Should We Stop Having Babies?
The controversial philosophy of antinatalism
A number of my essays were previously released as videos, but never published in written form, even though they’re a natural fit for Substack. So every now and then, I’ll be publishing one here.
Is it better never to have been? Some people believe it would indeed be better if no sentient life were to come into existence. Antinatalism is the philosophical viewpoint that procreation is morally wrong. And therefore, we should avoid it. Some antinatalists think only humans should stop having children; others believe that all sentient beings would be better off if they’d never existed. But isn’t it wrong to oppose the birth of children? Why would anybody be against the creation of new life?
One of today’s most well-known antinatalist philosophers is David Benatar. In his book Better Never to Have Been, Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm, and thus it’s always wrong to bring new sentient life into existence. Therefore, preventing procreation is the best thing we can do for our potential children, as those who haven’t come into existence are free from the suffering of life. So, his antinatalist position doesn’t come from a hatred of sentient beings. It comes from compassion because it seeks to prevent the inescapable suffering that results from being born.
Antinatalism is a controversial topic that clashes with the worldviews of many. The masses probably oppose antinatalism, viewing it as misanthropic. After all, isn’t ending sentient life as a whole to eradicate suffering a tad extreme?
Asymmetry of good and bad
If we look at life, we can conclude that we experience both good and bad; both pleasure and pain. And thus, we could argue that life is worth living when the good outweighs the bad. But when the bad outweighs the good, life is not worth living. However, from an antinatalist point of view, the bad always outweighs the good, no matter how you look at it. And thus, even when we consider our lives good and pleasant, not being born at all is always preferable to being alive.
According to David Benatar, coming into existence generates good and bad experiences, or pain and pleasure. If we experience pain, it hurts, and we suffer as a result. If we experience pleasure, we feel joy. As the Buddhists would say, life consists of Eight Worldly Winds: praise and blame, gain and loss, success and failure, and joy and sorrow. When we bring a child into the world, this individual will inevitably be exposed to these winds.
A positive, optimistic approach to this occurrence is that the child now has an opportunity to experience all the great things life offers. The individual may gain many pleasurable experiences and might even find sustainable meaning as a keystone of his existence. But do all these joys of life, like tasting good food and listening to beautiful music, make existence better than non-existence? Do these experiences outweigh life’s suffering? And even when a child’s life turns out to be at least moderately pleasurable and even enjoyable, would it still be better off not being born at all?
According to Benatar, a child would have been better off if it had never come into existence. He explains an asymmetry between the amount of pain and pleasure we experience when we exist and the absence of pain and pleasure when we don’t exist. His book contains the following graph, showing us, due to this asymmetry, the advantage of non-existence over existence.
When we exist, we experience pain (which is bad) and pleasure (which is good). However, when we don’t exist, we don’t experience pain (which is good), and we don’t experience pleasure (which is not bad). So, being alive comes with both “good” and “bad”. Not being alive accompanies “good” and “not bad”. Therefore, non-existence has the advantage.
Benatar presents us with alternative ways of comparing existing with not existing, which show that the asymmetry holds up. For example, we could say that the absence of pleasure isn’t “not bad” but “bad.” A common argument against the antinatalist view is that we miss out on all the great, pleasurable things that life offers if we aren’t born. So, we could consider missing out on life a bad thing.
But, looking at an alternative graph in terms of symmetry, can we say that the absence of pleasure that comes with non-existence is equally bad as the presence of pain that comes with existence? Benatar argues that the absence of pleasure is not bad “unless there’s somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.” So, someone who doesn’t exist doesn’t experience deprivation and, therefore, doesn’t suffer the absence of pleasure. Someone who does exist certainly experiences pain, including the deprivation of pleasure, which only affects those who exist.
For someone who doesn’t exist, the absence of pleasure is neutral - it doesn’t make any difference. Hence, evaluating the absence of pleasure (which accompanies non-existence) as “bad” is too strong. Benatar illustrates the asymmetry by the following example:
Whereas, at least when we think of them, we rightly are sad for inhabitants of a foreign land whose lives are characterized by suffering, when we hear that some island is unpopulated, we are not similarly sad for the happy people who, had they existed, would have populated this island. Similarly, nobody really mourns for those who do not exist on Mars, feeling sorry for potential such beings that they cannot enjoy life. Yet, if we knew that there were sentient life on Mars but that Martians were suffering, we would regret this for them.
David Benatar, Better Never To Have Been, chapter 2
But still, despite the disadvantages of existence compared to non-existence, people seem to prefer existing over not existing and wouldn’t want to have missed out on it. We even bring new people into the world who meet a fate similar to ours. And then to think that, according to one particular philosopher, pain far outweighs the pleasure in this world, and “misfortune in general is the rule.”
How dreadful life is
The notoriously pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that: “we generally find pleasure to be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very much more painful.” He illustrated his claim by a thought experiment, asking the reader to imagine two animals, one engaged in eating the other. Which experience is more intense: the pleasure of eating or the pain of being eaten?
Unlike non-life, life consists of ongoing tragedy. And if we procreate, we create more life and thus more suffering. Birth itself is harrowing for the mother. And after the child is thrown into existence without even asking for it, its future is grim. Imagine how people, even children, struggle with trauma and other psychological problems and regularly endure bodily pains and illnesses. Many live in war-torn areas or extreme poverty, experiencing hunger and homelessness. Many others, having no shortage of comfort, wealth, and safety, take antidepressants and suffer addictions.
And even if our misfortunes are few, we still experience the dissatisfaction inherent to existence (which we’ll explore later on). We won’t escape the degenerate state of aging, which eventually results in death. The whole notion of death is a source of suffering in itself, as many people fear the great, dark unknown that precedes and comes after this short disruption we call life. The utter cluelessness of who we are, why we’re here, and where we’re going is an existential pain deep-rooted in human life.
Schopenhauer describes early youth as being in a theatre, “before the curtain is raised,” waiting eagerly and hopefully for the play to start, blessed by the ignorance of what will happen.
Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless, every man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state of life of which it may be said: “It is bad today, and it will be worse tomorrow; and so on till the worst of all.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism, On the Sufferings of the World
Suppose that by ‘being alive’ we find suffering in every corner, while relief from copious amounts of pain remains to be seen. In that case, Schopenhauer might just have correctly described life as an “unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence.” And so, we might indeed be better off not being here at all.
However, many people don’t experience life as terrible. These people view their lives as happy and feel blessed as a result. But according to Benatar, people delude themselves with an “unduly rosy picture” of their own existence, as a consequence of a psychological phenomenon called the Pollyanna Principle: a human tendency toward optimism.
Our self-assessments are unreliable because we tend to recall more positive than negative experiences and exaggerate how good things will be. Also, humans adapt very well to situations and base their assessments on comparisons with others rather than on a more objective, cosmic viewpoint, even though the great calm of non-existence could actually be a better state. So, how we assess our lives is subjective rather than objective, and we can’t really imagine how it would be to be released from suffering because it’s all we know.
Ongoing dissatisfaction
The Buddhist idea of enlightenment (a state in which suffering ceases) includes escaping the cycle of rebirth. Nirvana, the ultimate freedom from suffering, means that we’re not born again in this painful existence (also called ‘samsara’). And so, Buddhism seems to follow antinatalist logic: that there’s no suffering in non-existence, so non-existence (or the escape from the cycle of rebirth) is preferable to existence, which is inherently painful.
To many, never coming into existence again may sound like a tragedy rather than liberation. If we don’t exist, we’ll never experience, for example, the joys of watching beautiful scenery or being in love. Why would we prefer nothingness over an opportunity to relish the pleasure and beauty of being alive?
In our consumerist culture, we celebrate the ongoing search for gratifying our desires, as it’s something to be enjoyed and makes life worth living. Isn’t it fantastic to be alive, so we can enjoy traveling, partying, restaurants, art, and having fun between the sheets? Or are most (if not all) of these things consumerism promotes ways to cope with life’s dissatisfaction?
According to Schopenhauer’s view, the things we seem to enjoy aren’t the things we look for in themselves. Pleasure in itself isn’t a positive experience but a negative experience. Pain, on the other hand, isn’t a negative experience but a positive one. As Schopenhauer stated, and I quote: “It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end.” So, we’re not so much after pleasure. We’re after getting rid of pain. Then, we could say that the attainment of pleasure is a means of ending pain.
Interestingly enough, we find a similar view among Buddhist scholars. The Buddhist monk Ajahn Sona tells a simile comparing desire to being in debt. If we pay off our debts, we feel relief. But if we don’t, we experience unease or dissatisfaction. It’s painful and needs something to be alleviated. For example, the thirst for beer requires beer to be consumed. The desire to be a millionaire requires a certain amount of money to be fulfilled. Suppose we experience many desires but are deprived of the corresponding pleasures. In that case, life becomes unbearable, as we find ourselves in a perpetual state of burning pain without any means to douse the fire.
However, if we don’t have desires, pleasure becomes obsolete. An antinatalist argument would be that the surest way not to experience the dissatisfaction, unease, and pain of all these desires that come with existence is not to exist in the first place. If we don’t start a fire, we don’t have to put it out.
Buddhists call the ongoing suffering (or rather ‘dissatisfaction’) of life ‘dukkha.’ Again, reaching nirvana relieves one from dukkha and liberates one from the cycle of rebirth. For an antinatalist, it’s pretty encouraging to see that within one of the major world religions, the highest attainable achievement is never to be born again.
So, is it bad to have children?
Antinatalism can be both misanthropic and philanthropic. David Benatar’s arguments are based on both compassion and a lack of favor for humanity. Looking at human history we can see that we’re capable of great harm towards one another and our surroundings. We just have to look at the horrors of the Second World War, the way we treat animals in slaughterhouses, or how we pollute oceans. Considering all these defects in our species, wouldn’t it be better if we just weren’t around? The philanthropic antinatalism presented by David Benatar is rather compassionate toward humanity and all other sentient beings, recognizing their suffering while offering a way to end our collective misery.
As the Buddhists would agree, with existence always comes harm. Any child brought into this world will experience pain and inflict pain on other beings, even though the magnitude varies per individual. Whether it’s physical pain, the pain of loss, or the pain of dissatisfaction, there’s always some suffering involved. Even Buddhist monks who attained the non-suffering state of ‘enlightenment’ had suffered before, and most likely squashed a bug or two. And thus, an antinatalist arguing that coming into existence is always a serious harm takes a rationally strong position. If we do not come into existence in the first place, we’ll not suffer harm and not inflict it. Moreover, we’ll not suffer the absence of pleasure because we’re not deprived of it.
Yet, the general populace will undoubtedly cast these rational arguments aside, claiming that bringing new people into the world is good and even moral. But, from an antinatalist viewpoint, how could it be, assuming that parents love their children? Isn’t the most ethical thing we can do to our unrealized children never to give birth to them in the first place if that spares them from significant harm?
Sentient beings, by and large, are biologically driven to procreate. We make babies simply because that’s what we do, often without giving it too much thought. Also, people procreate to give their lives meaning but don’t mind the painful consequences for the children themselves by coming into existence, let alone entertain the possibility that the child may be better off not being born. Then, when these children grow up, they also procreate to gain the same benefits as their parents, and so do their children, and so on. Benatar calls this a procreational Ponzi scheme. “It’s a Ponzi scheme in that eventually it’s going to go bust. And the final people are going to have to pay a price and will pay a price,” he stated in an interview.
Our children will suffer. They will grieve, have their hearts broken, be abused in one way or another, suffer physical pain and misfortunes like poverty, addiction, war, illness, loss of loved ones, and, in the end, death. And even if life largely spares them from misfortune, they will experience the perpetual dissatisfaction of being alive. On the other hand, as defective as we are as a species, chances are plausible that our children will harm the environment and other sentient beings. Hence, from the antinatalist viewpoint, coming into existence is always a serious harm.
But what should we do?
Suppose we agree with the pessimistic arguments of Schopenhauer and Benatar, showing us that we would have been better off if we had never had come into existence. What should we do now that we’re already here? Should we spend our lives sobbing about our unfortunate fate? Should we attempt to destroy conscious life as a way of reducing suffering? Should we, for the same reason, end ourselves? The antinatalist argument that not coming into existence in the first place is best doesn’t imply that we should cause pain or engage in self-destruction if we’re unfortunate enough to be alive. Such suggestions overshoot the goal, driving what we seek to reduce, which is suffering.
Moreover, there’s a fundamental difference between taking life after it’s created and preventing life from being created. Also, there’s a difference between a life not worth starting and a life not worth continuing. Not being born at all may be best, but second best may be a life worth living. We could even find some meaning, for example, by helping others make life more bearable. After all, no one asked to be here. And so, we’re all fellow sufferers: a realization that could be an immense source of compassion.
The philosophy of genetic suicide is an intriguing one.