Moral case against procreation Flashcards
In 2006, I published a book called Better Never to Have Been. I argued that coming into existence is always a serious harm. People should never, under any circumstance, procreate – a position called ‘anti-natalism’.
Anti-natalism will only ever be a minority view because it runs counter to a deep biological drive to have children. However, it is precisely because it is up against such odds that thoughtful people should pause and reflect rather than hastily dismiss it as mad or wicked.
But even if life isn’t pure suffering, coming into existence can still be sufficiently harmful to render procreation wrong. Life is simply much worse than most people think, and there are powerful drives to affirm life even when life is terrible.
Both overestimation and underestimation of life’s quality are possible, but empirical evidence of various cognitive biases, most importantly an optimism bias, suggests that overestimation is the more common error.
Considering matters carefully, it’s obvious that there must be more bad than good. This is because there are empirical asymmetries between the good and bad things. The worst pains, for instance, are worse than the best pleasures are good.
Injury occurs quickly but recovery is slow. An embolus or projectile can fell you in an instant – and if you’re not killed, healing will be slow. Learning takes a lifetime but can be obliterated in an instant. Destruction is easier than construction.
When it comes to the satisfaction of desires, things are also stacked against us. Many desires are never satisfied. And even when they are satisfied, it is often after a long period of dissatisfaction. There is a treadmill and an escalator of desire.
In other words, life is a state of continual striving.
The risks of cancer alone are substantial: in the United Kingdom, roughly 50 per cent of people will develop the disease.
The foregoing arguments all criticise procreation on the grounds of what procreation does to the person who is brought into existence. These I call philanthropic arguments for anti-natalism; there is also a misanthropic argument.
Homo sapiens is the most destructive species, and vast amounts of this destruction are wreaked on other humans.
More than 63 billion terrestrial animals and, by very conservative estimates, more than 103 billion aquatic animals are killed for human consumption every year. The amount of death and suffering is simply staggering.
All this is caused by the human appetite for animal flesh and products, an appetite shared by the great majority of humans. Using very conservative estimates, every human (who is not a vegetarian or vegan) is, on average, responsible for the death of 27 animals per year, or 1,690 animals over the course of a lifetime.
If any other species caused as much damage as humans do, we would think it wrong to breed new members of that species. The breeding of humans should be held to the same standard.
The question is not whether humans will become extinct, but rather when they will. If the anti-natalist arguments are correct, it would be better, all things being equal, if this happened sooner rather than later for, the sooner it happens, the more suffering and misfortune will be avoided.
philanthropic - seeking to promote the welfare of others; generous and benevolent.
misanthropic - having or showing a dislike of other people; unsociable, reclusive
