The aim of this blog in general and of this text specifically, is not to convince its readers that procreation is wrong since if you are here you probably already think so. It is not intended for people who are not yet antinatalists, it is aimed for antinatalists who care deeply about the suffering of others, no matter who they are, which species they belong to, and why they were created, but haven’t yet realized that procreation is a crime serious enough to be stopped regardless of people’s willingness to do so.
I am planning to invest considerable time writing about antinatalism despite that I think it is pointless to try and convince people to stop procreating, because it is not the general public I am aiming at. I know people are hopeless. I am not trying to convince all people to stop procreating, I am trying to convince you that procreation is such a serious crime – the greatest crime an individual can commit – that we must do much more than raise awareness. I am trying to convince you antinatalists to skip the futile attempt of convincing all humans to do the right thing, and look for ways to make all humans incapable of doing the wrong one.
People will never stop procreating by choice. But procreation is so harmful, so wrong and immoral, that it is not enough to oppose it theoretically, we must stop it practically.
We must do everything in our power to stop procreation, not only because it is an ethically wrong position, but because it is a very serious crime.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it is forcing on someone else the most important decision in that person’s life.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it is harming someone else without that person consent. For a broader explanation why harming is inevitable please read the text
Procreation is a very serious crime because it is gambling on someone else’s life.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it is forcing someone into a needless, pointless, absurd, constant chase after meaning in a meaningless, needless, pointless, and absurd world.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it is forcing someone into a needless, pointless, absurd, constant chase after pleasures despite that pleasures are not really intrinsically good but addictive falsehood smoke screen illusions, which trap sentient beings in an endless, pointless and vain seek for more of them. Pleasures are preceded by wants which are the absence of objects desired by subjects. People want because they are missing something. They seek pleasures to release the tension of craving. Craving or wants, are at least bad experiences if not a sort of pain. Pleasures are short and temporary, and compel a preceding deprivation, a want or a need, which is not always being fulfilled, rarely to the desired measure, and almost never exactly when wanted. And even when desires are fulfilled, the cycle starts again.
Procreation is a crime because it is forcing someone into a situation where pain is the natural default state. If one would stop all action, pains would attack very shortly in the form of hunger, thirst, boredom, loneliness, physical discomfort, thermal discomfort and etc. Pain comes if one does nothing. Pleasures are unguaranteed, brief, and at some point become boring and ineffective. There is no chronic pleasure, but there is definitely chronic pain. And it is quite abundant. Pain is always guaranteed for every person born.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it is forcing someone into a needless, pointless, absurd, constant chase after happiness despite that according to the “set point” theory of happiness, which many psychologists find convincing nowadays, mood is homeostatic and we all have a fixed average level of happiness. That means that even desirable things which people do manage to obtain, are satisfying at first, but eventually people adapt to them and return to their “set points”. Therefore people usually end up more or less on the same level of wellbeing they were before. That’s why some argue that people actually run on hedonic treadmills.
Procreation is a very serious crime because there is a very realistic probability that a person forced into existence would be miserable. There is not even a theoretical possibility that a person forced into existence won’t be harmed at all. Creating someone who would definitely be harmed and the only variable is to what extent (with the potential of extreme misery), must be morally prohibited. Given that the motives are never the interests of the to-be born person, it is not only morally flawed, it is selfish, egocentric, arrogant, and careless.
Procreation is a very serious crime because the ample evidences that bad experiences are more important than good ones, not only serve as a proof that good experiences are at least not as good as bad experiences are bad (if not proving that bad experiences almost always outweigh the good ones), but how horrible life actually and inherently is. Basically, pain and other negative experiences, increase the fitness of individuals by enhancing their respondence ability to threats to their survival and reproduction. It has a crucial adaptive function. Existing sentient beings are tortured by evolutionary mechanisms which their only point is that additional sentient beings would exist, regardless of any of those beings’ personal wellbeing. It is a pointless, frustrating and painful trap.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it is treating someone as a means to others’ ends. People create new persons to serve their own purposes such as to take care of them when they are old, to save their decaying relationships, to continue the family line, to please their parents, to ease their boredom, to fill their empty and pointless lives with a sense of meaning and purpose, to feel powerful and competent because someone is totally depended on them, to feel needed and important, to ease their loneliness, to hush their biological impulses, to boost their ego, to create an immortality illusion, to take care of society’s elderly, to be loved even if that love is temporary and conditioned and a result of imprinting and not of free choice and objective assessments, to continue the human race, to feel normal, to make them look normal to others. And so, extremely emotional and physical vulnerable persons are being created to others’ ends. This is a very serious crime.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it diverts energy, time and resources from persons who already exist and are in need, to those who needed nothing, were deprived of nothing, and harmed by nothing before they were forced into existence.
Procreation is a very serious crime because life is a constant Sisyphean struggle just to survive a life no one chose. Everyone is bound to overcome needless frustrations, disappointments, pains and discomforts.
Procreation is a very serious crime because each bad moment happening in life is unnecessary. Every pain, every sickness, every fear, every frustration, every regret, every broken-heartedness, every moment of boredom and etc. are all needless. They exist only because the person experiencing them exists. They exist because the parents of that person have forced existence on that person.
Procreation is a very serious crime because people are creating new persons for their own selfish sake and count on that their children would adapt and adjust to the difficulties of life, just like everybody else does. Only that not everyone manages to adapt to life’s difficulties, and even if everyone did, why condemn people to such a state in the first place? Why knowingly create someone who would have to adjust to bad situations, instead of easily avoiding any bad situation that person would be forced to endure coming to existence? Why consciously choose to throw other people into the position in which they must always compromise and never get everything they want?
Procreation is a very serious crime because lives not worth living is not a theoretical possibility, it is a certainty. People whose lives are not worth living would be born, and the chances for that happening are renewed with each procreation. Misery has no quota. The only way to avoid this worse off option is by not procreating.
Procreation is a very serious crime because there is no way to retroactively undo it, and there is not even an easy and harmless option for someone to end its own existence. Many people are trapped in horrible lives without a truly viable option to end it because they are too afraid to kill themselves, or because they don’t want to hurt the ones who care about them if they do, or are too afraid that if they won’t succeed in killing themselves they would be socially stigmatized in the better case, or coercively hospitalized in a worse one, or harm themselves so severely while trying to kill themselves that they would end up even worse than they were. Trapping people in the impossible situation of not wanting to live but not wanting to kill themselves so not to hurt others or because they are afraid to kill themselves for any of the mentioned reasons, is a very serious crime.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it forces someone to die, and to fear of death for most of one’s life.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it forces someone into an unfair world where the most crucial factor in having a relatively tolerable life is luck. In a split of a second, even relatively happy lives can turn utterly miserable, often by one wrong decision, or even regardless of one’s actions. One can be very responsible, reasonable and diligent, yet utterly miserable as a result of a mistake made by someone irresponsible, unreasonable and lazy. Life is not only pointless but also unfair, arbitrary and fickle.
Procreation is a very serious crime because people can choose whether to create sentient creatures who would necessarily suffer from many bad experiences that they have necessarily not given consent to, and with no guarantee whatsoever that the created persons won’t be very miserable, yet they choose to do so anyway. They choose that other persons would experience pain, frustration, fear, boredom, they choose they would get disappointed, sick, rejected, and humiliated. Yes, that person may enjoy parts of life too, but that is not mandatory, while it is mandatory that this short list of bad things will happen at some point, at least once in each person’s life. Despite that pleasure is optional, happiness isn’t, and suffering is inevitable, people criminally choose to willingly force sentient creatures into this condition.
And finally, more than anything, what makes procreation such a serious crime, is that it is forcing enormous needless and pointless suffering on thousands of individuals vulnerable to harms. While the person created is one morally relevant creature which would be harmed by being created, each person created is hurting infinitely more morally relevant creatures during a lifetime.
It is very hard to accurately assess the harms caused by each person since it depends on various factors such as location, socioeconomic status, consumption habits, life expectancy, livelihood, diet and etc., however, regardless of any circumstances, harming numerous others is inevitable.
And the most immediate and prominent harm is caused by what people eat.
Every person has to eat, and every food has a price. Unfortunately, most people are choosing the ones with the highest price – animal based foods.
Each person directly consumes thousands of animals. More accurate average figures are varied according to each person location. An average American meat eater for example consumes more than 2,020 chickens, about 1,700 fish, more than 70 turkeys, more than 30 pigs and sheep, about 11 cows, and tens of thousands of aquatic animals, some directly and some indirectly (as many of which are fed to consumed animals).
Therefore in most cases procreating is choosing that more fish would suffocate to death by being violently sucked out of water, that more chickens would be crammed into tiny cages with each forced to live in a space the size of an A4 paper, that more calves would be separated from their mothers, and more cow mothers would be left traumatized by the abduction of their babies, it is choosing more pigs who suffer from chronic pain, more lame sheep, more beaten goats, more turkeys who can barely stand as a result of their unproportionate bodies, more ducks who are forced to live out of water and in filthy crowded sheds, more rabbits imprisoned in an iron cage the size of their bodies, more geese being aggressively plucked, more male chicks being gassed, crushed or suffocated since they are unexploitable for eggs nor meat, more snakes being skinned alive, and more crocodiles and alligators being hammered to death and often also skinned alive to be worn, and more mice, cats, dogs, fish, rabbits, and monkeys being experimented on.
Since most humans, more than 95% of them actually, are not even vegans – the most basic and primal ethical decision one must make – procreation is practically letting a mass murder on the loose.
And it is not that vegan food is harmless. It is much less harmful, but still very harmful. It is impossible to eat without harming someone, somewhere along the way, even when sticking to a vegan, local, organic and seasonable diet. It is impossible to entirely avoid using fertilizers, packages, pesticides, transportation, water, energy, and to produce waste.
For a broader explanation why harming is inevitable please read the text the harm to others, where there is a more detailed information regarding some of the inherent harms of humans, all humans, and regardless of what they eat.
And anyway, a vegan, local, organic and seasonable diet, is relevant for extremely tiny minority of people who care enough to choose the least harmful options at any given time. Even most vegan and environmentalists are not doing that. Most vegans simply consume plant based food, and most environmentalists still hardly connect food with environmentalism. In recent years there is a positive awaking in that area, but still it mostly regards dolphin safe tuna, food’s carbon footprint, bottled water, and avoiding six pack rings.
And of course the vast majority of people are extremely far from even being aware of all that, not to mention considering it, or even thinking that they should. And that is a very strong reason for forced sterilization. That is so since there is no way to avoid harming others even if everyone tried, and currently the vast majority of people not only don’t want to, but support the exact opposite.
Not even one horror that humans inflict on others has really totally been eradicated. They’re all, in one way or another, still here. War, rape, torture, murder, plunder, fur, leather, circus, zoos, horse racing, colonialism, turning animals to sumpters, enslavement of nonhuman animals for agricultural labor, tusking, circumcision, bullfights, genocide, hunting, isolation, wool, forced hospitalization, slavery. They are all still here. Even stoning, throwing over the roof, and burning at the stake are still around, and for the same mad reasons, just as it was hundreds of years ago. All these horrors were invented by the human race and all are still maintained by the human race. The human race has managed to start all these atrocities and didn’t manage to completely end even one of them.
Living on a planet with limited resources, no one can really avoid getting in conflict with others. No one should cause suffering to anyone, but no one can not cause suffering to others. Everything people do affects others, so it is even theoretically impossible to fulfil the most basic ethical requirement – do no harm. And practically, it is far from being the case that people are harming only since and when they cannot do otherwise. I wish people were harming others only for survival reasons. Reality is unfortunately much crueler. People harm, exploit, torture, humiliate, deprive, attack, ignore, abuse and whatnot, for much less essential reasons. People don’t harm others because they have things that they need, but mostly because they have things that they want.
Procreation is a very serious crime because it is creating a new center of suffering which didn’t have to be created. It is a center of suffering since it would suffer, and would cause much more suffering to others. When creating a new person, people don’t just force life on that person, but they also force that person on other living creatures. They force many others, probably thousands of sentient creatures, to be hurt by that person. Procreation is always a harm because someone is always harmed by the existence of someone being born.
The greatest crime of procreation is creating a new and unnecessary unit of suffering, exploitation and pollution, which is added to the already billions of units of suffering, exploitation and pollution. Units of suffering, exploitation and pollution mustn’t exist.
That is the main reason why procreation is morally prohibited and so must necessarily be stopped as soon as possible.
But that’s not going to happen. At least not voluntarily. The need to procreate is so strong that rational arguments don’t stand a chance.
It is very unlikely to convince people that procreation is a crime, while so many of them believe that it is the exact opposite. Not only that most people think that procreating is bliss, many of them wholeheartedly believe that it is a divine bliss. They feel that they are not even qualified to critically discuss the issue, a task preserved, according to them, only to god, and their god is very pro-natalist. Some of them believe that the suffering on earth would be compensated in the afterlife, and so generally accept the existence of suffering in this life. They usually don’t ponder over whether their children would share the same belief system, and so condemn them to suffer existence for the sake of salvation in the afterlife despite that before they were born, their children need not to be saved from anything.
It is irrelevant to seriously dream of global antinatalism in a world where in many places there is a duty to procreate, or at least an aggressive peer pressure to do so. For example in societies where procreation is a divine decree, or societies who feel they need soldiers or more working hands, or somebody to take care of the aging population in the rare cases of negative population growth, or simply because it is socially unacceptable not to have children. Probably an enormous number of people were forced into horrible lives, even after the contraceptive age, not to mention before it, by people who didn’t want to force them into existence, but had no choice. Most societies still look at healthy couples who are not extremely poor, as selfish if they choose not to create people. Generally speaking, the less liberal a society is, the stronger the peer pressure to procreate.
In the more liberal areas of the world, most people think that what matters most is what the parents want, not how the children would feel. This view stems from the liberal reasoning that people are first and foremost obligated to promote their own happiness and fulfill their own desires. Therefore it is wrong to pressure them not to bring people who are highly expected to lead miserable lives (for example in the case of foreseen serious health issues or very poor social starting conditions) into existence, in fact, the perception is that if that’s what they want, they should be supported. People who do so are in many cases considered heros. That is despite that they, and mostly their children, are forced to struggle with a problem they unnecessarily chose to create. And that is because procreation is not about what children would need and about what they absolutely don’t need, but about what their parents want and about what they absolutely don’t agree to give up on.
People procreate even when the chances for serious lifelong maladies are very high (for example in the case of genetic diseases or even when problems are observed through ultrasound).
Even people who have had horrible lives don’t hesitate and procreate despite that they know firsthand how easily life can become nightmarish. Procreation is way stronger than rational arguments, and people are anyway not very rational.
Despite that contraceptives are highly available in most of the world, people are too careless and not responsible enough to always use them.
Try to imagine for the sake of the argument that for some reason our world would become one with no contraceptives, a world in which basically, most of the sexual acts can end up with procreation. Do you think it would have made people stop having sex? It probably would have changed people’s sex lives, for example, casual affairs and one night stands would be much less common, probably even sex among couples, but it would most certainly cause much more people to be created. That is since humans are irrational biological machines, not ethical calculation machines.
Antinatalists’ arguments are so reasonable and yet, people don’t stop breeding.
People are struggling all the time, they are dissatisfied all the time, and want that things would be utterly different than they are, in their personal lives and in the world in general. Why perpetuating this Sisyphean struggle? Why condemn people to such a state? Yes, people can adjust even to bad conditions, but why force them into such a state in the first place? Why force them to adapt to a bad situation when it is absolutely unnecessary? It is so cruel to say that life is hard on everybody and they are all managing and they all adjust, since not everybody adjust, and since no one should adjust to a situation they don’t choose and didn’t agree to before they were forced into it. Why create someone who can adjust to a bad situation instead of easily avoiding it? The sayings that life is a compromise, or that we don’t always get what we want in life, are so common, and yet people consciously choose to throw other people into the position in which they must always compromise and never get everything they want. They choose to do it despite that there is absolutely no need to create a need.
Throughout history, were people ever happy? Did people ever get along with each other? Were they ever satisfied with themselves? Was there ever tranquility? Was there ever a time when most of the people didn’t have to struggle for everything in life? When was it ever good? The fact that that’s the way it is and has always been, doesn’t mean we should perpetuate it. On the contrary, if that’s how things have always been, we have even less reasons to believe they would ever change for the better. If anything, it should hasten us to try and do everything to stop it, not to submissively perpetuate it.
People are selfish enough to force someone into existence despite that it would necessarily suffer. They are not doing it so the person created would enjoy itself, as obviously it is impossible to do something for someone who does not yet exist. Nobody is bringing a new person into the world because that person wanted to, but because they wanted to. The motives are egoism, selfishness, to solve marriage problems, to feel needed and important, out of boredom, to grant falsified meaning to their pointless lives, because it is customary and expected of them, because not having children is unacceptable, and etc. The expected harms to their future children are the last to be considered, and the harms to others are not at all considered.
Procreation is not only creating a subject of harms and pleasures, but a small unit of exploitation and pollution, so the question mustn’t only be is it justified that people would impose harms on another person so that person would experience pleasures, but is it justified that people would create someone who would impose immense harm on many others so that that person would experience pleasures. Since it is never justified, procreation is never justified.
And since people don’t even take seriously the possibility that their own children might suffer extremely, there is no chance they would ever take seriously the certainty that other sentient creatures would suffer extremely because of their procreation. That’s why we mustn’t wait until people would understand that it is ethically impossible to justify procreation, but do everything we can to make it impossible to procreate.
Our enemy is not strong pro-natalist arguments since there are none. If it was the case then maybe at some point the antinatalist movement would have overcome it, or at least it would make sense fighting this war. But our enemy is much stronger than strong arguments, it is DNA.
There are ideological aspects to pro-natalism, but this is not the heart of the matter. Antinatalists prefer to think so since it is easier to fight ideas than wants, like it is easier to fight ignorance than apathy, but the need to procreate is biological, psychological, cultural and existential (filling life with meaning and purpose), and that is very very hard to beat. A moral argument can never beat all that. We can’t count on people to understand that procreation is morally wrong. That would never happen.
What makes it is so hard to convince people not to procreate is not their arguments but their apathy and biological urges. Deconstructing pro-natalists’ arguments is easy, turning their indifference into caring is almost impossible. People are so indifferent to the suffering of others, and even to the suffering of their own children (who they themselves brought into appalling starting conditions in many cases), so how can we seriously believe that they would ever change? It is not that they are not aware of the potential problems their children might be forced to face in the world, it is not ignorance. I wish that was the case, since ignorance can at least theoretically be solved. But the problem is much harder and worse. People are aware of the potential risks to their children and of the certain harms to others, and they do it anyway. Many are too apathetic, and many of the ones who are not totally careless, are not strong enough, the desire to procreate is just stronger than them. The fact is that even people who are sensitive and caring about the suffering of others are creating new persons. Even environmentalists and activists for animals are creating new persons. Even they are not strong enough to do the right and obvious thing and resist the urge to breed.
People’s urge to breed is not an uncontrollable urge, evidently many choose when and how many times to breed, and some choose not to breed at all. However, for every person who chooses not to create another person, there are many who choose to bring people into an existence of extremely hard living conditions. Anyway my main claim for forced sterilization is not that people have an urge to breed which is uncontrollable, but if anything, it is exactly the opposite. Although it is true that if people were unable to overcome their biological urge to breed, it would make a very strong case for forced sterilization, I think that the fact that people can control their urge to breed but willingly choose to inflict so much suffering on others, including their own children, makes an even stronger one.
The main problem with antinatalism isn’t the logic of its arguments but the failure to understand the illogicality of humans. We are not going to overpower irrational biological drives by using logical arguments. We can barely convince some people to acknowledge the harmfulness of procreation, so we definitely can’t make them care enough to take action against it. The vast majority of people are too indifferent to “sacrifice” even their most minuscule desires and habits such as eating the meat of animals whose lives are a living hell, so they are definitely not going to voluntarily give up on procreation. People are not even ready to stop making the problem bigger by not consuming more animals despite that meat is not a biological need, so to stop procreating despite that it is?
A great share of the reasons why humans mustn’t procreate are the very same reasons why they would keep procreating as long as no one stops them. In the book Debating Procreation; Is It Wrong to Reproduce? David Benatar mentions some of the most famous psychology experiments that demonstrate how irrational, conformist, pliable and obedient humans are, as part of his misanthropic argument against creating new people.
The fact that humans are not rational creatures, which Benatar exemplifies by mentioning the “framing effect” (the principle that people’s choices are influenced by the way they are framed through different wordings, settings, and situations) and the “endowment effect” (preferring what we already have and valuing it much higher than its objective value), is a good reason why they shouldn’t procreate but also a good reason why they would never stop by themselves, and why it is pointless to use rational arguments to make them stop.
Humans’ tendency toward conformity, a fact Benatar exemplifies by mentioning the famous Asch conformity experiments, is a good reason why they shouldn’t procreate but also a good reason why they won’t stop.
Even more than the former two, humans’ tendency to obey authority, a fact Benatar exemplifies by mentioning Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiments, is a very good reason why they shouldn’t procreate, as this trait was and is still being used to make people do terrible things. But it is also a good reason why they won’t stop, as long as they would be convinced by authoritative figures that it is needed personally, socially, culturally, economically, and militarily.
The fact that humans can so easily hurt, humiliate and psychologically torture other humans, which Benatar exemplifies by mentioning the famous Stanford prison experiment, is a good reason why they shouldn’t procreate but also a good reason why they won’t stop, as they don’t care much about others.
Later in that book Benatar mentions some of the great atrocities people have caused throughout history to further form the basis for his misanthropic argument against creating new people. Again this is not only a good reason why people shouldn’t procreate but also a reason why they won’t stop. That is since if their level of moralism is so low (and the extremely partial list of extremely horrible atrocities they have caused to their own kind is an unequivocal evidence for their low morality), then why would they suddenly decide that they are too horrible to exist? Why would they voluntarily decide to stop breeding so that such a cruel species as their own would go extinct?
Nothing even remotely close to such an ethical internalization was ever made by humanity, not even after the greatest atrocities caused by it during history, and despite that some of it required much less demanding decisions than stop procreating. Humans are not particularly good at reaching the right conclusions, even when they are simple and desired by most of them, so reaching a conclusion such as stop procreating which is really undesirable by the vast majority of them?! This is absolutely delusional.
People are deeply trapped in the life mechanism. They are victims not only of their biology but also of their psychology. They would adapt and adjust themselves and their expectations according to how bad the lives they are forced to endure are. However, obviously low expectation, adaptation ability, and the fact that everyone else’s lives is not much better, can’t justify bad situations which shouldn’t have been created in the first place. But an even sadder fact is that humans are not really looking for justifications to procreate. Most just do. They don’t even really need mechanisms to sooth their worries about the future of their children, because as inevitable as it is that bad things would happen to their children, it rarely crosses their minds. Unfortunately people are that apathetic to the fate of others, even when it comes to their future children, and definitely when it comes to the rest of the victims of procreation.
Since parents are creating new centers of suffering out of their own will and for their own benefit, they are imposing an intended risk on someone else’s life. They don’t intend to harm their own children, but they intendedly ignore the fact that their children would surely be harmed. And when considering the harms to others, since the parents are the ones who provide their children food, clothes, energy and every other harmful aspect involved in supporting their life, they are definitely held responsible in every possible way. They have created this consuming being which wasn’t there and wasn’t deprived of anything before they have decided to create it, and now it exists, and it is hurting many sentient creatures in many different ways for no justified reason at all. Considering the enormous harm every person inflicts on others, and the loaded weapon in the Russian Roulette that people are playing every time they are creating a new person is not a gun, but an aircraft carrier.
Humans’ carelessness, even for their own children, and their cruelty in general, are of the strongest reasons why trying to convince people not to procreate is useless, and why we must find ways to stop humans from procreating regardless of their opinion about it. Just as they disregard the opinion of their children, and all of their children’s victims. That is not to teach them a lesson of course, but because it is the only way to stop this never-ending crime.
Given the biological urge to procreate, it is probable that each couple’s children would too procreate and so repeat playing Russian Roulette with others’ lives, repeat forcing existence without consent, and hurt others, many many others if the cycle of procreation endlessly continues.
Appealing to people hoping they would voluntarily stop procreating for moral reasons is chanceless. The reduction in procreation in some parts of the world is a result of people’s self-centered decision that they don’t want to have children, not a result of their ethical decision that they don’t want children to be created.
We can’t count on the human race and mustn’t even if we could, since it means letting trillions of sentient creatures suffer until everyone would realize that procreation is wrong. We must take the power to decide out of humans’ hands by preventing them from doing the wrong thing.
When considering the billions of sentient creatures being imprisoned for their entire lives, when considering the billions of sentient creatures being genetically modified so they would provide the maximum meat possible for the to-be born persons, when considering the billions of sentient creatures being forced to live without their family for their entire lives, when considering the billions of sentient creatures who suffer from chronic pain and maladies, when considering the billions of sentient creatures that can never breathe clean air, walk on grass, bath in water, and eat their natural food, when considering the billions of sentient creatures being violently murdered so the to-be born could consume their bodies, when considering the billions of sentient creatures whose habitats are being destroyed and polluted, when considering the billions of sentient creatures being skinned alive, castrated, burned, poisoned, kicked, dehorned, mounted, chained, experimented on, enslaved, human extinction is totally unquestionable.
Antinatalists understand very well the consequence of the decision not to procreate if it would be applied by everyone, and it seems that most don’t mourn it but actually wish for human extinction. My problem with this stand is that things are way too horrible for this passive longing to be sufficient. We shouldn’t suffice with not regretting that the human race would go extinct, we should do something so it will happen as soon as possible. There is no real moral validity to a position supporting a consequence without doing anything to promote it.
Obviously some antinatalists are activists in the antinatalist scene and clearly every person they manage to convince not to procreate is a great contribution to reducing suffering. But on a global scale it is absolutely hopeless. The reproduction growth rate is so much faster than the antinatalism growth, and the urge to procreate is so much stronger than people’s ability to act rationally and morally, that talking with them, one person at a time, is far from enough. Considering the enormous number of victims and suffering in the world, the solution must be global and inclusive, not local and individual. We can’t fix the human race. The only way to stop the daily horrors the human race is doing is human extinction. And that is not going to happen voluntarily.
Voluntary human extinction require social agreement, so far one haven’t come up regarding much easier problems which should have been resolved long ago. There were never truly egalitarian and equitable societies in history. Social injustice is a human feature since forever. So are class, poverty, servitude, racism, chauvinism, war and etc. it is hard to see voluntary antinatalism in such a world. A world in which religions are still so amazingly popular, a world where people are not yet over the concept of god, so acting against his pseudo creation plan? People are not ready to pass on meat despite all of its tremendous costs, some of which to their own health, so what are the odds they would give up procreation?
Instead of acknowledging that the world is full of misery and therefore refuse to create another misery machine, which would not only increase the misery by absorbing and inflicting it, but also by preventing parents from investing all of their time in reducing some of the already existing misery, people are creating new suffering centers, which is to add cruelty to harm.
Procreation is causing enormous unnecessary suffering, suffering which can be prevented with no harm to the unborn. Causing unnecessary suffering is not only immoral it is cruel. Doing so despite that it could be easily prevented, and while the alternative is harmless, is a crime we must do everything in our power to stop as soon as possible.
The possibility of creating even one extremely miserable person, is enough to make procreation unethical. The fact that it is estimated that there are tens of millions of suicidal people around the world makes procreation unethical and really cruel. And the fact that there are trillions of victims of humanity’s procreation makes the opposition to forced sterilization unethical and really cruel.
The claim that problems can be solved is ethically flawed not only because it is factually wrong, but also because even if solutions were possible, it cannot justify the creation of the problem in the first place. That is to an even greater degree the case with procreation which is forcing problems, really major problems, on others.
The problems humans are causing are only getting bigger and bigger, and so the solution must be radical and thorough. People are not going to stop procreating out of their own good will. Activists who want to solve problems from the roots, once and for all, must make them stop.
Some antinatalists make do with adopting a minimalist lifestyle, reducing their personal harmfulness footprint to minimum. But when the entire system is so structurally harmful and flawed, there is something immoral in minimalism, since it is forsaking the helpless creatures of the world who have no way of defending themselves.
Personally trying to prevent causing harms, is not enough, because it doesn’t prevent others from causing harms. Activists mustn’t seclude themselves and live a life of minimum intervention in the lives of others. A much more reasonable and ethical conclusion would be to maximally intervene in the lives of others, definitely when it comes to procreation.
If even the few people who care about others and are aware of how structurally violent and immoral this world is, won’t do everything in their power to help them, and instead would lead highly introversive lives, trillions of creatures would continue to be sentenced to life of suffering.
Moral people mustn’t make do with their private minimal existence while others are suffering. We must make sure that no one is suffering. Or at least no one of the ones we can help. And these are all the creatures who suffer at the tyrant hands of the human race. It is not enough to claim that non-existence is better than existence, we must act so there would be no procreation. Therefore what moral people should aspire for is not to minimize their personal harm, but to maximize the reduction of global harm.
Thinking that something is morally right should commit and impel us to act so it is carried out.
I call everyone who cares about others’ suffering not to concentrate on their own little lives while entrusting the fate of other suffering creatures in the hands of pro-natalists, but act so there would be no procreation anymore.
We mustn’t count on human morality. It is speciesist and immoral to allow them to decide and to wait until each one of them would understand and act accordingly, while the victims pile up. We must make a decision for the victims’ sake even without the permission of the victimizers.
Think about it this way, if one generation of humans had decided that it is wrong to procreate and therefore agreed to sacrifice its desire to do so, that decision would have prevented all the suffering caused by humans from the moment the last person of that generation died. If for example that generation lived in the beginning of 19th century, that decision would have prevented all the suffering that occurred during the 20th century. Two world wars, hundreds of other wars, all the war crimes, all the reeducation camps, the famine in China, the famine in Ukraine, the famine in Japan, the famine in Russia, the famine in India, the famine in Somalia, the famine in Ethiopia, the famine in Mozambique, the famine in Yemen, the famine in Sudan, all the rapes, all the murders, all the tortures, all the concentration camps in Poland, Germany, Cambodia and North Korea, all the diseases, the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing in Armenia, the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, the ethnic cleansing in Cambodia, all the animals experimentations, all the fishing, all the hunting, all the beating, all the humiliations, all the accidents, all the disappointments, all the frustrations, all the pains, and every second in every factory farm. Can the frustration of one generation, of one species only, seriously be compared with all these atrocities? Of course not. But the human race is far from being moral enough to decide not to procreate, no matter how obvious, essential, unequivocal and urgent it is. The human race is not moral enough to realize that if one of the former generations had made that call then all the atrocities of the 20th century and the ones happening now in 21st century wouldn’t have happened, and that if they would make that call now, all the atrocities of the 22nd century won’t happen. But the human race would never make that call.
Now, if it was possible to sterilize that generation in the beginning of 19th century, an action which would have prevented the horrors of the 20th century, for the price of the frustration of the people who existed in the beginning of 19th century only and wanted to procreate, is it even conceivable to consider if it was worth it? Is it even conceivable to consider if it is worth doing now?
Human extinction is a moral imperative. That is since it is preventing suffering from innumerable generations, with no negative effect. And also since arguing that something is better (and obviously antinatalism implies human extinction), surly in this unequivocal case, ethically compels an intervention to make it happen. After all, to stand idle while generation after generation spawns an unimaginable amount of suffering, is complicity. It is very cruel to let the madness continue without doing anything about it.
There are so many references to the human race as a parasite, cancer, a plague, demons and etc., from popular culture to the environmental movement. Even people who are barely aware of the harms of the human race but read in the papers nowadays that it is responsible for the sixth mass extinction think that the world would be a better place without the human race. There is a human voluntary extinction movement for many years now, which I have no doubt that has managed to convince some people to consider not to procreate, or at least to have one baby instead of few. But clearly this movement can’t even stop the growth of the human population, not to mention to achieve the goal itself – human extinction. For that to really happen we must make it happen and it is not going to happen by the futile attempt of trying to convince each human, while condemning each victim out of the trillions per year to a life of extreme misery. It is not going to happen by making every human become antinatalist but by making every human sterile. The suffering production line must be stopped in every possible way.
It might be possible to engineer a virus or bacteria which attack humans’ reproductive system, and unlike lethal pathogens, it might be possible that this virus or bacteria can be spread in a very high rate under humans’ radar. Unlike lethal pathogens, ones that would cause sterilization, don’t kill their own host and so can keep spreading themselves effectively and relatively quietly.
Other methods might be developing a powerful sterilizing chemical substance which can be easily spread through air, water sources, or via basic food staples. And anyway, combining several methods is best if possible. Obviously that is a very aspiring undertaking, but nothing else can ever stop the heinous crime of procreation.
Some might oppose the forced sterilization call as an operative antinatalist resolution, due to its coercive aspect. But given that the only way to cease the inherent coercion of procreation is with the inherent coercion of forced sterilization, clearly for the long run that resolution beholds much less coercion than letting procreation continue on its horrendous course. The number of individuals who would endure coercion of all kinds in the future, in case it won’t happen, is practically infinite. In fact, even without considering everyone who would ever exist, the number of individuals who endure coercion of all kinds in the present, already outweighs the number of people who need to be sterilized.
Refusing to force sterilization on the current generation is forcing endless suffering on an endless number of individuals. Coercion is unavoidable, the question is of extent. The coercion involved in forced sterilization is for one generation only. The coercion involved in the refusal to forced sterilization can last until the sun burns out.
Procreation is a crime so serious that it shouldn’t be left for humanity to decide upon. It must be stopped and by forced means if necessary. And unfortunately it is necessary.
People will never stop breeding until we make them. We must stop looking for the best antinatalist argument, and start looking for the best way to somehow sterilize them all.
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