How about don’t have kids so you can work more and more flexible hours on demand in aspiration of a fabricated idea of a career

I wish I got to choose if my parents had children.

Yes… But should they get that choice?

If I could wave a magic wand, I’d make it so every 12 year old that could make sperm (trans, cis, whatever) gets a reversible vasectomy automatically. Then, if/when they ever want and plan for starting a family, they can take the class on childhood development and how to be a good parent who raises not shitty humans. If they pass, great! They get to undo the vasectomy and try for a family. If not, oh well, no one wanted to have to support your shitty kids in the first place.

I have no idea how something like this could ever actually be implemented in a fair way… Hense the need for the magic wand

… without being judged for it, I hope?

I wish they did but the governments are intent on taking that choice away

Of course. You can, and it’s your right to do so. But that doesn’t mean it’s ethical.

What previous status quo are antinatalists trying to return to? “Reactionary” is just the left wing equivalent of “woke”.

Need dragon slayers in the time dragons.

I don’t care about the species, I care about the people. If someone doesn’t want to reproduce, it’s better for both them and the species that they don’t. People only reproducing when they personally get something out of it will eventually make future generations enjoy it more. Forcing it just promotes suffering, perpetuating the cycle of unhappy parents in the long run.

This whole idea of caring about furthering our “species” is eugenics anyways. My genes make me want to be a parent, but I understand that the genes themselves don’t matter for shit. I’m planning to have kids because I will enjoy raising them and helping them live full lives. If someone doesn’t share this desire, I’m not gonna force my preference onto them.

Freedom and treating humans with dignity does that very job of eugenics better than the eugenics notion of pressuring people to be parents. There’s no Darwinian excuse for being shitty to other people. Just be good.

80 years of total infertility across billions of people. Even 99.9% infertility would still leave millions of people. Extinction isn’t coming anytime soon.

I would say it isn’t

The child can still consider taking the one-way exit as soon as it is able to make such considerations and thereby gets a choice.

You could ask in a similar manner:
Wouldn’t it be immoral to disallow this decision making process by leaving the child no choice by not having it?

Asking for consent of an unborn is paradoxial and inherently impossible. It’s almost like asking a plant whether it consents into being planted and eaten afterwards. It has no agency. Is it immoral though to plant it and eat it anyway?

Having a child is similar. Get it, let it grow and develop its agency. Then it can decide for itself.

I mean… with all the negativity in this thread, every single person here is consenting to be alive every single day. While there are a number who choose an early exit, the vast vast statistical majority overwhelmingly consent to live another day every day. With such stats I feel like it’s fine to assume the default status is consent in this context.

Plus, speaking of morals, we’re just dumb little apes. You give us too much credit if you think we can fight the greatest biological urge of all life over something we’ve completely invented in our minds : morals, and the morals of the unborn is like double hypothetical.

There are more houses/apartments than people.
There is more food going to the trash than what we need.

It’s not that we have a lot of people. The problem is the greed of a few and the complacency/idiocy of the rest.

common spujb w

I agree. The thought of bringing a child into the world in our current political and economical landscape would be gross.

I think most people simply don’t appreciate what having a child is and what a massive responsibility it is.

I think you’re talking out of your own ass, if you believe that most parents don’t know all that.

Your answer lies in the classic 2006 film “Idiocracy”

Who cares, I’ll be dead.

Yes, common objections are that the economy could crash or that humanity could go extinct. I don’t think these are good objections, and I have different reasons. It seems like a bad “an end justifies the means” way of thinking sometimes.

Honestly, the economic crash one is weird. The logic is that we must sacrifice our present and immediate future (that happens to be millions of lives) so that other lives are better (supposedly). Huh? It reminds me of the argument I heard against prohibiting animals in circuses. They argue that the animals that were in the circuses at the time would be slaughtered or abandoned, so their logic was allowing more and more years of animals suffering inside the circuses. What? Yes, the change definitely hurt, but it was possible both to fight against their slaughter and abandonment, and to get rid of that abuse forever. If we decrease in population, of course it will be difficult, but we can find ways to face the difficulties while we get into a better system. We cannot preserve capitalism just because we are afraid of hard times, when capitalism itself is hurting us.

The extinction one is different. We won’t get to that point, but even if we did, it would be a free decision of humanity that is hurting no one else. That’s the intuition they probably have: that those humans would be hurting the ones that do not exist yet, but I already commented about that reasoning. I don’t think there’s harm against the non-existant. Our end is possibly inevitable because the habitable Universe seems to have an end. If we decide to fight it, that’s okay as long as we do it ethically. But if we collectively decide to end it all, I respect it as long as it’s done ethically too. Anyway, as I said, this is mere imagination as I do not see humanity (in the big numbers we now are) never ever choosing this path together. We will be here for some time.

if people stop having children, it breaks the system

The overriding fear I’ve seen is that not enough white children are being born. And as the definition and context of whiteness shifts, this inspires varying degrees of alarm and hatred. A big part of the current Israel/Palestine conflict stems from the demographically older and more infertile Israelis believing they need to cap the younger and more virile Palestinian population by any means necessary (including the current genocide).

So it isn’t even that “people stop having children”, but the “right” people not having the “correct” kind of children.

we better go full speed ahead on a the most moronically large scale sunk cost calamity that is going to hit us like a brick wall

Sort of the dirty secret about climate change is that its got nothing to do with population size. Enormous amounts of natural resources and carbon emissions are being produced by vanishingly small portions of the population. The whole AI project has been a fossil fuel hog. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consumed phenomenal volumes of material for the benefit of an infinitesimal sliver of the planet’s residents. Reliance on disposable plastics and love of enormous cars has nothing to do with the number of children we’ve been having.

Anti-natalism is completely divorced from ecological sustainability. In many ways, it is rooted in this delusion that we’re all living in these remote rural settings with an infinite frontier to exploit forever. And that mentality emerges most forcefully in places that don’t have these dense urban populations.

What’s f.ex mean?

If one animal species is harming an ecosystem then I don’t see how it’s morally wrong to limit their reproduction.

r/195’s 1 rule was if you visit this subreddit, you must post before you leave.

Sooo back on reddit…

There is r/196. The rule of the sub is that if you visited it, you have to post a meme before you leave. These people are just following the rule.

Memes are generally divorced from their original source. This format is only used to show the creator has a controversial idea.

antinatalism is depression turned into a moral philosophy

Not necessarily. Antinatalism and other pessimistic points of view can be held by non-depressed people. On the internet, it seems like psychological pessimism is the same as philosophical pessimism as many depressed people do adopt these points of view and flood the forums. Adding to that, they often abandon their philosophical pessimism when their depression lifts, leaving a testimony that it is true: only depressed people defend these ideas. But we need only an example of a person that is not depressed and still values antinatalism on its own to demonstrate that your statement is not the case, and I think I might be that example. Many other examples might be found in universities. I hope one day we get a formal social study so that I do not have to give anecdotal “evidence” and personal information.

Now, I’d add to defend those I know that are indeed depressed, we should be debating and trying to refute the philosophy itself. Even if depression is leading them into these kinds of thoughts, we cannot say that this disproves their ideas. Many brilliant discoveries and inventions were reached in what we classify as pathological states. The manic researcher and crafter is an archetype for a reason (e.g., mad scientist, mad artist), and we have not fewer examples of depressed people that made valuable work, such as author F. Dostoevsky. There are two books that are coming to my mind that explain why (specifically) mood disorders are pathological but still let people do great things: A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illnesses and Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. So, as I was saying, the fact that someone is clinically depressed does not inform us about how true or how solid their ideas might be. Discrediting them just because they suffer from depression would be an ad hominem, and, in the moral part, ableism. We need to listen to/read their ideas and discuss the ideas instead.

it posits itself as a solution to suffering by offering an unrealizable future

This is a very misunderstood part of antinatalism. Almost no antinatalist is utopic in their views, that is, few antinatalists think that the point must be to cease all reproduction and that antinatalism fails if they don’t. That would be an ideal scenario; there’s no suffering without existence, but that is a dream. There are no goals for many antinatalists, just the idea that bringing children into this world is not ethically correct. They might follow antinatalism and not have children or adopt, but not preach much about it because they know practically no one will listen. I, for instance, bring this problem to people that might have not thought about it before. If they go ahead and have children, I’d still think that was not correct, but well, nothing to do but to help take care of this new life. It can be as pragmatic as that.

but really it’s an excuse to not even attempt to make the world better.

No. In my case, I try to help in other ways. This right here is an example as I’m trying to broaden the discussion around these topics in a healthy way because I know Reddit has sadly damaged these debates with a lot of insults and bad attitudes from many sides. They insult people, so these people go to their subreddit and insult them back… It is not a good way to first learn about these topics, and many are learning what antinatalism is first on Reddit. I hope Lemmy will be slightly better.

Anyway, I also try to better the world in the ways I can. Still, as a person that values philosophical pessimism, I think we are only saving lives from a neverending fire, or giving palliatives for an incurable disease. I enjoy my life and I try to help others enjoy theirs as much as this existence lets us.

If anything, philosophies around negative utilitarianism, preference utilitarianism, overall pessimism, etc. tend to respect others a lot and value their suffering negatively. That’s usually their point. Suffering is not a “necessary side for pleasure” or “a trial from which we gain something” or “something not that bad” or any explanation different cultures have given. Suffering is bad; in a better world, it wouldn’t exist like this. It is tragic, but it is reality, so we must face it and combat suffering as best as we can. I’d say these ethical paths inspire protection of others more than others less centered on sentience.

Finally, it is good advice to seek professional help, but not on the sole basis of someone being an antinatalist. If our OP here is depressed, I do recommend visiting a professional.