The Predicament of Existence

@fmf said
"Most of us agree that pain is part of life, that none of us can escape it, and that death comes for all of us in the end. And yet many of us feel that life is worth it; that the pleasure of life outweighs the suffering. Anti-natalist philosophy takes a different view. The anti-natalist believes that pain outweighs pleasure, so much so that it's morally wrong to bring a child int ...[text shortened]... Well worth a listen.

I must admit, I had not heard much about this ideology before.

Thoughts?

Here's a very personal take: As a clear - thinking fifteen year old I looked around me and decided that I didn't much like the human race, and the way it went about exploiting and destroying other species and the natural world in general, and decided that I wanted no part in its' continuation. Without going into age details, that was then and this is now, and things in this regard are far worse now than they were then. In any case after fifteen life tends to get more complicated, what with academic exams, rising hormone levels and thereafter the general need to get on with life, but the feeling stayed with me, and I was fortunate in this regard to at an early age meet and fall in love with someone who for her own reasons didn't want kids either, so we didn't have any. (And we're still together)
This has nothing to do with the pain of life, or lack of happiness, or indeed moral issues; I've had a great life and still have, and consider myself to have been probably undeservedly lucky in all important respects.
But still, no kids, so I've sort of denied myself the whole child - rearing experience, which I've noticed by observing others is not a passport to guaranteed happiness anyway, and I've done things and continue to do things which would not have been done with children in tow, so to speak, so no regrets, and any 'innate biological drive to reproduce' is for me to do with the process rather than an end result....
Other animals can as far as I'm concerned carry on doing what they do, they are blameless, after all, whereas we as a species in all of our teeming masses are far from it.

@fmf said
Dark and toxic because of the dehumanizing and misanthropic prism through which you see your fellow human beings. Dark and toxic because of that.

So much for every moral compass being just as valid as everyone else’s.

@kellyjay said
So much for every moral compass being just as valid as everyone else’s.

No one has claimed this.

@fmf said
No one has claimed this.

You have claimed my views are what?
If all views are valid, your opinion of any opinion is meaningless.

The whole point of the discussion, at least that part I have been having, is there is more to this life than this life. This is not very different from every voice and opinion is equally valid, if there is no distinction they are all equal. What happens next is vital; if it is nothing, then nothing here matters; it all ends up the same.

@kellyjay said
If all views are valid, your opinion of any opinion is meaningless.

How are "all views valid"? "Valid" in what way? What are you on about?

@kellyjay said
There is more to this life than this life. This is not very different from every voice and opinion is equally valid, if there is no distinction they are all equal.

Every opinion is not "equally valid".

@kellyjay said
What happens next is vital; if it is nothing, then nothing here matters; it all ends up the same.

What "happens next" is we die. This does not mean that "nothing here [in life] matters. All our lives are different and unique. They do not "end up the same".

@fmf said
What "happens next" is we die. This does not mean that "nothing here [in life] matters. All our lives are different and unique. They do not "end up the same".

Exactly how would you know this, on what do you base that? All lives are different and unique here; granted, no one, not even I, disputed that. I did say that if there is nothing afterward, nothing waiting beyond this life, it doesn't matter what we are here, there, no one will matter, there will be no one to care, there is nothing there. That was the distinction I was making between cockroaches and man that you twisted into something else, a pathetic endeavor of scoring cheap shots.

@fmf said
Every opinion is not "equally valid".

Is your moral compass better than someone else?

@kellyjay said
Is your moral compass better than someone else?

The decisions that I make with my moral compass are sometimes better than the decisions others make, undoubtedly. But I am also sure that there are plenty of occasions when the decisions that other people make using their moral compasses are, when I reflect upon them, better than the corresponding decisions that I make.

@kellyjay said
I did say that if there is nothing afterward, nothing waiting beyond this life, it doesn't matter what we are here, there, no one will matter, there will be no one to care, there is nothing there.

It does matter what we are "here" in this life ~ regardless of whether there is eternal life. That you think "there is nothing there" in this life for those who believe there is "nothing afterwards" strikes is a very sad outlook on life. Perhaps your religious beliefs have diminished your human spirit.

@kellyjay said
That was the distinction I was making between cockroaches and man that you twisted into something else, a pathetic endeavor of scoring cheap shots.

I am not "scoring cheap shots", KellyJay. I am tackling what I see as your lamentably misanthropic and dehumanizing perspective on life. This is what you said: "What have I ever said that isn't true of people, and if that at the end of all life is nothing, what makes humans any better than cockroaches?" It speaks for itself. Very sad that this is the prism on your fellow human beings that your religionism has given you..

@fmf said
I am not "scoring cheap shots", KellyJay. I am tackling what I see as your lamentably misanthropic and dehumanizing perspective on life. This is what you said: "What have I ever said that isn't true of people, and if that at the end of all life is nothing, what makes humans any better than cockroaches?" It speaks for itself. Very sad that this is the prism on your fellow human beings that your religionism has given you..

I said that if a man and a cockroach, a happy man or a sad man, all die and there is nothing after this life, they all end up the same, as NOTHING! What you have been twisting is that into me saying man and cockroaches are the same, now you can own that or not. You took a conversation about nothing after death into making it into a human roach comparison. CHEAP SHOTS!

@kellyjay said
What you have been twisting is that into me saying man and cockroaches are the same, now you can own that or not.

You asked me, as an atheist, to answer the hackneyed old question "What makes humans any better than cockroaches?" if there is no life after death.

@kellyjay said
You took a conversation about nothing after death into making it into a human roach comparison. CHEAP SHOTS!

There have been no cheap shots, KellyJay. You suddenly mentioned cockroaches in the context of your toxic comments about the supposed "meaningless" of life if there is no eternal life after death [i.e. "nothing after death"]. It wasn't me who suddenly made the human/cockroaches 'debating point', it was you. Nothing is being twisted. There have been no cheap shots.