Disclaimer: I don't have kids and I'm not sure if I will. Take everything I say with a grain of salt because this entire discussion is highly dependent on perspective. That's a discussion I've had...
Disclaimer: I don't have kids and I'm not sure if I will. Take everything I say with a grain of salt because this entire discussion is highly dependent on perspective.
That's a discussion I've had with myself as well. I don't have an answer; instead, I'm aiming for a discussion.
A large concern of mine with respect to having children is that I don't know what kind of world we are handing off to them; from the climate change standpoint, I am afraid it won't be as good as the one I was given. I too struggle with the idea that I never asked to be born, yet here I am. I had no choice in the matter whatsoever; it was entirely my parents' decision (and as an adult, it is yours as well). I am highly cautious of having a child because there are many elements that could make their life much more difficult if they were to go wrong. None of us can predict what will happen during the 18+ years you would spend raising a child.
Everyone is going to have some amount of suffering or discomfort in their life. Depending on who you were born to, this discomfort may range from not eating for 2 days to not getting the newest iPhone all of your friends have. Obviously one is worse than the other, but you can only experience what you experience. It is suffering nonetheless. No matter your background, not everything can be peachy 100 percent of the time; it's just a fact of life. And if it were, that would honestly be a pretty dull existence. It's like playing a game where you trivially win every time - it isn't interesting or rewarding. It may be safe, but there's no depth to the experience. Aside: I don't mean to downplay starvation, please bear with me.
I'm of the opinion that life is about the experience. I have goals, sure, but it's more about the overall path than the destination (cliche, I know), because the same thing happens to everyone there. Procreation absolutely has a risk - you don't know if you'll always be able to provide for your child, that they won't have some deficiency, that they won't just turn into a shitty person despite your best efforts.
Personally, I wouldn't call the act of having children immoral. However, this gets a bit grey if you are clearly unable to support that child and provide them the right resources to live in this world.
My parents and grandparents have been very generous to me, more so than I deserve in all honesty, which is why I do my best to properly use those resources. That has enabled most of my accomplishments to date. I don't say this to brag; my point is that I think there is no moral issue with bringing a child into this world if you have the resources to provide for them. This is not just food and clothing, I mean things like your attention, encouragement, and guidance (without being a helicopter parent). I know this sounds like the opinion of someone privileged (because it is), but I do think it is immoral to have a child if you are not in a position to take care of them for 18 years or more.
I wish people would more carefully consider the implications of creating a new fucking person. The fact that you do is probably a good sign, but what do I know.
If one takes a purely utilitarian view, as you seem to be leaning towards, one has to consider the nett utility (or happiness) of a human life. Assuming you live in a country with a decent...
If one takes a purely utilitarian view, as you seem to be leaning towards, one has to consider the nett utility (or happiness) of a human life.
Assuming you live in a country with a decent standard of living and a reasonably violence-free society, your child is more likely to live a mostly happy life than a mostly sad life. Of course, "into each life some rain must fall" but, overall, there's more sun than rain. The sum total of a human person's happiness in this environment is more likely to be a nett positive than a nett negative. Do you have the right to eliminate someone's chance for a mostly happy life just because it comes with some sadness?
If we audaciously applied numeric figures to human happiness and misery, we might find that a human life has a nett happiness value of +6, being the +8 (out of 10) happiness they have during their life, plus the -2 (out of -10) sadness they have during their life. Yes, we've added some sadness to the world, but we added more happiness than sadness. There was a nett gain in human happiness, for the individual and for the world.
And there's the broader picture to consider. If we look at this through the universal view of morality, we would ask what would happen if everyone followed this moral rule universally? What if everyone decided it was wrong to bring new life into the world because it might be unhappy? The outcome of that is human extinction within a century. There would be no humans on the planet a hundred years from now to even try to be happy. There would be no potential for human happiness if there were no humans around. That's a contradictory outcome: in order to reduce human misery, we also eliminated human happiness.
As regards the environment, there is an argument that we could do with fewer humans on the planet, but: this is a long-term fix; it only requires people to have fewer babies rather than no babies, and; it won't fix the problem of climate change in time (we only have about another decade before the change goes too far for our comfort).
Something that's especially worth considering when utilitarianism, but more specifically, hedonism arises is the idea of the hedonic treadmill. How valid is the hedonic treadmill? Do humans really...
Something that's especially worth considering when utilitarianism, but more specifically, hedonism arises is the idea of the hedonic treadmill.
How valid is the hedonic treadmill?
Do humans really have a baseline of happiness that we don't generally deviate from?
Do people living in extreme poverty tend to be equally happy after coming out of such a situation?
I'll be honest I don't know much about what the hedonic treadmill specifically is and should probably read more about it before writing this comment. But if the hedonic treadmill holds true, isn't hedonic utilitarianism as a theory pointless? How can there be net gains and losses when everything always returns to centre ground?
I have my doubts about the validity of the hedonic treadmill but again, that might just be because I don't know much about it.
This is purely anecdotal, but having lived in abject poverty for a large part of my life and living now (for a decent time) being able to at least provide for my family our basic necessities, the...
This is purely anecdotal, but having lived in abject poverty for a large part of my life and living now (for a decent time) being able to at least provide for my family our basic necessities, the hedonic treadmill comes off as "rich person" philosophy. I don't think I've ever encountered a person who rose up out of poverty who would say they were just as happy on their "good days" with money as they were without. It's simply not true.
Yeah this is kind of the problem I have with the idea. Growing up we'd often have no electricity or water or Internet for a few days to weeks and to be honest while it absolutely sucked, it didn't...
Yeah this is kind of the problem I have with the idea. Growing up we'd often have no electricity or water or Internet for a few days to weeks and to be honest while it absolutely sucked, it didn't make me less happy because we always had everything we needed (the lack of water and electricity wasn't because of money it was where we were, the entire part of the city had their utilities cut off). There's research to suggest that earning more than 70,000 dollars a year doesn't make you happier. So that part of the hedonic treadmill I can see, that humans have a tendency to adapt to the situations they're in.
But if someone told me that people in extreme poverty, always hungry, with people they know starving to death and dying of disease were actually just as happy as somebody in a nice rural home with a swimming pool and 5 bedrooms, I would be very upset that such a claim could be made. Because it doesn't take much to know that it's just not true. I think you're right when you say it's a rich person philosophy, in that I think there's some truth in it once you have enough money to provide for your family and take time to do luxury activities.
Part of human existence is understanding that fundamentally all any creature has an obligation to is to itself, and then only because it has convinced itself as much. It's a bit reductionist,...
Part of human existence is understanding that fundamentally all any creature has an obligation to is to itself, and then only because it has convinced itself as much. It's a bit reductionist, sure, but most philosophies are. If they weren't, we'd be living in a utopia right now.
So, accepting that as a fact, it does not behoove the individual (human, in this example) to refuse to procreate for biological, social, and cultural reasons. Without procreation a society can't continue. If a society is unable to continue, it devolves more and more until it is nothing. Human beings, as social creatures, need a society of some sort to live, which is tantamount to every creature. Thus, with no procreation there is no society and thus there are no humans.
Also, and feel free to ignore me if I'm speaking out of turn here: almost every time I've personally encountered people who believe this type of philosophy they also suffer from some form of depression. If that's true with you, I hope you're getting whatever help you need and, if you're not, we are here for you any time you need. If that isn't true with you, just ignore this entire paragraph.
And for good measure, because it can never be spread enough: For use in the US
This does not follow from your premises. At all. A creature does not usually mass ~400 millions tons. A creature is not all the instances of a given individual which more-or-less belong to the...
Part of human existence is understanding that fundamentally all any creature has an obligation to is to itself, and then only because it has convinced itself as much. [...] So, accepting that as a fact, it does not behoove the individual (human, in this example) to refuse to procreate for biological, social, and cultural reasons.
This does not follow from your premises. At all.
A creature does not usually mass ~400 millions tons. A creature is not all the instances of a given individual which more-or-less belong to the same group. A creature is not society.
There are plenty of reasons - biological, social, cultural - for an individual to refuse to procreate. Most - probably all - of those reasons are advantageous to the individual. Not procreating means not having to go through a pregnancy and childbirth. It means not having to take time off work, it means not having to take care of an infant, then a child, then an adolescent. There is a cost - measured in money, time, stress - for that.
Without procreation a society can't continue. If a society is unable to continue, it devolves more and more until it is nothing. Human beings, as social creatures, need a society of some sort to live, which is tantamount to every creature. Thus, with no procreation there is no society and thus there are no humans.
And this is something between the invocation of a slippery slope and a non-sequitur.
Yes. Without any sort of procreation society won't be able to continue existing. If everyone, or at least the vast majority of people, decided to stop procreating, no more humans would come into being.
But, again, an individual is not the whole of society. The decision of an individual to not procreate won't lead to a society where no more children are born - not any more than the existence of gay people does.
Even if it did, so what?
Let's imagine a world where every single person on Earth somehow decided "no, I don't think I want children", and went about their life trying to avoid reproducing. Every single one of the individuals making up the group that we call "society", decided against it.
In that scenario, society would eventually disappear. The human race would eventually go extinct.
Why would that be a bad thing?
I could go on about how society is not a thinking entity, how it does only exists as the connections between individuals, how it's not more important than them, how "the greater good" is a load of bollocks even outside of Harry Potter...
But, in that scenario - in a scenario where no-one is reproducing - the people have decided, collectively, that society is not worth preserving. That the cost to keep the human race alive (through reproduction, at least) is not worth paying.
Also, and feel free to ignore me if I'm speaking out of turn here: almost every time I've personally encountered people who believe this type of philosophy they also suffer from some form of depression.
I will do exactly that because while yes, I suffer from some form of depression, that's not the reason for my being anti-natalist. I am anti-natalist not because I want to die, but because I want to live, and I can't, in good conscience, create new thinking beings only to condemn them to death.
Well, I think we can use the exact opposite quite succesfully too. There's a good chance that if you have a child that the child will have a long meaningful happy life. Does that mean that if you...
Well, I think we can use the exact opposite quite succesfully too. There's a good chance that if you have a child that the child will have a long meaningful happy life. Does that mean that if you aren't constantly making children you are denying this happy life to a non consenting sentient person/people?
This discussion also reminds me of mildly relevant lyrics from the song The Greatest Show on Earth by Nightwish, it's a bit melodramatic but I still love it.
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born
The potential people who could have been here in my place
But who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara
Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton
We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA
So massively exceeds the set of actual people
In the teeth of those stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here
We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds
How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state
From which the vast majority have never stirred?"
Sure we can, but it's true that it's a bit of a wonky argument. If you can be sure that each potential offspring will suffer, I would argue that each potential offspring is pretty much guaranteed...
Sure we can, but it's true that it's a bit of a wonky argument. If you can be sure that each potential offspring will suffer, I would argue that each potential offspring is pretty much guaranteed to have good/happy experiences in their life too. Therefore I think you could say that if you don't have this hypothetical offspring that you are denying them these good parts of life.
Similarly, you could argue that your child could become the next Newton and improve the world so much that if you don't have this child you are potentionally robbing the world of becoming a much better place.
My wife and I certainly considered the ethics of bringing a life into this world knowing the garbage environment we're probably leaving her with. I'm almost certain future generations will see...
My wife and I certainly considered the ethics of bringing a life into this world knowing the garbage environment we're probably leaving her with. I'm almost certain future generations will see this age right now as peak decadence. And it's like a drug, making better choices is really hard when you've lived your life with cheap everything because the negative externalities of producing the goods we consume were never properly internalized. For me it's been small steps, I'm down to 5 days where I have meat, and trying to reduce that. I barely drive and work from home. I keep my house at low temps and heat the rooms I'm using. I switched my gas powered tools to electric. I try not water my lawn and keep it fairly tall. But it's not nearly enough to offset the emissions a new life adds to the total output.
My province is currently has raging wildfires putting many towns in danger of being burned down and our newly elected government just cancelled our carbon levy because people "shouldn't be punished" for heating their homes and rolling their coal. We're not even willing to do less than the bare minimum and we want to blame China and India for leading by example.
It's quite despairing and I feel bad for the world my daughter will have to live in if we don't collectively start taking big steps.
You would be right if happiness was the purpose of life. It is not: the purpose of life is to be meaningful. Mother Theresa, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Stephen Hawking had lives full of sorrow...
You would be right if happiness was the purpose of life. It is not: the purpose of life is to be meaningful. Mother Theresa, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Stephen Hawking had lives full of sorrow and pain. But they were absolutely meaningful.
Says who? I disagree entirely, and there are entire schools of philosophy on the opposite side to you (eg Epicureanism). Why is 'famous and respected' some inherent benchmark for having the...
if happiness was the purpose of life. It is not: the purpose of life is to be meaningful
Says who? I disagree entirely, and there are entire schools of philosophy on the opposite side to you (eg Epicureanism). Why is 'famous and respected' some inherent benchmark for having the correct answer? The person who lives a quiet life in a little house by the ocean has every bit as much chance of having it right.
“Meaningful” is a broad concept that encompasses a lot more than “famous and respected”. Those are just the examples I was able to come up with last night. Any life can be meaningful because human...
“Meaningful” is a broad concept that encompasses a lot more than “famous and respected”. Those are just the examples I was able to come up with last night. Any life can be meaningful because human beings find meaning in lots of different endeavors.
If you had a meaningful but miserable life, from my perspective you got it all wrong. If you redefine it to what the individual person finds meaningful, then it's impossible to know who had a...
If you had a meaningful but miserable life, from my perspective you got it all wrong. If you redefine it to what the individual person finds meaningful, then it's impossible to know who had a meaningful life or not.
I did. I refuse to procreate, and this is one of the main reasons for it. I don't care about what impact it would have on environment or society or the planet. It's not even suffering that matters...
I did. I refuse to procreate, and this is one of the main reasons for it.
I don't care about what impact it would have on environment or society or the planet. It's not even suffering that matters that much, but the death that would follow. Hell, it might just be even worse if we could guarantee every single person a happy, meaningful life, one that they would definitely like.
I did but not really for any of the reasons you listed. Me and my partner decided not to have kids because (1) Medically its very risky for them (2) Neither one of us want to be responsible for a...
I did but not really for any of the reasons you listed. Me and my partner decided not to have kids because (1) Medically its very risky for them (2) Neither one of us want to be responsible for a child (3) Neither of us really like children that much (4) Neither of us think we would be a good parent. Why do something neither of us want to do and change our lives in a way we don't want it to be changed? There is a nice added benefit that the #1 thing you can do to help lower your carbon footprint is to not have kids, but that's more of a nice side-effect than it was something that actually effected our decision.
It's a rather pessimistic outlook on life.
Disclaimer: I don't have kids and I'm not sure if I will. Take everything I say with a grain of salt because this entire discussion is highly dependent on perspective.
That's a discussion I've had with myself as well. I don't have an answer; instead, I'm aiming for a discussion.
A large concern of mine with respect to having children is that I don't know what kind of world we are handing off to them; from the climate change standpoint, I am afraid it won't be as good as the one I was given. I too struggle with the idea that I never asked to be born, yet here I am. I had no choice in the matter whatsoever; it was entirely my parents' decision (and as an adult, it is yours as well). I am highly cautious of having a child because there are many elements that could make their life much more difficult if they were to go wrong. None of us can predict what will happen during the 18+ years you would spend raising a child.
Everyone is going to have some amount of suffering or discomfort in their life. Depending on who you were born to, this discomfort may range from not eating for 2 days to not getting the newest iPhone all of your friends have. Obviously one is worse than the other, but you can only experience what you experience. It is suffering nonetheless. No matter your background, not everything can be peachy 100 percent of the time; it's just a fact of life. And if it were, that would honestly be a pretty dull existence. It's like playing a game where you trivially win every time - it isn't interesting or rewarding. It may be safe, but there's no depth to the experience. Aside: I don't mean to downplay starvation, please bear with me.
I'm of the opinion that life is about the experience. I have goals, sure, but it's more about the overall path than the destination (cliche, I know), because the same thing happens to everyone there. Procreation absolutely has a risk - you don't know if you'll always be able to provide for your child, that they won't have some deficiency, that they won't just turn into a shitty person despite your best efforts.
Personally, I wouldn't call the act of having children immoral. However, this gets a bit grey if you are clearly unable to support that child and provide them the right resources to live in this world.
My parents and grandparents have been very generous to me, more so than I deserve in all honesty, which is why I do my best to properly use those resources. That has enabled most of my accomplishments to date. I don't say this to brag; my point is that I think there is no moral issue with bringing a child into this world if you have the resources to provide for them. This is not just food and clothing, I mean things like your attention, encouragement, and guidance (without being a helicopter parent). I know this sounds like the opinion of someone privileged (because it is), but I do think it is immoral to have a child if you are not in a position to take care of them for 18 years or more.
I wish people would more carefully consider the implications of creating a new fucking person. The fact that you do is probably a good sign, but what do I know.
If one takes a purely utilitarian view, as you seem to be leaning towards, one has to consider the nett utility (or happiness) of a human life.
Assuming you live in a country with a decent standard of living and a reasonably violence-free society, your child is more likely to live a mostly happy life than a mostly sad life. Of course, "into each life some rain must fall" but, overall, there's more sun than rain. The sum total of a human person's happiness in this environment is more likely to be a nett positive than a nett negative. Do you have the right to eliminate someone's chance for a mostly happy life just because it comes with some sadness?
If we audaciously applied numeric figures to human happiness and misery, we might find that a human life has a nett happiness value of +6, being the +8 (out of 10) happiness they have during their life, plus the -2 (out of -10) sadness they have during their life. Yes, we've added some sadness to the world, but we added more happiness than sadness. There was a nett gain in human happiness, for the individual and for the world.
And there's the broader picture to consider. If we look at this through the universal view of morality, we would ask what would happen if everyone followed this moral rule universally? What if everyone decided it was wrong to bring new life into the world because it might be unhappy? The outcome of that is human extinction within a century. There would be no humans on the planet a hundred years from now to even try to be happy. There would be no potential for human happiness if there were no humans around. That's a contradictory outcome: in order to reduce human misery, we also eliminated human happiness.
As regards the environment, there is an argument that we could do with fewer humans on the planet, but: this is a long-term fix; it only requires people to have fewer babies rather than no babies, and; it won't fix the problem of climate change in time (we only have about another decade before the change goes too far for our comfort).
Something that's especially worth considering when utilitarianism, but more specifically, hedonism arises is the idea of the hedonic treadmill.
How valid is the hedonic treadmill?
Do humans really have a baseline of happiness that we don't generally deviate from?
Do people living in extreme poverty tend to be equally happy after coming out of such a situation?
I'll be honest I don't know much about what the hedonic treadmill specifically is and should probably read more about it before writing this comment. But if the hedonic treadmill holds true, isn't hedonic utilitarianism as a theory pointless? How can there be net gains and losses when everything always returns to centre ground?
I have my doubts about the validity of the hedonic treadmill but again, that might just be because I don't know much about it.
This is purely anecdotal, but having lived in abject poverty for a large part of my life and living now (for a decent time) being able to at least provide for my family our basic necessities, the hedonic treadmill comes off as "rich person" philosophy. I don't think I've ever encountered a person who rose up out of poverty who would say they were just as happy on their "good days" with money as they were without. It's simply not true.
Yeah this is kind of the problem I have with the idea. Growing up we'd often have no electricity or water or Internet for a few days to weeks and to be honest while it absolutely sucked, it didn't make me less happy because we always had everything we needed (the lack of water and electricity wasn't because of money it was where we were, the entire part of the city had their utilities cut off). There's research to suggest that earning more than 70,000 dollars a year doesn't make you happier. So that part of the hedonic treadmill I can see, that humans have a tendency to adapt to the situations they're in.
But if someone told me that people in extreme poverty, always hungry, with people they know starving to death and dying of disease were actually just as happy as somebody in a nice rural home with a swimming pool and 5 bedrooms, I would be very upset that such a claim could be made. Because it doesn't take much to know that it's just not true. I think you're right when you say it's a rich person philosophy, in that I think there's some truth in it once you have enough money to provide for your family and take time to do luxury activities.
Part of human existence is understanding that fundamentally all any creature has an obligation to is to itself, and then only because it has convinced itself as much. It's a bit reductionist, sure, but most philosophies are. If they weren't, we'd be living in a utopia right now.
So, accepting that as a fact, it does not behoove the individual (human, in this example) to refuse to procreate for biological, social, and cultural reasons. Without procreation a society can't continue. If a society is unable to continue, it devolves more and more until it is nothing. Human beings, as social creatures, need a society of some sort to live, which is tantamount to every creature. Thus, with no procreation there is no society and thus there are no humans.
Also, and feel free to ignore me if I'm speaking out of turn here: almost every time I've personally encountered people who believe this type of philosophy they also suffer from some form of depression. If that's true with you, I hope you're getting whatever help you need and, if you're not, we are here for you any time you need. If that isn't true with you, just ignore this entire paragraph.
And for good measure, because it can never be spread enough: For use in the US
This does not follow from your premises. At all.
A creature does not usually mass ~400 millions tons. A creature is not all the instances of a given individual which more-or-less belong to the same group. A creature is not society.
There are plenty of reasons - biological, social, cultural - for an individual to refuse to procreate. Most - probably all - of those reasons are advantageous to the individual. Not procreating means not having to go through a pregnancy and childbirth. It means not having to take time off work, it means not having to take care of an infant, then a child, then an adolescent. There is a cost - measured in money, time, stress - for that.
And this is something between the invocation of a slippery slope and a non-sequitur.
Yes. Without any sort of procreation society won't be able to continue existing. If everyone, or at least the vast majority of people, decided to stop procreating, no more humans would come into being.
But, again, an individual is not the whole of society. The decision of an individual to not procreate won't lead to a society where no more children are born - not any more than the existence of gay people does.
Even if it did, so what?
Let's imagine a world where every single person on Earth somehow decided "no, I don't think I want children", and went about their life trying to avoid reproducing. Every single one of the individuals making up the group that we call "society", decided against it.
In that scenario, society would eventually disappear. The human race would eventually go extinct.
Why would that be a bad thing?
I could go on about how society is not a thinking entity, how it does only exists as the connections between individuals, how it's not more important than them, how "the greater good" is a load of bollocks even outside of Harry Potter...
But, in that scenario - in a scenario where no-one is reproducing - the people have decided, collectively, that society is not worth preserving. That the cost to keep the human race alive (through reproduction, at least) is not worth paying.
I will do exactly that because while yes, I suffer from some form of depression, that's not the reason for my being anti-natalist. I am anti-natalist not because I want to die, but because I want to live, and I can't, in good conscience, create new thinking beings only to condemn them to death.
Okie doke homie. More power to you.
Well, I think we can use the exact opposite quite succesfully too. There's a good chance that if you have a child that the child will have a long meaningful happy life. Does that mean that if you aren't constantly making children you are denying this happy life to a non consenting sentient person/people?
This discussion also reminds me of mildly relevant lyrics from the song The Greatest Show on Earth by Nightwish, it's a bit melodramatic but I still love it.
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born
The potential people who could have been here in my place
But who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara
Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton
We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA
So massively exceeds the set of actual people
In the teeth of those stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here
We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds
How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state
From which the vast majority have never stirred?"
Sure we can, but it's true that it's a bit of a wonky argument. If you can be sure that each potential offspring will suffer, I would argue that each potential offspring is pretty much guaranteed to have good/happy experiences in their life too. Therefore I think you could say that if you don't have this hypothetical offspring that you are denying them these good parts of life.
Similarly, you could argue that your child could become the next Newton and improve the world so much that if you don't have this child you are potentionally robbing the world of becoming a much better place.
My wife and I certainly considered the ethics of bringing a life into this world knowing the garbage environment we're probably leaving her with. I'm almost certain future generations will see this age right now as peak decadence. And it's like a drug, making better choices is really hard when you've lived your life with cheap everything because the negative externalities of producing the goods we consume were never properly internalized. For me it's been small steps, I'm down to 5 days where I have meat, and trying to reduce that. I barely drive and work from home. I keep my house at low temps and heat the rooms I'm using. I switched my gas powered tools to electric. I try not water my lawn and keep it fairly tall. But it's not nearly enough to offset the emissions a new life adds to the total output.
My province is currently has raging wildfires putting many towns in danger of being burned down and our newly elected government just cancelled our carbon levy because people "shouldn't be punished" for heating their homes and rolling their coal. We're not even willing to do less than the bare minimum and we want to blame China and India for leading by example.
It's quite despairing and I feel bad for the world my daughter will have to live in if we don't collectively start taking big steps.
You would be right if happiness was the purpose of life. It is not: the purpose of life is to be meaningful. Mother Theresa, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Stephen Hawking had lives full of sorrow and pain. But they were absolutely meaningful.
Says who? I disagree entirely, and there are entire schools of philosophy on the opposite side to you (eg Epicureanism). Why is 'famous and respected' some inherent benchmark for having the correct answer? The person who lives a quiet life in a little house by the ocean has every bit as much chance of having it right.
“Meaningful” is a broad concept that encompasses a lot more than “famous and respected”. Those are just the examples I was able to come up with last night. Any life can be meaningful because human beings find meaning in lots of different endeavors.
If you had a meaningful but miserable life, from my perspective you got it all wrong. If you redefine it to what the individual person finds meaningful, then it's impossible to know who had a meaningful life or not.
That's an interesting subject. I'll get back to you ;)
Studying these:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/happiness/
Success is not guaranteed. This is true for the majority of worthwhile endeavors.
I did. I refuse to procreate, and this is one of the main reasons for it.
I don't care about what impact it would have on environment or society or the planet. It's not even suffering that matters that much, but the death that would follow. Hell, it might just be even worse if we could guarantee every single person a happy, meaningful life, one that they would definitely like.
I did but not really for any of the reasons you listed. Me and my partner decided not to have kids because (1) Medically its very risky for them (2) Neither one of us want to be responsible for a child (3) Neither of us really like children that much (4) Neither of us think we would be a good parent. Why do something neither of us want to do and change our lives in a way we don't want it to be changed? There is a nice added benefit that the #1 thing you can do to help lower your carbon footprint is to not have kids, but that's more of a nice side-effect than it was something that actually effected our decision.
Would you rather run the race or sit on the starting line? That's the question you're asking.
I was referring to the kids they're not having... they're still on the starting line.
The chain of comments I wiped out here was mostly an antagonistic argument going in circles about an analogy.
Well thanks for doing what you do and please let me know if I overstep or have overstepped any bounds.