If this case goes forward, it could potentially be a game-changer.
According to BBC [beeb]
Mumbai businessman Raphael Samuel told the BBC that it’s wrong to bring children into the world because they then have to put up with lifelong suffering.
Mr Samuel, of course, understands that our consent can’t be sought before we are born, but insists that “it was not our decision to be born”.
So as we didn’t ask to be born, we should be paid for the rest of our lives to live, he argues.
Mr Samuel’s belief is rooted in what’s called anti-natalism – a philosophy that argues that life is so full of misery that people should stop procreating immediately.
This, he says, would gradually phase out humanity from the Earth and that would also be so much better for the planet.
It does seem only reasonable: parents create children out of incompetence, laziness, or selfishness. They feel that their genes are so important that they’re willing to inflict life upon a person, creating them as a sort of monument to their own self-love.
The BBC article included this lovely illustration
I think Mr. Samuel is pursuing a weaker argument; by creating a child, the parents are dooming it to eventual death. If the worst-case scenarios of global climate change come true, people who create children today are delivering them into a world where they will face scarcity wars, anoxic annihilation, thermal brain-damage, and cognitive decline due to increased atmospheric CO2. I decided not to have children at an early age, mostly because I don’t like babies, but secondarily because I believed that we were on an unavoidable trajectory toward nuclear war. If a prospective parent was fairly sure that their child would die in a nuclear exchange or the aftermath, how could they morally create a new life, being fairly certain what was in store for it?
Consider this situation: some parents become pregnant, have amniocentisis and determine that the fetus will develop with spina bifida; their doctor recommends they consider terminating the pregnancy – and they do so. Many people would observe that situation and say “they had a difficult choice to make, and we respect their decision.” But the same decision applies: “Your child is going to die of something, perhaps something horrible like nuclear war or suffocation in an extinction event. 100% for sure and – unless they’re fortunate enough to die of an accidental opiate overdose – it’s going to be extremely unpleasant.”
Having kids is murdering them.
I don’t know if Mr. Samuel is really serious. I see this case as a sort of ‘reductio ad absurdum’ against conventional notions of responsibility and assessment of values. If we accept that people are responsible for the direct (and some indirect) consequences of their actions, then the existence of people is a consequence of parenting. And if we assess a person’s life as more or less satisfactory, then a moral system would require us to be able to assess the morality of making the decision to have a child, knowing in advance that the child might experience a more or less satisfactory life. Moral nihilists dodge having to resolve these problems by adopting the position that they are unconvinced that any of this ethics stuff makes any sense at all. Someone who pretends to be able to assess consequences as having moral value (i.e.: a typical consequentialist) does have to resolve this problem, because the consequences (guaranteed pain and death) for offspring are clear and unavoidable, as is the parents’ responsibility.
Disclaimer: this posting is not entirely serious. I’m just not sure where it’s not but please, when I run for Attorney General don’t say “Marcus advocated wiping out humanity!” Humanity’s doing a fine job of that already.
Inquiring minds want to know: how many children does Raphael Samuel have?
Reginald Selkirk@#1:
Inquiring minds want to know: how many children does Raphael Samuel have?
He probably got them all to sign a liability waiver as soon as they were delivered safely at the hospital.
Well, I think that one reason that people with a consequentialist ethical view might choose to have children is if they look at life and see it, on balance, as having more positives than negatives, and believe that this will be true for their children also. I’m sure that many people who have children don’t think about it this way, but I suspect that many of them do, especially those who live in circumstances where having children is a truly free choice.
That sounds like a Doug Stanhope bit: Doug Stanhope talking about Parents imposing Life without Consent
kurt1@#4:
Sam Kinison did a similar bit in the 80’s – “I was a bodiless soul of light and love and you had to fuck and bring me down here!”
Pretty funny. I prefer Stanhope to Kinison (who was groundbreaking in his day) but both of them subscribed to the “I am anti-PC blaaargh!” school of comedy.
springa73@#3:
Well, I think that one reason that people with a consequentialist ethical view might choose to have children is if they look at life and see it, on balance, as having more positives than negatives, and believe that this will be true for their children also.
It’s hard to justify making such a momentous decision without consent, but gaining consent is problematic. Given the number of people who end their own lives, one could argue that there is a solid probability that a parent’s choice will be demonstrably wrong.
Suicide statistics differ by region, but, in general, less than 2% of all people kill themselves. This means there’s a significantly higher probability that a parent’s choice will turn out to be right, because the child didn’t try to kill themselves and was happy to be alive. Of course, life satisfaction is another question, this one also differs worldwide, but a significant portion of people do enjoy their lives and feel that the nice aspects of being alive outweigh the unpleasant ones.
Of course, I’m willing to agree that one might still prefer being cautious and adopt a “better safe than sorry” attitude—remaining childfree guarantees that no child will suffer a miserable life, but if you do make a baby, then this child might end up being unhappy, but I don’t think that this probability is a particularly high one, because most people enjoy their lives.
I’m planning to remain childfree, because I dislike being near or taking care of children. On numerous occasions people (mostly Christians) have accused me of being selfish, they claimed that my decision not to breed is selfish, while their baby making is somehow generous and selfless. Those were really fun discussions, because at some point these people usually ended up saying that their child has been the greatest source of joy in their entire life. They basically admitted that they made babies for selfish reasons (the child was to serve their personal enjoyment). It’s not like people breed for their children’s sake. It’s funny how when I choose to avoid having children in order to increase my own life satisfaction, then that’s selfish; simultaneously when others choose to make babies for the purpose of increasing their personal life satisfaction, then that’s somehow generous: “Look, I gave this child their life; I gave them so much—my time, my money, my attention—this means I must be selfless and generous, because I gave so much to another human being.” It doesn’t matter than this other human being was created so that the parents could enjoy raising a kid.
Wouldn’t that also create a massive liability for people trying to convince others (or outright pressuring them) to have children? Aiding and abetting, maybe? What’s that legal term again for baiting people into committing crimes? (That thing the FBI apparently likes doing with reluctant bombers)
If so that would be a dark day for organised religion, conservatives and nosy people struggling to keep their advice for A Good Life to themselves everywhere. Although the catholic church at least seems very adept at dodging responsibility when it comes to crimes involving children.
komarov@#8:
What’s that legal term again for baiting people into committing crimes?
Entrapment.
Entrapment is really interesting and it’s seldom used as a defense because it’s an affirmative defense; it entails admitting that the crime was committed but trying to brush it off. So “yeah I shot the sherriff but I did not shoot the deputy.” It’s better to just deny everything. Also, it’s not entrapment if the prosecution can argue that it’s something the defendant would have done anyway. So if a defendant smokes dope every day they can’t claim they were entrapped into doing it on a specific occasion.
This is all carefully crafted to allow the FBI to continue setting people up. Because they love to do that.
I’m confused by his assertion that eliminating humanity would be good for the planet. If life is misery, doomed to death, then all of those organisms out there are suffering in misery while trying to impose non-consensual life on their own children. Surely it would be better for the planet if humanity lasted at least long enough to wipe out all life on it. I mean, that is the logical conclusion of his argument, yes?
suttkus – I’m personally in favor of a softer form of this ethos, have thought about it a lot. because of my friends and family i am the most blessed with mental and physical health (i say from the sickhouse), i have had the myriad ways life can go wrong just hammered home 24-7.
So I’ve thought about this a lot and have an answer. Humans seem to be uniquely powerful in our ability to experience suffering. What the fuck is fibromyalgia? It almost seems like some people’s bodies get used to being in pain and just send you those signals constantly regardless of your physical condition. The pain people feel is real, but it’s as mysterious as it is abject. Meanwhile a dog will be so eager to play after abdominal surgery that you have to restrain them from ripping their stitches out in exertion.
That’s not even considering something I find a much worse kind of human pain: bad self esteem. When I was a kid there were assemblies and classes and exercises all aimed at improving the self esteem of kids. The net result? The median american does have more unearned sense of confidence than the average person in the world, but the most miserable are still unmoved. I don’t have data past the evidence of observing people in my life, but bad self esteem seems to be cemented extremely early in life. It can get worse but I have never once seen it improve.
People with bad self esteem are just hammered with self-hatred their whole lives and there is fuckall to be done about it. It’s easy to imagine that if you love someone enough it will somehow save them, cut through the static in their brains. Being loved is better than nothing, but it’s like taking tylenol for the pain of being gored by an ox. There is no cure for that shit.
I know a guy with bad self esteem who was having a comparatively gentle couple of weeks and had been tracking his mood in a cell phone app. It never rose above OK, most of his life is far worse. Even in a world as monumentally fucked and miserable as the one I see around me, I’m capable of feeling pretty excellent. I’m lucky as hell and I never forget that.
TL;DR: Humans suffer more than other animals. We’re priority one for voluntary extinction, IMHO. Nature is cruel, but what it did to us is substantially worse than for the rest of the biosphere, and we’re making things worse for other organisms while we’re at it.
My softer version of this is that we have the as yet unproven potential to be much better than we are, so if we turn ourselves around hard, maybe we can justify the idea of continuing the human species. I dunno.
suttkus @#10
No, that’s not the logical conclusion. Plants and animals with a more primitive nervous system (like bivalves) cannot possibly suffer. You cannot justify wiping out those. The question becomes more interesting when it comes to smarter animals. Deer and wolves certainly can feel pain and sometimes they display behaviours that indicate suffering. This goes even more so for dolphins and bonobos. Still, in my opinion, animals tend to appear as mostly happy with their lives. A more primitive brain means that they are less likely to feel emotional pain (depression and low self-esteem seem to be mostly human problems). Wild animals often experience painful deaths, because dying from a disease or getting killed by a predator is pretty nasty. Hunger also exists among wild animals. Yet despite all that they seem to be doing mostly fine for most of their lives. It appears for me that animals themselves are happy to be alive and don’t want to be wiped out.
Another question is whether humans even have a right to decide this for other living and sentient beings out there. I’m perfectly fine with some human deciding to commit a suicide. I’m fine with people deciding for themselves. But I don’t think that some human has a right to decide to wipe out other sentient beings “for their own good.”
I mentioned suffering as a criterion because consequentialists like Bentham concerned themselves with it. I am unconvinced that it is the correct criterion and I suspect it was established deliberately in order to allow humans to eat plants – in spite of the rather obvious fact that plants try to protect themselves (they are just overwhelmed by plant-eaters’ superior intelligence and mobility). If there is a natural right to life I see no reason it doesn’t apply to plants and bacteria; its suspicious that only creatures with big brains are extended rights. Most mammals evidence every behavior of trying to stay alive – “wanting to live” is as good a criterion as “not suffering.”
Moral vegans should starve themselves nobly to death, their own life being the only one they have right to dispose of.
That’s an interesting argument, I like it.
Personally, I perceive vegan moral arguments as problematic, because often it just gets outright illogical. For example, why do they draw the line exactly where they do it? Killing pests in order to prevent them from eating your food is OK. Destroying animals’ native habitats (thus dooming them to death) in order to make new crop fields is also OK. Yet killing an animal in order to eat it is not OK. Why? Their attitudes about honey are also interesting. Exploiting bees for honey is bad. Exploiting bees to pollinate vegan-friendly food crops is somehow OK. Ultimately, if the goal was to reduce animal suffering, death, and exploitation as much as possible, veganism wouldn’t the answer anyway. For example, a meat-eater like me who has chosen to have no children is going to kill (both directly and indirectly) a lot fewer animals than a vegan with children.
Great American Satan,
I have fibromyalgia and I assure you that is indeed a very real thing. Your description of it is pretty close, but the symptoms are physiologically based and not just an issue of perception. It’s akin to autism is some ways and to PTSD in other ways. It’s basically chronic over-stimulation of pain receptors and they’ve identified elevated levels of something called Substance P in the Cerebrospinal fluid of patients. The cause is not understood, but the effect certainly is. People with fibro suffer from a debilitating hypersensitivity to light and sound (the sound of my refrigerator is sometimes too loud) and sometimes they can’t even stand the feeling of clothing on their skin. It causes a litany of other symptoms that is too long for this comment thread.
Also, I was badly parented and suffered from very poor self esteem when I was young and I no longer do. I met some very good people along my way to self-destruction and my life and my attitude improved. I like myself and I am having a good life because my attitude changed. It is possible and there is hope.
Being badly parented was also a big part of the reason I chose not to have kids. That and all the other shit I worked through during my child-bearing years made the decision easy. Looking at the world today I think I made the right decision for myself and my unborn/unsuffering child.
voyager@#15:
I met some very good people along my way to self-destruction and my life and my attitude improved.
That’s a really interesting way to put it!
Ieva Skrebele says,
I’m not sure I buy this because personal misery is not the only determinant of how likely one is to commit suicide. There are fairly strong non-religious societal mechanisms (both passive, such as lack of access to easy and painless ways to do it, and active, such as suicide hotlines) to discourage suicide and even stronger religious ones. You’d really want to look at the percentage of people that commit suicide plus the percentage that would have if they’d not been influenced by these other mechanisms. (Obviously the latter is pretty hard to determine.)
My daughter was “the best mistake I ever made”. I tell people that we’re not having another one because “she’s perfect and any kid that comes after her would just be a disappointment”, but the reality is that I’d decided that having kids was a priviliege, not a necessity.
For me the only anti-natalist argument that makes sense is the first-world environmentalist one. Historically, Empire and upper-caste used the language of anti-natalism as a cover for racist/classist policies including the mandatory sterilisation of criminals in India. As such, any edict issued by the wealthy and powerful against the poor masses should be treated with contempt. Childlessness should be strictly voluntary.
On the flip side, in the first world, we consume significantly more per capita, and we occupy positions and hoard resources that could just as easily (and probably should) belong to others (akin to the “#mygenesmatter” argument, why should my daughter be the sole beneficiary of my wealth?). As such, for a middle-class white family in a wealthy country, the most moral thing I can do is abstain from having children. Fewer resources consumed as the result of my actions, more opportunity for others to flourish, a better world in the long-term.
Of course, once you have them (doctors aren’t always accurate on their assessment of fertility, abortion was not an option, and I don’t regret that), the best thing you can do is to live within your means, set a good example, and treasure what you’ve got. I can’t buy into that fatalist “we’re all gonna die anyway so why bother living” crap. It’s easy from the perspective of a living person who had the opportunity to experience “experience” to pat themselves on the back for denying that opportunity to others, or to compare voluntary euthanasia to childlessness, but it’s absurd hypocrisy. They’re apples and oranges, even if I can see moral arguments in favour of both.
M Smith@#18
I’m strongly opposed to forced sterilization. Firstly, in the 20th century there have been plenty of precedents with various eugenics programs in different countries, and it became really ugly. So there’s no way I’d want that. Secondly, I’m a strong proponent of individual freedom. I support each person’s bodily autonomy, and I believe that nobody else ought to tell other people what they can or cannot do with their bodies.
That being said, I see multiple arguments for why voluntarily choosing to remain childfree can be a very good idea. There are people for whom not having children would be the responsible choice. Some examples:
1. People with serious illnesses that are genetically inherited by their offspring. I’m not talking about minor medical problems here, I mean serious illnesses.
2. People who would be bad parents because of having the wrong personality traits. For example, some people are poor at anger management and are easily irritable. Even if they love their kids, they will still be awful parents. Condemning your child to having a miserable childhood is a bad decision.
3. People with serious mental problems, addictions, etc. problems.
4. People who are involved in dysfunctional relationships. Growing up with an abusive parent really sucks for the child.
5. People who want a child for the wrong reasons, for example, some women get pregnant in order to force the guy to stay with them. Such crap usually doesn’t work in the long term and can have terrible consequences for the child.
6. People who earn too little money to support the child. Personally, my political beliefs are leaning towards socialism. I believe that the state should give money to poor parents in order to ensure that no child has to grow up in poverty. That being said, a lot of countries (for example, the USA) fail to financially support poor children. If some person is poor and living in a country where their kid would have to grow up in poverty, then the responsible decision is to not have a child in the first place.
7. People who simply dislike children. Yes, such people do exist, I’m one of them. If I had to take care of a baby, I’d be unhappy, miserable, I’d hate my life, and I’d quickly begin to hate the baby.
My point is that, depending upon individual circumstances, choosing to remain childfree can be the more responsible decision. If you cannot provide happy childhood for a child, then just don’t have one.
It’s great that it worked for you. There are some people like you who never plan having kids, but end up being happy about the accident. Unfortunately, there are also examples of the exact opposite—there are people who didn’t want to have children, but ended up with one because abortion wasn’t available, and the end result was misery for everybody, including the unwanted child.
Pro-life activists and gynaecologists and Christians tend to claim that every single person who becomes a parent (even if at first they didn’t want to) will end up being happy about the accident and enjoy being a parent. That’s bullshit. That’s not how it happens for everybody. Some people instead end up hating parenthood and mistreating their child. Pro-life activists fail to pay attention to such cases due to their rose-colored glasses, but I have seen this happen plenty of times.
When I requested a doctor to sterilize me, she refused saying that I might later regret this decision. Firstly, I hate patronizing doctors who believe that they know me better than I know myself. Secondly, I believe that regretting having a child is a hell lot worse than regretting your decision to sterilize yourself. If you regret having a child, you ruin not only your own life, you also make an innocent child endure a shitty childhood. That’s a lot worse than simply lamenting the fact that you wanted a child but didn’t have one.
I was intensely aware of my son’s inevitable death at the moment of his birth. I was and remain conflicted about my part in it. But I love him so much; it’s impossible to think of it –of him– as a mistake. Existence is desire. Desire is suffering. *shrug*