Over 2,500 years ago, a prince, named Siddhartha Gautama, decides to leave his life of luxury (and his family) to meditate in the forest. Why? After 29 years of ease, comfort, and unlimited pleasures, he grew bored and decided to leave his palace and witnessed an old man, a sick man, and, finally, a dead man. After contemplating extensively about the impermanence of everything, he came to the conclusion that life is suffering, and to free yourself of that suffering, you must rid yourself of all expectations, desires, and attachments. After 6 years of meditating, he finally achieved enlightenment, becoming the Buddha. Buddhism has over 500 million followers today and is one of the world’s largest religions. The aim of Buddhism is to remove all expectations, desires, and attachments to achieve enlightenment, a state free from the cycle of rebirth. While Buddhism isn’t against procreating, this is only because they believe in reincarnation, so the being will be born anyway, just in another form. However, the inherent pessimism about life in the Buddhist worldview is also what drives anti-natalist thought, a philosophy which seems to be gaining momentum in recent times.
“It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer, a 19th century German philosopher, also internalized these ideas in his works. Schopenhauer claimed that life was a state of constant pain, with fleeting moments of satisfaction sprinkled here and there. He came to the same conclusion as Siddhartha, that the reason for this suffering is our desires and the only escape from this was an ascetic lifestyle. Schopenhauer accurately argues that humans will always desire more and always be dissatisfied. However, what he gets wrong, is that he states that this dissatisfaction causes us to be chronically unhappy. But this is false – humans can be both dissatisfied and happy. The majority of people are happy even though they are chasing after some goal. The only people that are chronically unhappy are depressed people.
Schopenhauer’s views are the main basis of anti-natalism, the philosophical belief that it is morally wrong to have children. Although still an incredibly small minority, the anti-natalist movement appears to be gaining traction. One of the main proponents of modern anti-natalism is David Benatar. In his book, ‘Better never to have been’, he states that it doesn’t necessarily even matter if the joy of life outweighs the suffering, the fact that there is any suffering at all makes it better never to have been born. As seen in the below diagram, he states that if we hadn’t existed, the absence of pleasure would be not bad while the absence of pain would be good. However, there is no reason why the absence of pain should be ‘good’ rather than ‘not good’. It seems like Benatar already believed his conclusion that life is not worth living and created some logic to try to justify it.
Some lives are terrible. If a parent has a genetic predisposition for depression or is in severe poverty, it would most likely be better that they didn’t have kids. However, the argument that no one should have any kids because life is suffering is baseless. The majority of people are happy that they are alive. While anti-natalist thought is based upon compassion, the premise is ultimately wrong.