Anti-Natalism, Can It Really Exist?

Zaharoff - I'm a little perplexed as to your issue with him, when you listed bands you liked I don't remember you seeming so averse to aggressive venting.

I like NIN okay, it's occasionally very beautiful but Reznor's voice and lyrics always seemed the weakest part, like Jim Thirlwell/Foetus but not nearly as good.

However, what he did with his voice in Twin Peaks seemed like a huge improvement. I thought that was a great performance.
 
Robert Adam Gilmour said:
Zaharoff - I'm a little perplexed as to your issue with him, when you listed bands you liked I don't remember you seeming so averse to aggressive venting.
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I liked Nine Inch Nails, particularly "Pretty Hate Machine," which was a revelation when it was released.
I just don't care for Mr Reznor as an individual.
I love Chet Baker's music - as a representative of humanity - a malignancy.
Believe me, I try to avoid knowing details about artists, pop or serious.
While I can enjoy and appreciate creative output, I usually want to know scat about the creator.
Authors, musicians, painters, sculptors ... don't need or want to know what they think, their politics, love life, childhood, pets, fave foods.
And yes, I realize that puts me out of step with the ever curious crowd, gaping at todays parade.
 
Has anyone written a story (not a philosophical treatise) about global voluntary anti-natalism that ends in species extinction? Seems like it would be interesting to explore what plausible scenario might bring that about. The closest thing I can think of is the short story "The Last Night of the World" in Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man".


marioneta said:
Antinatalism will exist when nature decides it will and not by the voluntary will of humans because we are programmed biologically to reproduce, as are all living things. Celibacy might be an individual choice, but will never be the norm.We are seperate from nature because of our consciousness, which may have been a mutation, but we still are within the matrix of nature. Human beings may be an aberration of nature just as plastic is, but our origins are still in nature.
The scenario I envision is similar to the movie Children of Men without the happy ending.
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Robert Adam Gilmour said:
What did he do?
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I take it you mean Mr Reznor and not Mr Baker.
Reznor has been venting, howling and screaming his rage for almost thirty years.
Society as a whole has been doing this, as well.
TV "news" where opinionated types interrupt and talk over each other.
Politicians who preach hatred, division, resentment.
A chorus of fury now seems to drown out good people.
More religious souls may wonder if the Lord of Lies is active.
Mr Reznor is another stoker of the flames, and he has enriched himself over the years with his negativity.
I am not blind, however, to the tone of TLO, though I suspect few members here would riot or set their neighbors' homes on fire.

What is it you admire about him as an individual?

Apologies for straying off the topic of anti-natalism
 
"What is it you admire about him as an individual? ...Apologies for straying off the topic of anti-natalism"

Actually, Zaharoff, I believe that you haven't strayed that far from the path and that your questions are excellent ones.

I posted the original interview with Reznor not because I admire him or even because I listen to his music (I haven't for years, except for that appearance on Twin Peaks 3). And other than the interview, I didn't know anything about his life.

He just seemed to me the kind of person who represents the many reasons to explore or consider anti-natalism. The fact that he seems to actually know this of himself, and is articulate enough to discuss it, was an added bonus.

The issue seems to be whether one has to be "good person" to be relevant to this topic. While I try to be a kind and compassionate person myself (with many failings), by temperment I am also a philosopher and have spent many years of my life contemplating the evil that men do. Not with much insight, unfortunately.

However, I suggest that on the topic of anti-natalism, we may learn much from people that do not get listed on the "10 Most Virtuous People Alive" list, especially those who are creative. In short, "Evil Artists and Writers?"
 
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Steve Dekorte said:
Has anyone written a story (not a philosophical treatise) about global voluntary anti-natalism that ends in species extinction? Seems like it would be interesting to explore what plausible scenario might bring that about. The closest thing I can think of is the short story "The Last Night of the World" in Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man".


marioneta said:
Antinatalism will exist when nature decides it will and not by the voluntary will of humans because we are programmed biologically to reproduce, as are all living things. Celibacy might be an individual choice, but will never be the norm.We are seperate from nature because of our consciousness, which may have been a mutation, but we still are within the matrix of nature. Human beings may be an aberration of nature just as plastic is, but our origins are still in nature.
The scenario I envision is similar to the movie Children of Men without the happy ending.
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I reread The Last Night of the World here. This is the ideal case scenario. I doubt most people would go quietly into the night like that. The Purge is more likely.

It'd be good if we ask ourselves the questions: What is morality to a species?
It's obvious the continuation of a species depends on reproduction, but the continuation of an individual does not depend on it nor is it the first priority (survival is). As for the nature argument, I think we are as separated from nature as we can be. Other creatures live within nature, and to them procreation is natural as excretion; procreation for us depends on the society we are in and our choice.

Gnosticangel said:
"What is it you admire about him as an individual? ...Apologies for straying off the topic of anti-natalism"


He just seemed to me the kind of person who represents the many reasons to explore or consider anti-natalism. The fact that he seems to actually know this of himself, and is articulate enough to discuss it, was an added bonus.

The issue seems to be whether one has to be "good person" to be relevant to this topic. While I try to be a kind and compassionate person myself (with many failings), by temperment I am also a philosopher and have spent many years of my life contemplating the evil that men do.

I suggest that on the topic of anti-natalism, we may learn much from people that do not get listed on the "10 Most Virtuous People Alive" list, especially those who are creative. In short, "Evil Artists."
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The rants of Reznor are no more surprising than what we can find in True Detective. Another interview shows him to be more balanced.
 
Gnosticangel said:
The issue seems to be whether one has to be "good person" to be relevant to this topic. While I try to be a kind and compassionate person myself (with many failings), by temperment I am also a philosopher and have spent many years of my life contemplating the evil that men do. Not with much insight, unfortunately.

However, I suggest that on the topic of anti-natalism, we may learn much from people that do not get listed on the "10 Most Virtuous People Alive" list, especially those who are creative. In short, "Evil Artists and Writers?"
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There's a lovely old expression that gets bandied around too little these days: whited sepulchre.

That is, people who present themselves outwardly as being morally pure, the very epitomes of virtue and decency, when in reality they are as corrupt and full of rot as anyone else. Hypocrites, in short.

Scratch any preening moralist and chances are you'll uncover a truly poisonous individual with a more shameful history than any of the ordinary wretches they like to present themselves as superior to. Any "10 Most Virtuous" list is guaranteed to have at least 3 or 4 hidden monsters lurking in its ranks.

So I wouldn't measure the virtues of antinatalism by the perceived virtuousness (or otherwise) of people who espouse them. It's too important for that. It's the idea itself that needs to be considered seriously, even if one finds some of its most vocal proponents personally repulsive.
 
cannibal cop said:
There's a lovely old expression that gets bandied around too little these days: whited sepulchre.

That is, people who present themselves outwardly as being morally pure, the very epitomes of virtue and decency, when in reality they are as corrupt and full of rot as anyone else. Hypocrites, in short.

Scratch any preening moralist and chances are you'll uncover a truly poisonous individual with a more shameful history than any of the ordinary wretches they like to present themselves as superior to. Any "10 Most Virtuous" list is guaranteed to have at least 3 or 4 hidden monsters lurking in its ranks.
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Matthew 23:27:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
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Nagai Kafu, A Strange Tale from East of the River (trans. Seidensticker):

He frequented the pleasure quarters with such enthusiasm that ten years were as a day; for he knew only too well that they were quarters of darkness and unrighteousness. And had the world come to praise the profligate as a loyal servant and pious son, he would have declined, even at the cost of selling his property, to hear the voice of praise. Indignation at the hypocritical vanity of proper wives and at the fraud of the just and open society was the force that sent him speeding in the other direction, toward what was from the start taken for dark and unrighteous. There was more happiness in finding the remains of a beautifully woven pattern among castaway rags than in finding spatters and stains on a wall proclaimed immaculate. Sometimes in the halls of the righteous droppings from crows and rats are to be seen, and sometimes in the depths of corruption flowers of human sympathy and fruits of perfumed tears are to be found and gathered.
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I like this passage very much, though even this paradox can sometimes seem simplistic, in a world where it is not the white wall, hiding corruption, that is proclaimed righteous, but the dungheap itself.
 
ToALonelyPeace said:
As for the nature argument, I think we are as separated from nature as we can be. Other creatures live within nature, and to them procreation is natural as excretion; procreation for us depends on the society we are in and our choice.
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By the same token, then, excretion in this society has become a matter of choice?

You’re essentially saying procreation is originally a bodily function, as it were. That seems like a sound perspective, and the reason i’d say that to procreate falls, like excretion, within the realm of the natural ( i mean this free from moral pronouncement - so, not ‘naturally good’ or something ), while the decision to not procreate falls within the realm of choice.
 
Pro-natalism is becoming so twisted in Trump's America that women's status as birth givers is again overriding their human rights.
 
Anti-natalism is such a fascinating idea, but I ask myself why I tend to resist it. What attracts me to its argument is that it's so counter to our basic biological desires. Yet my resistance to it is based on those same biological desires or instincts as well as a distrust that comes from coming from the bottom rung of society which is usually characterized as "people of colour". And so I wrestle with it.
 
Gnosticangel said:
Some thinking out loud: Whenever "antinatalist impulses" have been applied selectively or politically to any race or ethnicity, the process shows what are the very worst sins of humanity, including genocide. For example, one could justifiably term Nazi sterilizations of subject populations, or diabled people, a hellish version of selective antinatalism in practice. So, while personal thoughts of antinatalism may contain opportunities for profound existential reflection; and while antinatalism may offer a sharp lens for neutral observers witnessing trends in history, art and literature; antinatalism when "applied to others" in practice has always generated evil. (Forgive the obviousness of that, but human history is certainly filled with examples of that kind of "antinatalism.")
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It's false to link Nazism with a type of "selective" antinatalism. Nazism justified itself on eugenics (from the word eu: true and genics: genes). It has nothing to do with suffering, moral problems..etc, because it's about the gene pool. A contemporary version of eugenics is prenatal screening, where people choose the child they'd like to enter this world.

Gnosticangel said:
Perhaps there are political, anticolonialist or environmentalist aspects to antinatalism that are independent of racism though? For example, what could be loosely termed the "antinatalist stream of thought" through history seems to be most closely tied to urban societies past their prime or "decadent," whether in ancient Rome, 19th Century Europe, or the modern world.

Virtually everyone is familiar with the phenomena of current declining birthrates in post-industrial societies in Japan, Europe and the US. Usually this is attributed to increased education and career opportunities for women, leading to fewer choosing to have children. However there are also many people who are simply deciding to "not bring any more children into this overcrowded world," a sentiment that I've often heard in the environmental movement. And there may be just as many people who choose to not have children as an aethetic or philosophical choice.
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In a farming society there is demand for having as many children as possible, because the farm needs helpers. Yet in post-industrialized like the Western world children are required to go to school for 12 years, so they need more resources than what they bring into the family. It doesn't make sense to have 9 or 10 anymore. Education for women should be taken into account, yes, but also the work cultures and living cost in countries like Japan and US (I don't know about Europe). Overall, I think environmental and population controls are the least concerns of to-be parents.
 
ToALonelyPeace said:
It's false to link Nazism with a type of "selective" antinatalism. Nazism justified itself on eugenics (from the word eu: true and genics: genes). It has nothing to do with suffering, moral problems..etc, because it's about the gene pool.
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But it can also be dangerous not to link nazism with the things that might grow or evolve towards it in time. In fact, i can imagine a nazi ( note i'm not capitalizing that ) might argue his belief system is grounded in a certain type of morality; certainly the peoples the many genocides have been enacted upon were viewed as being morally inferior and hence not deserving of having their genes distributed. Our nazi might very well argue that the genetically more pure ( or whatever balderdash they call it ) are less prone to suffering because of their übermenschliches constitution.

In regards to Marioneta's understated point about antinatalism and PoC, allow me to stretch and fill it in a bit: if one is susceptible to it, one might find, in the discourse of Occidental apologists for the antinatalist cause, the underlying and perhaps subconscious assertion that those who choose not to 'breed like rabbits' are somehow morally superior to the many African nations or, say, Palestine where birth rates are rather higher.
That's potentially an ugly undercurrent, no?

Related to that: antinatalism is, after all, a luxury position, because contraceptives are not free.

Extrapolating upon that again, i am quite willing to prognosticate that if a certain president's plans on abortion are made lawful, the price of contraceptives will skyrocket, thereby conveniently keeping those breeding underclasses from entering into the universities, effectively and finally pricing them out of any hope of a career.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E86gWQs-ios
 
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