“Let me ask you this, Mr. Porter. Is it possible to adhere to a philosophy that is not connected in a significant way to your own psychological make-up and/or childhood experience?

I await your thoughtful response.”

Ultimately I think it is possible - e.g. it might just be what everyone else believes. But if you mean adherence by choice, then I think psychological make-up must enter into it. Even if you adopted a philosophy bearing no obvious relationship to your own life experience, that choice would have to come from something in you.

I’d say it would provide the best framework for fatherhood. Existential pain is, in my opinion, of necessity and strikes everyone who reflects further than on what to have for dinner tonight. Hiding this collective and basal pain from our children, treating it as a taboo, is nothing other than an act of deceit. Giving a child a rosy cottonlined image of the world is to make its inevitable existentialist awakening and pain more dramatic and more damaging than it has to be. Had we all tried to understand our existentialist pain, had parents encouraged thought and discussion about our position in existence, the meaning or nonmeaning of it all rather than providing an illusion and desperately treating it all as one big happy garden party, neurotically ignoring the pain of it all (save perhaps the distant sufferings of Christ), the world would perhaps be a more peaceful, more healthy place. Less rosy perhaps, but more healthy. To contemplate one’s existence is not unhealthy, or abnormal. It is and should be treated as the most basic and most important contemplation we undertake, a need as basic as any other. What else is there to contemplate? If I had been so vain (Santa Clause forbid) that I thought of myself as having a right to procreate I would have tried to make sure my inevitably doomed children grow up under no illusions, even if it would mean they would probably blame me for having come into existence (I would have had to apologize). Fortunately I find existence so shit that I am going to spare any future being the experience. The best is of course not to create these insatiable and often pain-rendering needs for meaning in the first place. And yes, one day I will (although antinatalism does not require it, you fierce opponents out there!) put an end to my boring, though pretty comfortable, upper-middle class existence. I’m just going to contemplate it a little while longer.

Some religious heads got the first part right but religion thrives on people’s suffering. The only way to truly end the suffering inherent in the human condition is to not procreate.

The act of getting children should be approached with the care with which we treat nuclear bombs that have a large chance of exploding and destroying the universe.

Including antinatalism itself, both as a philosophy and as a series of actions or behaviours. I must say that I think antinatalism is perhaps the one “philosophy”, if it can be called that, that I would not allow to be presented to impressionable young people. Heavens - I mean, even Satanism teaches that there are things in the world worth wanting!

Antinatalism is a profound and subtle call to utter despair. While it can probably never succeed in its goal of preventing the birth of all future generations, it might yet do grave damage to those that are born, imbuing them with a sense of desolation that makes it impossible to enjoy what pleasures there are in life, exaggerating the pain of inevitable suffering (even physical pain can be greatly aggravated by hopelessness and unhappiness), and encouraging those who hold it to take no action, fight no battle, to improve life for themselves or others in any way.

Alias Clio

Mitchell, this is the thing that scares me more than anything. And suicide doesn’t even solve it - as you said, we’re responsible for our inaction as much as our action. The suffering of the world is horrible enough, but knowing that just by existing, we’re forced to participate in it and perhaps exacerbate the suffering of others in unpredictable ways, is not something I can just shrug off.

I’ve been accused of sexual signaling before. I find it puzzling. If I were trying assuage the ladies’ sensibilities, why wouldn’t I balance things off with a nice reference to my love of kitties and soft things? Oh yeah, I guess that’s just what I did. Must be a small penis complex, then. Looks like Hammie beat you to the chase.

I suppose I don’t take well to snarkery, and perhaps that’s a character flaw on my part. It’s not that I find such gestures distasteful. It’s just so often distracting. Your quick and clever reduction of my intentions, for example, adds nothing to the discussion, such as it is. I keep re-reading it. You begin with something, then end on a joke. Or a meta-joke. And I don’t mind that the joke, or whatever, is at my expense. I just would prefer that I wish it were funnier. Or funny. Then maybe I could chime in with a “Hahahahaha! Hahahahahaha!” And be done with it.

For what it’s worth, I’m not a dour person. I’m not some attention-seeking poseur-nihilist provocateur looking for a reaction. I’m not even particularly unhappy person, at least not at the moment. Nor am I all that smart. But as much as it may surprise or irritate you, I am sincere. If we were talking over beers at some dive bar, I like to think there would be good will and I might even learn something. Of course, I’d pick up the tab because — ladies, pay attention — that’s the kind of guy I am.

What I’m getting at is something very simple. Something that you may find boring or stunted or obtuse. It hardly matters that I abhor death, though I do. It hardly matters that I rue my existence, though I do. It’s not about me. In a sense, it’s not even about those yet countless uncorked people who I believe will be wronged by their birth. It’s about ethics, and it’s about consistency. You mention consent and the pain-pleasure ratio. A good start. But the “imagined” consent that you seem to dismiss I find crucial because of its prima facie impossibility, which I submit would be morally relevant to most people in most other contexts.

The “death is awful and horrifying” line is an accurate account of my editorial position, but largely irrelevant. That death is a HARM, something that would sooner be avoided if possible, at least under most circumstances, is relatively — I would say uncontroversially — clear. That’s the point I would force (though its not exclusive or even essential), that death is a category of harm. When death results from an agent-specific action, it is usually characterized as killing. If you think this is just bluster and not a sound trajectory of reasoning, try constructing a deep argument against murder without it. I’m not saying it can’t be done; I’m saying that’s the task. Anyway, if you want a real “bedrock” point, I’ll refer you to Hippocrates’ fabled first principle. Or, if you prefer, to Lockean nonaggression. Personally, I started by taking Murray Rothbard seriously enough to get pissed off, but that’s probably a useless idiosyncrasy.

Here’s the rub, as I see it. You take, and somewhat distort, my central argument about the primacy of harm, characterize it as “axiomatic,” and proceed to your punch line. Let me throw you a clue. There is an easy way to win the debate on terms that I will happily concede. All you have to do is begin with non-cognitivism, layer on a wholesale rejection of positivist ethics, and then you’re free to dismiss every “axiom,” every premise, every moral utterance, indeed every deontological, consequentialist, utilitarian, contractual, or otheryet interest-bound formulation of moral conduct, as a trite fantasy. You’ll be left in the company of Stirner and Sade. And I just might join you, sooner than later. I am cursed with an open mind.

However, if you observe or adhere to some version of the harm principle, or some version of utilitarian ethics, or if you believe laws and conduct should be justifiable in moral terms, or even if you believe in Christian Hellfire, then intellectual good faith should compel you to explain where antinatalism goes astray. This is something you don’t bother with, perhaps because you have something clever to say. Is it wrong to kill an innocent person? Yes? No? Depends? What if, instead of murdering a person outright, you put them in a small room and dumb-waiter them weekly — then bi-weekly, then monthly — rations of oatmeal for years, until they starve, just for kicks? Or what about rape? Any problem with taking sexual gratification by force? If not, fine. But if so, why? Is it a matter of aesthetics or taste? Or do you support some legal or moral proscription on sexual coercion? A proscription based, perhaps, on the nostrum of “imagined consent”? Or on some greater interest or consequence?

I’m not baiting you with such examples. And they’re not analogies to forced life. Not exactly. They simply invite the same fundamental questions, although asking the questions may seem odd. Just as asking the questions with reference to procreation may seem odd, for the opposite reason. The challenge — and here I presume — is to distinguish the case against wanton procreation from quotidian examples where the harm principle — or some other moral calculus — is the reflexive, recognized default.

If you have a child, that child cannot, by definition, have consented to your act of procreation. If this lack of consent is morally irrelevant, Why? That child may suffer. If this suffering is morally irrelevant, Why? That child will die. If this child’s death is morally irrelevant, Why? This is all foreseeable, after all. And all avoidable. It’s an agent-centered outcome, and agency is the crux of moral reasoning, no? Other moral options — adoption or childlessness — were conspicuously available all along, yet not chosen. in my view, the moral relevance is made salient by the asymmetry, which posits that conceivably compensatory pleasures foregone are morally irrelevant when no one is otherwise deprived. But while asymmetry is informative, it isn’t essential. There are many ways to skin this cat. But the burdern of justification rests on the actor, an actor who I believe has much to account for.

Somehow, I suspect that this accounting doesn’t interest you. It’s easier to throw out a line. Because my perspective is easily — lazily — dismissed as silly or nihilistic or self-congratulatory or penis-envied, or something. But here’s the rub. The idea that people shouldn’t have children, superficially provocative as it is, follows from applying accepted ethical methods and premises consistently. I’ve seen justifications of procreation that may work in a given context, but these are typically esoteric, or centered around emergencies (kidneys and twins and the like). So far as I’ve seen, neither you nor anyone in this thread has attempted to fashion a defense of procreation that comports with normative ethics as accepted and applied in other well established contexts, nor has anyone bothered to distance themselves from the accepted moral order. Instead of simply jousting me and speculating about my MO, I suggest you take the challenge at face value, and try to come up with something. I’m genuinely curious.

And I repeat: I love cunnilingus, and I love my wife.