I do not think it is emphasized nearly enough that all parents are, in effect, apologists for the Holocaust. If the Holocaust were not, in some deep way, "okay" - if the world including frequent genocide were not "okay" - how would it be acceptable to reproduce? Making a new baby says the world is alright. And the world includes genocide, mass rape, pediatric AIDS, eyeball parasites . . . all this, though, the parent must conclude, is "worth it."
This pertains to a problem with all ethics that build on some idea of universalizability: To what extent do you count others' behavior as just a given aspect of the world and to what extent to you universalize over it as well?
ReplyDeleteSo I think from a purely theoretical point of view, antinatalist arguments that focus on harm that is nobody's fault and cannot be avoided is "safer".
But this one still has intuitive force - in fact, force from the same source that makes Kant's example with the liar and the murderer so appalling.
Yes - this connects into the whole theodicy thing, especially the "free will" explanation for evil. Some evil is caused by free will. But the easier case, for those like me who believe that if there is a God it is evil, is evil that is not caused by any conscious entity (like eyeball parasites).
ReplyDeleteTo what extent do you count others' behavior as just a given aspect of the world and to what extent to you universalize over it as well?
This is a very interesting question in tort law as well - when do we have a duty not just to avoid injuring people, but to protect them from other people? Especially the intentional wrongdoing of other people? The tort law answer tends to be "when it's foreseeable and you have some special relationship to the victim." Parents and children are a special relationship. You have a duty not to let people beat your children.
If the law were rational, I think there would also be a duty not to have children in the first place. A California court of appeals even agreed with me, for a while, in a limited case of a child born with a foreseeable defect - see my explanation here.
It's not precisely on point, but I am again reminded of the table talk from Todd Solondz's "Storytelling":
ReplyDeleteBRADY
We're studying the Holocaust in
Social Studies.
MARTY
Oh, yeah?
SCOOBY
We did the same thing last year also.
FERN
How was the class?
BRADY
Well, I'm supposed to watch Schindler's List for homework. The
movie's like almost four hours.
And then I'm supposed to write a
report on survivors.
(to Marty)
You know any survivors, Dad?
MARTY
Hmmm...Do I know any...personally...?
FERN
Well, technically your Zeda is a
survivor.
BRADY
He was in a concentration camp?
FERN
Well, no. But he had to escape the
Nazis.
BRADY
But I thought he came over to
America before the war.
FERN
Well, he did. With his family. But
his cousins, they had to stay and
they were all killed. And if he'd
stayed, he would have been killed.
So in my book he's a survivor.
BRADY
Even though it was only his
cousins that were killed?
FERN
But that could've happened to him.
Or to me, if I'd been alive. Or
you.
MIKEY
Or me?
SCOOBY
You mean, then, we're all
survivors?
FERN
Well...yes. If it hadn't been for
Hitler, he wouldn't have had to
leave Europe. We would have
been...European.
SCOOBY
But then, in a sense, since you
would never have met Dad if your
family had stayed in Europe...if
it weren't for Hitler, none of us
would have been born.
(A long pause.)
MARTY
Get the hell outta here!
A bit further down the path forged by Scooby's dialectical prowess.
ReplyDeleteI think this image would have even less success in convincing people than the holocaust-metaphers of the animal-rights-people have. Nevertheless I can see some truth in both of them. But to most people it will sound absolutely absurd that their having babies could have any connection whatsoever with genocide.
ReplyDeleteBtw, sorry for any confusion, I'm a different rob than the Rob above me - a smaller one, if You will ;-)
As Archie says at the end of Jumpers:
ReplyDelete"Do not despair - many are happy much of the time. More eat than starve, more are healthy than sick, more curable than dying, not so many dying as dead - and one of the thieves was saved! Hell’s bells and all’s well! Half the world is at peace with itself, and so is the other half. Vast areas are unpolluted, millions of children grow up without suffering deprivation, and millions, while deprived, grow up without suffering cruelties, and millions, while deprived and cruelly treated, nonetheless... grow up."
Salem:
ReplyDelete"Do not despair - many slaves are happy much of the time. More eat than starve, more are healthy than sick, more curable than dying, not so many dying as dead - and one of the thieves was saved! Hell’s bells and all’s well! Half the world's population of slaves is at peace with itself, and so is the other half. Vast areas are unpolluted, millions of slave children grow up without suffering deprivation, and millions, while deprived, grow up without suffering cruelties, and millions, while deprived and cruelly treated, nonetheless... grow up."
Wow, even when altered to pertain exclusively to slavery, the quote still stands! You're right; it's definitely time to put people to work in the fields again.
"In the face of an argument why [a slave] was not benefited by his enslavement, we would view with suspicion his enthusiasm for his own enslavement. We should do the same about people’s enthusiasm for their having come into existence." Benatar
ReplyDeleteHow bizarre... I read this post and comments AFTER I read and commented on the new post re: Nussbaum and storytelling... and my comments on that post revolved around slavery. Something in the water this week, I spose.
ReplyDeleteHere's a quote from Paul Fussell's "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" -
ReplyDelete“’A Power of Facing Unpleasant Facts’ – The words are [George] Orwell’s in his essay ‘Why I Write.’ From childhood, he says, he might have sensed that he was going to be a writer, for already he had ‘a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.’ The latter, he implies throughout his career, is necessary not just to any writer but to any honest thinker. And it’s notably a power, not merely a talent or a flair. The power of facing unpleasant facts is clearly an attribute of decent, sane grown-ups as opposed to the immature, the silly, the nutty, or the doctrinaire. Some exemplary unpleasant facts are these: that life is short and almost always ends messily; that if you live in the actual world you can’t have your own way; that if you do get what you want, it turns out not to be the thing you wanted; that no one thinks as well of you as you do yourself; and that one or two generations from now you will be forgotten entirely and that the world will go on as if you had never existed. Another is that to survive and prosper in this world you have to do so at someone else's expense or do and undergo things it’s not pleasant to face: like, for example, purchasing your life at the cost of the innocents murdered in the aerial bombing of Europe and the final bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And not just the bombings. It’s also an unpleasant fact that you are alive and well because you or your representatives killed someone with bullets, shells, bayonets or knives, if not in Germany, Italy or Japan, then Korea or Vietnam. You have connived at murder, and you thrive on it, and that fact is too unpleasant to face except rarely.”
Wait, I thought you anti-natalists were all holocaust denialists
ReplyDeleteThat's ridiculous. I don't know any anti-natalists that deny the Holocaust. It's actually a good example of the massive risks one takes in creating a child.
DeleteChip Smith:http://hooverhog.typepad.com/hognotes/2009/04/a-few-months-back-overcoming-bias-big-dog-robin-hanson-took-a-recreational-stroll-into-the-uncanny-valley-of-911-conspiracy.html, Inmendham:http://supexcellency.blogspot.com/2008/11/inmendhams-racism.html, Leaving Society:http://nobadmemes.blogspot.com/2011/08/lets-have-socratic-dialogue.html, this guy:http://forum.thatfatatheist.com/single/?p=8179968&t=9120545
DeleteIn the future, if you use this formatting, your links will be clickable:
Delete<a href="http://websiteaddresshere.com/">Clickable Hyperlink Text Here</a>
producing:
Clickable Hyperlink Text Here
Chip is almost certainly wrong.
DeleteThe guy who accused Inmendham of racism provided no evidence, links, etc., whatsoever, except a screenshot, that in context, could have been Inmendham making his point. The CORE proof he claimed to have wasn't linked in any way, so I can't evaluate it.
The second to last guy I don't know, but he did, in fact, deny the holocaust occurred on his site.
The last guy, however, did not. He said Hitler did Europe a service by fighting the communists. That's arguable.
So you seem pretty slack, "Anonymous", in your arguments.
But anyway, Sister Y obviously doesn't and I don't deny that the holocaust took place. I think it's rather obvious from any honest reading of history and interviews with survivors, both inmates and Nazis, that it did.
People have a difference of opinions. What's your point?
And can you provide evidence for the two people you accused of Holocaust denial, but offered no proof of?
Last guy: http://forum.thatfatatheist.com/single/?p=8177854&t=9109868
ReplyDeleteInmendham:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTXWnUBEeEE
It's not a big surprise really. Schopenhauer was Hitler's favorite philosopher.
First link didn't work. Here's a tinyurl version that might
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/7ao33te
Last guy
ReplyDeleteInmendham
Hitler was a vegetarian, I hear. My mom is a vegan and a 9/11 truther - does that mean 9/11 truthers are Nazis? (Much less vegetarians.) I'm confused.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting question, from the Less Wrong perspective, is why certain historical, factual, or even scientific beliefs take on such moral weight that the mere fact that a person holds the belief impugns his character, without a perceived need for any further inquiry into the person's goodness or badness.
Just noticing a pattern, is all.
ReplyDeleteThe first antinatalist I ever met admired serial killers. The second reacted to someone announcing that his sister was pregnant by openly hoping that her house would burn down with her inside it. When I first heard about antinatalism, I assumed you would all be compassionate people who work at soup kitchens, but all you seem to devote yourself to doing is convincing happy people that they're secretly miserable, shitting on proposals intended to make the world better on the grounds that they're not good enough, and convincing mentally healthy people that it's in their best interests to commit suicide(if you object to that last one, tell me what else Zralytylen and CulturalPhillistine on youtube are doing).
From where I'm standing, the only undeniable good it's done is let depressed and pessimist people know they're not alone and join something resembling an online community. I don't know if it's actually prevented any births, because people mainly seem to either dismiss it as a patent absurdity or instantly accept it as something they've always believed but never have been able to articulate.
Indeed - it's fairly well accepted that bad people are wrong.
DeletePerhaps you would enjoy Greg Swann's treatise on self-love; he comes to similar conclusions.
You're right, that was kind of ad hominem.
DeleteBut hey it's still bad PR right? And I feel I was more focused on critiquing antinatalism as an existing movement than as an idea in general.
Also, don't get me started on the linking to internet crazies thing. I am simply the best there is.
Okay those are pretty fucking awesome.
DeleteInmendham is, I don't think, opposed to believing the Holocaust is true. He's taking a skeptic's position and saying prove it.
DeleteNow I think the proof is there. In fact, forget just the "army" as Inmendham puts it -- doctors and nurses, especially in psychiatry, were gassing patients long before the concentration camps did so ... they were the precursors to the camps, their methods were exported to the camps as well as their equipment, and in one case was simply converted into a camp.
To start with, I just started watching that Inmendham guy. And I know this may come as a shock to you, Anonymous, but without needing any prompting from you, it was easy for me to find points in his videos where I disagreed with his conclusions or simply knew he was factually incorrect. For example, when he claimed that war and violence are getting more and more common and worse, when this isn't actually true.
Steven Pinker: A Brief History of Violence
The other day, I posted a comment (can't remember which one) where I disagreed with our host about something.
I hope Inmendham isn't an anti-semite, but regardless of how nuts some of his views in some areas may be (and equating Reagan with Hitler is pretty nuts -- Reagan helped free a lot of people from the even greater political tyranny of strong-man rule communism), his basic points that there is a lot of suffering in the world, that life is essentially pointless, and that, at a minimum, you are taking a huge gamble in terms of causing suffering (well, you're certain to cause LOTS of this: the question is, is it more than the pleasures, and in at least many cases, the answer is yes) when creating a child; all stand up to scrutiny.
Just because I watch some guy's YouTube videos doesn't mean I've accepted every single part of his belief system as my own. THAT would be nuts.
"I don't know if it's actually prevented any births, because people mainly seem to either dismiss it as a patent absurdity or instantly accept it as something they've always believed but never have been able to articulate."
DeleteI've always wanted kids, and now I see the moral problem with having kids (based in part on my own experience of being unhappy, especially the last 2 3/4 years -- although at other times too).
I think you're bring a lot of bias to the table, Anom. You're not the only one, but you are so far from immune it's not funny.
Also, as far as being pessimistic goes, well ... the optimism bias is the delusion. That's well established in psychology. Sure you could swing too far the other way and also enter the state of delusion, but most people would have to swing some distance in that direction to become more realistic.
DeleteFurther, I wasn't walking around one day and caught a dose of depression. Things happened.
I had the best, happiest 6 years of my life, and they went off the rails, in a way I couldn't effectively (and can't) (and soon won't at all) live with.
Were one particular thing to happen, I would be able to clime out of this and be happy. But it isn't going to and I've simply decided -- long long ago -- this is the one thing I can't live with.
So I intend to die.
But that's because of how life worked out, including my huge part in that equation in the choices I made. It isn't because of some nefarious "chemical imbalance"/disease.
Feeling better (and it happens at times) wouldn't change my decision. My decision is based on my values, and I've hashed it out for over 2 years.
My values haven't changed, and I've decided they don't need to.
I know right?
DeleteOh God, now I look horrible insensitive. The "I know right?" was directed at Sister Y's last comment and not any of yours.
Deletelol It's alright. I'm not concerned.
DeleteThere are people who are horribly insensitive and lots of them. You don't come across as one.
As far as the suicide thing goes... That's your decision, and I have no right to pretend I know your situation better than you do.
DeleteI don't get why you guys don't go "Yes, I'm depressed, and depression is a horrible, horrible thing that is sadly common and no child should have go through it" Or, "no I'm not depressed, but that doesn't stop me from realizing that many horrible things can happen to people, even in first world countries, depression being one of those things. Let's err on the side of caution" instead of "I'M not depressed! You're just deluded/addicted to life and once I inform you of the TRUTH you'll be properly miserable"
I think that characterizes a strain of AN thought.
DeleteThe Wheaties I am currently targeting with my urine stream are the meaning/stories that people perceive as justifying suffering. It's a subtle point that these things (work, the self, politics, religion) can be good for existing people to believe in (and even reduce their suffering or cause positive value), BUT don't thereby justify the creation of new sufferers for the meaning/stories sake.
"I don't get why you guys don't go "Yes, I'm depressed, and depression is a horrible, horrible thing that is sadly common and no child should have go through it" Or, "no I'm not depressed, but that doesn't stop me from realizing that many horrible things can happen to people, even in first world countries, depression being one of those things. Let's err on the side of caution" instead of "I'M not depressed!
DeleteWell both states happen. They aren't mutually exclusive.
And if by depression you mean sad, lacking motivation for life-affirming goals, etc., then I am, clearly. My point isn't that this part of the human experience is denied to me.
My point was that it happened as a result of things in my life, and had those things in my life been different, I would feel different. If they became different now (and they won't) I would feel different.
But I wasn't walking around one day la-dee-da and contracted a chemical imbalance. That part of the theory is, I think, nonsense.
It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for me to be happy under the circumstances.
Not to me anyway -- and on the happiest day of my life (and I can remember it), if you had told me this would happen, yes, I would have instantly predicted I'd want to die.
DeleteHad not a damn thing to do with some drug-pushing-company's marketer's wet dream bullshit of an alleged (never proven, and somewhat disproven by their own studies) chemical imbalance.
I don't know enough about the evidence going into the study of depression to agree or contradict you there. I can provide anecdotal evidence of people I've read or interacted with who have suffered, or are suffering depression and feel that what they suffered was pathological in nature and not a reaction to poor circumstances, but anecdotal evidence doesn't mean a whole lot.
Delete"what they suffered was pathological in nature and not a reaction to poor circumstances"
ReplyDeleteIn your opinion. Life itself, however, is a pretty poor circumstance. Possibly you think about it differently than they do, and they think about it more realistically.
No I mean, they told me they consider it pathological. I'm not them, so I can't say.
DeleteFair enough.
DeleteMe, no, I can trace it back to the moment ... then several reinforcing moments.
It's just, why try to convince people with lives they consider acceptable or overall good that they are actually suffering horribly when there's so much clear unambiguous horror out there?
ReplyDeleteIt's like trying to get someone to hide in their basement by giving them a fear of grass when there's a tornado warning. It just strikes me as odd and morally questionable.
I think Benatar's arguments suffers a problem, and this is why I believe Sister Y is nearer to the truth.
DeleteBenatar says humans have a strong bias toward optimism as a rule --true -- therefore our lives aren't as good as we think they are -- qualified true: but what does it matter? If people *feel* good and see their lives as good, if it's partly based on a cognitive bias? It's their subjective impression, and an objective, external person isn't the one best place to make the assessment.
Similarly, the fact that some person thinks I should want to live because they or someone they know went through something similar than me, or objectively worse (and I concede that is frequently the case), and they want to live ... isn't important.
The point is how *I* see my life, subjectively, from my own values and viewpoint, and how *I* feel -- not how they feel.
Because I'm the one who has to live and feel and think about my life.
*best placed
DeleteI don't think convincing people they are unhappy when they are, in fact, enjoying themselves is a worthwhile goal. And since happiness is a subjective state, I don't even think it's terribly in line with reality. One could, instead, teach about the optimism bias, if one wished, or about reasons for thinking religion is untrue.
DeleteI like truth. I value truth. So there's an answer.
But convincing someone on their honeymoon that no, they don't really like this love and sex thing after all would be dumb.
However, teaching people that some other people are terribly unhappy and really don't want to live, even though they may not be able to relate to it, has value. It prevents the optimists from forcing their will on myself or people in a similar position. It's a triumph of empathy if this can be taught.
I have known happiness, and the desire to live, so I accept that others have also.