[split] Ethics - parental responsibility re: children

[Rev. Rye]

Name it.

Ok, sure, here's the Wiki link on antina...

Nah, on second thought, you're a very special person with a very unique view that no one has ever thought of before, please ignore.

Seriously, there are dozens of philosophers who have had the same thought and have actually managed to create some good arguments in favour of  it. David Benatar and Arthur Schopenhauer are probably the best examples, possibly the Buddha. Ahri might be onto something, but doesn't seem terribly capable of expressing it in a way that doesn't sound like, well, a mentally ill shitposter. And, yes, I have mental illnesses, but at least I can apply some degree of intellectual rigor to the question.

Maybe I could qualify the premise, say it's not automatically a bad thing, but that it does become one when one decides to bring a child into the world recklessly, without knowing how to care for it and/or knowing that you're going to doom it to a bad life with little chance of rising above it all and/or if you're not going to be prepared to prioritise its well-being over yours. Or I could point out that the experiences of the last decade or two are making bringing new life into the world an option less morally sound (say, that there's a vanishingly small window of time before our chances to do anything about global warming run out and that it's become blindingly obvious that we're going to miss the mark. Or, Hell, the fact that we've been dealing with a deadly virus for two years and people are bitterly divided about whether we should do anything about it.)