In an article called “Anti-Natalism and the Future of Suffering: Why Negative Utilitarians Should Not Aim For Extinction” Magnus Vinding argues that people should act so to reduce suffering as much as possible, and should do whatever accomplishes that goal, however antinatalism is not the best way to do that. In his view antinatalism “misses the bigger picture and instead focuses only on whether single individual lives are worth starting for the sake of the individuals who are brought into existence. We have to take a much broader view to address that question, the question concerning how to reduce the most suffering in the world.” Although there are antinatalists who solely focus on the sake of the person forced into existence, many others argue against procreation for being morally wrong regardless of the wellbeing of the created person (the consent argument for example is highly popular among antinatalists), and many also consider the harm to others. In fact, although this blog doesn’t solely focus on the harm to others, in my view, it definitely must be the main claim for antinatalism. So his assumptions regarding antinatalism are mistaken, some of us do take a much broader view to address that question, and that’s exactly why some of us aim for human extinction.
Vinding doesn’t define himself as a pro-natalist, but very much like many pro-natalists he conveniently chooses to present antinatalism as if it is based on one argument by David Benatar. And he criticizes Benatar for claiming in the preface of Better Never to Have Been that he has no expectation that his book or its arguments will have any impact on baby-making:
“So it seems that Benatar actually does not argue for anti-natalism with any serious conviction that it will change the world much (“Procreation will continue undeterred”). Rather, his book seems more like the work of a mathematician who wants to show the truth of a counter-intuitive conjecture for its own sake, because he feels the truth “needs to be said”, not because it will “make (much) difference” in terms of impact in the world.” (p.3)
Besides that it is wrong to present a whole movement, let alone one that is abundant with various arguments, ideas, objections, inner dilemmas, nuances and etc., as if it is a one claim movement, with one thinker, and besides that many antinatalists oppose Benatar’s arguments, including myself, this book was published in 2006 and was based on an article written in the late 90’s, back then antinatalism was much less socially accepted than it is now (an improvement which is to a large extent thanks to Benatar). Since 2006 Benatar himself wrote two more books about the subject, as well as many articles and elaborated replies to his critics, he also attended several conferences, and gave plenty of interviews, in all of which he thoroughly and persistently explained his views regarding the wrongness of creating new persons. So it is unfair to criticize him for being like “a mathematician who wants to show the truth of a counter-intuitive conjecture for its own sake”. Furthermore had it been the case, he wouldn’t have written the third chapter of Better Never to Have Been where he makes the quality of life argument.
I do agree with Vinding that:
“there will always be people who decide to have children, no matter how convincing an argument anti-natalists can make against it, and thus the only way anti-natalists would be able to prevent such people from procreating would be by force”. (p.3)
However I disagree with his predicted scenario:
“And given that people likely also will be willing to defend their right to procreate with force, and given that the proportion of people who will either decide to have children or be in support of such a decision is likely to be the vast majority, the prospects of success for anti-natalists who wish to force people not to procreate looks no better than they do for the nonviolent anti-natalists. In the worst case, a war could break out, and the vastly outnumbered pro-coercion anti-natalists would score a predictable defeat that would leave things largely unchanged…” (p.3)
If the anyway much more desirable option of imposed sterilization on all people without the use of force is found, then his claim is irrelevant. The idea was never to literally force sterilization, but to impose it on everyone using an unforceful method such as a chemical poured into major water systems all over the world, or sprayed all over the world, or developing and spreading virus or bacteria which causes sterilization, or whatever method that can potentially affect everyone without the need to physically force it on everyone. The idea was never one that requires winning a war against pro-natalists.
Anyway, this is not Vinding’s main case against antinatalism. His main claim is that if antinatalism gained instant success today it means that humanity would be left with about a century to cure and prevent all suffering on the planet and on other planets:
“we are by no means guaranteed to be able to end suffering on Earth within the next century. Just consider the oceans with trillions of vertebrates, or the more than a quintillion – a billion billion – insects who live on the planet, and who may well be able to suffer. Making sure that no such beings suffer, or evolve into beings who do, is a huge challenge, and it seems to me that we are far more likely to be unable to accomplish such a thing within the next century than we are to succeed.” (p.4)
Of course humans are by no means guaranteed to be able to end suffering on Earth within the next century, since in order to do that they must first of all want to. Humans haven’t even taken the first step towards ending suffering on Earth which is to at least stop intensifying their share in causing it. Currently humans are still deeply immersed in increasing the suffering on Earth by artificially creating billions of animals who would know nothing but suffering for their whole miserable lives, just so humans could enjoy the taste of their flesh. Humans are way too unethical for anyone to take Vinding’s claim seriously. Let’s see them stop creating and intensifying absolutely needless suffering all the time, before counting on them to ever reduce suffering they are not directly causing.
I fail to comprehend the empirical basis of his argument. Whenever and wherever humans have reached they have wreaked havoc. Humans have consistently hunted other animals, or in the much worse case captivated, domesticated and reared animals for food, exploited them for various uses such as carry them around, carry their belonging, fight in their wars, do their labor, guard their camps, help them hunt, keep them warm, decorate their bodies and homes, serve as the raw material for their tools, killed them when they came near the areas they have conquered from them, and systematically destruct their habitats. So why, as opposed to every single moment in history, would humans all of sudden be such caring creatures whose main task in life would be to help other animals in nature and on other planets? Where is all this compassion now? More than 95% of humans are not even vegans, meaning the vast majority of the human race is still choosing to personally and needlessly harm and abuse other animals, so to expect that they would devote their lives to help animals they haven’t personally harmed? How does it make any sense?
It seems as if Vinding had never read a history book as he presents the issue as if all along history, whenever humans have encountered other animals in nature, they wanted to help them but didn’t know how, while it is exactly the opposite. All along history whenever humans have encountered other animals they wanted to use them for their own benefit, and usually with horrendous success.
When humans have seen other animals hunt each other, they didn’t think to themselves ‘oh, if only we had a way to help these poor animals being hunted’, but more like these poor animals are chasing other animals day after day to feed themselves, when they can confine them instead, and kill them whenever they wish. Humans saw what other animals are doing and made it much much much worse.
Animals in the wild would eventually be hunted or die of disease or hunger, but at least they are free, at least they live in a natural environment and not a filthy and contaminated one, at least they live in their natural society, at least they can eat and drink whenever and whatever they want and not what and when humans decide that they would, at least they can sleep whenever they want wherever they want and not when and where humans decide they would sleep, at least they can spread their limbs, stretch their necks, socialize, breath clean air, clean themselves, fly, roam, run, jump and play. Humans have carelessly and needlessly taken all that away from them. Don’t get this wrong this is not at all a glorification of nature. I agree that life in nature is horrible, only that life under human control is much more hellish. The point is not that nature is good, as it is definitely extremely far from being good, the point is that as horrible as nature is, humanity is nonproportionally worse.
Humans are the world’s biggest problem, not its greatest saviors.
I highly recommend reading the text about The Harm to Others, to get a broader sense of how harmful humans actually are. Vinding’s description gives the false impression that humans are constantly busy with minimizing suffering, while the truth is that most are constantly busy with maximizing it. The risk that suffering on Earth wouldn’t end is because humanity doesn’t care about it, not because it might run out of people.
Most of the world’s suffering is not a result of humans not having enough time to end it, but a result of humans having too much time causing it. The biggest barrier to reducing suffering is the human race, not its extinction.
Interplanetary Exploitation
Vinding argues that the human race must continue not only because it would be the savior of everyone on Earth, but also because it would be the savior of everyone in the universe:
“Even if we were guaranteed to be able to prevent all suffering on Earth for good within the next couple of centuries, this would not give us any guarantee that suffering will not occur beyond Earth.” (p.5)
And how does he suggest helping creatures suffering on other planets…
“The ideal thing would likely be to build a benevolent Von Neuman probe, an advanced spaceship that can travel out in all directions with as high a speed as possible, and which has the technological capability to reduce involuntary suffering in the best way possible wherever it goes.
And what is important to note in this context is that our ability to create such a machine lies even further away in the future than does the ability to “merely” cure Earth from suffering. This must be so, since this probe would have to be able to accomplish both this latter mission of curing Earth from suffering and much more.
So this is the final and supreme reason that counts against anti-natalism: if we take the minimization of suffering seriously, we cannot defend going extinct before we have seeded a cosmic mission to minimize suffering in our future light cone, and it seems safe to say that we will not be able to finish this task any time soon. In order to accomplish our goal of reducing suffering in the world, continued human procreation still seems necessary.” (p.9)
All the suffering currently caused by humans, and all the suffering that will be caused by humans in the future here on earth, if the human race won’t go extinct, can’t be seriously balanced with the hypothetical option that there are sentient creatures outside of earth, and that they are miserable, and that humans (of all creatures) would want and could someday help them using a special spaceship.
It is very cynical, absurd and ironic to argue that all the suffering caused by humans on earth must continue because of the potential suffering in the rest of the universe. That is especially so since humans are extremely far from solving even human related problems.
Hunger wasn’t always a human phenomenon. Surly people were hungry in times of harsh weather, but it was never even remotely similar in kind and extent to the world hunger of the last two centuries. Modern hunger is manmade. It’s a result of politics and economics. And that simple problem that humanity has created by its own hand, to its own kind, wasn’t yet and is still far from being solved. Unlike the case of stopping the creation of new sentient creatures just to torture them, or helping animals in nature, not to mention helping sentient creatures on other planets (if there are any and if it is even possible), this is solving one of the biggest problems humanity has ever faced, and one that is caused by humanity and to its own kind. And it still exists in the third decade of the 21st century. So justifying the torture of trillions of beings by the human race every single year, because maybe someday humanity might build an advanced spaceship that can travel out in all directions with as high a speed as possible, and which has the technological capability to reduce involuntary suffering in the best way possible wherever it goes, when humanity is so far from feeding all its members, and is even farer from stop fighting each other over territories on this planet?
“The pessimistic anti-natalist might object that building such probes is an impossibly ambitious goal, and that we will only cause more suffering by aiming for such a high goal…one could have said the same thing about the goal of creating civilization 70,000 years ago, when there were only a few thousand humans running around on the plains of Africa, a goal that could barely even be envisioned back then. And yet, 700 centuries later, here we are: civilization has arisen, along with computers and civil liberties, and we have more minds working to improve our knowledge, technology, and ethics than ever before. In light of this development, it seems that we should be careful to deem the aforementioned ambitious goal impossible.” (p.10)
Only an extremely passionate human chauvinist, ignorant of humanity’s horrendous past, and speciesist present, can give civilization as a good example. Civilization is an example of the worst thing that ever happened on earth, surely to other animals, but also to humans. All along history humans have used their intelligence and rationality to use, abuse, exploit, manipulate, and control each other and other animals. All along history humans have consistently brought havoc everywhere they have reached. Wars, pollution, torture facilities, concentration camps, factory farms and many many more examples are the products of human civilization and intelligence. Human civilization is an ongoing memorial of exploitation, domination and destruction.
It is really cruel to condemn trillions upon trillions of sentient creatures to such a miserable life because maybe someday humans might build an advanced spaceship that can travel out in all directions with as high a speed as possible, that might help creatures that might exist on other planets.
There is no reason to believe that as opposed to their history on this planet, when humans would reach other planets, they would act differently. Just as they have taken control of every inch on this planet, same is likely to happen on other planets. They would most probably exploit the extraterrestrials they meet and even “export” their earthly exploitation methods to other planets by taking along with them the creatures they are so good at exploiting here on earth, and if that would happen it would multiply the tremendous suffering they already cause.
Vinding conveniently argues that it would be callous “if humanity, after having glimpsed an Earth plagued by suffering, and a future light cone potentially even more so, chooses to opt for eternal peace without doing anything about the rest. That would be nothing but anthropocentric speciesism and a wasted opportunity.” (p.11). Only that as mentioned earlier this is not necessarily the reason for human extinction. It certainly isn’t mine. The goal is not to opt for humans’ eternal peace, but for the end of humans’ eternal tyranny over every other creature on earth.
In the end of his article against human extinction, Vinding calls to promote suffering focused ethics and anti-speciesism. Ironically, human extinction is the immediate and clear inference from suffering focused ethics and anti-speciesism perspective. The conclusion that human extinction is ethically mandatory is more unequivocal and urgent not under anthropocentric antinatalism, but when considering the harm to others. Then, human extinction is not a desirable by product of antinatalism, but a silent scream coming out of the throats of trillions of miserable sentient creatures.
References
Magnus Vinding Anti-Natalism and the Future of Suffering: Why Negative Utilitarians Should Not Aim For Extinction 2015
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