Having kids is immoral

[Nernico]

Originally Posted by elucidate

I understand what you are saying, there's no need to be so rude and aggressive.

You sound like a militant vegan for goodness sake!

Do you eat meat? Do you have a problem with the eating of animals or do you consider them below us and therefore not worthy of the same consideration you would give a child? I'm curious.

Truth isnt a public contest.

What do you think about this exemple?

I want to give a gift for 9 kids but i want to torture 1 kid. What should i do? Should i avoid unecessary pain to the potential tortured kid and not give gifts to another 9 kids or give a wonderful gift to 9 kids and torturing 1 child?
Do you think its morally correct torture 1 kid by giving a gift to another 9 kids?

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by Nernico

Truth isnt a public contest.

I'm not making it a contest.

What do you think about this exemple?

I want to give a gift for 9 kids but i want to torture 1 kid. Do you think its morally correct torture 1 kid by giving a gift to another 9 kids? What should i do?

What do I think of it? Honestly...not much.

It's a stupid example.

Of course it's not morally correct to torture a child and give gifts to the others.

It can be seen as an example of how some family units operate though, so I will give you that much.

What I've noticed about you is that you never answer anyone elses questions but you expect others to answer yours.

Do you consider your questions to be more worthy of attention than anyone elses here? That's a good way to alienate yourself from people...which may be what you want?

[Nernico]

Originally Posted by elucidate

I'm not making it a contest.



What do I think of it? Honestly...not much.

It's a stupid example.

Of course it's not morally correct to torture a child and give gifts to the others.

It can be seen as an example of how some family units operate though, so I will give you that much.

What I've noticed about you is that you never answer anyone elses questions but you expect others to answer yours.

Do you consider your questions to be more worthy of attention than anyone elses here? That's a good way to alienate yourself from people...which may be what you want?

You guys simply dont accept that preventing harm is a moral obligation and benefiting someone is less important.
You all just say many people see life as an amazing experience and its a REASON to bring kids to the world ignoring that many others experience extreme suffer and pain.
I am just trying to explain that the "argument of happiness" is immoral.

[ZephyrusX]

I think he is saying that it is irrelevant how many people have overall positive lives. His/her objective is to stop procreation so that no human will ever have to suffer again regardless of how small that actual suffering may be in relation to other experiences. Way to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Still I reject the premise that we ought to prevent suffering.

Originally Posted by elucidate

Some being the operative word here.

Judging by the amount of people in this thread who have posted that they do not regret being born and actually feel like they have benefited from being here counteracts your assumption that all people feel the same about suffering.

Consent has been brought up a few times, which is frankly, another aspect of these conversations that makes no sense to me. It is only meaningful to speak of consent when there is an actual sentient being present that is capable of rational decision making. Hence the reason why our states peg the age of consent at different ages depending upon the subject matter. The age of political consent in Canada is 18 I believe. Speaking of consent in this context is a meaningless discussion as we are talking about non-existent people.

From that you could possibly say that the decision to procreate or to keep the baby is a selfish act as the decision to do so always reflects the will of the parents (well there are exceptions, but that is besides the point). But the observation becomes rather moot the moment the child is born. Hell, it might be a moot point once the child starts kicking the mother from the inside. The child demands attention; parents give it unselfishly. Parenthood is a holistically transformative decision. And at this stage, it actually does make sense to speak meaningfully of what the child wants.

The unspoken assumption seems to be that is it 'immoral' because the parents are making a selfish decision (at least initially), but what if we reject that premise? Who says that selfish decisions are bad?

[MariconesUnited]

Getting a strong case of deja vu here...

Originally Posted by Nernico

You guys simply dont accept that preventing harm is a moral obligation and benefiting someone is less important.
You all just say many people see life as an amazing experience and its a REASON to bring kids to the world ignoring that many others experience extreme suffer and pain.
I am just trying to explain that the "argument of happiness" is immoral.

You're not answering other people's questions. Are you even considering their arguments? I don't see why avoiding harm should be more important than providing other people benefit. We should aim for both. And just so I get you straight are you arguing that no one should procreate or only people who are very likely to have miserable kids?

[Nernico]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Yawn

If life is meaningless and happiness has no point and the preferred state is non-existence, then what utility could skepticism; cynicism; rightness or evidence possibly have?

The more frequently and intensively someone experiences happiness the less suffering they experience in their life. From that perspective happiness is something to be aspired towards if one does not have the will nor the inclination to committ suicide. However, when I say life is meaningless I mean that no one is ever deprived of any happiness if they don't come into existence so there is no reason to bring anybody into existence for their own sake. However, on the other side of the ledger there is in fact a reason to abstain from bringing people into existence because if you do so they will experience at least some measure of pain and suffering and they WILL die. Therefore everyone is unnecessarily harmed by coming into existence - even those who subsequently lead fantastically happy lives.

If people want to play the moral nihilism card and say that none of this has any meaning then I cannot counter this by the use of logic because my philosophical stance mandates a nihilistic 'world view'. However, I believe the premises and implications of the asymmetry are sound, resting as they do on inductive logical reasoning: No sentience = no deprivation of happiness and no pain or suffering. One only has to consider the planet Mars and see how there is absolutely no reason to start populating that planet with sobbing and cackling insane and deluded animals in a meaningless and pitilessly indifferent universe.

[ZephyrusX]

This made me laugh quite the bit. What does Mars have anything to do with this? I can give you credit for coming up with the most far out there examples.

Originally Posted by Nernico

One only has to consider the planet Mars and see how there is absolutely no reason to start populating that planet with sobbing and cackling insane and deluded animals in a meaningless and pitilessly indifferent universe.

[Nernico]

Originally Posted by MariconesUnited

Getting a strong case of deja vu here...

You're not answering other people's questions. Are you even considering their arguments? I don't see why avoiding harm should be more important than providing other people benefit. We should aim for both. And just so I get you straight are you arguing that no one should procreate or only people who are very likely to have miserable kids?

''I don't see why avoiding harm should be more important than providing other people benefit.''

Have I failed to provide any children with benefit by not having any children? No, I just haven't had any children.

Have I increased the amount of people who will experience pain, suffering and death on this planet by creating more people with my sperm? No.

My conscience is utterly clean.

''And just so I get you straight are you arguing that no one should procreate or only people who are very likely to have miserable kids?''

Ideally all people should just stop breeding and then we could gradually phase out the human race in a staggered manner in order to minimise the suffering to those who currently exist.

Of course this is unlikely to happen because most people would just get angry at me for even having the temerity to voice such an opinion.

[MariconesUnited]

Originally Posted by Nernico

''I don't see why avoiding harm should be more important than providing other people benefit.''

Have I failed to provide any children with benefit by not having any children? No, I just haven't had any children.

While I think failure is a harsh word, I think you are absolutely missing out on an opportunity to provide yet another sentient being the opportunity to experience the beauty, wonder and mystery of life. Absolutely.

[Nernico]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

I think he is saying that it is irrelevant how many people have overall positive lives. His/her objective is to stop procreation so that no human will ever have to suffer again regardless of how small that actual suffering may be in relation to other experiences. Way to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Still I reject the premise that we ought to prevent suffering.



Consent has been brought up a few times, which is frankly, another aspect of these conversations that makes no sense to me. It is only meaningful to speak of consent when there is an actual sentient being present that is capable of rational decision making. Hence the reason why our states peg the age of consent at different ages depending upon the subject matter. The age of political consent in Canada is 18 I believe. Speaking of consent in this context is a meaningless discussion as we are talking about non-existent people.

From that you could possibly say that the decision to procreate or to keep the baby is a selfish act as the decision to do so always reflects the will of the parents (well there are exceptions, but that is besides the point). But the observation becomes rather moot the moment the child is born. Hell, it might be a moot point once the child starts kicking the mother from the inside. The child demands attention; parents give it unselfishly. Parenthood is a holistically transformative decision. And at this stage, it actually does make sense to speak meaningfully of what the child wants.

The unspoken assumption seems to be that is it 'immoral' because the parents are making a selfish decision (at least initially), but what if we reject that premise? Who says that selfish decisions are bad?

What do you mean by 'positive'?

Everyone is harmed by coming into experience. Everyone dies. Everyone loses loved ones. Everyone experiences pain and suffering at certain points in their lives. I don't think these are positive things, they are negative things even if some good things may arise from them.

You may gush about joy, happiness and love but there's no need to create the need for these things to be experieced. When you create a baby you create a bucket of needs, wants and desires that can only ever be partially filled. Why create the bucket in the first place?

The answer is because the people who want to procreate have a bucket of needs, wants and desires themselves that they feel compelled to fill their bucket up as much as they can by doing, amonst other things, creating a baby. Thus the whole cycle is perpetuated indefinitely until one day the particular species becomes extinct. The end.

''Still I reject the premise that we ought to prevent suffering.''

Well that's unfortunate. Not all of us thank our lucky stars that we awoke from our slumber in order to find ourselves on this rotating compost heap. I was fine where I was thank you (just as no one complains about life on Mars) and now I have to go through the rigmarole of trying to satisfy as many of my needs, wants and desires as I can (which include helping others) only to return from whence I came via a painful and distressing phenomenon known as dying. There are good reasons why many philosphers have regarded the human condition as absurd..

''The unspoken assumption seems to be that is it 'immoral' because the parents are making a selfish decision (at least initially), but what if we reject that premise?''

Then you're being disingenuous. Read the typical reasons why parents want to procreate - they like babies' toes, they want someone to furnish their life with meaning, they want to pass on their family name etc. These are all selfish reasons to have children cited by parents that are not based on the interests of the child itself. The child has no interests prior to its conception of course so any motvation to bring a given child into existence comes from the parents' needs, wants and desires. Moreover, once one is born the clock is set ticking towards an ineviatable death, and pain and suffering will be experienced to some degree by the child throughout his or her life so the selfish decision to procreate also resulted in unnecessary pain, suffering and death for their child. Therefore at its core procreation is not only a selfish act but also an aggressive act.

The fact that parents don't generally see things this way can be easily explained away by recourse to evolutionary psychology. Developing an accurate appraisal of the human condition is a capability that tends to get weeded out of the gene pool for obvious reasons but still it persists in the early 21st century because mother nature has to tread a VERY NARROW LINE when it comes to dishing out logical reasoning skills in relation to psychological defense mechanisms - denial, repression, sublimation, displacement, projection etc.. Too much of the former and too little of the latter and the world, with all its emotionally driven animals (including humans) driven to survive at any cost, becomes a kind of tragic and absurd place.

I try to keep my good cheer but the mantra that 'life's a ***** and then you die' resonates with my experience of the world.

[Nernico]

Originally Posted by MariconesUnited

I think you are absolutely missing out on an opportunity to provide yet another sentient being the opportunity to experience the beauty, wonder and mystery of life. Absolutely.

I may be missing out on that but the children that I won't have will not miss out on a thing.

[ZephyrusX]

Then you're being disingenuous. Read the typical reasons why parents want to procreate

I’m not sure if you understood my question. I agree with you that the decision to have a baby is a selfish act as there is no child actually there to give consent. I said once that I liked the idea of having child as the transformative experience of raising one is likely to be very different than interacting with an adult, and essentially, this is a selfish desire. Is this inherently wrong though?

Human experience has a consistent way of avoiding simplifications. It seems very nice and convenient to categorize human behaviour as either ‘selfish’ or ‘unselfish’, but it is not as if our interactions are ever that simple. As I said before, child raising (as well as any other human interaction) is a transformative experience. You may start out with selfish expectations, and 1o -15 years down the road, you may still retain some selfish expectations, but at the same time, you’re worldview is likely to have been changed by virtue of the fact that you are interacting with and accommodating another human being in your life.

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by Nernico

You guys simply dont accept that preventing harm is a moral obligation and benefiting someone is less important.
You all just say many people see life as an amazing experience and its a REASON to bring kids to the world ignoring that many others experience extreme suffer and pain.
I am just trying to explain that the "argument of happiness" is immoral.

And you seem to be ignoring the fact that I have, more than once now, acknowledged that many people experience trauma and pain...I'm one of them for god sake. Pull your head out of your arse, you might be able to see better!

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

I think he is saying that it is irrelevant how many people have overall positive lives. His/her objective is to stop procreation so that no human will ever have to suffer again regardless of how small that actual suffering may be in relation to other experiences. Way to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Yeah, I get that.

Still I reject the premise that we ought to prevent suffering.

Well, to be really honest, there were times when I could see that suffering was a part of life and we all have to go through it, and then other times, when it was overwhelmingly unbearable, I saw no good purpose for it and it just was a joke to me.

Consent has been brought up a few times, which is frankly, another aspect of these conversations that makes no sense to me. It is only meaningful to speak of consent when there is an actual sentient being present that is capable of rational decision making. Hence the reason why our states peg the age of consent at different ages depending upon the subject matter. The age of political consent in Canada is 18 I believe. Speaking of consent in this context is a meaningless discussion as we are talking about non-existent people.

I know, right. That's the part that has me stumped. You can't ask someone who doesn't exist yet if they mind being brought here, so it's an assumption that they wouldn't. Suffering is one aspect of being human, it's not the whole enchelada. Negative things happen, and they are painful, but they pass, and people heal over time. It's no cold comfort at the time, but later it's in the past.

From that you could possibly say that the decision to procreate or to keep the baby is a selfish act as the decision to do so always reflects the will of the parents (well there are exceptions, but that is besides the point).

I actually agree that it is a selfish act.

But the observation becomes rather moot the moment the child is born. Hell, it might be a moot point once the child starts kicking the mother from the inside. The child demands attention; parents give it unselfishly. Parenthood is a holistically transformative decision. And at this stage, it actually does make sense to speak meaningfully of what the child wants.

The unspoken assumption seems to be that is it 'immoral' because the parents are making a selfish decision (at least initially), but what if we reject that premise? Who says that selfish decisions are bad?

This is what I was just asking myself. Obviously Nernico says it is...so we should all listen to him and stop breeding.

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by Nernico

I may be missing out on that but the children that I won't have will not miss out on a thing.

This mirrors my own thinking when I decided not to have kids.

They can't miss out on what they haven't had.

[ZephyrusX]

Originally Posted by elucidate

This is what I was just asking myself. Obviously Nernico says it is...so we should all listen to him and stop breeding.

May be you and I ought to go get pregnant after all just to spite Nernico.

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

May be you and I ought to go get pregnant after all just to spite Nernico.

Well, being the spiteful bee-atch that I am, I'd probably consider it just to flip him the bird. Now THAT'S selfish.

[Nernico]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

I’m not sure if you understood my question. I agree with you that the decision to have a baby is a selfish act as there is no child actually there to give consent. I said once that I liked the idea of having child as the transformative experience of raising one is likely to be very different than interacting with an adult, and essentially, this is a selfish desire. Is this inherently wrong though?

Human experience has a consistent way of avoiding simplifications. It seems very nice and convenient to categorize human behaviour as either ‘selfish’ or ‘unselfish’, but it is not as if our interactions are ever that simple. As I said before, child raising (as well as any other human interaction) is a transformative experience. You may start out with selfish expectations, and 1o -15 years down the road, you may still retain some selfish expectations, but at the same time, you’re worldview is likely to have been changed by virtue of the fact that you are interacting with and accommodating another human being in your life.

''I liked the idea of having child as the transformative experience of raising one is likely to be very different than interacting with an adult, and essentially, this is a selfish desire. Is this inherently wrong though?''

If selfish acts (that is acts that are done to meet one's own need) inflict unnecessary harm on another human being then i think it is wrong.

''As I said before, child raising (as well as any other human interaction) is a transformative experience.''

Then adoption is an option.

''10 -15 years down the road, you may still retain some selfish expectations, but at the same time, you're worldview is likely to have been changed by virtue of the fact that you are interacting with and accommodating another human being in your life''

Again, adoption is a genuine alternative to procreation.

[elucidate]

I do find the reasons many people give for having kids to be mostly narcisisstic. My brother says he "wants to see his eyes in his child"...and I've gotten stuck into him before on that one to make him think...hopefully.

Children are not dolls to play with...they are human beings. They aren't here for our amusement, though they are very amusing, most of them. I hate how many parents treat their kids as though they are objects and totally forget that they have feelings and thoughts of their own and they aren't just an extension of the parent.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Nernico

Again, adoption is a genuine alternative to procreation.

I think that there can be some instinctive issues around this.

Once again, we can look at the animal kingdom. First, the pleasant examples.

There are some animal species where adoption happens quite easily. Eg among wolves, if a female mother dies, other nursing females in the pack will adopt her cubs and nurse them. Female elephant seals will regularly adopt lost pups of other female elephant seals. This is common among certain birds such as geese too.

On the not-so-lovey-dovey side, there are animals which not only do not adopt the offspring of other animals of the same species, but will attack or kill them. This is common among, say, lions which will kill the cubs of other competitor male lions.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Nernico

If people want to play the moral nihilism card and say that none of this has any meaning then I cannot counter this by the use of logic because my philosophical stance mandates a nihilistic 'world view'.

Correct. You have no logical response to the counter-arguyments.

However, I believe the premises and implications of the asymmetry are sound, resting as they do on inductive logical reasoning: No sentience = no deprivation of happiness and no pain or suffering.

You missed the other equation.

No sentience = no happiness and no joy.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Nernico

You guys simply dont accept that preventing harm is a moral obligation and benefiting someone is less important.

Correct. I think that your statement is quite superficial and simplistic and I had said so earlier. It overlooks the following:

(1) There are situations where preventing harm would not be the moral thing to do.

(2) There are situations where preventing harm is not an obligation.

(3) There are situations where preventing harm and benefiting someone go hand in hand, and the difference is merely semantic.

(4) There are situations where benefiting someone is a moral obligation.

As I had said earlier, I could give hundreds of examples. So here are a few:

1. We may harm a person, depriving him of his liberty and locking him in a prison cell, but this is not necessarily an immoral thing to do, if he is a threat to public safety.

2. A man is drowning and you could easily save his life by tossing him a life buoy. This act can equally be described as "preventing harm" or "benefiting the man".

3. A man is drowning and you could easily save his life by tossing him a life buoy. This act is beneficial to him and to not do it would be immoral.

4. A teacher has a moral obligation to benefit her students, by teaching her students well.

5. To protect the environment may be said to be a moral obligation to future generations. You could fulfill this obligation by preventing harm (eg not wasting paper) or creating a benefit (eg planting trees).

6. The dentist says that your child needs his tooth extracted. This will cause him pain but is necessary for dental health. There is no moral obligation to prevent the extraction.

7. Your neighbour is a smoker and is harming his own health. He understands the risks but has no intention to quit. You have no moral obligation to stop him.

8. You have children and you are able to benefit them by giving them love, affection and care. This is a moral obligation.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Nernico

I dont belive in afterlife.

Even if benefits outweigh burdens within a life, there's no escaping the fact we die. Most agree that our own deaths harm us greatly. They end our lives – lives that we have become invested in, that we'd very much like to continue.

You should stop making all these arguments which keep slapping yourself in the face.

If life is such a bad thing, why on earth would you "very much like to continue" with it?

If non-existence is such a good thing, why would death "harm us greatly"?

Please, stop wasting everyone's time here.

[Irisha]

Why do you keep on repeating the same question, Acting Like Godot?
You think about yourself that you are such an intelligent person who knows his native tongue so well, - then why can't you understand what has been already said so many times? Life is suffering, as the Buddha said (who probably was more stupid than you, who knows...) But few people commit suicide because of the INSTINCT TO SURVIVE. Do you understand now?

Please, stop being so rude and agressive asking Nernico to stop posting here. I think you are able to decide youself to read or not to read, nobody makes you take part in this discussion.

I find Nernico's arguments very true in terms of logic (which I cannot say about yours). And nobody has disproved him yet because of that.

I could never imagine before that people on this forum are able to say another person such things as "why don't you stop living", "why would you very much like to continue with life", that they can be mocking at a person saying that he probably had bad parents, or life has been treating him badly.
And your several remarks about spelling is something! Have you noticed YOUR spelling mistakes?

You will have never understood anything because of your ABOMINABLE EGO.

[elucidate]

Uh...Nernico has been pretty rude and aggro himself Irisha.

I think ALG said to stop wasting everyone's time not to stop posting here.

Originally Posted by Irisha

Why do you keep on repeating the same question, Acting Like Godot?
You think about yourself that you are such an intelligent person who knows his native tongue so well, - then why can't you understand what has been already said so many times? Life is suffering, as the Buddha said (who probably was more stupid than you, who knows...) But few people commit suicide because of the INSTINCT TO SURVIVE. Do you understand now?

Please, stop being so rude and agressive asking Nernico to stop posting here. I think you are able to decide youself to read or not to read, nobody makes you take part in this discussion.

I find Nernico's arguments very true in terms of logic (which I cannot say about yours). And nobody has disproved him yet because of that.

I

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Irisha

Life is suffering, as the Buddha said

That is the English translation.

The word that Buddha actually used was dukkha.

It is a Pali word that has no exact synonym in the English language. Literally, it means a squeaky wheel.

The idea is that life isn't perfect, it is a squeaky wheel - in life, you may encounter a wide range of negative emotions, from intense emotional grief; to a mild sense of dissatisfaction; or a nagging feeling of restlessness; to a little bit of boredom.

All of these are dukkha.

We commonly use "suffering" as the English word for "dukkha", but in the English language, we also commonly associate "suffering" with something much more intense than, say, boredom, restlessness or mild dissatisfaction.

If a person is feeling a little bored on a Saturday night with nothing much to do, we would not typically say that he is "suffering". But in Buddhist terms, we would say that he is experiencing dukkha.

What Buddha was interested in was a path towards the complete elimination of dukkha - no grief, no pain, no boredom, no restlessness, no vague sense of dissatisfaction - just complete bliss and joy.

[Irisha]

Grief, pain, boredom, etc. - these are all suffering actually

[Irisha]

Originally Posted by elucidate

Uh...Nernico has been pretty rude and aggro himself Irisha.

I think ALG said to stop wasting everyone's time not to stop posting here.

So, did he mean by that to start saying different things that are closer to His opinion?

If anybody is rude does that mean that we have the right also to be rude?

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by Irisha

So, did he mean by that to start saying different things that are closer to His opinion?

I have no idea? Why don't you ask him.

If anybody is rude does that mean that we have the right also to be rude?

That's not the point I am making. The point I'm making is that you are defending a person who has attacked the view points of at least two people in this thread for not liking what they had to say.

If you are going to tell one person to stop being rude then you also need to tell the other, don't you think? But because you agree with Nernico, you are choosing to overlook HIS rudeness and tell someone else off. Is that fair?

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Irisha

But few people commit suicide because of the INSTINCT TO SURVIVE.

That is a silly point.

The option exists. If you do not take it, that is your choice and decision. Not your parents.

If you insist that instinct prevents you from killing yourself, one might as well as add that instinct prevents you from not procreating.

Nernico's response to that has to say that people's natural instincts drive them towards sex, not towards being parents, and their desire to be parents is only "culturally-sanctioned conditioning".

That is an entirely silly argument, unless you say that all the adults shown below are interested in parenting only because of their own "culturally-sanctioned conditioning".