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
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