Anti-Procreation Movement: A Comprehensive Philosophy

The human condition is defined by two things: survival and boredom. Both of these components of the human condition are in turn defined as experiences of deprivation, which causes suffering.
1) SURVIVAL
a) basic needs
i) food
ii) shelter
iii) warmth
iv) health
v) language
* Wealth is only a “need” in the cultural context of western society; undeveloped people don’t need money, they don’t value wealth. Because deprivation is a universal condition of life, wealth, though necessary to survive in a westernized capitalist society, is not important to our current discussion of deprivation.
b) comfort
i) ability to control and refine environment
ii) ability to create and control physiological well-being
c) survival and deprivation
i) The process of survival is one of always trying to meet the needs of physical existence, which are never eradicated and the lack of which is always felt. Until survival is satisfied, you are always deprived of at least some basic needs.
ii) Deprivation is felt not only when the needs are absent, but also when the process of meeting these needs is unpleasant. The phenomenon of survival not only is defined as defending against the deprivation of basic needs, but also is marked by the deprivation of other nonessential things that we would rather have or do.
iii) Deprivation is suffering because it is an unpleasant state to always be in want of something, to always lack something, and to always have to work towards achieving it. It is a simple lack of peace and stillness.
2) BOREDOM
a) Boredom is only felt after survival needs have been met; it is unique to human life, that is, to animals with higher levels of cognitive thinking.
b) Boredom is a constant condition that is always being battled; it is pervasive.
c) Boredom is qualitatively different from mundane activity or tedium. It is an inherent component of our psyche, our being. It can be described as a feeling of voidedness, emptiness, unfulfillment. But it is more than just unfulfillment, rather a lack of purpose…
* [listlessness, aimlessness, dissatisfaction, ennui --- but not apathy (it is a result of boredom) --- uneasiness, lack of repose, etc]
d) We struggle against it by finding ways to entertain ourselves, or by letting ourselves be entertained. Entertainment is typically found in a societal setting. It can take the typical forms of books, movies, music, etc, but it can also take the form of an individual aim, goal, ambition, quest… anything that will occupy our time and thoughts.
e) boredom as deprivation
i) We are trying to fill this inherent condition of aimlessness with an aim, if you will; listlessness with a list…of things to do, etc (see inset). But you can’t leave the hole unfilled; it is an imperative of our human nature to seek out ways to fill the hole. And because any attempts to fill the hole or ease our boredom are short-lived or temporary, we are constantly deprived of ever having a lasting solution.
ii) Just the fact that things are temporary is a deprivation. If something does last, it becomes boring, for lack of novelty, and we need to seek out something new. Or, if not, it becomes harmful and we must seek out something else—too much of anything is a bad thing. It is not just a matter of satisfying boredom, but of satisfying it with quantity, variety, novelty.
iii) Plato’s idea of being and becoming… We are never being, we are always becoming. We are never complete, never whole; we are always seeking out ways to become complete. Never satisfied with just being, we are always having to enhance and improve our condition.
iv) Even the process of avoiding boredom can expose us deprivation and leave us prone to suffering, much like the process of survival, because each involves taking unwanted or unpleasant action to achieve what we want, only to find it is a temporary solution, and that the whole process will have to be repeated ad infinitum.
3) SUFFERING
a) Other forms of suffering pertaining to survival: It requires, in most cases, personal and societal strife, struggle, tension, angst; enduring the mundane (having to work), the trivial, annoying personalities, annoying tasks, procedures, obstacles; the delaying of achieving other satisfactions, other wants; pressure, stress, time constraints, etc; anything involving working and performing utilitarian actions that we otherwise would not want to perform.
b) Other forms of suffering pertaining to boredom:
c) We typically think of suffering as the day to day events of pain and discomfort. We stub our toe, we are diagnosed with a terminal illness, our house is destroyed by a tornado, we lose our job, we lose our spouse, our car is totaled, the creamer we wanted to put in our coffee has curdled, we discover that we haven’t really turned into a cockroach but we are in fact insane. But these sufferings are not guaranteed, they are different from person to person, and they are not inherent to the human condition. Though these sufferings alone could be enough of an argument against procreation, the essential motivation should be the avoidance of the inherent, eternal sufferings of deprivation. Imagine a perfect person with a perfect life—no illness, no natural disaster, nothing bad or negative in his life, nothing even so mundane as stubbing a toe—nonetheless, he suffers because he is still deprived, because he still has to survive and avoid boredom. Survival and boredom are the two conditions of human life and each are accompanied by and defined through various forms of deprivation. They are persistent and perpetual, constant and pervasive. The only way to avoid these sufferings is to not endure survival or boredom, and the only way to achieve that is to not exist at all.
[deprivation is inborn suffering, inherent to the human condition. suffering as a result of wanting or needing something that you can’t have or maintain. other sufferings come from our daily movings through the world, caused not by an inherent condition of deprivation but by external sources.]
4) NONEXISTENCE
a) After recognizing these deprivations and sufferings inherent in existence, the imperative arises to end the spread of suffering unto a new being, to keep it in a state of nonexistence and thus never expose it to deprivation and suffering.
b) Buddhism supposes that there is a solution to the problem of deprivation and suffering for the living breathing human being, that meditation and adherence to a set of behavioral guidelines will bring one to a state of nonsuffering. However, though it be a noble effort, the philosophical premise is wrong. There is no state of nonbeing that one can return to while alive; it is an illusion and has no basis in reality. There is no mental path to salvation. Life will continue the cycle of survival and boredom, no matter how much meditation, self-reflection, and world-renunciation occurs; there is no epiphany brought on by a meditative state. If anything, this just proves itself to be yet another way to stave off boredom, another quest for entertainment leading nowhere, another flourish that ends only with death.
c) The act of birth creates a being ex nihilo; a new person is something created from nothing. Once becoming something, that human being will now go through the survival and boredom and the external sufferings that we all have gone through by virtue of being born ourselves. In bringing a new life into the world, and out of nonexistence, we inflict the worst harm, insofar as procreation is the essential beginning of all other harms that will befall the new human being.
d) Once born, there is no way to end or prevent the suffering except through death and thus reentry into a nonexistent state. The only way to avoid this suffering is to not be born in the first place. Obviously, once we are born, we cannot be unborn. But we can prevent the experience of suffering by others through not giving birth, not procreating, and thus not bringing into existence another vessel of suffering.
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?---
--Frankenstein
5) OVERCOMING OBJECTIONS
a) “Life contains more good than bad.”
i) Any amount of bad experienced in life is enough to make that life not worth beginning. A nonexistent being, or rather a nonbeing, is neither deprived of good nor harmed by bad. They will not experience the good of life, but as a nonbeing they will not miss it. But more importantly, they will not experience any bad. (“They” does not refer to a being nonbeing, but only serves as a placeholder in rhetorical speech.)
ii) One might say that the good experienced in life outweighs the bad. However, when life is weighed against nonexistence, the fact that a nonexistent being does not miss or feel deprived of the good nullifies that argument. On the one hand, good might outweigh the bad, but on the other, neutrality outweighs both.
iii) In life, there is no guarantee that good will outweigh bad. If it does, then there will at least be a depleted good by virtue of the presence of bad. In nonexistence, there is the nonexperience of good or bad, as well as the fact that there is not being to miss them. So, one could say, that while in life good it pitted against bad, and thus could have a positive or negative outcome, in nonexistence there can be only a positive outcome.
iv) But this mathematical representation does not matter, because good can never outweigh bad. Imagine a bucket of white paint. Even the smallest drop of black paint in that bucket will taint the purity of the whole. It is a fact that every life will have at least some bad in it, and because that bad is a guarantee, and because that bad will automatically befoul that life, that life is inherently not worth beginning.
b) “But I don’t experience any suffering.”
i) This is a delusion, or even a simple misapprehension. Nevertheless, everyone experiences suffering, even if only because we are always in a state of either survival or boredom. Those two features of life can never be satisfied, no matter how good one’s life might otherwise be. Remember the perfect person with the perfect life who has never so much as stubbed a toe. Even he must feed himself every day and find ways to kill time.
ii) Benatar proposes three methods though which we delude ourselves.
(1) The Pollyanna Principle: It is the idea that “every cloud has a silver lining.” It is the process of reflecting on a previous experience and overemphasizing or exaggerating the good parts at the expense of ignoring the bad. In this way, past suffering is mitigated, often to the point that one does not remember experiencing much or any bad at all. These people would argue that “there is more good in life than bad.”
(2) Adaptation, Accommodation, or Habituation: This is what one does when he says, “Oh, I didn’t really want that anyway,” or “That wasn’t such a good deal to begin with.” It is the process of lowering standards after they aren’t met, or changing goals or expectations to reflect the circumstances. As prospects weaken, rather then feel the suffering of failure or disappointment, this person will adjust his objectives, will lower the bar, to ensure success.
(3) Comparison: This person says, “It could be worse.” If a person does not hold his life to an ideal or objective standard, then the rule against which he measures his good or bad life is fluid and can be changed according to his life’s similarity to or difference from the lives of others. By comparing his sufferings to others, he can look to those who “suffer more” and prove to himself that he really doesn’t suffer that much at all. This method is absurd in that it requires the comparison of one’s own suffering with that of another and thus creates a falsely objective standard that in reality is a subjective standard based on personal perception. It also attempts to negate one’s own suffering by finding another “worse” suffering in someone else’s life.
iii) These methods are deceptive in that they lead one to believe that there can be a tolerable amount of suffering in one’s life when, in fact, any amount of suffering is intolerable.
c) “It’s a biological imperative to procreate.”
i) While there may be a subconscious or unconscious biochemical imperative to procreate, signaled by the sex drive, the conscious willful desire to have a child is not necessarily a product of this physiology, but could very likely be a product of cultural pressure and learned societal expectations. Humankind has evolved to a point where it can chose to ignore these biological impulses and sexual drives, or at least prevent them from leading to their primal biological results.
ii) This leads to the question, do the inborn hormones promoting procreation cause conscious thought on the matter, or is all conscious thought of procreation learned? Even if the conscious thought is biochemically caused, we still are capable of the self-restraint needed to ignore the imperative.
d) “We are obligated to assure the survival of the species.”
i) Says who. Again, humanity has evolved to the point where it can choose to ignore such imperatives. This thought is another byproduct of the biochemical impulses and can likewise be ignored.
ii) Survival of the species is just a consequence of these biochemical primal imperatives. The ethical or moral defense of such is a purely cultural construct.
iii) Evolution or the success of a species is the result of accidental yet beneficial mutation and adaptation. It has nothing to do with the enthusiastic pursuit of procreation.
iv) There is no inborn drive within any given individual leading or encouraging survival of the species, only the selfish drive for the survival of individual DNA, or more likely, the continued satisfaction of personal sexual desires.