[split] Ethics - parental responsibility re: children

[The Grand Nudger]

A person interested in making the world a better place probably isn't the best example of a person allowing suffering to exist - but..hey, end of the day, we can only do so much.

If we fixed all of our human problems there would still be suffering..but suffering, in and of itself, still won't be enough to state confidently that anti natalism is the correct or logical position. I think you're making just as misguided an accusation here as anywhere before. Human beings are well known for their attempts to escape, avoid, and prevent suffering. Clearly, we think it's a big enough problem to do something about it, though a great many of us may find that we aren't in much of a position to do so with respect to some given thing. Here again, not the kind of thing we can be morally responsible for - defanging anti natalism to some extent even as it suggests that they're not completely wrong all the time about every life. I wouldn't personally have a kid in a warzone, for example - but I find it hard to bring down any objective moral condemnation of those who do, and can clearly see the evil in insisting that only those of us who can satisfy a bored misanthrope's objections, as they live in relative peace, have kids.

A good argument for helping your fellow man, to my mind, not for emptying the world of people, the only agents we're aware of that could help those people who truly cannot help themselves.

The trouble, as you might see a pattern by now - is that if we entertain the idea that the world could be improved by the absence of human beings because we are or possess some bad thing x we must also contend with how the world could be made worse by the same. With or without people, there will be suffering on earth. That's non negotiable. A fact of our shared biology. We could say that there'd be less human suffering, at least - but there would also be less (or none) of all of the other things that people are, do, or experience.

[Ahriman]

Clearly, we think it's a big enough problem to do something about it

You mean like, hide from it? Because that's how most people handle suffering. They pretend it doesn't exist. Incredibly ignorant, foolish, stupid.

[The Grand Nudger]

There you go again. People are insane, irrational, cowards, misguided, malevolent, incredibly ignorant foolish and stupid (seems redundant, but okay). Pure misanthropy, not an ethical position, not a logical argument.

We leave the toilet seat up, too, wanna comment on that?

[Ahriman]

Maybe I use strong words because I'm a strong person. Or I could just be angry and upset with how much suffering I'm being forced to endure.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm unconcerned with why you do what you do or feel what you feel. I want to see the work behind your declaration that anti natalism is the correct and logical position. Your misery and misanthropy is not in question and you don't need to argue in or even explain your subjective appraisals. I take water for water.

[Ahriman]

You really don't get it by now? You're just blind.

[The Grand Nudger]

Doubtful. I sympathize with how you feel. I've seen some of the worst shit humanity has to offer. Stood in a mass grave, watched brothers bomb brothers in the same damned building, kids and all.

A logical and correct ethical position, however, is not about our feels.

[Ahriman]

When all you feel is suffering, the dissolution of humanity appears to be an attractive option.

[The Grand Nudger]

Being attractive and being logical or correct are not interchangeable.

I’m not even sure how you get to the dissolution of humanity, from how you personally feel about your own individual life. That’s teetering on genocide out of frustration. Not a rejection of alleged human perfidy, but a full throated acceptance of it, and agreement with its aims.

[Ahriman]

Yeah I know, I'm just frustrated. I have a few personal problems that render me incapable of relating to the rest of humanity in any meaningful way. You even said yourself, that I am "unlovable", well that's pretty much true. There's no room for love in my reality. It's all anger, boredom, hatred, and misery. I'm not even sure I've ever felt what people call "happy" at any point in my life. And to top it all off, I'm not allowed to do anything fun anymore. I can't drink, I can't smoke weed, I can't edge to porn for hours at a time, nothing. It's like God wants me to be bored and miserable.