Mild rant. I don't want kids, but now im at that age where all my stepsisters, sister and close friend all have kids now. My last childless stepsister is pregnant and they want to facetime the gender reveal. I just can't feign my excitement for this shit anymore. oh yay, another white american baby, how special. I guess she really just made the mistake of having a kid after the people i care about most(sister and close friend) already had kids so i just don't care anymore(in addition to not being close with my stepsisters, our parents married and we were all young adults basically).
But this got me thinking about how people talk about their pregnancies. The selfless reason is bringing a life into the world(lol) but i literally can't think of another selfless reason. They will want the kid to be like them, they will try to raise it like them, they probably also are thinking about how a child can care for them when they are older. Two people think they are really great and made something super special and im fucking over it.
you can't pull a soul out of non-existence because you're conceptualising non-existence as a state of being you can exist in.
the consent of the unborn is irrelevant because they don't exist yet and things that don't exist are only thought experiments
Uhh... No you actually are responsible for all the suffering and misery your children experience. You created them for selfish reasons, everything that happens to them is your fault, and you didn't ask first. Like, I don't talk about this basically ever because no one wants to engage with it, but having children is an entirely unjustifiable moral harm. You cannot, ever, under any circumstances, make creating new life morally or ethically justifiable.
People that don't exist don't have a right to be consulted because there is no them that can have rights.
Also this logic is weird why are parents only responsible for the bad things that happen to their kids and not the good ones. And why are bad things weighted stronger than good things
1.) All "rights" are constructed around a hypothetical abstract person. We don't conceptualize rights as they apply to Deborah Standing, 36, of Spokesie Illinois. We conceptualize them around an ideal, universal person who is no more or less real than an unborn baby. If it's wrong to do it to Deborah then it's wrong to do it to an hypothetical unborn person.
2.) Bad things don't balance out or negate good things. Giving someone a bunch of ice cream cones doesn't somehow make up for punching them in the face or giving them a swirlie. You're not justified for brutalizing someone at one moment because you were kind to them at another moment. Inflicting harm for selfish reasons is never justified.
yes there is a conceptual person who has rights. But those rights only apply when an instance of person such as Deborah Standing comes into existence for them to apply to.
why do good things not balance out bad things and who are you to decide that.
Let's say I punch someone in the head really hard. Later, I make them a really nice cake.
Does making someone a nice cake balance out punching them in the head?
Well this is a really uncharitable way of looking at Steve's point. No one is putting forth that you can just bake a cake to make problems go away. To me, experiencing something does has some value in and of itself. Who's to say whether or not every moment balances out to okay? I enjoy the sun on my face. I enjoy the rain falling softly around me. Life does suck, but there is a lot more complexity to a human life than just good or bad and only using these two metrics to try and measure out whether or not birthing someone is right or wrong seems a bit folly.
Also to answer your question, it depends. Is the cake a sign of actual change and consideration? Has that person moved on to the point where they respect and care for others enough not to hit them? The actions can be signifiers of the much more important internal change. The cake may not undo what was done, but that's not the point is it?
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Ideas of karmic balance are helpful for interacting with people regularly in a community as they encourage people to be nice enough in some ways to balance out their negative behaviour (and everyone has negative behaviour)
Also the idea that people should just feel guilty for their entire lives is itself an idea of retributive justice and also ignores the fact that guilt actually traps people in negative patterns of behaviour and the only way to improve as a person is to forgive yourself.
Your way would result in everyone feeling terrible while never improving as people
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what does this mean then
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I for one have had extremely negative experiences that looking back helped me grow as a person and that given the option wouldn't undo.
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Where does abortion fit in here?
They're not people yet, and never will be. The argument the previous users present with having kids is that they will be born, and therefore will be people.
Ah, I was missing the implicit “when they become a person”. Fair enough.
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Kant blows but fwiw, antinatalists like Benatar get him wrong with the whole means to an ends argument
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bullying Kant is always justified
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antinatalists try not to advocate eugenics challenge [impossible]
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Huh You know where i can read more about that