There is a name for the explicitly philosophical stance that bringing children into the world is by default worthy of condemnation: anti-natalism. The alleged reason why this is evil could be that having more children brings beings into a life of suffering or that new generations of humanity will inflict harm on the environment or other humans. Other than a discriminatory dislike of children or an utterly random embrace of anti-natalism without almost any thought at all, this position would only be held for such reasons as these. This philosophy's thoroughly negative stance on having children and its conflict with the still-popular desire to have kids for almost no reason other than to have them can lead to some key misunderstandings.
It is almost never emphasized with words, probably because almost no one seems to realize this, but anti-natalism is an inescapably moral philosophy. Only the tenet that having children is evil makes anti-natalism have any weight if it is a concept that is actually true. Otherwise, it is just the belief that some random person's subjective, meaningless preference that everyone avoid procreation is valid when this is objectively impossible. Furthermore, this is where anti-natalism excludes nihilism: if not having children truly is good, then there is at least one moral obligation that exists, and thus nihilism is false.
Anti-natalism could easily confused for nihilism by people who think nihilism is anything other than the strict idea that absolutely nothing has any sort of moral, aesthetic, or existential meaning. Nihilism does not entail that nothing is true, unique, useful, or personally attractive, but it does hold that there is nothing meaningful about anything at all no matter how much some people might feel otherwise. As such, even an obligation to do something most people would be repulsed by, like to kill masses of people or never bring a new generation of humans into existence, would not be nihilistic if they truly were our obligations because they would still be moral requirements.
Just because an obligation is objectively bleak or is subjectively unfavorable does not mean it would be nihilistic, because nihilism is about the hypothetical nonexistence of any objective values, the existence of which cannot be proven or disproven, instead of someone's subjective dislike of any aspect of existence. Hostility towards the thought of anyone having children for environmental, social, or personal reasons is always rooted in moralism unless it really is just a person pretending like their personal feelings or preferences have any fucking epistemological value. As such, anti-natalism cannot be nihilistic on its own and is instead moralistic left to itself.
This brings any rational person assessing the objectively separate ideas of anti-natalism and nihilism back to the same point that all moral issues reduce down to. It logically follows from conscience being subjective that it has nothing to do with proving moral obligations or with whether morality exists. Moral ideas that are not contradictory are logically possible, but it is impossible for the existence or nonexistence of moral obligations to be self-evident and true by necessity like logical axioms are, so anti-natalism is obviously not true by default, no matter how subjectively persuaded by it its adherents are because of petty assumptions.
Anti-natalism is not logically impossible, but there is no reason anyone would believe in it other than subjective appeal, cultural influences, or utilitarianism, all of which are objectively erroneous epistemological foundations for any belief. The resurgence of popularity for anti-natalism amidst a renewed focus on environmentalism is thus not due to rationality, but due to subjective dislike of existing as a human or dislike of the idea of other people coming into existence. Anti-natalism is really more misanthropic than it is environmentalist or anti-suffering, for there is more to human life than destruction and pain, and it is the ability to experience the many pleasures of human life that anti-natalism ultimately would have people try to erase from existence.
No comments:
Post a Comment