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?
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.)