26 Replies to “In support of antinatalism”

  3. Anonymous writes:I need not state that the clip is a cartoon and as such, almost by necessity over simplifies & as film: condenses, does it truly reflect your life or that of anyone you know? Or do you trust it is actually how many live and feel? I, personally don’t and do not. It essentially ignores that for the bulk of this particular couples’ life they enjoyed themselves and each others’ company. The seeming disappointment of something unknow[n](able) in this case having child/children, since they weren’t able to experience it. Simply put: life is meaningless without pain, pleasure and experiences both known and left a mystery of what may have been. The comments seem to similarly, by implication, reduce life to miserable moments / mindlessly happy ones (either/or) seems to talk at no purpose. It might seem odd to be a parent with “antinatalist sympathies” but I am just that. People in some of the most abject, overpopulated, and under educated countries in the world aren’t about to listen to Western whining about the issue. For antinatalism most assuredly has Western liberal thought written all over its at worst self-loathing design & at best rational, humanist one. The answer for most of us harboring such views: Don’t have kids, set some sort of example based on a personal code of ethics (ie. not having kids or doing your level best to form them into respectable and respectful people of “quality” and, finally, to be colloquial: shut the fuck up about it. God has made some junk, sorry glib Sunday School poster. Or more accurately people have made a lot of junky people. Let’s stop making junk and start taking life (in general) more seriously but stop taking ourselves always so seriously, perhaps. People should (ah, “should”: an auxiliary verb often employed by the truly arrogant) have a good look at themselves before procreating. I believe most do not even make the attempt so much the worse for their potential offspring. I tried to contemplate myself and my life before the birth of my child and to be honest it IS a difficult thing to rationalize for a thinking/feeling person. Only time will tell if I chose wisely or not, sad to say but true. More than likely my daughter will one day tell me, as I remember telling my parents all those years ago “I hate you Daddy and I wish I was never born” and the old chestnut “I didn’t ask to be born.” People always have a tendency to oversimplify the lives of others, meanwhile ignoring themselves. William Burroughs enjoyed quoting (I forget who): “The worst mistake is being born in the first place.” The seems to place the problem of existence squarely in the proper court: that each individual is ultimately responsible for his/her own life. Sorry for any offense (none intended) incurred & spelling/grammatical errors/omissions or general pointlessness.

  4. Anonymous writes:Overly simplistic, condensed. Essentially ignores that for most of their lives they enjoyed themselves and each others’ company. The seeming disappointment of something unknow[n](able) in this case having child/children, since they weren’t able to experience it. Simply put: life is meaningless without pain, pleasure and experiences known and those left a mystery of what may have been. Reducing it to all miserable moments / mindless happiness seems to talk at no purpose. It might seem odd to be a parent with “antinatalist sympathies” but I am just that. People should have a good look at themselves before procreating, most do not & only time will tell if I chose wisely or not, sad to say but true.People always have a tendency to oversimplify the lives of others, meanwhile ignoring themselves.

  5. Just about to have a cup of tea and get back to work. Some quick responses:Originally posted by anonymous:does it truly reflect your life or that of anyone you know? I’m not sure anything truly reflects anything, in the sense that a reflection is not the thing itself anyway, but you might recognise something in a reflection, nonetheless.Originally posted by anonymous:It essentially ignores that for the bulk of this particular couples’ life they enjoyed themselves and each others’ company.This is an extract of the film. The film itself has a redemptive theme, but I didn’t find it especially redemptive because I know I am not a well-adjusted cartoon character or one of their real-life counterparts. No, I am a maladjusted cartoon character.Originally posted by anonymous:Simply put: life is meaningless without pain, pleasure and experiences both known and left a mystery of what may have been. And possibly meaningless with these things, too.Originally posted by anonymous:People in some of the most abject, overpopulated, and under educated countries in the world aren’t about to listen to Western whining about the issue. For antinatalism most assuredly has Western liberal thought written all over its at worst self-loathing design & at best rational, humanist one. Or, at best a self-loathing design and at worst a rational, humanist one.I do associate antinatalism with things like animal rights. Let’s stop suffering at all costs. Euthanasia for your own good, etc. I am ambivalent, not unequivocal, about the general ideologies.Originally posted by anonymous:The answer for most of us harboring such views: Don’t have kids, set some sort of example based on a personal code of ethicsThe quandary of the antinatalist – having no children to indoctrinate with one’s views.Honestly, though, any crusade that starts from the assumption that life is meaningless is self-stultifying. One way or another, the human race will end, anyway. Still, even if we don’t, say, think a crusade to prevent factory farming is worth it when we consider the cosmic scheme of things, in which the universe turns us all into dust anyway, nonetheless, we may, when we come upon specific examples of cruelty in our own lives, may wish to intervene, or at least not partake. Similarly, people may make a moral decision not to have children and talk about their reasons for doing so.Originally posted by anonymous:Let’s stop making junk and start taking life (in general) more seriously but stop taking ourselves always so seriously, perhaps. I hope that I meet the second part of this prescription by supporting the argument for antinatalism with a Pixar animation. No? I thought it was funny, anyway.I believe I know what you mean about taking life more seriously, but where to start? So many people have broken their hearts so many times for so long trying to change the world.Originally posted by anonymous:that each individual is ultimately responsible for his/her own life.Or at least stuck with living it or ending it. They can’t be responsible for actually being born, however, unless one believes that a meeting was held before birth and the soul of the unborn consented, which may, indeed, be what happens, but that seems like supposition.Originally posted by anonymous:Sorry for any offense (none intended)None taken.Originally posted by anonymous:& spelling/grammatical errors/omissions or general pointlessness.Ah, if we have to apologise for pointlessness, then I’d never stop saying sorry.

  6. Anonymous writes:Good points, there is risk and reward in most forms of “reaching out”, I took the risk of coming off as ignorant and your thoughtful responses are my reward. If more people didn’t claim to know things they clearly cannot or do not know, I believe the world would take a step in some direction. I didn’t mean for my statements to come off as if I meant everything I said unequivocally by any means 😉 On another note: Quentin, your story, “The Tatooist”, I believe, is one of the best short stories in the English language and I praise it highly to everyone who’ll listen. I believe “The Tatooist” to be an excellent introduction to your work, please include it in “The Quentin S. Crisp Reader” if this should ever have the opportunity of appearing (I hope someday it does).

  7. Hello again.Possibly – probably – all ideologies are basically emotional. If you go back to Plato and Socrates (which is not as far back as you can go, of course, and it only one direction, anyway), they were intent on defining ‘the good’. I don’t think the emotional aspect of an argument disqualifies it, but I think it should be acknowledged. Humans are emotional creatures, and my guess is that when they try to deny this, they go wrong.Any human philosophy that leaves out some idea of what is ‘the good’ for humans is probably blind in some way, and yet ‘the good’ must be at least partly an emotional idea, and so emotions must be treated as important and objectives facts, as much as anything else.I don’t know why I started this reply in such a roundabout way…I’m not a humanist, I wouldn’t say. In the sense that I think there is more to life than the human, I think I must be disqualified from humanism. Something bigger than the human might be reassuring, or it might be threatening. I think antinatalism becomes compelling when there is a complete disjunction between the emotional human reality and the larger, cosmic reality. At best, when our inevitably emotional philosophies don’t apply to the universe in which we live, we just don’t know what to do or where we’re going.I was reading an essay by someone called Loren Eiseley the other day – ‘The Chresmologue’ – in which he talks about the suspense of being human (in our current age):Something has happened or is about to happen, but what? The suspense is intolerable. We are literally enduring a future that has not yet culminated, that has been hovering in the air since man arose. The lunging, rocking jugggernaut of our civilisation has charged by. We wait by minutes, by decades, by centuries, for the crash we have engendered. The strain is in our minds and ears. The betting money never changes hands because there is no report of either safety or disaster.I can relate to this.Anyway, one thing I forgot yesterday was to give evidence of my ambivalence in the form of something I’ve already written this blog (perhaps you’ve seen it already):http://my.opera.com/quentinscrisp/blog/the-age-of-sexy-immortalsOriginally posted by anonymous:If more people didn’t claim to know things they clearly cannot or do not know, I believe the world would take a step in some direction. I am often surprised at how convinced people are that they know things. It amazes me where they get this confidence from. But I suppose it’s understandable in that the uncertainty mentioned above can be so unendurable, people want to know things. Also, there are arguments against agnosticism which I can recognise. One has to admit at least the possibility of knowing things, both logically and in the hope that one might be able to know them.And I think we all make some assumptions, which come from the fact (or otherwise) that we exist, and partake of existence.Originally posted by anonymous:On another note: Quentin, your story, “The Tatooist”, I believe, is one of the best short stories in the English language and I praise it highly to everyone who’ll listen. I believe “The Tatooist” to be an excellent introduction to your work, please include it in “The Quentin S. Crisp Reader” if this should ever have the opportunity of appearing (I hope someday it does). Thank you.I haven’t read the story for a while. Considering the fact that I attempt to write exactly what I would like to read but think is missing from already available literature, I don’t actually re-read my work very often. But as I remember it, it was something of a breakthrough for me, that story. It felt like I had come closer than before to writing something that was truly me, and not derivative. I was only young when I wrote it, though, so I imagine it has flaws. Not that I’ve eliminated the flaws in my writing even now.Anyway, if books and writers still exist in a few years time and the latter have not been starved to death by electronic book pirating or something, it is definitely a candidate for inclusion in a “best of” type collection from me, yes.

  11. i can agree with the loren eisely quote. i think inquiring minds want to know what we are doing here besides living and dying.unfortunately, nobody can tell us because that kind of answer has to be searced out during a lifetime. and most likely, without the right kind of help, will never be found. hell, we don’t even know how to think. take socrates for example… who can think like him? and that’s only logic. the emotional element is missing.

  13. Originally posted by quentinscrisp:I think antinatalism becomes compellingI can’t find anything compelling about this point of view. I do find it very sad and remorse. I suppose if I lived a life like Heinrich Heine I may have a different point of view. Even Freud, who suffered terribly in the last years of his life, didn’t consider such a view until he himself fell victim to a horrible disease. I can only conclude that for the most part antinatalism derives itself from a very pain riddled psychic. I have suffered from chronic and dilapidating pain since I was 8 years old and while I have had days I would rather be dead, I have never become antinatalist. My sons, in fact, keep me going on the darkest of days.In the context of this short clip the more appropriate term may childless. The film is actually a traditional good vs. evil- good triumphs story. The love story about the elderly couple is touching. The seniors that I know who saw the film had to fight back tears in a few places. Tim Burton would probably be more up your ally, he could have done it just as well with his stop animation. The end result would be the same story with darker characters, but still the same in the end. Originally posted by I_ArtMan:take socrates for example… who can think like him?Lawyers :insane: 😆

  14. Originally posted by GaryGJBell:Living it. Ah yes, I knew there was something I’d forgotten.Originally posted by I_ArtMan:unfortunately, nobody can tell us because that kind of answer has to be searced out during a lifetime. and most likely, without the right kind of help, will never be found. hell, we don’t even know how to think. take socrates for example… who can think like him? and that’s only logic. the emotional element is missing.I’ve been observing dogs closely of late. I think I want to become more like a dog, though not more cynical.Originally posted by anonymous:http://overcompensating.com/posts/20080616.htmlSo it goes.Originally posted by GaryGJBell:I can’t find anything compelling about this point of view. I suspect some things will never be explained. It’s interesting to come to the edge of a divide and to realise that you are on one side and most people you know are on the other.

  15. TC writes:it is hard for me to gauge my view. I don’t think life is all that bad, but at the same time it seems wrong to give birth. Not only are you unsure of how your offspringmay feel when it is grown, but your also kind of sentencing it to death. That is why I am never able to understand how stone cold athiests can have childrenI also never liked the arugment that tries to dismiss antinatalism because many people who express this view are depressed or sick. If that is the case we shouldn’t take anyone’s view “that life is great” if nothing bad as happened to them.

  17. Originally posted by anonymous:That is why I am never able to understand how stone cold athiests can have childrenI don’t understand this, either.To come to terms with one’s own mortality is – I think – possible. To come to terms with the mortality of other – those close to us – is much harder. There seems a complete disconnect in this case, a shrugging refusal to look at something obvious.Originally posted by anonymous:I also never liked the arugment that tries to dismiss antinatalism because many people who express this view are depressed or sick.This is basically a way of judging without really describing, or, to put it another way, of arguing through the use of category. All you have to do is put something in a particular category and you don’t have to think about it any more. It’s a very common strategy.Of course, it doesn’t address the question why, at all, or if there is anything of relevance in a particular viewpoint.Anyway, the world is mad, as we know. Perhaps it’s ridiculous to try and be sane…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ioxj73deq0

  18. Someone kindly sent me this extract from an interview with Djuna Barnes: I asked of Djuna Barnes: “Why are you so dreadfully morbid? …” “Morbid?” was her cynical answer. “You make me laugh. This life I write and draw and portray is life as it is, and therefore you call it morbid. Look at my life. Look at the life around me. Where is this beauty that I am supposed to miss? The nice episodes that others depict? Is not everything morbid? I mean the life of people stripped of their masks. Where are the relieving features? “Often I sit down to work at my drawing board, at my typewriter. All of a sudden my joy is gone. I feel tired of it all because, I think, ‘What’s the use?’ Today we are, tomorrow dead. We are born and don’t know why. We live and suffer and strive, envious or envied. We love, we hate, we work, we admire, we despise. . . . Why? And we die, and no one will ever know that we have been born.” “But Djuna,” I interrupted, “this is one of your pessimistic moods. You cannot mean it all. You, of all the persons I have known, have had your fill of joy in this world.” “Joy! Is this what you call joy? When we are desperate, doing the first best thing, throwing ourselves at someone for whom we really do not care, and trying to forget ever after by repeating the same folly? In between times we work and talk. Laugh at intervals. . . . Joy? I have had none in my twenty-six years.”I’m not sure I really believe in “life as it is” and the stripping away of masks, and Djuna, typical of someone as young as she was at the time of the interview, seems to think she’s already very old, but other than that, as someone a decade or so older, I have to agree with what she says.

  19. you have to go on as if there is an escape ladder. you could be lucky and find it in time.i’ve had djuna’s thought process a thousand times. i still go on. it’s called following your dream.

  20. Originally posted by I_ArtMan:you have to go on as if there is an escape ladder. you could be lucky and find it in time.i’ve had djuna’s thought process a thousand times. i still go on. it’s called following your dream.One thing that I hope I’ll never do is advise people to give up on their dreams.Not that it matters what I advise, probably.

  22. TC writes:Interesting, I do somewhat agree with he “mask” bit. Many cultures seem to have a need to put on a postive face, even when there is no call for it. There is for instance one book (name I can’t recall) that talks how about the need to be postive ended up hurting the American economy. I’m not sure about the fact that she seems to feel old. I do agree that young people have tendency to be dramtic, but at the same time I firmly believe in the idea of an “old soul”. It reminds me of a qoute “There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist” (unsure who said it)

  23. Originally posted by anonymous:There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist” (unsure who said it)An old pessimist, perhaps?I think that the death-bed must be where optimism really comes into its own. You can only be a mistaken optimist at death’s door if you end up in hell. In fact, optimism on one’s death bed is especially beneficial if what comes next is only oblivion, since it means you’ve ended on a high note without disappointment. You’re forever about to unwrap the ultimate Christmas present. I suppose that’s like Pascal’s wager.Originally posted by anonymous:I do somewhat agree with he “mask” bit.I don’t entirely disagree, but you can always strip one more ‘mask’ away and one more. I’m not sure I’ve ever got to the bottom of that in terms of what one ‘really’ believes. The quote above seems to assume that there’s a masked version of the human and an unmasked version and it’s that simple, and it’s easy to tell the one from the other. I don’t really think it is. But, you know, if we were always absolutely precise in what we said it would take us forever to complete a sentence. So, I’m not calling her a simpleton, or anything like that.Originally posted by anonymous:here is for instance one book (name I can’t recall) that talks how about the need to be postive ended up hurting the American economy. It strikes me that there’s a huuuuge amount of effort put into making redemptive art, pumping out self-help books, inventing philosophies and so on in order somehow to close the gap, or paper over the gap, between how life is and how we would want it to be. If life was really as great as the people producing this stuff make out, why do we need to constantly, strenuously convince ourselves of the fact? That’s not necessarily a rhetorical question, though it might be.Anyway, sometimes, you know, it just seems more sensible to give up the struggle to reconcile these irreconcilable things.

  25. Evans writes:It strikes me that there’s a huuuuge amount of effort put into making redemptive art, pumping out self-help books, inventing philosophies and so on in order somehow to close the gap, or paper over the gap, between how life is and how we would want it to be. If life was really as great as the people producing this stuff make out, why do we need to constantly, strenuously convince ourselves of the fact?It strikes me that despite a lot of “How To Make Life Better” media the world – or at least the English speaking world – really does not feel particularly comfortable with people actually being happy. If you try to sincerely talk about feeling happy because of some work of art or scene your just ignored or considered some how over the top. Similarly there’s an almost endless appetite for feel good romantic plots in film and television, were as any actual effusive display of affection beyond the ”Owww I love you” type of things is gets either dirty looks or mocked.The theme seems to be ”Life’s Great but don’t be to happy about it because happiness, unless it has specific causes and is expressed in very specific ways, is how offensive and worrying”.

  26. Originally posted by anonymous:It strikes me that despite a lot of “How To Make Life Better” media the world – or at least the English speaking world – really does not feel particularly comfortable with people actually being happy. If you try to sincerely talk about feeling happy because of some work of art or scene your just ignored or considered some how over the top. Similarly there’s an almost endless appetite for feel good romantic plots in film and television, were as any actual effusive display of affection beyond the ”Owww I love you” type of things is gets either dirty looks or mocked.The theme seems to be ”Life’s Great but don’t be to happy about it because happiness, unless it has specific causes and is expressed in very specific ways, is how offensive and worrying”. This is a good point. I’m actually constantly making myself seem more miserable than I actually am just in order to make other people happy in their misery.

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