Antinatalism is silly edit: beyond a personal life choice that is. Births are gonna happen no matter how much you browbeat people about it. On the plus side, improving everyone's general welfare and quality of life reduces birthrates, historically.
Let me be silly then. I'm not trying to tell people what to do anyway
All good. I'm just trying to anticipate the moralizing direction anti-natalism discussions often wind up taking because it's extremely tedious when they do go that way.
Fair enough, I guess. I'm generally trying to operate with a fundamental distinction between what I, descriptively, find immoral and what I, prescriptively, want to see in a moral world. Policing bodies and reproduction itself certainly isn't something I want to see in a moral world
Bacterial binary fission and it's consequences have been a disaster for life as we know it
Self-replicating RNA molecules brought about by either lightning strikes in primordial soup or the heat from underwater sulfur vents was a party trick that has gone way too far!
IDK, anti-natalism always seemed misanthropic to me. Misery is a material condition, not an inherent aspect of human life.
For me anyways, the main reason I call myself a leftist is because I believe that material conditions must necessarily change regardless of what anyone wants.
I think especially now, during a major crisis, change is in the air and the future is up for grabs. If anything, change is necessary--the old neoliberal world is dying and it can't be saved, regardless of how much other people want to save it (Biden sure as shit isn't going to save it)--something new must eventually take its place. It could be fascism, it could be socialism, or it could be some even crappier version of capitalism, or something even worse like world war. The outcome depends on political factors that are within our control if we can be bothered to organize.
Our current circumstances cannot last. The rule of capital won't last forever for the same reason that the rule of Kings and the Pope didn't last forever. Projecting our current circumstances onto the entire human race for all eternity, and misanthropically concluding that the human race should stop reproducing itself flies in the face of history which shows that change is the rule, not the exception. Anti-natalism is a defeatist death cult, and its best to save those for the fascists.
Okay but it is probably worth noting that material conditions changing isn’t the same things as them improving, which I figured it was obvious that that was what we would be meaning here given the issue here being whether or not the Material Condition of Misery is likely to be permanent.
If you're looking for a guarantee that material conditions will improve, then I don't know what to say, because there is no such guarantee. Likewise, there is no guarantee that misery will persist for the same reason. The only thing that's obvious is that material conditions are never permanent, which is partially why anti-natalist sentiments make no sense to me, particularly when they come from folks on the left.
As I see it, capitalism produces misery through the process of alienation. Alienation from our work, alienation from each other, and alienation from society at large. In order to believe that misery is permanent, I'd have to believe that alienation is permanent--that it's impossible to construct a society where people aren't alienated from each other and their work. I'd have to believe in the permanence of capitalism in other words. But if I believed in the permanence of capitalism or in the impossibility of socialism, then I wouldn't really be a leftist and I would have no reason to call myself a socialist.
As I see it, a belief in the permanence of misery requires an admission that socialism is impossible. Do you agree? (not trying to back you into a corner here--I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts on this)
I suppose; although as an American there doesn’t really seem to be much in the way of a political stance I can take that doesn’t ultimately resolve into a defeatist death cult, at least on my end. Which actually might explain the prevalence of anti-natalism as a sentiment in the Western Left tbh.
I just don't see how anti-natalism follows from the insufficiency of the American left. I'm American too, and I certainly don't think I'll see socialism in my lifetime, but it wouldn't surprise me if I saw a growth in militant unionization and a growth in socialist parties. The stages for that are already set in place. The neoliberal assault on labor is weakening, and in the wake of COVID, global supply chains are being reworked in order to make them more national. But if production is to return to the imperialist core, then that will open up new possibilities for industrial unionization, and it gives capital fewer options to resist the unionization. At the same time, anti-socialist sentiment is rapidly dying off as the younger generations are much more interested in radical left politics than the older generations. I don't see the rise in interest in socialism and Marxism retreating anytime soon, unless Boomers figure out how to live forever. Finally, through the BLM protests, young organizers are starting to relearn the techniques of protest and civic disruption--and are forcing America's ugly race relations and grotesque criminal justice system to the forefront of everyone's mind.
All this points towards a future in which socialism is much less of a pipe dream than it feels now. Projecting the current state of the American left into the indefinite future seems at odds with what has happened over the last 10 years, and with what is happening now. Being an anti-natalist would require me to ignore the rising American left that I see right in front of my face. It would require me to erase the actually existing American socialists who are working successfully towards a future where socialism becomes a real possibility.
(Also I suppose I should mention that my previous comment was not really about broad social trends at all, it was half me doing a bit, and half a cry for help.)
That's fair--I kinda figured. I wanted to focus on anti-natalism because it seemed to be the focus of OP, and also because I truly believe that it is a misanthropic view that is not only personally destructive, but destructive to the left as a political project (not to mention dismissive of socialists working on behalf of future generations)--it's important to me to at least try and keep people from falling down that path.
Anyways, sorry to hear that you're in a tough spot. I wish I had good advice, but I'm not in a great place myself!
Sorry gang I’m on an anti-natalist kick tonight.
How about when you say you don’t like kids and someone responds “it’ll be different when you have your own!”, like fuck off dude, I’m not signing up to be held hostage by my own brain chemistry 😤
(I realise hating on future generations is literally the opposite of leftism, I’ll still fight tooth and nail for any of y’alls kids, just let me have my moment)
The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life, and poisons the earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the gun shoots death, and purifies the earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth and kill!
that sounded pretty badass, "poisons the earth with a plague of men", so i googled it thinking it either came from some fantasy game or like 1970s new art feminist shit and honestly what the fuck. i hate what you've helped me discover.
Check out the book Better Never To Have Been for more on this argument.
To quote Desert and Silvia Federici
Silvia Federici has clearly laid out that a key foundation of early capitalism was the destruction of women’s control over their own fertility: “...wombs became public territory, controlled by men and the state, and procreation was directly placed at the service of capitalist accumulation”
Greater access to birth control, decriminalization of abortions, and better sexual/social education surrounding copulation for all genders can lead to a more manageable human population and will become more necessary in communities in which local environmental carrying capacity is
reachedovershot dramatically.Forcing a person to bear a child (rather than a consensual decision, and especially when "fertile age" is used as impetus) is cruel and perpetuates capitalism and the consumer/proletariat class that necessarily drives it.
Anti-natalist hour? I'm here for it.
I just think it's immoral to have kids, tbh. To throw a new consciousness into this hellworld is reprehensible, with how we're destroying our own habitat and all. Not even to mention the violent strife that results from the destruction of this habitat. Like... If you want to have a kid, just so it can grow up and fight in the climate wars, you do you - I just don't think that's fair to the kid.
No, I don't think it extends. There's a fundamental difference between ending an ongoing experience (euthanasia of old people) versus choosing not to create new experience (refusing to produce a child yourself). I don't have an elaborate Anti-Natalist stance to expand here though, it's not like it has any real place in my politics.
I don't really have an answer to that question; just thinking about it has me worried enough tbh.
no you fucking brainlet, everything i don't like or disagree with is fascism. creamy peanut butter? fascism. flyfishing? fascism. skim milk? you bet your ass that's fascism
I agree, but saying "childbirth and its consequences have been a disaster for humanity" with zero context is really fucking stupid and there's no way to tell if it's a good faith critique of excess population growth caused by capitalism convincing people to have more children than they can support or if it's just a dumb fucking edgy "babby sux lel" idiot taking their venting from r/childfree and putting it here instead
I like existing, if only because I don't have a lot of other options when it comes to reacting to it, so I choose to choose the positive reaction.
Imagine if we just laid eggs and put them in an incubator with a battery backup.
