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Should this be the last generation?

jimtron

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jimtron
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Thought provoking NYT article, "Should This Be The Last Generation?"

Here's an excerpt, discussing South African philosopher David Benatar's book, “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.”:

Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.
Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.
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Last I checked, predictions were that the world's population would peak at around mid-century and start to fall after that. Not quite the end of the world IMO.
 
If by "thought-provoking" you mean negative, depressing, suicidal, crawl-in-a-hole-and-die defeatism, then yes, it certainly is that.

But the answer to the thread question, and this incredibly myopic article, is NO.
 
Vortigern99 said:
If by "thought-provoking" you mean negative, depressing, suicidal, crawl-in-a-hole-and-die defeatism, then yes, it certainly is that.

But the answer to the thread question, and this incredibly myopic article, is NO.
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To me the question the article raises is a rhetorical one. Of course there's no way we'll all agree to stop procreating. But I found the issues interesting to think about.
 
Oh good. I was wondering when nihilism would finally produce its own "Won't someone please think of the children?" whiner.
 
If the cessation of baby-making were to for the love of god finally commence, might we not finally have the fix to it all?
 
Dropping our birthrate is a good idea.
Dropping it to zero for a while is a good, but impractical, idea.
Dropping it to zero permanently is a noble, altruistic notion in line with enlightened concepts of human / Gaia value relationships which also happens to be as daft as a treeful of monkeys.
 
I am against this, as it is the evolutionary opportunity the cephalopods have been waiting for.
 
Contra Benatar [David], I'd argue that the prospect of the collective miasma from all the unchanged bedpans alone, surely a far greater cruelty than the sum of whatever the next generation is likely to suffer, is sufficient reason for and morally compels us to keep having kids. :stork-boy:stork-gir:stork-bab
 
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sounds like David Benatar is scared of death or maybe he's not getting laid and is a wee bit uptight.
 
I'm not totally sure, but can't articles in a similar vein be found in any time period?
I'm pretty sure there are at least know publication by ancient roman writers about how much better everything was when they were young and how the world is going down the drain now.
We still seem to be doing ok-ish all this time later, so I suspect the author might be overstating things a bit.
 
jimtron said:
Quote:
Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.
Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.
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I've highlighted the main flaw I see. He equates suffering with zero benefit. If I work in my garden planting flowers and things till my hands are raw and my back aches, I suffer but I get a benefit. In my opinion this line of reasoning is short sighted.
 
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[serious]Thought-provoking? To me it seems neither new, clever or useful.[/serious]

[silly]I suspect it's a ploy to counteract the "stupid people breed faster"-effect.[/silly]
 
I find it hard to agree with the quote in the OP in any useful way. Maybe my life has been on the whole much better than the average. Maybe it's been so much better than the average that the while the good in my life far outweighs the bad, the suffering of all those others is enough to cancel that out.

Maybe, though I highly doubt it. I certainly don't think that one has to do something particularly meaningful with one's life to say it's worthwhile. I am alive and I'm happy for that. If I could choose to have existed or not, I'd choose to have existed. There have been some times in my life that weren't particularly good, but none that I would choose to do away with if I could cut them out of my life like the editor of a film.

But as I said, perhaps other people are, on average, so much less happy than me that their suffering more than makes up for my happiness, and that of others like me.

That may be, but look at what it is that makes me happy, and you'll find that those things that make my happiness possible are things that are increasing in the world now, not decreasing. Which suggests that even if life is on average more bad than good today there will likely come a time in the future (with the rise of technolgy and economic growth) that that will no longer be the case.

Which suggests that if we follow his logic, rather than letting ourselves go extinct for the sake of our potential descendants, we should suck it up, and put up with the suffering of today so that those descendants will have a chance to come into being and actually have a net positive life-value.

Mind you, I really don't see what makes him think that people today have a net-negative life-value (as defined by themselves, of course, as I can't see any other way to make the definition than looking at what the individuals themselves consider valuable in life).
 
I dunno, all things being equal I'm glad I existed.

Maybe it would have been different if I had been born in the Warsaw ghettos or Darfur, but I don't plan on having children in those locations, so all I can do is analogize from my existence.

I've always hated the "life is suffering" meme. No it isn't. You ever heard Bach?
 
Absent a conscious mind to appreciate it, there is no point to existence. It's all Tinker Toys bonkin' around.
 
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