Many pro-natalists are claiming that there is something oxymoronic and self-defeating about antinatalism. Their claims, can be divided into three sub-claims: antinatalism being theoretically oxymoronic, ethically oxymoronic, and practically oxymoronic.
The theoretically oxymoronic sub-claim is that antinatalism is self-refuting because antinatalists claim they should never have been born, but if so, how could they have made this claim? The claim’s existence is negated by its own existence. One must experience existence to be able to condemn it.
The ethically oxymoronic sub-claim is that antinatalism is self-defeating because if the more caring people would not procreate, and the less caring people would keep procreating, the world would become a worse place, which is exactly the opposite of antinatalists’ goals, as it would be filled with careless people.
The practically oxymoronic sub-claim is that antinatalism is self-defeating because if only antinatalists would not procreate, after one generation, there would no longer be any antinatalists, and everyone would be pro-natalists.
In the following text I’ll shortly address these claims.
Antinatalism Being Theoretically Implausible
The fact that had antinatalists never been born they couldn’t have argued that they should have never been born, is not by any means in contradiction with the fact that after they were born, and experienced existence, they think that no one should be created. Obviously one must experience existence to be able to condemn it, and indeed each and every antinatalist has, and that’s part of the reasons why we wish to prevent it from others. Antinatalism is about preventing the creation of others, not about retroactively preventing the creation of self.
It would have been a contradiction if antinatalists were arguing somehow that they should have never been born, before being born, and chose to be born anyway (sorry but sometimes ridiculous arguments must be refuted by ridiculous means). But obviously no one was a person before being created and no one chose to be created, so there is nothing self-refuting about people being forced to be created, and later, after experiencing existence, condemning it, and arguing that no one should be created.
If this claim was true then it was also implausible to say something like ‘my yellow fever is terrible, I should have never gone on that trip’, because had that person never gone on that trip this claim about the suffering from yellow fever couldn’t have been made. Supposedly, this claim’s existence was also negated by its own existence. But I fail to notice any self-refuting in the claim that I should have never gone on that trip, or should have never experienced something that I prefer to never have experienced, and that is all the more so the case since, as earlier mentioned, antinatalism is about preventing something from others not about retroactively preventing something from self, and so in this relation it would be that others should not go on that trip so to not get yellow fever.
And generally speaking, ethical arguments that deal with ethically unpermissive actions, or with negative rights, don’t necessarily need to be self-sustaining. There is nothing irrational or self-refuting about a philosophy or about ethical claims that their implementation would bring about the situation in which there would be no one there anymore to make them.
It would be irrational and self-refuting only if one of the premises or claims of antinatalism is that antinatalists should exist, but obviously there is nothing of this sort in antinatalism.
True, if everyone would agree with and apply antinatalism there would be no antinatalists anymore but there also won’t be a need for them anymore.
The supposed negation of the argument in case it is implemented is not a problem, and that is because sentient beings are more important than arguments. In fact arguments are important only because and as long as there are sentient beings, and this claim, by implying that antinatalism is self-defeating, suggests otherwise. It won’t matter that there would be no one to claim for antinatalism when there are no sentient creatures anymore. To claim otherwise is to suggest that it is a problem that once the solution is fully implemented there is no problem to solve anymore. But the fact that solutions are only relevant when there are problems is in fact a very basic antinatalist notion. As the famous antinatalist saying goes – there is no need to create a need; and in relation to the theoretically oxymoronic claim I am adding that an option that negates all problems is not a problem, but an absolute solution.
Antinatalism Being Ethically Implausible
There is something ambivalent if not absurd in the claim that antinatalism is self-defeating because if the more caring people would not procreate, and the less caring people would keep procreating, the world would become a worse place. It is as if the claimers are saying: ‘hey antinatalists you are alright! we need more people like you, so why don’t you ditch this whole antinatalist thing and make more of yourselves’, and that is absurd because the reason they want more antinatalist people is exactly the reason that made people antinatalists in the first place – because they care about suffering. The exact reasons that make them think that antinatalists should procreate are the ones who brought antinatalists to conclude that everyone mustn’t procreate.
People who are claiming that it is wrong to forbid procreation for ethical reasons because then only unethical people would procreate, should advocate, if anything, at least for conditional antinatalism, something in the form of ‘people can procreate on the condition that they are ethical’. Are any of these claimers making such a claim? Hardly likely. Instead they are choosing the easier and cowardly road – trying to convince ethical people that they must procreate too.
If the supporters of this claim are so bothered with problems in the world, why not asking careless people to stop procreating, at least correspondingly to asking antinatalists to start?
According to the logic of the supporters of the ethically oxymoronic claim, they should advocate for that only ethical people would procreate, and the rest will not. But this is not their claim. Obviously they are just manipulatively trying to turn antinatalists’ caring against their world view, and so to justify their own world view.
But even if it wasn’t the case, creating more people with the aim of solving the world’s problems, hoping that the created people would be caring, and would be capable enough to solve them, is probably the worst way to try solving them. There is no guarantee that caring people would create caring people. And even caring people are causing a lot of harm just by being alive, even if they really try not to.
Clearly it is much more efficient to focus our energy on convincing other existing people to solve world problems instead of creating more and more people, all the more so when many of which are most likely to be merely additional problems instead of solving existing ones.
But even if they won’t, the best way to create more ethical people is by activism, not by procreation. Ethical people who create new people, except the enormous harm their children would inevitably cause just by being alive, prevent from themselves to invest most of their time, energy and resources in existing problems.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average cost of raising a child from birth through age 17 is $233,610. And many children are living at their parents’ expense (who often also pay for college education) way past 17.
And it’s not the only huge financial cost which must be considered. If parents devote on average around 3 hours a day to their children, by the time they turn 18, it sums up to about 20,000 hours.
Other crucial considerations are hard to measure. It is hard to tell how much energy raising children costs but it surly is enormous.
If all that time, money and energy is invested in solving existing problems, it would surly have a much more positive effect than raising children.
Not to procreate is to not harm the person created and to not harm others (those who would be harmed by the person created), while procreating is to cause harm to the person created as well as to others. The chances that the child would be such an efficient activist that it would be worth all the harms caused by it and for it, are very very low. It is much more probable that the person created by antinatalists would cause more suffering than it would reduce (not to mention that many children would choose not to be activists at all, and so would only cause suffering and won’t reduce any), and would have more negative experiences than positive ones. Most people, even ones without exceptional problems, are frustrated, bored and dissatisfied most of the time. Most are not satisfied with their jobs, their social life, their intimate relationships, and there is a huge gap between their expectations of themselves and of the world, and what their actual lives are like. Even without exceptional problems and life of misery, it is easy to see that most people are dissatisfied. While all that is the case for every person, since this claim suggests intending children to solve the world’s problems, that means adding an enormous weight for them to carry on their shoulders, as well as exposing them to the horrors of the world. Antinatalists are suffering because of what goes on in the world, why would they want to do that to their children?!
Even if, for the sake of the argument, I will ignore the problems involved in turning children into a means to an end (in this case it is not even using someone for something, it is creating someone for something), there is no guarantee that the assignment of the created children to change the world would ever succeed. The persons created might be totally unfit for being the activists expected of them. And there is not even a guarantee that the person created would even become an activist, not to mention not harm others, and surly not that it would be such an amazing and efficient activist that any harm caused to and by that person would be worth it.
On the other hand if people would devote the same time, energy and resources to turning themselves and other people who already exist, into super-efficient activists, it would be much more sensible, efficient and morally justified than creating new people to solve problems.
Antinatalism Being Practically Implausible
The practically oxymoronic sub-claim is probably the most common one. Being so, it is commonly addressed by antinatalists, so I’ll keep it short.
Basically, antinatalists commonly counter argue this claim, by arguing that antinatalism is not inherited, evidently all antinatalists were born.
The ‘practically implausible’ claimers can counter this counter argument claiming that antinatalists were created in times when it was harder not to procreate. But probably the vast majority of antinatalists are younger than 50 years old, meaning most were created in the 70’s and later, namely, after the social revolutions of the 60’s, and in times where it became socially acceptable to choose not to procreate. It is highly unlikely that so many people who were carriers of the “antinatalism gene” (according to this claim they must be more or less equivalent to the number of current antinatalists) have chosen to nevertheless procreate in times when it was no longer unacceptable not to. I am not at all ignoring the fact that social pressure to procreate was still put on people (as is to this very day, especially on women), rather that it was significantly reduced at some parts of the world, surly to the point that had there truly been some kind of “antinatalism gene” then at least its carriers who lived in these societies, would have forsaken procreation.
Having said that, I think that behavioral and belief systems have a strong genetic component. Certainly not to the degree implied by the above pro-natalists claims, but definitely more than implied by many antinatalists who counter these pro-natalists claims.
It is still hard to determine the nature vs. nurture debate, however, there are plenty of evidences supporting that both play very important roles. And in any case, I don’t know if there is any scientific denial of the crucial impact genetics has in shaping a person’s personality, preferences and positions.
People are born with certain genetic predispositions, and they obtain other dispositions throughout their lives. These significantly affect the positions they may or may not accept during their lives. People are not blank slates and in addition they are not rational creatures. This makes it even harder for ideas, no matter how right and rational, to be accepted by people simply because they are right and rational.
There is no reason to think that an idea would prevail just because it is rational, or right, or just, or ethical. This is not how the world works. It would be a bit exaggerated to claim that the world acts on the basis of might is right, as that is not always the case. But unfortunately it is closer to that than to being rational, right, just, and ethical.
There is nothing rational, right, just, and ethical about creating someone who would be tortured for its entire miserable life, merely to enjoy nibbling that creature’s corpse for a couple of minutes.
There is nothing rational, right, just, and ethical about solving conflicts and disputes by violence not to mention wars.
There is nothing rational, right, just, and ethical about discrimination, no matter on what grounds; be it gender, skin color, sexual orientation, weight, height, or species.
There is nothing rational, right, just, and ethical about the fact that the most crucial decision in anyone’s life – the very fact of being created, where, when, to whom, and with which genetic makeup – isn’t and can’t be made, or even be slightly influenced, by that person.
And yet, all this and a lot more, are so natural and accustomed parts of life on earth.
Ironically, thinking that eventually rationality is destined to succeed, is irrational.
Our world is not rational. It runs by irrational systems, and it is consisted of irrational creatures.
People have innate predispositions.
That doesn’t mean that indeed us antinatalists should procreate so there would be more of us, as evidently the number of antinatalists is growing, and obviously all antinatalists have been created by probably natalist parents, so they were convinced by arguments, or experiences they have gone through. What it does mean is that there would be many people who will never be antinatalists because their innate predispositions, independently of and all the more so in addition to the pro-natalist indoctrination they have been brain washed with their entire lives, would overcome rational ethical arguments they may encounter. We would never convince these people. No matter how hard we’ll try.
So the conclusion derived from these claims, especially from the ethical one, is false and even peculiar, but its premise is at least partly right. It is true that mostly less caring people would procreate, and it is probable that predispositions for less caring would be passed on to their children, and it is even more likely that less caring values would be bequeathed to their children as they themselves obtain less caring values. This is still not a reason for antinatalists to consider procreation, but it is a reason for antinatalists to consider a change in their activism.
There is a threshold for our ability to influence people not to procreate and it has a lot to do with caring. If future generations would be less caring because they would be brought up by less caring parents, and maybe even maintain a less caring genetic makeup, then indeed the world would deteriorate even more. Clearly the way to stop this is not by caring people creating people as well, an option that as earlier mentioned, will not solve the problems and is more likely to make things even worse. It will not change the odds between caring and indifference. These in any case would remain significantly against us. And it is not going to change for the better any time soon. We need a comparative advantage in order to defeat the vast carelessness and indifference. And that is not going to be a knockdown rational argument, a witty meme, or an ingenious slogan.
My aim of course is not to deject any of you. I appreciate any antinatalist activism since each person not created is less suffering caused. My aim is that antinatalists would think much bigger than their near circle, and much farer than their activism lifespan. I am lamenting the fact that the suffering is never going to stop as long as antinatalists insist upon depending only on ethical arguments. This route may slowly create more antinatalism supporters, but meanwhile pro-natalists are being created in a much faster rate, diminishing more and more any option of ever turning this around. Only an external power can change this course.
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