Distributed as in non centralized. Many people feel like there is nothing they can do to contribute to meaningful change, especially with how spread out Americans are, but surely there has got to be something.
Using the trend of blocking traffic as an example, I think a coordinated effort to not just block a highway in one city, but to block state routes and other arteries in many places would be more effective. Instead of one city having bad traffic for a day, it would be many towns and it would be harder to dismiss as a local problem if people across the states are engaging.
reproduction isn’t a choice for some people. that’s fucked up but it’s cold & hard reality.
this just increases the ratio of parents in the next generation that are shitty people, effectively strengthening fascist movements by increasing the proportionment of lil hitlers vs everyone else in the kindergarten class.
i think this strategy is highly problematic if you think about it for literally even just a second, and i say that as someone who would never voluntarily have kids.
This is one of the reasons I want children despite everything. If all the conscientious people stop reproducing, the future population will be composed entirely of people raised by selfish assholes.
So what is your plan? Try to outbreed the selfish assholes? Because otherwise, being the conscientious minority among an assholish majority is not a great place to be.
I’d rather maintain a conscientious minority than abandon the world entirely to assholes.
Previous poster isn’t talking about those people; but about people who do have a choice and why they should decline.
Correct. But that doesn’t justify dropping a child into the dumpsterfire we’re turning our planet into just so they can serve as a footsoldier in the fight against it. Children aren’t sacrificial lambs.
What’s to say good parenting can combat that to enough of an extent to actually make a difference? It’s not rare for two genuinely good people to produce a little hellspawn that grows up to be a lil hitler despite their parent’s best efforts. Good parenting is certainly an important factor, but that’s far from a guarantee your kid will do good with their lives. They could just as well be the next actual Hitler.
We can’t outbreed stupid or evil. If abstaining from having a kid for the sake of protecting that kid from an increasingly dire hellscape is some kind of failure to delay humanity’s downfall, then humanity isn’t something that should be preserved.
Yeah, my comment is clearly aimed at people who do have choice. That should be implied when someone makes any sort of idea: the ability to actually do something. I’d say that a birthstrike is comparatively easier than a labor strike, where a good percentage of the population is 1 or 2 missed paychecks from financial ruin and homelessness.
Don’t use someone else’s inability to justify your own lack of action. “Whatabout the people who can’t?” isn’t a strong argument if you do have the ability.
well first, it isn’t exactly a binary continuum whether or not one has reproductive autonomy. many people are somewhere between the caricature of a literal sex slave and someone just stuck in an unhappy marriage. without any delimiters in the original comment i don’t think it’s wild to assume that it does refer to these people, generally… how could it not? i’m willing to bet a significant portion of the population is subjectively not exactly “choosing” to reproduce in the same way we choose to do other things so it feels a little dismissive for you to just say these people don’t matter for the sake of your rhetoric.
second, im not really justifying have children nor did i do so originally. honestly, willful antinatalism is an incredibly obscure opinion in public discourse - most antinatalist trends are results of socioeconomic realities - so i don’t really feel the need to even attempt justifying reproducing. like i said, i’d never really have kids myself. but people are going to do it no matter what i think and there’s no public opinion campaign that will ever change that, at least as humanity currently stands.
finally, im not even going to really respond to your last point. if you want to argue against the overwhelming consensus and body of evidence from academia demonstrating that who one’s parents are massively influence their outcomes in life then go ahead but i dont think anyone in your audience at that point has a brain, tbh. of course it isnt the only deciding factor. but this is like saying we should be concerned about repainting our racing stripes when the engine block is literally about to fall out. even if i concede your point that doesn’t change the fact that one of the biggest ways who someone becomes in life is determined is by who they are born to and/or raised by, therefore is one of the biggest levers by which future demographic and political trends will be decided.
& i agree the world is shit; we live in nigh apocalyptic times, but this weird overvaluing of the sanctity of human life that antinatalist do feels similar to the pearl clutching republicans have over abortion and fetuses. a sacrificial lamb? dude get over yourself. we’re all gonna die. kids die everyday. that doesn’t mean you have to retreat into cynic pessimism… who are you, or any of us, to be the anubis weighing the value of souls that might come into this world? your position is just so blindingly anthropocentric and arrogant.
Not sure why you’re putting so much emphasis on this - there is a dichotomy in the sense that you can either make the choice or you can’t. If you’re not in the position to make the choice, it doesn’t matter if you’re a literal sex slave or stuck in an abusive relationship or w/e: you can’t make the choice.
Why does any of that matter in the context of choosing not to have a kid? It’s an obscure opinion? Really? I’ve never put much weight into the whole “everyone’s doing it!” style of peer pressure… having a kid for that is almost as fucked up as having one just to fight in some unwinnable battle on a dying planet. And yeah no shit people are going to keep doing it - even ignoring the ones who aren’t able to make the choice, there’s still an overwhelming tendency to approach that decision for selfish reasons like continuing some family legacy or having that ‘little bundle of joy’. There isn’t much thought into whether or not it’s fair for the kid.
You entered into this conversation doing exactly that, despite your own decision on the matter.
I did not, nor will I. I said it wouldn’t make a difference in the fight against fascism. Nice strawman though.
It’s saying the car is totaled. Tending to the engine or racing stripes are both a waste of time and effort.
In a vacuum, yeah. But in the context of a society where stupid and evil breed like rabbits, casting a drop in opposition to that river isn’t going to do shit. The exception being if you happen to be rich - money is ultimately what drives politics, so if you’ve got the income to make an impact and the means to crank out a child and put the effort into molding them into a decent person, then yeah I guess it’s worth a shot. Even if they can’t change anything, they’ll have the means to live a life detached from the dumpster fire. That said, the venn diagram of people who are rich and people who are decent hasn’t shown much overlap.
More strawman. I didn’t say shit about the value or sanctity of human life. I hate it when people put words in my mouth - stop doing that. My stance here is ultimately about suffering, and that if you’re in a position to choose whether or not create a life that’s doomed to suffer the hellscape we’ve built for the generations after us, that the sensible decision is to simply decline.
Jfc you tell me to get over myself for adhering to an opinion built entirely on minimizing the suffering of others, then immediately shrug off people (and kids specifically) dying everyday. Again, life vs death isn’t the core of the argument here, but consider the mass suffering that goes along with those and follow your own advice: get over yourself. This isn’t cynic pessimism, it’s pattern recognition.
I don’t give a fuck about souls or anubis or any other mythology. Those things are fun in videogames or w/e, but don’t belong in conversations like this one. I care about suffering, climate collapse, this global surge in popularity of authoritarianism: those things are real, and increasing at rate that doesn’t exactly make our world a suitable place to raise a child.
But who am I, you, or anyone else reading this to make the decision to have a kid? A potential parent, of course.
How so? You are the one arguing in favor sending our spawn into a life of misery so they can solve humanity’s problems, for the sole sake of humanity itself, without regard to what that means for the individual kid. That seems pretty anthropocentric and arrogant to me. You’re projecting.
I just wanna prepend my reply here with the fact that I hold no animosity towards you or anything, you’re a stranger to me, and that I appreciate you taking the time to share your ideas with me.
Now, I have two main points in response if you’re interested in continuing any sort of discussion…
Primarily I want to point out how every time material consequences are raised you respond with some form of absolute statement. (e.g, off the top of my head without directly citing you: ‘any kid could be Hitler,’ ‘it all won’t matter anyway,’ ‘humanity is a lost cause’). While this isn’t intrinsically bad it does come across as cowardly rhetoric. Conceding to absolutes is also what we might refer to as faith.
Secondarily, are we talking about morality or strategy here? If we’re talking about morality, then just say plainly you oppose reproduction categorically. If we’re talking real-world, effective strategy then we must confront things dialectically because material facts matter. We can’t just dismiss things with absolutism for being inconvenient to your existing position.
EDIT: Additional thought: If your stance is purely about suffering, then you are indeed making a claim about which lives are worth bringing into existence… namely, those that won’t suffer. That is a sanctity/value claim, just under another name. Which is it? Either you admit this is a value framework, or you have no grounds for your conclusion. I didn’t put words in your mouth, I simply interpreted the ones you put into the world as any reasonable person would.
There does seem to be more overlap in our assessments than what I normally see in these kinds of debates: opposition in good faith is practically unheard of, so I’m quick to just point out fallacies and post fairly bluntly in a way that’s more addressed to any potential lurkers than the poster I’m actually replying to. I’m not getting that vibe from you, so fuck yeah I’ll cool it down!
Honestly the ‘any kid could be Hitler’ thing is kind of moot. All that’s saying is that the parent isn’t in absolute control of how their kid turns out. But let’s ignore that and pretend 100% of good parents result in children who grow to be good adults. I still don’t see that making a difference. There are so many bad parents cranking out children who grow up to be bad adults that it’s a losing battle either way. That ratio is exaggerated in people who are in positions of power: turns out it’s really difficult and really rare for a decent person to acquire one of those positions, be it political, military, corporate, financial, you name it. So individually, raising a kid to be moral in a world where evil excels is setting them up for some extreme frustration; and on a larger scale, the odds of that kid growing to have the desire and means -and community support- to make a meaningful shift in things like civil liberties? It sounds like a heart warming movie, but not at all something that can realistically happen.
Is that cowardly? It might be… it is admitting defeat, and defeatism can definitely be a form of cowardice. I don’t see it as an act of faith though: faith is belief without evidence. To the contrary, we unfortunately have an abundance of evidence pointing toward governments around the globe shifting to authoritarianism, civil liberties evaporating, hatred of outgroups becoming the norm and even celebrated, wealth gaps widening, and environmental feedback loops pushing the global climate closer and closer to the limits of supporting human life. And none of those things have we collectively stepped back and said “well shit, we really need to start fixing this” - instead we’ve slammed down on the metaphorical (and literal) gas pedal such that those things aren’t just worsening, but that they’re worsening at an accelerating rate. If you see a car straight-on approaching the edge of a cliff at 90mph and accelerating, and it’s a hundred or so yards out, it isn’t exactly an act of prophecy to claim that it’s about to hurl itself off the edge.
I’m not sure. Neither? Both?
There’s a distinction between reproduction categorically, and the choice to reproduce. We’ve already bashed heads over that. What bothers me is people who choose to reproduce without any real thought into what that means for the life they just created. Anecdotally, even my own parents have berated me for denying them their grandchildren, and denying myself and my wife ‘life’s greatest joy’. I’ve finally gotten them to fuck off after repeatedly telling them to stop being selfish or telling me to be selfish; and that I love my unborn child far too much to bring them into the hellhole of a planet we’ve built for the next generation.
…but reproduction categorically? Well, like you said there are a lot of folks who aren’t actually in a position to make a choice. I still fear for their children, but I have nothing against the parents who are put into that horrible position.
I’m not sure what you mean. Real-world, effective strategy to do what? Turn humanity around and fix our dying planet? It’s a nice dream, and I’d absolutely love to be wrong here, but again the real world trends are accelerating toward that cliff.
Real world strategy to reduce suffering? Well, you know my stance on that already: don’t choose to have kids.
Accounting for those inconvenient things is what landed me in this opinion in the first place. I don’t say this as an insult or point of aggression, but I really do think you’re projecting. I don’t see a rational basis for optimism. Frankly I’m a tad jealous of that optimism even if it is irrational… basing my worldview on current events certainly isn’t doing any favors to my mental health.
Disagree on that last bit, but I can shrug it off as a miscommunication. That aside, again I’m not really sure what you mean. I understand sanctity to mean holding religious value, or holy. I don’t personally believe in any of that, but that isn’t exclusive to morality or values - there is absolutely a framework. There’s also a lot of overlap - for many, that framework comes from religion. But concepts like good and evil, moral and immoral, etc can and do exist in a secular context as well. It used to be my belief that the majority of people are overall good; but that evil people have a tendency to rise to positions of power due to being okay with advancing themselves with unethical actions. That second bit still appears to be true, but as for the majority of people being good bit… well, the 2016 election was last bullet in that liver, with the corpse of my faith in humanity further perforated in 2024: it isn’t just one evil dipshit on top oppressing the masses, it’s that a solid third of the masses fucking love that evil dipshit for the evil dipshit things he says and does. Another third of the masses is maybe not cheering the fucker, but are so apathetic to that kind of evil taking power that they couldn’t be bothered to do so much as color in a quarter-inch fucking rectangle in opposition to that possibility. Genuinely good people are a minority; and genuinely good people in power are a unicorn.
So, there’s the grounds for my conclusion. Evil is the norm. The only realistic path ahead of us I see is the continuing degradation of our rights and quality of life until our planet is pushed beyond the conditions that support human life. This will take generations yet, but that’s barely a blip on humanity’s timeline: we’re a hundred or so yards out from that cliff, and now’s not a great time to be adding passengers in the hopes that they’ll grow up and figure out how to add wings to the car before it hits the ground.