On Antinatalism

 

On Antinatalism

Antinatalism is the view that for human beings it is better to have never having been born. While the word itself is recent, the view isn’t. It is one of those views that once you think about it seriously ceases to seem to be absurd. Indeed, all human beings will die at a certain moment and some of them experience in their life extreme level of suffering. Indeed, it seems to me that only a thoughtless person would not question if, in some cases, it is not better to having come into this world.

To be honest, there is perhaps an argument that, assuming that there is no afterlife, this life is quite asymmetrical with regards to happiness and suffering. For instance, hurting oneself can take only a fraction of a second whereas healing can take long time (and far too often healing is never complete). Or a cerebral stroke can make us paralyzed or disabled and, clearly, in a very short time renders us incapable of things that took a lot of time to be learned and so on. Merely surviving requires some efforts and if we do not anything we will inevitably suffer and die. It is no wonder that, indeed, most religions see our earthly life as either a punishment, a result of being trapped in a delusion, a consequence of a transgression etc or a combination of these kinds of things. All these worlviews seem to confirm this intuition: if there is no afterlife, coming into being would be an evil for us. And, as it happens, even if there is an afterlife, our coming into being can be good or bad for us depending on the nature of the afterlife.  

While particular instances of suffering are contingent, death seems to be inevitable for all human beings. In order to reject antinatalism, one should be able to justify how the undeniably positive aspects of life – which like the negative ones seem contingent - can compensate for the inevitability of death. Clearly, this also depends on the views that one has about the eventual survival after death, the nature of the self and so on.

Let’s say that Alice and Bob are told a prophecy according to which all their children will inevitably end in a state of endless conscious torment (ECT). Assuming that they are in the position to avoid procreating, we might ask: would Alice and Bob do a good action if after becoming convinced by the prediction of the prophecy they nevertheless decide to procreate? In this scenario, it would seem clear that Alice and Bob wouldn’t do a good action if they procreate while fully convinced that all their children will end up in a state of literally unending conscious torment.

Given that there is one case in which it becomes quite questionable procreating it seems to me that asking the question about in which situations is good to procreate seems to me a valid philosophical inquiry. Let’s say that physical death entails the total annihilation of a person and that Alice and Bob are fully convinced of this. Assuming that the annihilation of a person is an evil, Alice and Bob should find a justification to allow such an evil to happen to a person. In which situations is procreating, then, an acceptable choice if death is the total annihilation of a person?

There is, further, another problem. Procreation causes the coming into be of a person. We are born without our consent. Assuming that we didn’t exist prior this life, we didn’t ask to come into existence and we didn’t choose to come into existence.

To appreciate this point, let’s say that a man finds himself in a situation where he has to choose among options. For some reasons, he chooses an option and he later regrets of having chosen that option. In this case, we might say that his misery is, at least in part, his own responsibility. He wasn’t forced to choose what he chose. But let’s say that another man forces, in good faith, the former to choose that option. Now, clearly, the former man has, in my opinion, all the reasons to not taking responsibility for the choice the latter made for him.

All of this tells us that procreating isn’t a ‘trivial’ choice. Rather like all other choices, it should be analysed and questioned. Considering what I believe about death, the afterlife etc in which conditions is it good to procreate?

Clearly, these reservations can also be made in cases in which the outcome isn’t clear from the beginning.

For instance, someone who denies the afterlife and is convinced that annihilation at death isn’t enough to accept antinatalism might still decide that procreating is unethical if he or she consider that it is very likely that his or her children will suffer horribly in their life (let’s say that they are certain or almost certain that their children will be kidnapped and tortured or horribly killed by some kind of disease).      

Conversely, someone that believes that his or her newborn babies will suffer forever if he or she might not be able to perform a sacred rite in time might have good justifications to have reservations about the goodness of procreation. Indeed, is it worth the risk to procreate even if there is a minimal risk that children might suffer endless torments after death without having personal sins? Here the infinitely negative outcome isn’t certain but, at the same time, leads, inevitably, to such a question.

So, it seems to me that procreating is a good action only if some conditions are met.

Indeed, it is easy to imagine scenarios where procreating seems to be a morally wrong action or, at least, a questionable one. And yet it seems to me that people refuse to think about this topic in any depth.

So the question is: in which conditions is it good to procreate?

To me, it is clear that if there is no afterlife, then intentional procreation involves a moral evil: given that annihilation is inevitable, and that annihilation is an evil, then intentionally procreating brings about an evil. 

I personally think that an afterlife is possible, so antinatalism, to me, doesn't seem to me a necessary consequence of my worldview. At the same time, though, afterlife or not, the problem that antinatalism raises is very deep. We have to engage with this question: in which conditions is it good to procreate?