dick, to each his own. But I still believe there's still good reasons even for people that want them to not have them today.
how can you be sure you possibly know what the sum total of their life-that-never-was would be
I can't. One can make a reasonable guess, though. Modern civilization as we know it is on its last legs, and what's coming won't be pretty.
I haven’t said that, of course the problem is systemic.
Then don't bother with the ecological pretense. That's all I'm really saying.
I’m absolutely not trying to defend my choice to not have kids under a guise of environmental protection or preventing suffering, if that’s what you’re saying. Personnally I don’t want kid because I’ve never seen the point, even if I had some I’m convinced I wouldn’t have the free time to raise him properly, and finally I don’t want to decrease the aforementioned - and already limited - free time I have for something that seems pointless to me. I also don’t think it makes me sound like a dick, to each his own. But I still believe there’s still good reasons even for people that want them to not have them today.
Okay, so you just don't want to have kids because you don't want to have kids. That's fine. And for the record, I should have put more emphasis on "sound like a dick". I think it's perfectly okay to look at the future and reason that having children will make it harder to survive, fight, and harder to protect the people you already care about right now. That argument does not require any big leaps of logic or even really a commitment to a particular philosophical notion of "good" and "suffering".
I can’t. One can make a reasonable guess, though. Modern civilization as we know it is on its last legs, and what’s coming won’t be pretty.
Okay. Some people will still have kids though and some of them will be lucky--eh y'know what if I keep this up I'll wind up arguing myself full circle into a moral responsibility to have kids, which is not what I believe.
Then don’t bother with the ecological pretense. That’s all I’m really saying.
Again, there is a valid ecological reason: maintaining a population of billions of people is potentially impossible no matter the system they exist under, not without long term environmental damage and resources exhaustion. I think it is now likely impossible given the damage that's already been done (and I'm not talking about climate change here, more like ecosystems destruction). It's not a pretense.
Okay, so you just don’t want to have kids because you don’t want to have kids.
Yes, and I still think there are potentially valid reasons to want to avoid promotion of natalism / to promote antinatalism under a leftist lense. That's all I'm saying.
What do you do about your anti-natalism other than not have a child yourself? Do you talk to your friends and family and discourage them from having kids? Do you write articles about it to try to spread the idea in hopes that it would prevent births? Do you form political orgs with these people in hopes to better raise awareness or pass legislation to further anti-natalist aims?
Do you talk to your friends and family and discourage them from having kids
Yes, but mainly for the suffering aspect I mentioned above; like you rightfully said yourself in other comments, the environmental point has less standing - though again, even in a communist utopia, far less consumption, decentralized production and so on, whether or not maintaining a population of billions in a sustainable way without damaging ecosystems or exhausting resources is possible is definitely not a settled matter. We don't know.
The point about the kid suffering, to me, has more standing though. As for your question, admittedly that's about the extent of it, though.
Here's the thing, whether those people close to you have kids or not, people will continue to have kids. Unless anti-natalism is made a political end-unto itsef (a scary prospect), it won't stop being anything more than individuals choosing not to have kids because they're scared for the future. However, there 100% will be human births right until we go extinct, whenever that may be, so we must fight for the new generations with the life-affirming and extrmely practical aims of socialism.
I also don't want children, but I don't think that anyone is morally at fault for having children during hard times and even existential crisis. It's a completely normal human urge and desire to have a family which isn't totally selfish, it's just some of us don't have that but we shouldn't make it some abstract moral position or, god forbid, a political one.
That's one of the topics where I often disagree with people on CTH (here and on the old sub). I absolutely understand the leftist hate about antinatalism since it's very often parroted by malthusian ghouls that want to implement eugenics or genocide, or used as a cover to deport the problem to individuals and avoid doing anything more when it comes to our environmental impact; but there are valid reasons today to not have kids even if you want them.
This completely misidentifies the main source of environmental harm, which is not in the energy, resources, and emissions associated with sustaining any individual person. The issue is in the economic system, that is becoming increasingly more wasteful despite being able to meet everyone's basic needs more efficiently due to the more advanced productive forces. If you understand that, then the idea that it should be "turned back" on the developed world has no basis because it wouldn't even help much
Leftist want to prevent the creation of wage-slaves by ending wage slavery though, not people.
I feel like to be anti-natalist is to admit defeat to some extent, which I can get sometimes, but to be a socialist or whatever like...generally you want to overthrow capitalism and build a new society and you need people to do that and you need future generations to inhabit that society.
But if they never exist, then there isn't actually a recipient of that benefit/someone saved from suffering. :thinky-felix:
Edit: what I do understand is the sense that increasing one's responsibility to another life/lives as the world deteriorates may cause oneself more suffering as opposed to sticking with their current number of connections and responsibilities. A child can be a liability in hard times; that's undeniable. But again, that's really a personal choice, not a choice for another person
But if they never exist, then there isn’t actually a recipient of that benefit/someone saved from suffering.
That's the point, though ? you're not adding a conscious being that would've suffered had you done so. There is thus objectively less suffering in the world as a result.
That's getting on more philosophical questions where I feel I'm less informed / knowledgeable to answer; perhaps you're right and there is joy to be had in a world of resources wars, mass migrations the like of which the species has never seen, lack of food and water, potential nuclear exchanges, and wholesale misery.
There might even be. I'll just wrap this up with a rare hot, but imo good, :amber: take. (Yes I know. Amber.) Completely forget where she said it, but she makes the point that plenty of people, perhaps even the ancestors of you or I, have still had kids during hellish present conditions with no real reason to think the future conditions for the kids would be any better. Not really making a moral judgement about that one way or another, but it supports my belief that some people will be trying to have kids no matter what, and that it's best just to treat the general concept of having kids as value-neutral.
Sorry, I think my comment sounded like sarcasm but it was genuine: I genuinely don't know and you're right that there might be happiness in such a world. If you're in a tight loving community even under hardship in such a world, maybe there's some happiness to be found. Still think it's less likely than under better conditions, though.
It's a strange sub. Half of people there are leftist buddhist vegans. The other half are edgy teenagers reposting memes from r/childfree.
I guess it has a similar problem to atheist and anticonsumerist subs. On a site chock-full of middle class white dudes any ideology that isn't specifically leftist (and even some of those) gets expressed in a reactionary way. That's why antinatalist sub is so into bitching about poor people having children, atheist sub is way into shitting on Muslims.
I've left the sub because I got tired of explaining that "sterilising the poors" isn't a good idea to yet another teenage eugenicist, but who knows, maybe forums like this are the ones that need leftist perspective the most.
:D I'm an antinatalist, pretty active on the sub too. It can be a little moral high ground-y, but yeah I feel that antinatalism and political leftism have a lot of shared ideals.
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Anti-natalism is an OP to reduce the number of slaves made useless to the capitalists due to automation before they revolt.
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You probably shouldn't judge any ideology based on a random post on a reddit sub dedicated to it.
Also, actual honest to god ecofash like Pine Tree Party are really into outbreading the undesirables.
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I think it would make sense to differentiate antinatalism the philosophy, which is basically a very narrow philosophy that suggests that being born sucks even if you are privileged and doesn't suggest any totalising course of action, and antinatalism the reddit meme, which as I pointed out in another reply kinda sucks.
I share your concerns that this kind of rhetoric is going to be used by the right, but antinatalism as a stand-alone thing seems to have been born in the 2000s and I feel like "the poors shouldn't breed as much poors for their own sake" is an older idea than that.
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It's just a critique.
lol how can it solve anything it's completely obscure and irrelevant
how is this eugenics when they believe NO ONE should procreate?
I've only seen the cringe side of it I guess...what do you think those shared ideals are?
Just the general dislike for capitalism and preventing the creation of more wage-slaves
plenty of reactionary folks that also dislike capitalism. I honestly don't see anything leftist about anti-natalism unless you really stretch that definition
If anything, I see communism as very hopeful for humanity. That seems at odds with anti-natalism.
Not that I knock the personal choice not to have kids, but that's all it really is: personal choice. Basically as impactful to the world at large as choosing not to use plastic straws anymore.
All of humanity is descended from individuals, so your moral relativism of "it's personal choice' is literally the first step towards everything bad that has ever happened
It's not a moral argument, it is an empirical one. Individual people choosing not to have kids will not solve anything if capitalism, the real source of waste and pollution, is not challenged. Individual people subsisting is not the source of pollution, it is the econmic system.
More precisely, I'd say they dislike the symptoms of capitalism. If you ask them directly they'll say they love capitalism, and they likewise love all sorts of policies that perpetuate capitalism. They see the problems but reject the unifying framework.
Environmental sustainability, perhaps. Though of course a mother from, say, Ethiopia could pop out 80 kids in her life and the impact would still be less than even a single US child in terms of emissions and environmental degradation; it's mainly in developed countries right now that anti natalism should be applied.
Nah that's dumb. You wanna help the environment? Fight alongside indigenous peoples, fight for migrants, fight to dismantle the police, fight to dismantle the US military. Not having a kid, even in the first world, is as impactful as fuckin consumer choice.
I could drive 20 Hummers, and I still wouldn't be having the same impact on the environment as having one kid does.
You could have 20 kids and I'm not sure if they'd actually put more carbon into the atmosphere than a single fighter jet does across its lifecycle. ;)
Though the math gets trickier if one or more of them ends up contributing to the manufacture of said aircraft.
Alright, at this point it's only you that's going to see this, so I'll give my response to the whole everything. Yes, antinatalism takes a defeatist approach to a lot of these issues. But, genuinely, do you see these issues being solved within your lifetime? Do you think the proletariat will rise up and seize the means of production, violently uniting to throw off the shackles of the bourgeoisie? I can definitely tell you my opinion, that they will not. We are on an on-fire planet, jokingly saying "this is fine" to quell our own fears. Most likely outcome is that the rich will all escape via space, leaving the poor behind to die on this burning shithole of a planet. So, yes, while the military-industrial complex does contribute more to the end of humanity than having one kid does, unless you are somehow certain that your kid will be some combination of Che Guevara and Albert Einstein, I'm saying it's wrong to bring them into this world.
You can do all of these and still recognize that the situation is dire enough that any potential new source of emission (and in developed countries, a newly born person will emit quite a lot during his life) is not a great idea. Moreover, I'm not convinced the planet can support so many people without ongoing ecological damage. Nor am I convinced it's impossible, mind you; perhaps no meat and massively decentralized and sustainable agricultural practices like permaculture could do it.
A more valid reason to me these days, though, is the fact that putting a kid in the world right now means they'll likely suffer immensely and won't live past 30 due to the impending ecological catastrophe.
Again, this is nothing more than consumer choice. I choose not to have children. I choose to buy a hybrid. Maybe if enough people make this choice, it would solve the problem! Inadequate and ineffective. I do not criticize your choice, but I do criticize your reasoning.
Maybe. Hard to really assess when capitalist societies have done almost nothing but make the problems worse for their entire existence.
But if they never exist, then who is being saved from suffering? And presupposing that this child-who-never-was still has some sort of moral weight, how can you be sure you possibly know what the sum total of their life-that-never-was would be? I'm growing more and more sure that people who make this argument just feel bad saying that they're saving themselves trouble. Which, y'know, I get it. It makes you sound like a dick to put it that way, but it's much more morally consistent and probably correct. Kids are a liability in the best of times.
I haven't said that, of course the problem is systemic.
I'm absolutely not trying to defend my choice to not have kids under a guise of environmental protection or preventing suffering, if that's what you're saying. Personnally I don't want kid because I've never seen the point, even if I had some I'm convinced I wouldn't have the free time to raise him properly, and finally I don't want to decrease the aforementioned - and already limited - free time I have for something that seems pointless to me. I also don't think it makes me sound like a dick, to each his own. But I still believe there's still good reasons even for people that want them to not have them today.
I can't. One can make a reasonable guess, though. Modern civilization as we know it is on its last legs, and what's coming won't be pretty.
Then don't bother with the ecological pretense. That's all I'm really saying.
Okay, so you just don't want to have kids because you don't want to have kids. That's fine. And for the record, I should have put more emphasis on "sound like a dick". I think it's perfectly okay to look at the future and reason that having children will make it harder to survive, fight, and harder to protect the people you already care about right now. That argument does not require any big leaps of logic or even really a commitment to a particular philosophical notion of "good" and "suffering".
Okay. Some people will still have kids though and some of them will be lucky--eh y'know what if I keep this up I'll wind up arguing myself full circle into a moral responsibility to have kids, which is not what I believe.
Again, there is a valid ecological reason: maintaining a population of billions of people is potentially impossible no matter the system they exist under, not without long term environmental damage and resources exhaustion. I think it is now likely impossible given the damage that's already been done (and I'm not talking about climate change here, more like ecosystems destruction). It's not a pretense.
Yes, and I still think there are potentially valid reasons to want to avoid promotion of natalism / to promote antinatalism under a leftist lense. That's all I'm saying.
All of the potential combinations of sperm and egg
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What do you do about your anti-natalism other than not have a child yourself? Do you talk to your friends and family and discourage them from having kids? Do you write articles about it to try to spread the idea in hopes that it would prevent births? Do you form political orgs with these people in hopes to better raise awareness or pass legislation to further anti-natalist aims?
Yes, but mainly for the suffering aspect I mentioned above; like you rightfully said yourself in other comments, the environmental point has less standing - though again, even in a communist utopia, far less consumption, decentralized production and so on, whether or not maintaining a population of billions in a sustainable way without damaging ecosystems or exhausting resources is possible is definitely not a settled matter. We don't know.
The point about the kid suffering, to me, has more standing though. As for your question, admittedly that's about the extent of it, though.
Here's the thing, whether those people close to you have kids or not, people will continue to have kids. Unless anti-natalism is made a political end-unto itsef (a scary prospect), it won't stop being anything more than individuals choosing not to have kids because they're scared for the future. However, there 100% will be human births right until we go extinct, whenever that may be, so we must fight for the new generations with the life-affirming and extrmely practical aims of socialism.
I also don't want children, but I don't think that anyone is morally at fault for having children during hard times and even existential crisis. It's a completely normal human urge and desire to have a family which isn't totally selfish, it's just some of us don't have that but we shouldn't make it some abstract moral position or, god forbid, a political one.
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That's one of the topics where I often disagree with people on CTH (here and on the old sub). I absolutely understand the leftist hate about antinatalism since it's very often parroted by malthusian ghouls that want to implement eugenics or genocide, or used as a cover to deport the problem to individuals and avoid doing anything more when it comes to our environmental impact; but there are valid reasons today to not have kids even if you want them.
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This completely misidentifies the main source of environmental harm, which is not in the energy, resources, and emissions associated with sustaining any individual person. The issue is in the economic system, that is becoming increasingly more wasteful despite being able to meet everyone's basic needs more efficiently due to the more advanced productive forces. If you understand that, then the idea that it should be "turned back" on the developed world has no basis because it wouldn't even help much
Leftist want to prevent the creation of wage-slaves by ending wage slavery though, not people. I feel like to be anti-natalist is to admit defeat to some extent, which I can get sometimes, but to be a socialist or whatever like...generally you want to overthrow capitalism and build a new society and you need people to do that and you need future generations to inhabit that society.
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But if they never exist, then there isn't actually a recipient of that benefit/someone saved from suffering. :thinky-felix:
Edit: what I do understand is the sense that increasing one's responsibility to another life/lives as the world deteriorates may cause oneself more suffering as opposed to sticking with their current number of connections and responsibilities. A child can be a liability in hard times; that's undeniable. But again, that's really a personal choice, not a choice for another person
That's the point, though ? you're not adding a conscious being that would've suffered had you done so. There is thus objectively less suffering in the world as a result.
Objectively? How do you measure suffering and does it negate joy/pleasure or are those separate counts?
That's getting on more philosophical questions where I feel I'm less informed / knowledgeable to answer; perhaps you're right and there is joy to be had in a world of resources wars, mass migrations the like of which the species has never seen, lack of food and water, potential nuclear exchanges, and wholesale misery.
There might even be. I'll just wrap this up with a rare hot, but imo good, :amber: take. (Yes I know. Amber.) Completely forget where she said it, but she makes the point that plenty of people, perhaps even the ancestors of you or I, have still had kids during hellish present conditions with no real reason to think the future conditions for the kids would be any better. Not really making a moral judgement about that one way or another, but it supports my belief that some people will be trying to have kids no matter what, and that it's best just to treat the general concept of having kids as value-neutral.
Sorry, I think my comment sounded like sarcasm but it was genuine: I genuinely don't know and you're right that there might be happiness in such a world. If you're in a tight loving community even under hardship in such a world, maybe there's some happiness to be found. Still think it's less likely than under better conditions, though.
It did come off that way a little, but no worries. There's no elegant way to articulate that uncertainty. :rat-salute:
It's a strange sub. Half of people there are leftist buddhist vegans. The other half are edgy teenagers reposting memes from r/childfree.
I guess it has a similar problem to atheist and anticonsumerist subs. On a site chock-full of middle class white dudes any ideology that isn't specifically leftist (and even some of those) gets expressed in a reactionary way. That's why antinatalist sub is so into bitching about poor people having children, atheist sub is way into shitting on Muslims.
I've left the sub because I got tired of explaining that "sterilising the poors" isn't a good idea to yet another teenage eugenicist, but who knows, maybe forums like this are the ones that need leftist perspective the most.
no place for misantry here fuckhead
What is misantry? Is it when you hate ants?
they ruined my picnic :(
did you mean misanthropy or misandry?
wait i really said the wrong fucking word god thats embarrassing
If you hated people, you'd want them to live and suffer.
you are now on the potential terrorist section of my community watchlist