Posted: Apr 14, 2012 11:31 am
Andrew4Handel wrote:jamest wrote:
His argument only works if there is a universal consensus that there is no reason for living, which there is not. Even at Auschwitz, where we might say that suffering reigned supreme, most of the inmates wanted to carry on living. Clearly, even when suffering reaches such extremes, humanity has reasons for wanting to live. If hope and purpose can survive such an ordeal, then there really cannot be any suffering sufficient to deny the possibility of future human experience.
I don't think you can decide for other people how much suffering they can tolerate and as a parent you are inflicting inevitable suffering (illness and eventual death) on a new sentience not at its request.
How do you know that an individual would request not to be born, assuming they had the capacity to make such a decision?
Further, you make it sound as though life has nothing to offer but suffering, which is not the case [for most individuals].
The reality is that a significant amount of people will be brought into the world that reject it (over a million suicides a year) or who inevitable live mostly in suffering (Children who die in a famine) (adults who experience life longing grinding poverty)
My only concern is to prevent the propogation of suffering.
1 million suicides a year compared to 140 million births, does not indicate that most of us want to turn off the lights.
Nobody rejects the notion that there's a lot of suffering. However, to overlook the joys of life; to overlook the innate desire to live most of us still harbour - regardless of our circumstances; to overlook the fact that there's other ways to resolve problems/suffering without having to annihilate our species; to overlook the fact that we may as a species eventually get our act together: this is why we reject your judgement.
Those who don't want to live are [mostly] free to end it all (ultimately, they cannot be stopped), but such people are not representative of the whole and [therefore] are not justified in making that decision for the whole - or the unborn.
There are many good reasons (individual and social) for not wanting children, but yours isn't one of them.
Based on your argument I could have a child and torture constantly til it died but that would be okay because it still would have had an innate will to live in the face of its suffering.
That wasn't my argument at all - I never remotely suggested that what happened at Auschwitz was 'okay'. The point was that even when suffering reaches such nightmarish proportions, most people still want to live through it. They harbour hope for something better.
However I don't think the will to survive is rational considering that life is hard and death is inevitable.
Life isn't always hard, and there are certainly many joys and pleasures to be found within life. There is also the potential for positive change - something you don't seem to have considered at all.
So just citing the fact that people persevere in the face of gross suffering is a flawed argument and bad justification for procreating.
They don't just want to live because they're afraid of death. They want to live because they know that beyond suffering, there's good reasons for being alive.
At the same time I have my own perspective and it is entirely relevant and I feel forced into existence against my wishes into a world and body I would not have chosen.
You didn't have the capacity to 'wish' until after the fact. If you don't like the way the world is, then put your energies into changing it. I don't know what your bodily problems are, but if you cannot change them then learn to accept them and make the most of them.
I have attempted suicide in the past because of this and my inability to find life pleasurable (although anti depressants help superficially boost my positive (sensations) and yet more people like me will be forced into existence based now it seems on a utilitarian gamble in that you are willing for their to be constant suffering and death for the sake of transient happiness of what is not even necessarily the majority in what maybe a pointless universe.
You need to change your mindset/attitude. That is the source of your suffering, as much as anything else. You are constantly hurting yourself.
If you are someone who draws wider conclusions from evolution then it is clear that we have been cooerced into procreation by inhereting dispositions that perpetuate mindless procreation. I can't read anything positive or life affirming in that account.
I don't believe that shit about evolution.