Came across this community in my feed, and after browsing a bit I'm intrigued.
As an "outsider", I would have assumed this place would be about enjoying a childfree lifestyle, but it seems to be more than that.
For example, I see lots of posts and comments that seem to allude to extinctionism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement
That caught me off guard since I figured this place would be more like "look at all this free time and money and freedom I have to enjoy my life to the fullest in any way I want". Now I'm curious.
It seems like there's a whole spectrum of ideas that are getting lumped into the same bucket. What's your take? What brought you here?
That is not an unfair assumption to make. It is possible that people with depression have a disposition towards pessimism, nihilism, and antinatalism; however, I would like to know how that invalidates the position. Note that this philosophy has been exposed to people without depression as well, and so far, it has been incredibly hard to refute without assuming life, humanity, or sentience as positive things.
Philosophical pessimism, particularly Schopenhauerian thought, asserts that suffering is the default state of life, and happiness is merely a temporary alleviation of it. This makes sense when viewed through an evolutionary lens. Suffering is what drives us to avoid death, while pleasure serves as reinforcement that the death-defying action is favorable to our continued existence.
Consider a primitive person being hunted by a predator. That person experiences suffering, which prompts them to escape. They outrun the predator and avoid death. Then they experience happiness, which acts as reinforcement to continue the escape behavior. This is why we experience pain more intensely than pleasure. If it were not so, the primitive person would have died and we would have never been here. This principle applies to hunger, loneliness, insomnia, and similar biological drives.
Some propose the argument that life would be worth it once suffering is solved. Under the reasoning I presented above, I do not see how this could be "solved". How will you solve death economically? How will you remove or solve bereavement? How will you permanently solve disease?
Let us say you selectively keep pumping dopamine and serotonin, and selectively inhibit their reuptake whilst constantly monitoring pleasure and pain. Will this not be detrimental to your survival? What if you run into scenarios where it is necessary for you to "escape"?
As I see it, suffering is necessary for survival; it needs to be the default state, and it is experienced more intensely than pleasure. We, as already existing beings, need suffering, but it need not be imposed on the non-existent.
(Sorry if I went into a tangent, lol!)
It's an interesting take. You may be right about the biological weighting of suffering vs. happiness, so in some high-level, scientific sense perhaps "life is suffering" is a valid statement. But if I start asking people on the street if, based on their subjective lived experience, they agree with that statement, I can guarantee that not everyone would.
And that's the rub for me: I see antinatalists taking this position as if "life is suffering" is subjectively true for all humans, and I don't think that's true, or at least not to an extent that leads to the conclusion that no one should reproduce in order to save the next generation from the suffering.
So it seems to me that one driver of antinatalism is people with depression incorrectly assuming that the next generation will experience life the same way they do. All it takes to prove that assumption wrong is a single person who disagrees that their subjective lived experience is one of constant suffering.
There are obviously specific situations or conditions which would lead to suffering for any potential children -- not enough money, food, security, etc -- but my understanding is that isn't the kind of thing we're talking about here.
(Though there also seems to be a certain flavor of antinatalism which is something like "our universal shared conditions are going to get so bad that everyone will suffer" due to global warming, lare-stage capitalism, whatever. That one I can understand.)
The flavor of antinatalism I presented above is not different from this. The two are not mutually exclusive. In my previous comment, I was more concerned with showing how the default state of life is negative. All these factors just add to the severity of how bad life is (and can be).
People tend to remember pleasant experiences more accurately than unpleasant ones. This phenomenon is known as the Pollyanna principle. When you ask strangers about their lives, they are likely to focus on positive moments and downplay suffering. Yet, if you probe them, you might see that the reality of human existence includes chronic stress, job dissatisfaction, loneliness, loss, bereavement, discrimination, injustice, regret, disease, and ultimately death. These hardships are not uniformly distributed across a lifetime; they are usually amplified towards the end. For example, illness becomes more acute in old age, and many old people experience helplessness, loneliness, and memory loss, despite having had children.
It is about preventing needless suffering. So, if suffering constitutes an overwhelming part of life, one should not procreate in order to avoid it. Sure, we may have our coping mechanisms to get around the suffering, but why learn and deploy them when it can be avoided altogether? It is not for the benefit of the child that they are being brought into existence.
I can similarly argue that people without depression assume that the next generation will do well too. You have already mentioned global warming and late‑stage capitalism. Given threats like these, I find it unreasonable to presume that future lives will be unproblematic. Reflecting honestly on ourselves and our circumstances reveals that we should not expose future generations to life and the world. You do not necessarily need to be depressed to recognise that things are bad.
Also, I am not particularly arguing for "constant suffering". My claim is that it is unethical to subject a sentient being to suffering when that suffering could be avoided.
....Says who?
Would you take an hour of the most excruciating pain for an hour of the most intense pleasure?
Our evolutionary ancestors needed to experience pain more intensely because it prevented them from dying. What does pleasure provide, when it merely acts as a tool for reinforcement?
You can try to refute my description of the pleasure-pain biology ^ , but once you accept it, I do not see how you could say "Says who?".
^ If you are refuting that, see this text explaining it biologically: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5498867_A_common_neurobiology_for_pain_and_pleasure