I always found it strange that antinatalists refuse to commit Minecraft, despite all their bitching that life is pure suffering and it'd have been better to never have been born. It's like they're all disingenuous cocksuckers.
Well, like theodicy, the problem of evil, this is the obvious Achilles heel of the whole antinatalism thing. To the extent it isn't some nearly religious belief in the worthlessness of existence, it's an offshoot of utilitarianism, where the original precept is that existence itself is worthless and, more importantly, of negative value.
I think my mistake, and it isn't the first time I've made it, is encountering the rebbit version of something and trying to defend the actual version of it as it exists in legitimate philosophy. Because almost all rebbit philosophy is REEEEEEE FUCK YOU DAD.
The whole thing makes a little more sense when you find out that some of the more vocal antinatalists, like Thomas Ligotti, suffer from the sort of chronic anhedonia that probably has a biochemical origin. When one's nervous system simply does not let one feel the kind of joy and happiness that most people get regular doses of, it's at least understandable that one would come to the conclusion that the pains and agonies of life far outweigh its insignificant and transient pleasures. And there's other antinatalist novelists I've read - Ann Sterzinger comes to mind in particular - whose worldview is really obviously entirely shaped by the fact that they're just an untreatable depressive. Imagine constantly looking at the world with the kind of awful, sinking cynicism you get when you're in your deepest blue funk. It's honestly a little heartwarming that some of them have any empathy for others left at all.
But those are the thoughtful, creative ones. Your average reddit antinatalist is just looking for a profound-seeming justification for the life of shallow hedonism they were already living.
Ooh hot dog, you boys wanna talk about some antinatalism?
First off - this is a thread dedicated to making fun of reddit. It seems we're all in agreement that irrespective of any respectable versions of antinatalism (lol), /r/antinatalism version is filled with dumbos who landed on antinatalism as a post-hoc rationalization for their preexisting views. With that said, we shouldn't let their stupidity convince us of the truth of natalism any more than we should let the stupidity of /r/atheism fedoras convince us of the truth of theism.
I've only read one book about antinatalism --
Better Never to Have Been by Pat Benatar -- so I'm by no means an expert on this. But that book's argument is actually much more interesting (and not as easy to reject) than you might expect.
A simple and strong antinatalist argument looks like this (I took the enumerated text from chapter 2 of Benatar's book):
- The presence of pain is bad
- The presence of pleasure is good
- The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone
- The absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation
Think about the number of siblings you have. For the sake of example, let's say you have two siblings. Is it a tragedy that your parents had only three children instead of four? Surely no. But is it a tragedy if your parents had had four children and your third sibling died of childhood disease? Surely yes.
Also, it's important that we note the distinction between
starting a life and
continuing a life. Once you already exist, you have desires and relationships that you have an interest in. If you die prematurely, you're no longer able to pursue/nurture those desires and relationships. That's a bad thing, and so as long as you have interests, you shouldn't commit minecraft. But if a person never exists at all, they never have any desires or interests to lose, so nothing bad has occurred.
