Incidentally, with regards to antinatalists "in a sound state of mind", I think a number of antinatalists are actually severely depressed. Ligotti suffers from a chronic anxiety disorder.
See, this is the thing.
I don't know about you, genuinely, but I, when I hear of someone's incredibly cynical worldview, and then hear that they have emotional problems, it is very hard for me to not connect those two things. I don't like going "antinatalists are depressed, and that's why they think like they do" because to a lot of people, that's being judgmental. This is what I mean by that brick wall, when it becomes impossible for me to take someone's opinion on its own, as an opinion.
I genuinely cannot understand why antinatalists think how they do without making assumptions about their personalities. I do not like to make said assumptions, thus, brick wall.
Also, earlier you seemed to conflate the philosophical argument that life is a bad thing with the much more extreme belief that death is always a good thing. Those are really not the same thing at all.
I don't see much of a difference, frankly. Unless you're going along the line of thought that "life is bad but death is worse", but I find it hard to draw a meaningful distinction between the two.
It's fairly simple: Suicide may negate the suffering of that one person, but it increases the suffering of everyone around them. This applies even more to murder and other such actions. The ideal is to limit the creation of new life and to minimise the suffering of those that do live, not to make the living suffer more.
As to Corporal Forsythe's post... damn, that guy needs to get a life.
^ I have some pretty bleak views on things, and I'm pretty well-adjusted. Really, I wouldn't be arguing with you if I didn't see validity in the notion that life is suffering.
Also, what of Buddhists and Gnostics?
Then again, Ligotti himself would probably not entirely refute your point, although he might contend that it does not make the view invalid.
Obviously I wouldn't go up to an antinatalist and go "you're just depressed", which would just be rude (as well as an ad hominem attack and therefore irrelevant, if we were debating the issue).
It's fairly simple: Suicide may negate the suffering of that one person, but it increases the suffering of everyone around them. This applies even more to murder and other such actions. The ideal is to limit the creation of new life and to minimise the suffering of those that do live, not to make the living suffer more.
And here's the inevitable point of irreconciliation.
Because you see, "minimizing the creation of new life", to me says "making humanity die out". Slowly and painlessly yes, but it is still, inherently, an endorsement of the idea that humanity somehow does not deserve to continue existing for as long as possible.
I am not okay with that, even in theory.
^ I have some pretty bleak views on things, and I'm pretty well-adjusted. Really, I wouldn't be arguing with you if I didn't see validity in the notion that life is suffering.
I frankly don't understand how you can claim to be well adjusted yet view life as suffering.
I'm not trying to insult you. It just genuinely does not make sense to me that you can say that life is suffering, yet also say you're well adjusted, which would imply you're happy with your life.
Also, what of Buddhists and Gnostics?
What of them? I don't care for Gnosticism and know very little about Buddhism that I didn't get from Aondeug, who never struck me as antinatalist.
Both Gnosticism and Buddhism could be classed as pessimistic ideologies.
Buddhists see suffering as an intrinsic part of life; this is one of the Four Noble Truths. The aim in escaping from the cycle of reincarnation is, as I understand it, to escape from life's suffering.
And lest you think I'm defending antinatalism, I am not OK with ending humanity, either, but I don't see why humanity as a collective (as opposed to human individuals, who have a right to life) should deserve to keep existing. Or at least, it's not obvious to me that it should.
I figure the suffering of humanity can be justified if we develop our civilization, technology, and knowledge to the point where we can view the widest possible context of existence, and then make a judgement about what we want to do with it.
Maybe we'll obtain a means of obliterating life and preventing it from reoccurring, or maybe we'll be able to convert all matter into an organ that experiences infinite pleasure. Maybe we'll just find ways to make things just moderately better.
Human civilization has come a long way for being so young. I think it'd be premature to end it after just a few more generations.
Maybe we'll obtain a means of obliterating life and preventing it from reoccurring, or maybe we'll be able to convert all matter into an organ that experiences infinite pleasure.
Frankly, both of these propositions are every bit as dreadful to me as antinatalism, and the former moreso.
The latter also sounds kind of gross, although I know that's not really the point.
It's fairly simple: Suicide may negate the suffering of that one person, but it increases the suffering of everyone around them. This applies even more to murder and other such actions. The ideal is to limit the creation of new life and to minimise the suffering of those that do live, not to make the living suffer more.
And here's the inevitable point of irreconciliation.
Because you see, "minimizing the creation of new life", to me says "making humanity die out". Slowly and painlessly yes, but it is still, inherently, an endorsement of the idea that humanity somehow does not deserve to continue existing for as long as possible.
I am not okay with that, even in theory.
^ I have some pretty bleak views on things, and I'm pretty well-adjusted. Really, I wouldn't be arguing with you if I didn't see validity in the notion that life is suffering.
I frankly don't understand how you can claim to be well adjusted yet view life as suffering.
I'm not trying to insult you. It just genuinely does not make sense to me that you can say that life is suffering, yet also say you're well adjusted, which would imply you're happy with your life.
Also, what of Buddhists and Gnostics?
What of them? I don't care for Gnosticism and know very little about Buddhism that I didn't get from Aondeug, who never struck me as antinatalist.
To the first point: While I'm not quite pro-human extinction myself, I can entirely understand why someone would support the idea, if only because I would rather our species die out small, happy and in harmony with nature than big, unhappy, wading in pollution and killing each other constantly. It's less a matter of life than quality of life.
To the third: There is a difference between self-identifying as an anti-natalist or a pessimist and believing that life is suffering. The notion of samsara is a key tenet of Buddhism. Look it up.
And finally, to the second, as it relates to the third: One can be dissatisfied with the state of the world and see life as less positive than negative from a philosophical perspective while still enjoying many aspects of life and refusing to accept that suffering cannot be reduced.
In other words, just because I believe that something is not good does not mean that I do not think it can be made better. One must always strive for improvement.
To the first point: While I'm not quite pro-human extinction myself, I can entirely understand why someone would support the idea, if only because I would rather our species die out small, happy and in harmony with nature than big, unhappy, wading in pollution and killing each other constantly. It's less a matter of life than quality of life.
You'll have to forgive me if I think that either of those things happening is both horrible and unlikely.
The notion of samsara is a key tenet of Buddhism. Look it up.
I see no real reason to.
And finally, to the second, as it relates to the third: One can be dissatisfied with the state of the world and see life as less positive than negative from a philosophical perspective while still enjoying many aspects of life and refusing to accept that suffering cannot be reduced.
Oh absolutely. I just refuse the idea that reducing suffering = slowly killing the entire species. I have a hard time thinking that anyone who would want the entire species dead doesn't have ulterior reasons for wanting it, even if they're not wholly conscious ones. This is what I meant by the brick wall thing.
I don't have nearly enough knowledge to feel confident in predicting the ultimate fate of humanity and/or existence, nor making judgements about how desirable it would be.
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
Human civilization has come a long way for being so young. I think it'd be premature to end it after just a few more generations.
I'm not so sure about this. Let me repost something I stated on FB the other day:
On a really somber note, the lynching of Jesse Washington -- aka the "Waco Horror" -- is today's featured article on Wikipedia. It is in my opinion one of the most horrific and evil things ever perpetrated in history and it happened in my v
ery own state in Texas, and it happened as recently as this past century -- there are people alive today who were around when this happened.
I really do think that while we have greatly improved as a species since that last century, I think that many of us lack an objective standard to base this metric on. Everyone knows about the world wars, everyone knows about the genocides; and while I'm certainly not marginalizing the evil impact of those events, they seem to be something everyone considers a far place and a long time ago. The Waco Horror happened on our own turf and done so by a generation or two removed from our's -- and something they tried to suppress and forget -- and that by itself should be sobering enough.
FYI that article on this lynching really is one of the most horrific accounts you'll ever read so be warned there. This occurred just a little more than 50 years before us landing on the moon. We've made strides to be sure but I don't think we need to be patting ourselves on the back in regards to progress when shit like this and the holocaust are still in recent memory.
Fair enough of a point, but I think humanity tends generally towards cooperation, security, and benevolence. I don't think misanthropic attitudes or behaviors are the norm. Given that, I think increasing our power and knowledge is likely a net good.
To the first point: While I'm not quite pro-human extinction myself, I can entirely understand why someone would support the idea, if only because I would rather our species die out small, happy and in harmony with nature than big, unhappy, wading in pollution and killing each other constantly. It's less a matter of life than quality of life.
You'll have to forgive me if I think that either of those things happening is both horrible and unlikely.
The notion of samsara is a key tenet of Buddhism. Look it up.
I see no real reason to.
And finally, to the second, as it relates to the third: One can be dissatisfied with the state of the world and see life as less positive than negative from a philosophical perspective while still enjoying many aspects of life and refusing to accept that suffering cannot be reduced.
Oh absolutely. I just refuse the idea that reducing suffering = slowly killing the entire species. I have a hard time thinking that anyone who would want the entire species dead doesn't have ulterior reasons for wanting it, even if they're not wholly conscious ones. This is what I meant by the brick wall thing.
I know that those are extremes that I have posited, but the point is that if one is of the belief that humans are likely to screw things up exponentially more with time, the idea of simply opting to die out becomes much more palatable. And in all honesty, I think that's just as realistic an expectation as that of dialectic materialism and certainly more so than the Rapture. But I don't cleave to such expectations myself...
Putting it in plain terms, samsara is the self-perpetuating suffering of the world that is carried through birth and reincarnation. The sole escape from the wheel of samsara is through the achievement of nirvana: The nullification of the self through enlightenment.
but the point is that if one is of the belief that humans are likely to screw things up exponentially more with time, the idea of simply opting to die out becomes much more palatable.
Perhaps for you it does.
This conversation is over, we're not getting anywhere and I'm trying to read Dresden Codak.
^ I never said that I personally agreed with it, just that I understood the sentiment. You seem to be actively trying to assume the worst of me for some reason.
Fair enough of a point, but I think humanity tends generally towards cooperation, security, and benevolence. I don't think misanthropic attitudes or behaviors are the norm. Given that, I think increasing our power and knowledge is likely a net good.
I also believe that on the whole people are more inclined to do good to each other than evil. The problem is that it is very easy to convince people that it is better to do the wrong thing than the right thing because it is, ostensibly, easier.
Sure would be nice if we could get a species-wide consensus on this. It'd be kind of sad if we tapped into practically infinite power and still couldn't decide what the best use of it would be.
My own research and my conversations with Aondeug indicate that the first noble truth is better translated as "life is hardship" rather than life is suffering.
This mistranslation has led to antinatalists making weird ad hoc explanations for the phrase like people being in pain at all times, or nonsense involving heavy use of the word " deprivation"
You seem to be actively trying to assume the worst of me for some reason.
That's not the case, I'm just kind of tired of this discussion, and you also referred to the idea as palatable, so I assumed you meant for you personally.
^^ Yeah, "suffering" has too many specific connotations in English. I always thought of it being more about how, for example, all life seems to depend on other life ending to some degree: Carnivores eating herbivores eating plants nourished by the decayed bodies of other living things. It's an unbreakable circle, at once beautiful and vaguely disturbing.
^ "More palatable" does not mean "absolutely right" by any stretch of the imagination.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
My own research and my conversations with Aondeug indicate that the first noble truth is better translated as "life is hardship" rather than life is suffering.
This is correct. My Religious Studies College professor liked to use the term dis-ease, as in the state of not being at ease, not "disease" the sickness.
Buddhism does not deny that there is happiness and joy in the world, it merely submits that these things are usually fleeting and that eventully one will want more things, become hungry, uncomfortable, etc...
It's not claiming that there's MORE unhappiness than than happiness to be had, merely that one is better off not having to go through the process over and over again.
On that note, I don't think I've ever heard of an antinatalist that I'd even humor the idea of being enlightened, so if Buddhism or any other reincarnation religion is correct, their probably just in for another shitty existence next go round...
Odradek: Oh boy, the "vote for the most awful candidate because it might actually spur a revolution" card. I remember when trolls people tried doing that with American Idol several years ago, and it blew up in their faces.
Yeah, that seems to be an argument against voting for Obama: "if we had a Republican president, things would actually change for the better because...!" except I'm pretty sure that, historically, that most likely wasn't the fucking case.
Yup. Asking people to give up their standard of living because some Twitter Marxist thinks we're too spoiled or something is not a good deal, and that's basically what this dude is advocating.
"if we had a Republican president, things would actually change for the better because...!" except I'm pretty sure that, historically, that most likely wasn't the fucking case.
You know I also oppose kneejerk reactions along party lines, but something more recent than the 19th century would've probably been slightly better a response. >_>
The problem with the "vote for terrible candidate to inspire revolution" concept is that the USA is not the kind of country that has big, sweeping revolutions. If anything, we're more like England: Radicals yell about something for years and years until it becomes mainstream in progressive regions and someone passes it into law, hence making it "the official view." And even then, lately the law has been far behind the public on most social and economic issues, and at most we've seen some mild subversion directed less at the national government than at corporations and state-level officials.
America is a boring place in that way. Safe, thankfully, but boring.
That said, if the slow but steady rise in what I like to call "scary shit" keeps up (ultra-right-wing domestic terrorism, attempted broad repeals of civil liberties, etc.), we might see a radical shift in who we elect very quickly. Not a true revolution per se, but a strong and sudden change of the tides. Considering where we are now, that latter part of the equation would be a good thing, but the part that leads up to it will be ugly...
Comments
See, this is the thing.
I don't know about you, genuinely, but I, when I hear of someone's incredibly cynical worldview, and then hear that they have emotional problems, it is very hard for me to not connect those two things. I don't like going "antinatalists are depressed, and that's why they think like they do" because to a lot of people, that's being judgmental. This is what I mean by that brick wall, when it becomes impossible for me to take someone's opinion on its own, as an opinion.
And here's the inevitable point of irreconciliation.
Because you see, "minimizing the creation of new life", to me says "making humanity die out". Slowly and painlessly yes, but it is still, inherently, an endorsement of the idea that humanity somehow does not deserve to continue existing for as long as possible.
I am not okay with that, even in theory.
I frankly don't understand how you can claim to be well adjusted yet view life as suffering.
I'm not trying to insult you. It just genuinely does not make sense to me that you can say that life is suffering, yet also say you're well adjusted, which would imply you're happy with your life.
What of them? I don't care for Gnosticism and know very little about Buddhism that I didn't get from Aondeug, who never struck me as antinatalist.
Buddhists see suffering as an intrinsic part of life; this is one of the Four Noble Truths. The aim in escaping from the cycle of reincarnation is, as I understand it, to escape from life's suffering.
And lest you think I'm defending antinatalism, I am not OK with ending humanity, either, but I don't see why humanity as a collective (as opposed to human individuals, who have a right to life) should deserve to keep existing. Or at least, it's not obvious to me that it should.
Well I would say I don't agree with that.
I would point out though that believing that suffering is inherently a part of life is very, very different from saying that life is suffering.
(That was a "to be fair"; I don't really want to argue about this.)
News to me.
What I have seen of the movement seems to define life as a long fog of suffering with occaisonal bright spots.
Unrelatedly I don't much feel like talking about this anymore.
yesquote.
Frankly, both of these propositions are every bit as dreadful to me as antinatalism, and the former moreso.
The latter also sounds kind of gross, although I know that's not really the point.
I don't think he's saying that he wants those two things to happen, or even that he necessarily believes they will.
You'll have to forgive me if I think that either of those things happening is both horrible and unlikely.
I see no real reason to.
Oh absolutely. I just refuse the idea that reducing suffering = slowly killing the entire species. I have a hard time thinking that anyone who would want the entire species dead doesn't have ulterior reasons for wanting it, even if they're not wholly conscious ones. This is what I meant by the brick wall thing.
I don't see celebrating humanity's accomplishments and remembering and learning from its horrors and shortcomings as mutually exclusive.
And I certainly don't think of the horrible things we've done as justification for ending our species.
Perhaps for you it does.
This conversation is over, we're not getting anywhere and I'm trying to read Dresden Codak.
This mistranslation has led to antinatalists making weird ad hoc explanations for the phrase like people being in pain at all times, or nonsense involving heavy use of the word " deprivation"
That's not the case, I'm just kind of tired of this discussion, and you also referred to the idea as palatable, so I assumed you meant for you personally.
You know what I mean. I misunderstood you.
I assume so.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
You all thought I was joking about the "Twitter Marxist who is voting for Romney" thing, huh?
go to bed Zombie Lincoln
you are drunk