Anti-Natalism is a very odd movement which is made up of folks who, like many of us, wish they were never born. But the anti-natalists wish to make this a trend or a movement.
Their philosophical view is that life is horrible torture. We come into the world, shine bright for what seems like forever but is really just a the blink of an eye. And the whole time we are wishing we lived forever (As if 70 year of torture was not enough!) and living in daily terror of our looming annihilation, which is colloquially known as our death.
We know we are going to die, this is the ultimate terror, and these facts make most of us at least a bit nuts, which is why things like dope, porn and therapists exist at all. A human comes into the world, is shown a glimpse of heavenly forever in a fleeting flame of existence, and then cruelly snuffed him out with utmost cruelly just when he thinks it’s barely even gotten started.
It’s awful. Life is torture.
They give you a glimpse of eternity and then snatch it away just as you are beginning to adjust your eyes. How cruel can you get? We salve ourselves with religion and lies and dope and sex to try to make this truth go away, but none of it really works, and deep inside we all know we are just fooling ourselves.
This thing called life is cruel and evil precisely because we die and we know it, and this tortures us into some degree of insanity with every day we march forward in footfalls of doom towards the ultimate in sheer, raving horror. Death is the ultimate fear, the granddaddy of all of the rest, and the others all have death as first base.
No compassionate human being would ever bring a child into this torture chamber called life to saddle it with the charnel house as coda always barely visible at the end of that long, seemingly eternal tunnel always in the foreground at least a bit no matter how we try not to see it. Death is the shadow that stalks us through life. We keep saying we won’t turn around and see it, but it’s no matter because it falls in front us as much as behind us. We can run but we can’t hide. Every time we turn this way or that, there’s another reaper. There’s literally no escape.
Bringing a poor innocent child into this horror called life is such a cruel and evil act that anti-natalists say we should all just stop doing it. Quit having kids. Stop bringing new humans into this Hell. It’s the only moral choice. Making babies can be nothing other than immoral or even evil. In order to be good, we must not breed.
Why is life such a horrorshow? Not so much because we die but because we know we are going to. As far as we know, most other animals are not even sure that they exist, and they don’t seem to know that they are going to die. So life is a pleasant illusion in a sense for a lower mammal.
If we humans somehow had no idea we were going to die, then our deaths would hardly be painful at all. We would be stumbling right along, assuming we were going to live forever, and then one day, death would take us away, but since we don’t know what it is or if it will even happen, it’s not a problem. We could go through our lives barely worrying about death for a second.
On the other hand, we might take all sorts of crazy risks all through life because we knew that no matter what, we could probably get away with it.
The threat of injury can be sobering, but it ain’t got nothing on death. Hurt and sick can’t begin to compare to buying it. It would be nice if they did, but they just don’t. That’s mostly because we humans persist in the delusion of sure recovery from injury and illness.
The only reason we are much cautious at all is because we are afraid that if we let down our guard or slip up, we will die. So most folks tend to watch their step through their lives, which is actually good for our species.
Obviously anti-natalists acknowledge that the movement would drive humans extinct, but anti-natalists either don’t care or think this would be a good thing. I have no idea what to say about that except that there sure would be lots of cockroaches running around our planet.
I do not support anti-natalism, and I think it is a bit of an absurd movement, but it is one of the cleverest movements I have heard of. I will give them that. For some reason, I doubt it will catch on.
Ann is also quite a misanthrope and pessimist, but I guess most of these anti-natalists are, and the former two would seem to flow naturally form the latter. So she spends a lot of time making misanthropic posts on Facebook which are pretty funny.
Schopenhauer (and even Nietzsche) are probably right after all. And so was Twain at the end. I realize that pessimism (and even nihilism) are rational. And so is misanthropy. I just think they are a drag. These notions are not wrong because they are false. They are wrong because they are no fun.
I suppose my argument would be, “Well, of course the world blows and life sucks, but so what?” And, “Well, sure most other humans are moronic and contemptible, but so what?” The purpose of my life is not to wallow in these damnable truths. The purpose of life is the Endless Party we need to engage in so we don’t have to think about those things. We are here to pretend, escape and forget. That’s the meaning of life. That’s it. There’s nothing else.