Anti-natalism is the philosophical value judgment that procreation is unethical or unjustifiable. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from making children. Some antinatalists consider coming into existence to always be a serious harm. Their views are not necessarily limited only to humans but may encompass all sentient creatures, arguing that coming into existence is a serious harm for sentient beings in general. There are various reasons why antinatalists believe human reproduction is problematic. The most common arguments for antinatalism include that life entails inevitable suffering, death is inevitable, and humans are born without their consent. Additionally, although some people may turn out to be happy, this is not guaranteed, so to procreate is to gamble with another person’s suffering. WIKIPEDIA
If you think, maybe for a few years, like 10-20 years, no one should make babies, and when things get better, we can continue, then you are not an anti-natalist. Anti-natalists believe that suffering will always be there and no one should be born EVER.
This photo was clicked by a friend, at Linnahall.
All of the problems you posited are consequences of capitalism and imperialism, the environmental damages included. You’re shifting the blame from genuine systemic failures to humanity genetically. It cedes all responsibility to move onto a better world, preferring to give up and adopt an eco-fascist position.
Jesus Christ stop calling it eco-facism! This is not that. Anti-Natalism is not eco-facism. The person you replied to made excellent points.
No they didn’t, and yes, this is eco-fascism. Desiring omnicide of humanity for ecological reasons cedes all agency to the ruling class.
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml
And all the fundamenta of capitalism and imperalism are consequences of how we humans are our own wolves. Again, billionaires aren’t extraterrestrials or lizards.
Some things aren’t reversible. For example, the species that went extinct (some of which we won’t even know they existed because there wasn’t enough time for them to be catalogued by Science) due to “Industrial Revolution”.
A naïve part of me hopes for a better world, where humans could finally coexist with Mother Nature, while we could improve things for all biosphere through Science and Academia, a Science and an Academia detached from capitalistic greed, a sincere pursuit of knowledge and scientific improvement not just for humans, but for all lifeforms, letting go from all our human malice and greed.
However, I can’t help but notice how this is getting farther and farther to be reached as the world is increasingly technofeudalist. I can’t help but see reality as it is: bleak, with a bleaker future awaiting for us, as we get increasingly trapped into a dystopia where the majority of humans would be required to fight against the asymmetrical forces possessing nuclear warheads and real-time control of public opinions from social media.
Sorry if I’m overly realistic and I can’t gaslight myself into hoping for the best, because I’m past this point, I grew tired of hoping for better times as I watch powerless to the dystopia where I was compelled to exist.
My hope now relies beyond this Pale Blue Dot: some supernova within this cosmic vicinity of the Milky Way blasting insurmountable amounts of energy towards here (not enough to vaporize the Earth, but enough to vaporize the machine where we’re forced to be cogs), or some solar CME/flare, powerful enough to free us from ourselves.
Genetic determinism was historically grossly over-applied and is still over-applied in popular (pseudo-)science and in far-right politics.
@davel@lemmy.ml
Where exactly am I saying it’s something to do with human ethnic origins? Where exactly am I nodding or advocating for eugenics or other bigoted concepts?
Because my point is about the innermost human nature, imbued within every human that ever existed, exists and will exist. When, for example, Thomas Hobbes says “Humans are wolves to humans”, he’s not saying about a specific race or gender, he’s talking about the Homo sapiens. All of us, since humans discovered fire and became “fearsome” to other lifeforms holding this warm thing we think we can control.
It goes with saying how the fact that there are bigoted people using this science to try and “validate” eugenics (and how there are bigoted people in the first place) is, ironically enough, another evidence of how humans are wolves to themselves. It’s like I said in a previous reply, billionaires (and far-right figures) aren’t extraterrestrials or lizards, they’re humans with enough power to let their evilness affect other humans. Given enough power, many other humans are likely to pave similar paths.
Yes, not everyone, the end of Derren Brown’s “The Push” documentary shows how there are situations where humans can end up not ceding to their impulses to harm others in order to save their own skin.
But even when we choose to do good and help others (and this includes caring for the wellbeing of the unborn so they don’t suffer the consequences of current humanity’s actions) despite our own wellbeing, our wolves are still there, lurking inside us, because it’s born with us.
This doesn’t invalidate “Homo homini lupus est”, just shows how we sometimes get to be less of a wolf. The first step is letting go of our antropocentrism, our way of seeing the whole cosmos as if it depended and was centered on us humans, and starting to see things anachronistically, beyond human existence, and realizing how we’re just a speck in this cosmic timeline, just wandering star dust.
You aren’t being realistic. Being pessimistic isn’t realism, again you attribute the problems of systems like capitalism and imperialism to humanity, but we know for a fact that tribal societies didn’t have such problems, and neither do socialist states as they exist today. You turn hatred of symptoms of capitalism and imperialism to humanity. It’s eco-fascism.
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You hate humans and don’t want to be called fascist? LMAO
I’m pro-veganism and pro-socialism, so we can move onto a more ethical and environmentally conscious mode of production. Wanting humanity to go extinct is just ecofascism.
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Okay? Just because I’m not omnicidal I’m deserving of hatred?
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml
While tribal societies were indeed better insofar they were closer to Nature as today’s humanity, I can’t see a haven in today’s world.
I mean, yeah, things can be going better in, say, China, insofar (AFAIK) Chinese people haven’t to worry about having a shelter and enough food, because they’re not relegated to the whims of capital as we are in the West. I can sort of agree it’s the best we can have in terms of social welfare.
But even China is far from detached, for example, from consequences of climate change. We’ve seen how floods and typhoons and drought have been increasingly hitting the Chinese, because we all exist within the same cosmic boulder called Planet Earth so whatever is done here also affects there and vice-versa.
Even though China is moving more and more to green energy, the way West countries are still "drill baby drill"ing inexorably affects them as well. And also their future, and our future, everyone’s future and every future generations upon whom climate consequences will inexorably hit harder (not to say, for example, about the mess waiting to happen above our heads due to ever-increasing amount of satellites, the Kessler Syndrome, which will also affect us down here if things get beyond control up there).
A better world is neither easy nor impossible, but merely difficult. Your pessimism takes this to be impossible and just cedes all agency to those who would perpetuate the worst excesses when you yourself acknowledge that countries like the PRC are making massive strides forward. It’s better to get organized and try to move towards socialism than it is to say the battle is already lost and we are doomed.
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml
This reply of mine is probably going to diverge a lot from the main subject, but you suggested that I should “get organized and try to move towards socialism”.
Politically speaking, I live in a country (Brazil) where we already have nice relations with PRC and a country that been trying to counteract the Global North through BRICS.
So, to a certain extent, there’s some effort in this regard from the current government in the country I was born in, but Brazil is still a marionette of USian interests since USA pulled Brazil to their side during Cold War (1964 Military Coup, orchestrated by USA).
And Brazilians themselves are politically divided, with a significant part of the country advocating for their own economic slavery (far-right). Partly because people are held captive by a system that conceals knowledge from them, making them too busy with the “rat race” alongside the panis et circensis, so they rely in out-of-the-shelf opinions without pondering broader. When I try to talk with those geographically around me trying to wake 'em up, it’s as if I was talking in Sumerian or Akkadian, anything but contemporary language.
Then, there’s the religious aspect, very strong around here. Brazil is highly christian, while I went to Left-hand Path (highly-personalized syncretic spirituality involving Luciferianism and other esoteric beliefs) a few years ago, quite the opposite… If I couldn’t “convince” people back when I was still a christian, it’s worse now while I’m literally worshiping their “enemy”. Can’t really belong to secularists, either, because I got a belief in the supernatural, even though my belief tries to consider scientific facts.
So I doubt I can “get organized”. My worldview is very atypical, I’m very atypical. In fact, I’m just nobody. You’re likely the second person this week suggesting I got some kind of power when I got none. I can’t even have power over myself, let alone over other people (and I don’t even want to).
While I do talk and participate in discussions regarding the sociopolitical, philosophical and the mundane sometimes, trying to understand and be understood, trying to share knowledge while also trying to learn, open to what I don’t know yet, deep inside I got extensively de-realized and depersonalized, accepting how even the whole cosmos will end someday (Big Freeze / Big Rip / Big Crunch / Big Bounce), and I can’t see purpose except beyond existence.
It’s not about “ceding agency to those who would perpetuate the worst excesses”, it’s just that I went too far into staring at the Darkness and seeing how cosmic existence is pointless and fleeting, so deeply that I can’t simply “unsee” and/or forget Her stare back at me, so everything became fleeting. It’s my inner battle that’s already lost, because ain’t no battle, no spoon, nothing but the nothingness… And my weirdness before others… And Nature, Moon, Earth and Cosmos as closest manifestations of Her principle.
I certainly can empathize with feelings of hopelessness, but I think you can absolutely still organize with others that most closely align to your beliefs and interests, and that organizing can help be a part of forming a new bedrock of optimism for yourself. I don’t think desiring the end of humanity is particularly useful for getting positive change.