What do you have against antinatalism? Antinatalism basically, is the idea that suffering is an expected part of life, and that bringing humans into the world is signing them up to suffer, something no human can agree to before they are born. You cannot determine for another human, before they are even born, whether or not they will consider their life worth living. Actively and voluntarily creating a person is therefore an act of cruelty.
Some people confuse the position of antinatalism with eugenics because they hear "stop having kids" and build a ton of assumptions on top of that. Antinatalism seeks to prevent harm by making a personal choice and encouraging others to do the same on the basis that human suffering is Bad.
What is meant by "there is no social justice in procreation" is that babies are not tools or pawns for social change. You cannot Create More Humans into a better future because Our baby humans will be better than Their baby humans. Your feeding children to coyotes in the hopes that eventually the children will outnumber the coyotes.
I'm not going to create another future wage slave in the hopes that maybe their great grandchildren will have a perfect life. I can't guarantee that a kid I have will think that their life is worth living or that life is a gift in general. I can't understand how people can choose to bring someone into the world knowing that they will suffer and struggle tirelessly against calloused greed. I consider it an uncritical act of selfishness. Why create someone who will have to be aware of reality when you could just leave them to not exist in the first place?
I am capable of logic and serious consideration of the impacts of my choices. As a result, my conscience would not allow me to voluntarily procreate. To do so would be incredibly cruel. I would rather spend my life working to improve things for people that already exist than spend the rest of it regretting the suffering I willingly created. I don't blame people who didn't have a choice, but if you do and you procreate anyway? That shows a lack of critical thought.
i have no problem with individuals choosing not to have children, for any reason. but um "I don't blame people who didn't have a choice, but if you do and you procreate anyway, that shows a lack of critical thought." <- that's where the problems lie & that's where things start getting eugenics-y my friend!
i think the feeling of "what's the point of having children in this hell world" is a very normal and valid one, and i think "i cannot imagine bringing a child into this hell world" is a normal conclusion to come to from that feeling; the problem lies in extrapolating that feeling to "this is a logical conclusion all people should come to, regardless of their feelings, about how we should all react to our circumstances."
for one i think its an untenable belief system for actual change given that the majority of people will never be antinatalist. and why should they? most people like living and they want to have children. the world has always had profound horrors; i don't know you anon but i am certain that people on this planet, throughout history, have suffered worse and seen darker faces of humanity than either of us have. and they chose to continue living and having children. i don't think many people who descended from survivors of genocides would find these arguments particularly compelling either. if we are going to discuss how people currently alive should engage with the hypothetical autonomy of people who are not yet alive, i think there's also a fair argument that since many people have lived through starvation, abuse, rape, genocide, natural disasters, horrific disease, and still felt that they were glad to be alive and wanting to have children, i think its unfair to say that because we can't be sure our children won't regret being alive we shouldn't have children. because they might regret being alive (at any point in life*), that means they shouldn't have the choice?
"I would rather spend my life working to improve things for people that already exist than spend the rest of it regretting the suffering I willingly created." <- i find this sentence especially interesting, because the major problem here is an emotional response. you feel regret and guilt at the idea of causing someone to live in this world with so much suffering.
but is that something you must feel guilty over? that's not to say it is "bad" that you do. its an understandable feeling to have, and again, i think your choice to react to that feeling by not having children personally is entirely fine and reasonable. but another person may not feel guilty about this. they may think, "my children have a damn right to be alive, i have a right to be alive, i did not create their suffering by giving them a chance to experience life and love and beauty, and those things are worth facing the horrors of life for."
you may not find that a compelling argument. but they wouldn't find your argument compelling, either, and your respective subjective experiences of life and emotion and meaning all play a major role there. its not just a matter of logic or reason.
ultimately, anon, i think it comes down to you have different emotional experiences with life and being alive than i do. i find existence itself to be rich with meaning and worth regardless of the pleasure or pain experienced, and i find meaning and beauty in this world even with the amount of suffering that has been and will be experienced. i find a lot of beauty in how humanity continues moving on, continues struggling for life and love and connection in the midst of suffering and violence. so it is quite easy for me to understand people's desire to have children, as it is easy for me to understand why people fight so hard to stay alive when a deeply suicidal person may find it absolutely nonsensical. just because the argument is convincing to you, and hits squarely about the subjective experiences you have had (and that's not something i take lightly!) does not mean the argument is actually useful on a social level or that other people are not thinking critically for not being convinced by it. it is a very easy thing to use logic to explain your own subjective experience, and then believe your subjective experience was actually the product of logical thinking.
*because this isn't black or white. many people have moments of wishing they weren't alive, does that mean their parents shouldn't have had them, even if at other points they don't wish that?
