English CC subtitles have been added. Here's also some timestamps: 0:00 Intro (Black Lives Matter, Reddit comment) 6:54 BirthStrike Movement 9:46 Benatar's voluntary antinatalism and his "last generation" hypothetical 14:55 Authoritarian Antinatalism 16:10 Antinatalist Paradox (the means and the ends are not aligned) 18:33 Marxism and Vanguardism 21:14 Intersectionality 24:42 Racism (and Speciesism) 27:27 Cruel Optimism 30:33 Reason, Argumentation & Power 33:10 Ego & Power 36:05 No Antinatalist Praxis 37:36 Utopianism and Anarchism 40:08 Antinatalism and Evolutionary Theory 42:14 Exposure, Spectacle & Sameness 45:35 Misanthropic Antinatalism 46:50 Conclusion Thanks to everyone for listening and engaging in the comment section.
thanks for the content! however, what's the deal with sustainability and the environment issues? I thought that the basis of anti-natalism is the fact that life - regardless of the type and how full of resources it may be - is more suffering than good, more bad than happiness ...
There are multiple "flavors" of antinatalism. One of them for example is purely misanthropic and wants to discontinue human existence. Another does not care about the weighing of pleasures and pain, they only care about the inability to gain consent. Or if they did care about pleasure and pain, they could argue that even the most minuscule pin prick negates an otherwise entirely blissful existence. I'm not really interested in these arguments. If you believe in the "more bad than good" aspect of it, then I don't understand your confusion here. If you live in a world that is ruining itself, where the air is not breathable, with rampant inequality and knowledge that climate catastrophes are only going to increase in intensity and frequency, how is that not part of the "life is more bad than good" equation? What are you even thinking about to fill up the "bad" bucket of life if not the conditions in which people find themselves in? Do you think a world with a lot more injustice and unsustainability would not produce more antinatalists?
@@tranquil87 u sound quite defensive. Anyway, I think it is much more interesting and important that man is the one who can decides (most times and other times by mistake or accident) to bring a new life into the world; without thinking about the environment and everything that surrounds us where man really cannot influence 100%, so man is the one who gives life, human life, and so he can definitely have control over the next lives that may or may not appear in this world more than he could control the whole environment or even just a part of this entire planet. So I don't understand the focus on the environment, it's banal, childish..
I listened to this two times now… Its a good video (text). A lot of different things to chew on here, and you cover a lot of things. I’m glad there still exist thoughtful commentary on this platform. Some of your points I agree with more than others. The thing I find most confusing is who you are actually addressing. I struggle to understand who that could be. You argue like you are taking a subversive controversial stance outside what most antinatalists believe, while to me you’re pretty much _exactly_ in line with what most people think (although possibly with more sophistication). I don’t know many people who think antinatalism can ever succeed through activism to get to voluntary extinction. I can’t think of a single one in fact. You argue like David Benatar does, but he’s been quite clear on quite a few occasions he does not. Activism in the antinatalism community is a rather rare phenomenon in general, so I personally find the few rare examples that pops up more like a curiosities, so I never really understood the widespread attitude to always shoot it down immediately or critique it mercilessly. This does not invalidate your general points of course, I’m just quite surprised you look at the current state of the antinatalism community this way.
Just wanted to let you know that I’m not an anti-natalist or a pessimist, but I really like your channel and respect your views. Keep up the interesting videos
Interesting content. I liked and subscribed. You say at 27:27 "The belief that antinatalism can solve racism or any other social problems is a form of cruel optimism." The wide-spread adoption of antinatalism would solve ALL social problems since a side effect would be the extinction of humans. So I disagree with you.
I'm not sure how you are in any way responding to the quote itself. Replace the word "antinatalism" in your message with "ultra-pacifism" for instance. Imagine that no one could ever be aggressive/violent anymore, and you have the same fantastical solution: it solves all social ills. It's still just an imaginary exercise though; the belief that it can be anything but an exercise of the imagination is the 'cruel optimism'.
@@cliffraven Yes, I am reasonably certain. We must start from the fact that I am reasonably certain that reality is not just a figment of my imagination, and that there are in fact laws that constrain reality: laws which can be observed and studied. Can I prove to you that I am not just dreaming this moment up right now? Can you prove to me that you are not just a figment of my imagination? No, we cannot; but it is reasonably assumed that solipsism is wrong, and unconstructive, so we don't bother with it. We can have the exact same kind of certainty about antinatalism when its goal is the conscious pursuit of human or sentient extinction once we take into account the big picture. Again, we can take your statements and replace "antinatalism" with something else. How about a God that removes all suffering? Can you prove to me that tomorrow there won't be a God that comes on this planet and casts a magic spell which will remove suffering forever? Because that would be very convenient, and it would justify my not wanting to act constructively today. But no, you cannot; but why should I put that burden of proof on you? It's simply not reasonable to assume this might come about, it *is* fantastical; and my video argues that it's also not reasonable to assume that antinatalism can be implemented or succeed: there has not been an ounce of evidence to suggest otherwise. There are laws that constrain the universe and everything within it, including our biology and our psychology. Those laws limit the things that we can and cannot do. Do you disagree? Do you think that we can just create new realities merely by wishing them? Do you think that your thoughts about antinatalism (or anything at all) come out of nowhere? That they have no physical, biological, psychological, or sociological basis? The widespread adoption of antinatalism is just as fantastical of a belief as thinking that you can breathe underwater without the help of technology. Your body is not *structured* for that; it has not *evolved* to be able to do that. In exactly the same way, human beings have not evolved to reach perfect or near-perfect homogeneity in beliefs and practices, and societies and politics have not emerged in order to pursue their own demise. Living systems all obey an homeostatic imperative which works to push them towards the maintenance of their own structures. This is a structural law. It is just as real as gravity. It is not enough to wish it to fail for it to be able to fail. If you wish to commit suicide, you have to have your organism as a whole be in enough pain and suffering to push you towards that, right? It doesn't suffice to want to die. The idea of continuing to live must *feel* like it's a worse choice than death and the pain that might precede it. Your biological systems essentially make the choice for you: at some point you just can't keep going on. And then you need to form some kind of plan of action, right? But if you want *societies* to commit suicide, what is there to be done? There is no organism that suffers there, and there is no possible course of political action, because societies purposefully attempt to maintain themselves and reproduce themselves. Everything that they do is towards that end. And they have a lot more influence and control over how people feel and behave than you will ever have with your arguments. They hold the very means by which you can secure your existence. You and other antinatalists are a drop in the ocean of influence that forces itself onto other beings every day, and however powerful you think your arguments are, I guarantee you that societies have more influence over their constituent parts, and billions of years of homeostatically-driven evolution is a lot more powerful of a motivator than the arguments that people make in academia or on the internet about how life should end.
@@tranquil87 You are wrong. Antinatalism is just the belief that making babies is a shitty thing to do. Anyone who holds this belief is an antinatalist. They don't have to believe it's possible that it gets widely adopted by society. They don't have to be part of a social movement. I just noticed that 'social movement' was added to the wikipedia definition of antinatalism and I think it is total bullshit. Imagine if I called atheism a form of cruel optimism, just because I was certain religion would never be stamped out. It's ridiculous. Some atheists make organizations and have social movements with atheism as the central theme, but atheism itself is not a social movement. Nor is antinatalim. Human extinction may be a natural side-effect of antinatalism catching on, but it isn't necessarily the goal for all antinatalists. I, for one, would be fine for humans to continue if they figured out how to procreate without violating the consent of the resulting person. I agree that God is a delusion, and hard solipsism might as well be. But we have evidence for antinatalism catching on. We also have evidence for declining population levels in every country where women get good educations and access to birth control. Every woman who decides not to have children is a bit antinatalist. So we mentally-ill antinatalists with your 'cruel optimism' may have already won, it's just going to take some time for the third world to catch up. I hope to spread antinatalism. You can say we are deluded. You can say we are drops in the ocean. You can say we are doomed to failure. The first women suffragettes were told the same things. The first slavery abolitionists were told the same thing. The first civil rights activists were told the same this. Like those other naysayers, I think you will be on the wrong side of history. However, I don't pretend to predict the future. I wrote a sci-fi book on the subject, Last Call for Heroes, which contains one idea of how the world would look if antinatalism became wide-spread. You think it's useless to fight for antinatalism, but we don't have to agree with you. Braveheart's Dad- "We do not have to beat them. Just fight them. Now who's with me?"
@@cliffraven You start your comment by saying that "it's bullshit to consider antinatalism a social movement" and then you go on to use the suffragettes, abolitionists and other civil rights activists as an example of why you believe in spreading antinatalism and the possible wide-spread adoption of the belief. Do you not see the contradiction here? I addressed this comparison in this video. I make arguments for why there is seemingly no parallel between those social movements and antinatalism, because antinatalism (as extinctionism) doesn't have the characteristics of a social movement, such as an ability to mount a political resistance in the pursuit of its goals. I'm sorry if it bothers you, but these are the facts. This has nothing to do with my psychology and my wanting to be a "naysayer". If you go into any activist space that is focused on organizing some form of political resistance you will also find that out for yourself. I don't know what you mean by "fighting". I assume you mean making moral arguments and condemning people who procreate -- mostly on the internet -- and if that's what you find meaningful and a good use of your time, then by all means, keep doing it. It's just not going to lead the human species to consciously pursue its own extinction, or that of the whole biosphere. If people understand that, and they still consider themselves antinatalists, that's not a problem to me; I specifically highlighted early on in the video that I am not addressing other forms of antinatalism that are *not* trying to pursue those goals as a social movement (and/or attempting to supplant existing social movements). Congratulations on the book.
English CC subtitles have been added. Here's also some timestamps:
0:00 Intro (Black Lives Matter, Reddit comment)
6:54 BirthStrike Movement
9:46 Benatar's voluntary antinatalism and his "last generation" hypothetical
14:55 Authoritarian Antinatalism
16:10 Antinatalist Paradox (the means and the ends are not aligned)
18:33 Marxism and Vanguardism
21:14 Intersectionality
24:42 Racism (and Speciesism)
27:27 Cruel Optimism
30:33 Reason, Argumentation & Power
33:10 Ego & Power
36:05 No Antinatalist Praxis
37:36 Utopianism and Anarchism
40:08 Antinatalism and Evolutionary Theory
42:14 Exposure, Spectacle & Sameness
45:35 Misanthropic Antinatalism
46:50 Conclusion
Thanks to everyone for listening and engaging in the comment section.
You talked to Adam Lanza 😲
thanks for the content!
however, what's the deal with sustainability and the environment issues? I thought that the basis of anti-natalism is the fact that life - regardless of the type and how full of resources it may be - is more suffering than good, more bad than happiness ...
There are multiple "flavors" of antinatalism. One of them for example is purely misanthropic and wants to discontinue human existence. Another does not care about the weighing of pleasures and pain, they only care about the inability to gain consent. Or if they did care about pleasure and pain, they could argue that even the most minuscule pin prick negates an otherwise entirely blissful existence. I'm not really interested in these arguments.
If you believe in the "more bad than good" aspect of it, then I don't understand your confusion here. If you live in a world that is ruining itself, where the air is not breathable, with rampant inequality and knowledge that climate catastrophes are only going to increase in intensity and frequency, how is that not part of the "life is more bad than good" equation? What are you even thinking about to fill up the "bad" bucket of life if not the conditions in which people find themselves in?
Do you think a world with a lot more injustice and unsustainability would not produce more antinatalists?
@@tranquil87 u sound quite defensive. Anyway, I think it is much more interesting and important that man is the one who can decides (most times and other times by mistake or accident) to bring a new life into the world; without thinking about the environment and everything that surrounds us where man really cannot influence 100%, so man is the one who gives life, human life, and so he can definitely have control over the next lives that may or may not appear in this world more than he could control the whole environment or even just a part of this entire planet. So I don't understand the focus on the environment, it's banal, childish..
I listened to this two times now… Its a good video (text). A lot of different things to chew on here, and you cover a lot of things. I’m glad there still exist thoughtful commentary on this platform. Some of your points I agree with more than others. The thing I find most confusing is who you are actually addressing. I struggle to understand who that could be. You argue like you are taking a subversive controversial stance outside what most antinatalists believe, while to me you’re pretty much _exactly_ in line with what most people think (although possibly with more sophistication). I don’t know many people who think antinatalism can ever succeed through activism to get to voluntary extinction. I can’t think of a single one in fact. You argue like David Benatar does, but he’s been quite clear on quite a few occasions he does not. Activism in the antinatalism community is a rather rare phenomenon in general, so I personally find the few rare examples that pops up more like a curiosities, so I never really understood the widespread attitude to always shoot it down immediately or critique it mercilessly. This does not invalidate your general points of course, I’m just quite surprised you look at the current state of the antinatalism community this way.
Excellent video! I wish I had been this eloquent when I was trying to discuss the subject of antinatalism. Thanks, also, for the transcript.
Just wanted to let you know that I’m not an anti-natalist or a pessimist, but I really like your channel and respect your views. Keep up the interesting videos
Interesting content. I liked and subscribed.
You say at 27:27 "The belief that antinatalism can solve racism or any other social problems is a form of cruel optimism." The wide-spread adoption of antinatalism would solve ALL social problems since a side effect would be the extinction of humans. So I disagree with you.
I'm not sure how you are in any way responding to the quote itself. Replace the word "antinatalism" in your message with "ultra-pacifism" for instance. Imagine that no one could ever be aggressive/violent anymore, and you have the same fantastical solution: it solves all social ills. It's still just an imaginary exercise though; the belief that it can be anything but an exercise of the imagination is the 'cruel optimism'.
@@tranquil87 I don't think the wide spread adoption of antinatalism is fantastical. Are you sure it is? Can you prove it is?
@@cliffraven Yes, I am reasonably certain. We must start from the fact that I am reasonably certain that reality is not just a figment of my imagination, and that there are in fact laws that constrain reality: laws which can be observed and studied. Can I prove to you that I am not just dreaming this moment up right now? Can you prove to me that you are not just a figment of my imagination? No, we cannot; but it is reasonably assumed that solipsism is wrong, and unconstructive, so we don't bother with it. We can have the exact same kind of certainty about antinatalism when its goal is the conscious pursuit of human or sentient extinction once we take into account the big picture.
Again, we can take your statements and replace "antinatalism" with something else. How about a God that removes all suffering? Can you prove to me that tomorrow there won't be a God that comes on this planet and casts a magic spell which will remove suffering forever? Because that would be very convenient, and it would justify my not wanting to act constructively today. But no, you cannot; but why should I put that burden of proof on you? It's simply not reasonable to assume this might come about, it *is* fantastical; and my video argues that it's also not reasonable to assume that antinatalism can be implemented or succeed: there has not been an ounce of evidence to suggest otherwise.
There are laws that constrain the universe and everything within it, including our biology and our psychology. Those laws limit the things that we can and cannot do. Do you disagree? Do you think that we can just create new realities merely by wishing them? Do you think that your thoughts about antinatalism (or anything at all) come out of nowhere? That they have no physical, biological, psychological, or sociological basis?
The widespread adoption of antinatalism is just as fantastical of a belief as thinking that you can breathe underwater without the help of technology. Your body is not *structured* for that; it has not *evolved* to be able to do that. In exactly the same way, human beings have not evolved to reach perfect or near-perfect homogeneity in beliefs and practices, and societies and politics have not emerged in order to pursue their own demise. Living systems all obey an homeostatic imperative which works to push them towards the maintenance of their own structures. This is a structural law. It is just as real as gravity. It is not enough to wish it to fail for it to be able to fail.
If you wish to commit suicide, you have to have your organism as a whole be in enough pain and suffering to push you towards that, right? It doesn't suffice to want to die. The idea of continuing to live must *feel* like it's a worse choice than death and the pain that might precede it. Your biological systems essentially make the choice for you: at some point you just can't keep going on. And then you need to form some kind of plan of action, right? But if you want *societies* to commit suicide, what is there to be done? There is no organism that suffers there, and there is no possible course of political action, because societies purposefully attempt to maintain themselves and reproduce themselves. Everything that they do is towards that end. And they have a lot more influence and control over how people feel and behave than you will ever have with your arguments. They hold the very means by which you can secure your existence.
You and other antinatalists are a drop in the ocean of influence that forces itself onto other beings every day, and however powerful you think your arguments are, I guarantee you that societies have more influence over their constituent parts, and billions of years of homeostatically-driven evolution is a lot more powerful of a motivator than the arguments that people make in academia or on the internet about how life should end.
@@tranquil87
You are wrong.
Antinatalism is just the belief that making babies is a shitty thing to do. Anyone who holds this belief is an antinatalist. They don't have to believe it's possible that it gets widely adopted by society. They don't have to be part of a social movement. I just noticed that 'social movement' was added to the wikipedia definition of antinatalism and I think it is total bullshit.
Imagine if I called atheism a form of cruel optimism, just because I was certain religion would never be stamped out. It's ridiculous. Some atheists make organizations and have social movements with atheism as the central theme, but atheism itself is not a social movement. Nor is antinatalim. Human extinction may be a natural side-effect of antinatalism catching on, but it isn't necessarily the goal for all antinatalists. I, for one, would be fine for humans to continue if they figured out how to procreate without violating the consent of the resulting person.
I agree that God is a delusion, and hard solipsism might as well be. But we have evidence for antinatalism catching on. We also have evidence for declining population levels in every country where women get good educations and access to birth control. Every woman who decides not to have children is a bit antinatalist. So we mentally-ill antinatalists with your 'cruel optimism' may have already won, it's just going to take some time for the third world to catch up.
I hope to spread antinatalism. You can say we are deluded. You can say we are drops in the ocean. You can say we are doomed to failure. The first women suffragettes were told the same things. The first slavery abolitionists were told the same thing. The first civil rights activists were told the same this. Like those other naysayers, I think you will be on the wrong side of history. However, I don't pretend to predict the future.
I wrote a sci-fi book on the subject, Last Call for Heroes, which contains one idea of how the world would look if antinatalism became wide-spread. You think it's useless to fight for antinatalism, but we don't have to agree with you.
Braveheart's Dad- "We do not have to beat them. Just fight them. Now who's with me?"
@@cliffraven You start your comment by saying that "it's bullshit to consider antinatalism a social movement" and then you go on to use the suffragettes, abolitionists and other civil rights activists as an example of why you believe in spreading antinatalism and the possible wide-spread adoption of the belief. Do you not see the contradiction here?
I addressed this comparison in this video. I make arguments for why there is seemingly no parallel between those social movements and antinatalism, because antinatalism (as extinctionism) doesn't have the characteristics of a social movement, such as an ability to mount a political resistance in the pursuit of its goals. I'm sorry if it bothers you, but these are the facts. This has nothing to do with my psychology and my wanting to be a "naysayer". If you go into any activist space that is focused on organizing some form of political resistance you will also find that out for yourself.
I don't know what you mean by "fighting". I assume you mean making moral arguments and condemning people who procreate -- mostly on the internet -- and if that's what you find meaningful and a good use of your time, then by all means, keep doing it. It's just not going to lead the human species to consciously pursue its own extinction, or that of the whole biosphere. If people understand that, and they still consider themselves antinatalists, that's not a problem to me; I specifically highlighted early on in the video that I am not addressing other forms of antinatalism that are *not* trying to pursue those goals as a social movement (and/or attempting to supplant existing social movements).
Congratulations on the book.
THE KING IS BACK
hello