WEBVTT - Natalism feat. Andrew 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:08.119 Al Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to ache it up 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:12.920 in here. I'm Andrew Sage also known as Andrewism, and 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:19.520 I'm joined once again by that's a cue. 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:24.959 Mia Wong girl, who was really really the first time 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:27.200 was like I Am not going to miss my cue 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.280 this time. And then this time I was like, oh, 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:32.160 I'm waiting for the queue, and then it was like shit, 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.080 that's the cue. And it took my brain like several 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:39.000 seconds to be like, oh no, it would be very 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:41.320 funny if the editors just edited out the pause so 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:43.519 everyone has no idea what I'm talking about. 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:49.320 That's that would be hilarious actually, But there was unaware 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.519 that was like a ten second pause before me I 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:52.919 came in. 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:58.440 No, really truly, this is Mia on like three hours 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:02.560 of sleep brain. I was like, oh, yeah, right, the 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.479 key is going to come and then it things going 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:08.120 great for be A Wong, the other person who's on 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.440 this show. You know who I am. Statistically, if you're 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.920 listening to the show, who of. 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:18.240 Course, I mean speaking of seconds. By the way, in 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:22.840 those ten seconds that you were waiting for your queue 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:28.280 that had already passed, hundreds of people were born, you know, 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:33.720 every second somewhere someone is being born. Like other animals, 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:39.120 humans have this tendency to multiply. But should they That 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:41.839 is the question of the day. This is the last 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:46.319 episode I was on. We spoke about the worries surrounding populasia. 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:48.760 You know, whether we have too many people or too 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.320 few people. But the question of making people or not 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:56.559 making them has been the subject of a few ideological classes. 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:00.200 There's a whole movement of thinkers who argue that in 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.880 new life into the world is a big mistake. These 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:07.880 are the anti natilists. On the other side, you have 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:12.360 those who say that having children is good and essential. 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.880 That's the proneat to list cap. So in this episode 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:19.200 will be getting into that tug of war philosophically and 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:21.919 weighing the issues with both. Because I'm not going to 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.040 make it a secret, I'm not a fan of either 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:27.079 of them. I don't know, how do you feel about. 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:29.160 Yeah, this is the one, the one good Stalin quote. 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:30.000 They're both worse. 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:35.800 So we have to pick among those twos. Let's start 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.600 with the anti natilists. What what's the kind of gut 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:44.000 reaction or impression you get from those those folks. 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.840 I don't know. I think there's a combination of stuff 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:53.280 that's largely harmless and sometimes is funny, Like you get 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:55.760 protested people holding up signs that are like I didn't 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:57.919 ask to be born or didn't consent to be born, 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.480 and it's like sure, but then then there's all people 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:02.600 just do mass you things about it. So it's great, 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.760 it's a good time. It's a very normal time for politics. 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:11.720 Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean when I think of them, 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.360 I tend to think cringe and reddit. But they actually 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:20.280 have a philosophy outside of Reddit forums. So, according to 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:24.400 the Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy, anti natialism is the view that 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:30.639 it is either always or usually morally impermissible to brookerate. Now, 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:32.600 most of us grew up with the idea that life 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:37.080 is inherently valuable, right, but anti natilists disagree. They see 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:40.600 life as a buden rather than a gift. Very edgy, 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:44.000 very reddit. But you know, it's something that has been 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:48.520 around since before the Internet. While not himself an anti natalist, 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:53.480 the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who lived in the nineteenth century, 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.960 is taught by some anti natalists as a contributor to 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:01.400 their philosophical foundations. In his description of life as constant, 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:07.000 striving frustration and pain. In the twentieth century, the Romanian 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:12.520 writer Emil Choran argued that non existence is the ultimate 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:17.320 form of peace. His philosophical pessimism regarded individual life and 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:21.760 human history as a whole as a record of error, illusion, 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:26.920 and futility. And most famously, South African philosopher David Bennetta 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.200 laid out one of the main anti neatilist arguments in 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:33.760 his book Better Never to Have been the harm of 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:38.760 coming into existence. It's a bang aside, though. Now you 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:43.400 can find theoretical contributions to anti natilists thought in Buddhism's 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:47.360 idea that life is suffering, or incidant interpretations of it 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:51.359 rather or incident gnostic traditions that saw the material willed 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:55.159 itself as a kind of cosmic mistake. Now, there are 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:57.839 a lot of reasons that anti natialists put forward for 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:03.159 their stance. There are philanthropic misanthropic arguments an planutialism. You know, 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:06.240 the philanthropic ones focus on harm to the individual who 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:10.080 is brought into existence, while the misanthropic arguments tend to 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.440 focus on the harm that new people cause to the will. 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.440 So there's the consent argument that Mia would have mentioned. 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.440 You know, basically, a child that cannot consent to be inborn, 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:21.920 so by creating them you're forcing them into life. They 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:25.599 didn't ask for a life that will inevitably include suffering. 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:30.320 Another argument is in that sort of negative utilityianism camp. 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:34.480 It's the idea that our moral priority should be reducing suffering, 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.440 not increase in happiness. In fact, they don't see the 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:43.440 potential or actuality of pleasure as an offset to suffering 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.760 at all. You know, under their view, even a single 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.520 unit of suffering is unacceptable, and since every new life 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:54.120 will include suffering, not creating life is the surest way 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:59.080 to reduce it. If Benetta had the famous asymmetry argument, 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.039 which is that the presence of pain is bad, the 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.840 presence of pleasure is good, but the absence of pain 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.280 is always good, even if no one appreciates that good, 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:12.239 and the absence of pleasure isn't bad unless there's someone 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:16.040 missing out. So put simply, according to the argument, by 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:20.760 not having a child, you avoid guaranteed suffering without depriving 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:25.640 any person of joy because that person doesn't exist. So 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.760 that equation is probably one of the main pillars, i'd 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:42.159 say of the anti Natilists as a movement. You know, 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.679 you might be thinking to yourself, Oh, but I'm glad 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:45.280 to be alive. 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:46.640 No, you're not. 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:52.760 According to according to Bennetta and the anti Natilists, you're 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:57.520 deluded to think so. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:02.960 it the deluded gladness argument. Basically, your positive view of 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:06.440 your own life is unreliable. But how it argues that 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.160 we have cognitive biases like optimism and selective memory and 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:14.520 so on, which distort how viciously we assess our own suffering. 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.560 So many good life reports. Even if you think you 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.640 have a good life or a decent life, you're deceiving yourself, 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.720 according to him. Do you think people are deceiving themselves 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:25.600 when they say that they enjoy their lives? 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:32.440 You know, this entire line of argument is just making 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:34.840 me be like, you need to do less philosophy and 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:37.000 like go outside and live. 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.240 Like it's just like, yeah, I mean, I get the 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:43.680 whole thing about you know, all mental bias towards optimism 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:46.960 and that kind of thing, but that doesn't invalidate the 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:50.119 joy of people appreciating their life. 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:54.640 Yeah, it's like this. This sounds like the exact script 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:59.680 you get in your head when you're really depressed. It's like, okay, 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:04.360 like have you considered getting your depression managed and getting 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.320 help for it instead of like doing philosophy about it. 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.560 I feel like you would be an antenage list. Oh 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:16.440 you're yeah, like another thing murders well. 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:20.520 And it's also frustrating because it's like the most compelling 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:25.440 version of this argument is about like this world right 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:29.280 now is absolutely dog shit and I can't justify bringing 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:33.559 someone into it. But that's like too grounded. It's all 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:35.640 these people are like, no, no, no, no, no, Actually, here's 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.000 like this philosophy that proves that that life bad. 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:43.119 And it's like, uh, I mean that there are antage 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.160 lists arguments that do get into that more grown dated 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:48.120 Oh yeah, definitely, no, yeah, thing you know that they 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:52.240 have one argument about multiplying suffering, right, because every child 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.520 you bring into the wool is in just one boos son. 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.520 You know, they have the potential to hapture themselves and 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:02.120 grandchildren and so on, multiplying the child answers of pain, disease, loss, 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:03.720 suffering down the generations. 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:06.559 It's like this is like long termism shit it's just like, 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:09.960 instead of like actually analyzing the world, we're going to 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:15.960 build unbelievably complicated and completely meaningless, like abstract models of 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:19.959 it and try to base our things off of that. 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.840 Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's it's totally ridiculous. Now, I understand. 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:26.120 You know, our Tarck record isn't the best. You know, 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:30.960 they're their plagues and slavery and genocide, environmental destruction, and 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:33.200 some of them, see, well that's the best thing. The 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:36.120 best thing we could do is to voluntarily go extinct, 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:38.000 you know, to step off the stage of the earth. 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.719 And that connects with the general misanthropy, and I think 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:44.920 the misanthropic argument that humans are some kind of blight 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:49.280 on the world. Yeah, and they're anti nelists who take 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:51.320 it a step further as well, And they're not just 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:55.960 antilists for humans, they're universal antiseilsts. So they believe that 0:09:56.080 --> 0:10:00.480 not just human births are problematic, but existence itself, sentient 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:03.880 beings across the board, human or animal are better off 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:05.920 never being brought into life at all. 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:10.040 Really, truly, at this point, brother, this is a you problem. 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:14.679 You just don't like existing, Like, we can work on that, 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:18.800 but this is not a philosophical think, like you're just depressed, Like, 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:20.840 come on, what are we doing here? 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:25.040 Yeah, I mean, anthonatialism is making some very heavy claims, 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.400 and they're obviously going to be coming to arguments because 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:29.719 people are going to roll over with the kind of 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.680 asslutions that it makes. The most intuitive answer I would 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:37.920 give is that yes, life involves suffering, but it also 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.440 includes pleasure and joy and creativity and achievements, and for 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:47.199 most people, those positives outweigh the negatives. And if you're 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.400 a radical, you recognize that some of the negatives of 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:55.400 life are not inevitable. The famines, the wars, the suffering, 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.600 the poverty, it's not inevitable. It's a product of economic 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:01.640 and political systems that we have the power to change. 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:05.280 And yes, there will always be suffering. They may always 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:09.800 be some diseases, there will always be death, right, but 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:13.840 that doesn't mean that existence is worse than non existence. 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.160 I'm glad to exist. Me. I feel like you're probably 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:19.199 glad to exist. I'm glad you. 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:23.280 Exist, yeah, most of the time. Like this this is 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:26.560 a distinct improvement for positions I have been in. But like, yeah, 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:30.840 it's nice, yes, you know, like even even in the 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:33.200 middle of like the hell world. 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:38.680 It's nice. Yeah, and yeah, the biases may skew our perspective, 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.280 but the fact that we overwhelmingly choose life itself is 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:46.040 a reason too not throw it out. 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:46.280 You know. 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:48.319 Whilst people are given the choice do you want to 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.760 live right now? And I mostly people want to say 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.200 they're going to live, you know. Yeah, and yes, we 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.200 don't consent to be in born, but there are other 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.840 things that we don't consent to that we still benefit from. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.760 You know, in funds, don't consent to be vaccinated, but 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:07.920 it's it's something that benefits them, you know, we educate 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:11.840 in funds, we restrain them from danger. We don't ask 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:14.480 their permission necessarily to do these things, but it's just 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.880 for their well being, for their benefit. And I don't 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.680 think while consent is an important factor in the way 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:23.240 that we increaters others, I don't think consent is the 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:27.280 only factor for a framework of determining what is moral 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:32.120 and immoral. You know, you can't use consent to determine 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:35.920 whether it's moral or not to exist. I don't feel 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.880 like those two pieces meshed together very well. Yeah. 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.360 Well, and also I think like there are so many 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:45.400 other things that we didn't consent to, you know, Like 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:47.000 this is another thing that's talking. It's like we never 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.760 consented to die. On a less metaphysical level, I don't know, 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:55.400 like I didn't consent to like to live under this state. Yeah, 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:59.720 where you know they're like doing helicopter raids on apartment 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:02.640 build things and like dragging naked children screaming away from 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:04.480 their parents in the middle of the night, like you 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:07.680 know that. And that's the thing that you can actually 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:10.640 actively do something about that you didn't consent to, that 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:13.880 is actively harming you and everyone else around you, versus 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:18.160 like being born and making that the thing that you're 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:20.800 doing is like okay, like we didn't get set to 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:23.240 living or capitalism. We didn't. We didn't consent to colonialism, 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:24.640 like we didn't ge set to any of the ship 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:28.360 And that's something you could, you know, make not happen, 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.319 versus you being born, which there is nothing you can 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:34.640 do to change the fact that you were born. And 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:36.760 it's like, oh, well, focus the next generation children, Yeah, 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:38.280 you want you want you want to focus on like 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:41.640 reducing the amount of suffering the next generation will create 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.360 in the world. Have you considered the climate change? 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:50.280 Yeah, yeah, I also think that on a broader level, right, 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:52.679 I think it's good to be questioned some of the 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.880 intuitions that we may have. You know, even there all 0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.559 a deepest moral intuitions, I think it's good to maybe 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.960 consider them or to be thoughtful about them. But also, 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:09.000 as the Incident Encyclopedia of Philosophy argues, if a theory 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.880 implies that the creation of all human life is a 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:17.040 moral mistake, that conclusion itself might be reason to doubt 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:22.960 the theory. This is something called the repugnant conclusion objection, 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:27.080 you know, I mean, because it's repugnant. It's intuitively repugnant 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:30.600 to most people to hear that existence is a mistake. 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:31.720 Nobody should be alive. 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:37.480 Yeah, I was like, what, No, absolutely not, get your 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:39.560 shit worked out exactly. 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:41.240 Betray the logic here. 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:43.880 Not great, Like you were saying, Yeah, there'll be a 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:45.560 lot of things in this in the world that suck 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.040 right now that cause suffering, and there's a lot of 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:52.960 present joy is alongside that present suffering. But there's also 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.640 the value to be had in that potential joy. You know, 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:01.600 the potential possibilities have value. If potential suffering has value, 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:06.640 potential joys should also have value, the potential of creating 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:11.000 a better world, each new child bringing the potential for 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:16.520 greater love, for incredible arts and crafts, for a scientific breakthrough, 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:20.480 is for reshaping the world in a positive direction. You know, 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:24.120 the potential for the unique goods that each individual life 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:28.840 can bring. I believe justifies the risk of suffering because 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:32.200 the world without those future goods would be worse than 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:38.600 a world with them. And yes, humanity can cause harm, 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.960 where we are also capable of extraordinary good we can change, 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:45.440 we can reduce suffering over time. New generations are going 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:48.400 to be part of that solution, I will say, though 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:52.280 two anti nationalists credit. One of the points of the 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:57.000 Internet and Psychlopedia of Philosophy points out is that the 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:59.680 debates of what antiinnacialism is theoretical. You know, this is 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:07.280 stuffy philosophers sitting around exchanging notes and writing books. Right, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:10.400 most of its advocates are not actually putting forward policies 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:15.320 that are restricting people's ability to create life. But the 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:18.160 same cannot be said for the other side of the coin, 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:33.479 the pro natalists. Yep. So, in broad terms, pro natalism 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:37.000 or just natalism, is the belief that reproduction is a 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:41.560 societal good or even the society needs more children. This 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:44.920 movement is getting louder and louder these days. It's shaping 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.400 policy debates in the US, in Europe and Asia and beyond, because, 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.720 as I mentioned in the previous episode, fertility rates are 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:56.120 falling almost everywhere. Countries like South Korea, Italy, Japan, and 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:58.400 the US are seeing fewer booths than needed to sustain 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:01.800 their current populations. So you're going to be seeing pronatalism 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.879 in various forms shown up in politics and even in 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:09.720 tech circles, especially in those ways taxles. Now, prenatalism is 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:13.399 a broad umbrella. You know, you can have the mild 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:17.480 the position of supporting families with policies, and most people 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:19.919 are not opposed to that, But you also have the 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.720 strong pronatalist stands, which is actually urging or incentivizing or 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:31.240 mandating both for cultural, economic, or ideological reasons. Pronatalism was 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:34.639 motivated by a few different reasons. You know, there's the 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:38.520 economic anxiety of a shrink in population meaning fewer workers, 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:43.320 more retirees, and strained pension systems. There's a nationalistic argument 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.880 of worries about cultural continuity, which tend to titter into 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:53.480 the reactionary directions, and the pronatalism today is very much 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:56.560 political as a result. In the US, Republicans have been 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:59.399 leaning into it, framing the low booth rates as a 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:03.480 national crime. And in Europe you have countries like Hungary 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:07.680 under Victor Auburn which have made pronatalism a signature policy. 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:12.159 It's a very ineffectiveness. The religious motivations of pronatalism are 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:14.920 also pretty interesting. You know, you have the being fruitful 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:19.560 and multiply directive in the Bible, which some take as 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.560 far as the quiver full movement, which is the whole 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:26.200 thing about having children by like the dozen no more. 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:27.600 Yeah. 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.880 Then you have the tech elite circles pushing pronatalism because 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.119 it connects with the ideas of human progress. One of 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:39.640 the pronatalists who most famously practices what he preaches mostly 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:44.360 for worse is he on Musk. Yep, right, he's he's 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:47.800 a big Nazi about it. For one, because of this 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:50.960 we'll worry about white facility rates. But he also thinks 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.679 that global rates as a whole or a bigger threat 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:57.160 than climate change. So I mean it seems like he's 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:03.240 single handedly trying to fix that with his seed is spreading. Yeah, 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.160 is his assembly line of children with the accompanying product 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.080 barcodes for names, and I just feel bad for them, honestly, 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:12.879 to have that as a father. 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:17.760 No, it sucks. Yeah, it's not great. It's not good. 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.040 And so he and his billionaire bodies of the belief 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:24.080 that civilization will collapse if we don't make more babies, 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:29.240 Silicon Valley circles are funding pronatalist think tanks and embryo 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:33.920 optimization projects. A lot of policies are also coming out 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:38.440 of the pronatalist camp. Unlike the anti natalists. Historically, countries 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:40.920 like the Soviet Union hand their off medals like Mother 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.240 Heroine for women with large families, and the Russia of 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:48.639 today has revived similar awards recently, alongside like I mentioned 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:53.320 in the previous episode, banning anti natalist propaganda. Now some 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:57.480 countries are offering tax incentives for both and even proposing 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:01.200 baby bonuses of thousands of dollars is paid for each booth. 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:03.840 Thousand said dollars per birth is kind of a spit 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:06.040 in the face because that's not even going to last 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.840 the first couple months of a child being born. Let's 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:15.200 be real, children are extremely expensive. Yeah, yeah, proniceists also 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:20.160 tend to push things like expanded family benefits, child allowances, 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.080 or holes and subsidies for parents. These, I would say 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.840 are the more liberal minded or progressive minded pronace lists 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:28.639 as much as you can be a progressive and a 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.680 proniac list, because they're actually considering the ways that they 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.600 can make actually bearing children and raising children a bit 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:39.040 easier for the people who have to do it. That 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:43.480 sort of support also includes things like expanding IVF access, 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:48.399 subsidized and fertility treatments, you know, improving embryo screening, that 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:52.639 sort of thing. Places like Scandinavia also have generous leave policies, 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:56.000 which are often cited as a model of soft pronetalism 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:58.720 because it makes it easier for people to balance work 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:01.800 and child rearing. But he don't tend to hear these 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:07.880 policies coming out of the much louder pronatalist conservative camp. Right. 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:10.800 What you get from them and from their pronatalism tends 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:14.320 to be restrictions and women restrictions and abortion and body 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:18.119 autonomy policies that conflict with the goals of reproductive justice 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:22.560 and gender equality, sometimes putting women's health at risk. And 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:27.320 also conservatives push lots of narrative with their pernatalism, large 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.760 families sense of valorise. They frame childbearing as a civic duty. 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:34.879 You know, they appeal to legacy and culture and identity. 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.879 When you get into that white supremacist camp, and you 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:41.600 also get the whole eugenics of it, you know, the 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:46.160 tech elite prenatalist wing. They're pushing for things like gene editing, 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:50.440 embryo selection, and the sort of stuff that Musk is 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:54.879 talking about with his racial replacement anxieties. In any case, 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:59.199 the effectiveness of even the few positive policies has been 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:03.560 pretty mixed. Countries have tried pumping billions into subsidies, and 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:09.040 often fertility rates have barely budged deep structural issues like 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:13.560 the cost of living, cultural norms around gender, career paths, 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:18.119 health concerns. All these often we the incentives of a 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:22.199 couple of thousand dollars or extended opportunity leaves. You know, 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.280 if people don't want to have babies, they're not gonna 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.040 have babies. If they're not confidence in their ability to 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:31.639 have children raise an environment that they feel is best 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:34.600 for them, they're not gonna have children. You know, people, 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:40.320 more than ever have that choice, and unfortunately a lot 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:45.760 of the pronacialist policies don't care about making child bearing easier, 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:48.919 you know, easing the path to make that choice. They 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:52.399 just want to pressure people to have children. Yep, you know, 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:55.760 they loose right back to misogyny, a reaction against women's freedom, 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:58.720 pushing them back into the kitchen, pushing them back into 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:03.280 that Subsivian position in society. So I have to look 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:05.919 at both sides, right, you have the anti natalists and 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:09.439 the pronatalists. Don't create life to avoid suffering, or you 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:12.960 must create life to preserve society. I guess you could 0:23:12.960 --> 0:23:17.840 call me a centrist. The anti natalists repulse me, and 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:22.879 the pronatalists equally repulse me. You know, I'm wary of 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:25.760 anyone claiming that you must have children or you must 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:28.439 not have children. I'm weary of a world where these 0:23:28.520 --> 0:23:32.080 kinds of choices are couced by others. You know, As 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:35.200 an anarchist, I'm a firm believer in autonomy, in personal 0:23:35.200 --> 0:23:39.120 freedom and the ability to decide one's own life. That's 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:41.320 what matters to me. You know, I don't intend to 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.600 have children myself. I do like children a lot. I 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:46.720 was once a child myself, and I look forward to 0:23:46.720 --> 0:23:49.800 being an uncle. A godfather and all that, but that's 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:52.520 my choice. You don't let your choice be your choice 0:23:52.560 --> 0:23:56.399 and my choice be my choice. Make choices freely, resist 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:59.480 the pressure for me the camp and keep the agency intact. 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:01.439 That's all I have to say on it. 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:03.800 Honestly, Yeah, I mean honestly. That covers that stuff I 0:24:03.840 --> 0:24:04.480 was gonna say so. 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:10.480 Yeah, I mean with that, if be can wrap it, yeah, 0:24:10.560 --> 0:24:13.119 all the poets, all the people this has been, It 0:24:13.119 --> 0:24:13.879 could happen. 0:24:13.600 --> 0:24:20.720 Here, Peace, It could happen Here is a production of 0:24:20.760 --> 0:24:23.880 cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, 0:24:24.000 --> 0:24:27.280 visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out 0:24:27.320 --> 0:24:30.720 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:24:30.760 --> 0:24:33.400 to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:35.679 Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:36.840 Thanks for listening.