Speaker 1: Al Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to ache it up
Speaker 1: in here. I'm Andrew Sage also known as Andrewism, and
Speaker 1: I'm joined once again by that's a cue.
Speaker 2: Mia Wong girl, who was really really the first time
Speaker 2: was like I Am not going to miss my cue
Speaker 2: this time. And then this time I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for the queue, and then it was like shit,
Speaker 2: that's the cue. And it took my brain like several
Speaker 2: seconds to be like, oh no, it would be very
Speaker 2: funny if the editors just edited out the pause so
Speaker 2: everyone has no idea what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: That's that would be hilarious actually, But there was unaware
Speaker 1: that was like a ten second pause before me I
Speaker 1: came in.
Speaker 2: No, really truly, this is Mia on like three hours
Speaker 2: of sleep brain. I was like, oh, yeah, right, the
Speaker 2: key is going to come and then it things going
Speaker 2: great for be A Wong, the other person who's on
Speaker 2: this show. You know who I am. Statistically, if you're
Speaker 2: listening to the show, who of.
Speaker 1: Course, I mean speaking of seconds. By the way, in
Speaker 1: those ten seconds that you were waiting for your queue
Speaker 1: that had already passed, hundreds of people were born, you know,
Speaker 1: every second somewhere someone is being born. Like other animals,
Speaker 1: humans have this tendency to multiply. But should they That
Speaker 1: is the question of the day. This is the last
Speaker 1: episode I was on. We spoke about the worries surrounding populasia.
Speaker 1: You know, whether we have too many people or too
Speaker 1: few people. But the question of making people or not
Speaker 1: making them has been the subject of a few ideological classes.
Speaker 1: There's a whole movement of thinkers who argue that in
Speaker 1: new life into the world is a big mistake. These
Speaker 1: are the anti natilists. On the other side, you have
Speaker 1: those who say that having children is good and essential.
Speaker 1: That's the proneat to list cap. So in this episode
Speaker 1: will be getting into that tug of war philosophically and
Speaker 1: weighing the issues with both. Because I'm not going to
Speaker 1: make it a secret, I'm not a fan of either
Speaker 1: of them. I don't know, how do you feel about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the one, the one good Stalin quote.
Speaker 2: They're both worse.
Speaker 1: So we have to pick among those twos. Let's start
Speaker 1: with the anti natilists. What what's the kind of gut
Speaker 1: reaction or impression you get from those those folks.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think there's a combination of stuff
Speaker 2: that's largely harmless and sometimes is funny, Like you get
Speaker 2: protested people holding up signs that are like I didn't
Speaker 2: ask to be born or didn't consent to be born,
Speaker 2: and it's like sure, but then then there's all people
Speaker 2: just do mass you things about it. So it's great,
Speaker 2: it's a good time. It's a very normal time for politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean when I think of them,
Speaker 1: I tend to think cringe and reddit. But they actually
Speaker 1: have a philosophy outside of Reddit forums. So, according to
Speaker 1: the Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy, anti natialism is the view that
Speaker 1: it is either always or usually morally impermissible to brookerate. Now,
Speaker 1: most of us grew up with the idea that life
Speaker 1: is inherently valuable, right, but anti natilists disagree. They see
Speaker 1: life as a buden rather than a gift. Very edgy,
Speaker 1: very reddit. But you know, it's something that has been
Speaker 1: around since before the Internet. While not himself an anti natalist,
Speaker 1: the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who lived in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: is taught by some anti natalists as a contributor to
Speaker 1: their philosophical foundations. In his description of life as constant,
Speaker 1: striving frustration and pain. In the twentieth century, the Romanian
Speaker 1: writer Emil Choran argued that non existence is the ultimate
Speaker 1: form of peace. His philosophical pessimism regarded individual life and
Speaker 1: human history as a whole as a record of error, illusion,
Speaker 1: and futility. And most famously, South African philosopher David Bennetta
Speaker 1: laid out one of the main anti neatilist arguments in
Speaker 1: his book Better Never to Have been the harm of
Speaker 1: coming into existence. It's a bang aside, though. Now you
Speaker 1: can find theoretical contributions to anti natilists thought in Buddhism's
Speaker 1: idea that life is suffering, or incidant interpretations of it
Speaker 1: rather or incident gnostic traditions that saw the material willed
Speaker 1: itself as a kind of cosmic mistake. Now, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons that anti natialists put forward for
Speaker 1: their stance. There are philanthropic misanthropic arguments an planutialism. You know,
Speaker 1: the philanthropic ones focus on harm to the individual who
Speaker 1: is brought into existence, while the misanthropic arguments tend to
Speaker 1: focus on the harm that new people cause to the will.
Speaker 1: So there's the consent argument that Mia would have mentioned.
Speaker 1: You know, basically, a child that cannot consent to be inborn,
Speaker 1: so by creating them you're forcing them into life. They
Speaker 1: didn't ask for a life that will inevitably include suffering.
Speaker 1: Another argument is in that sort of negative utilityianism camp.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that our moral priority should be reducing suffering,
Speaker 1: not increase in happiness. In fact, they don't see the
Speaker 1: potential or actuality of pleasure as an offset to suffering
Speaker 1: at all. You know, under their view, even a single
Speaker 1: unit of suffering is unacceptable, and since every new life
Speaker 1: will include suffering, not creating life is the surest way
Speaker 1: to reduce it. If Benetta had the famous asymmetry argument,
Speaker 1: which is that the presence of pain is bad, the
Speaker 1: presence of pleasure is good, but the absence of pain
Speaker 1: is always good, even if no one appreciates that good,
Speaker 1: and the absence of pleasure isn't bad unless there's someone
Speaker 1: missing out. So put simply, according to the argument, by
Speaker 1: not having a child, you avoid guaranteed suffering without depriving
Speaker 1: any person of joy because that person doesn't exist. So
Speaker 1: that equation is probably one of the main pillars, i'd
Speaker 1: say of the anti Natilists as a movement. You know,
Speaker 1: you might be thinking to yourself, Oh, but I'm glad
Speaker 1: to be alive.
Speaker 2: No, you're not.
Speaker 1: According to according to Bennetta and the anti Natilists, you're
Speaker 1: deluded to think so. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls
Speaker 1: it the deluded gladness argument. Basically, your positive view of
Speaker 1: your own life is unreliable. But how it argues that
Speaker 1: we have cognitive biases like optimism and selective memory and
Speaker 1: so on, which distort how viciously we assess our own suffering.
Speaker 1: So many good life reports. Even if you think you
Speaker 1: have a good life or a decent life, you're deceiving yourself,
Speaker 1: according to him. Do you think people are deceiving themselves
Speaker 1: when they say that they enjoy their lives?
Speaker 2: You know, this entire line of argument is just making
Speaker 2: me be like, you need to do less philosophy and
Speaker 2: like go outside and live.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like, yeah, I mean, I get the
Speaker 1: whole thing about you know, all mental bias towards optimism
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing, but that doesn't invalidate the
Speaker 1: joy of people appreciating their life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like this. This sounds like the exact script
Speaker 2: you get in your head when you're really depressed. It's like, okay,
Speaker 2: like have you considered getting your depression managed and getting
Speaker 2: help for it instead of like doing philosophy about it.
Speaker 1: I feel like you would be an antenage list. Oh
Speaker 1: you're yeah, like another thing murders well.
Speaker 2: And it's also frustrating because it's like the most compelling
Speaker 2: version of this argument is about like this world right
Speaker 2: now is absolutely dog shit and I can't justify bringing
Speaker 2: someone into it. But that's like too grounded. It's all
Speaker 2: these people are like, no, no, no, no, no, Actually, here's
Speaker 2: like this philosophy that proves that that life bad.
Speaker 1: And it's like, uh, I mean that there are antage
Speaker 1: lists arguments that do get into that more grown dated
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely, no, yeah, thing you know that they
Speaker 1: have one argument about multiplying suffering, right, because every child
Speaker 1: you bring into the wool is in just one boos son.
Speaker 1: You know, they have the potential to hapture themselves and
Speaker 1: grandchildren and so on, multiplying the child answers of pain, disease, loss,
Speaker 1: suffering down the generations.
Speaker 2: It's like this is like long termism shit it's just like,
Speaker 2: instead of like actually analyzing the world, we're going to
Speaker 2: build unbelievably complicated and completely meaningless, like abstract models of
Speaker 2: it and try to base our things off of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's it's totally ridiculous. Now, I understand.
Speaker 1: You know, our Tarck record isn't the best. You know,
Speaker 1: they're their plagues and slavery and genocide, environmental destruction, and
Speaker 1: some of them, see, well that's the best thing. The
Speaker 1: best thing we could do is to voluntarily go extinct,
Speaker 1: you know, to step off the stage of the earth.
Speaker 1: And that connects with the general misanthropy, and I think
Speaker 1: the misanthropic argument that humans are some kind of blight
Speaker 1: on the world. Yeah, and they're anti nelists who take
Speaker 1: it a step further as well, And they're not just
Speaker 1: antilists for humans, they're universal antiseilsts. So they believe that
Speaker 1: not just human births are problematic, but existence itself, sentient
Speaker 1: beings across the board, human or animal are better off
Speaker 1: never being brought into life at all.
Speaker 2: Really, truly, at this point, brother, this is a you problem.
Speaker 3: You just don't like existing, Like, we can work on that,
Speaker 3: but this is not a philosophical think, like you're just depressed, Like,
Speaker 3: come on, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, anthonatialism is making some very heavy claims,
Speaker 1: and they're obviously going to be coming to arguments because
Speaker 1: people are going to roll over with the kind of
Speaker 1: asslutions that it makes. The most intuitive answer I would
Speaker 1: give is that yes, life involves suffering, but it also
Speaker 1: includes pleasure and joy and creativity and achievements, and for
Speaker 1: most people, those positives outweigh the negatives. And if you're
Speaker 1: a radical, you recognize that some of the negatives of
Speaker 1: life are not inevitable. The famines, the wars, the suffering,
Speaker 1: the poverty, it's not inevitable. It's a product of economic
Speaker 1: and political systems that we have the power to change.
Speaker 1: And yes, there will always be suffering. They may always
Speaker 1: be some diseases, there will always be death, right, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that existence is worse than non existence.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to exist. Me. I feel like you're probably
Speaker 1: glad to exist. I'm glad you.
Speaker 2: Exist, yeah, most of the time. Like this this is
Speaker 2: a distinct improvement for positions I have been in. But like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's nice, yes, you know, like even even in the
Speaker 2: middle of like the hell world.
Speaker 1: It's nice. Yeah, and yeah, the biases may skew our perspective,
Speaker 1: but the fact that we overwhelmingly choose life itself is
Speaker 1: a reason too not throw it out.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Whilst people are given the choice do you want to
Speaker 1: live right now? And I mostly people want to say
Speaker 1: they're going to live, you know. Yeah, and yes, we
Speaker 1: don't consent to be in born, but there are other
Speaker 1: things that we don't consent to that we still benefit from.
Speaker 1: You know, in funds, don't consent to be vaccinated, but
Speaker 1: it's it's something that benefits them, you know, we educate
Speaker 1: in funds, we restrain them from danger. We don't ask
Speaker 1: their permission necessarily to do these things, but it's just
Speaker 1: for their well being, for their benefit. And I don't
Speaker 1: think while consent is an important factor in the way
Speaker 1: that we increaters others, I don't think consent is the
Speaker 1: only factor for a framework of determining what is moral
Speaker 1: and immoral. You know, you can't use consent to determine
Speaker 1: whether it's moral or not to exist. I don't feel
Speaker 1: like those two pieces meshed together very well. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and also I think like there are so many
Speaker 2: other things that we didn't consent to, you know, Like
Speaker 2: this is another thing that's talking. It's like we never
Speaker 2: consented to die. On a less metaphysical level, I don't know,
Speaker 2: like I didn't consent to like to live under this state. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where you know they're like doing helicopter raids on apartment
Speaker 2: build things and like dragging naked children screaming away from
Speaker 2: their parents in the middle of the night, like you
Speaker 2: know that. And that's the thing that you can actually
Speaker 2: actively do something about that you didn't consent to, that
Speaker 2: is actively harming you and everyone else around you, versus
Speaker 2: like being born and making that the thing that you're
Speaker 2: doing is like okay, like we didn't get set to
Speaker 2: living or capitalism. We didn't. We didn't consent to colonialism,
Speaker 2: like we didn't ge set to any of the ship
Speaker 2: And that's something you could, you know, make not happen,
Speaker 2: versus you being born, which there is nothing you can
Speaker 2: do to change the fact that you were born. And
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, well, focus the next generation children, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want you want you want to focus on like
Speaker 2: reducing the amount of suffering the next generation will create
Speaker 2: in the world. Have you considered the climate change?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I also think that on a broader level, right,
Speaker 1: I think it's good to be questioned some of the
Speaker 1: intuitions that we may have. You know, even there all
Speaker 1: a deepest moral intuitions, I think it's good to maybe
Speaker 1: consider them or to be thoughtful about them. But also,
Speaker 1: as the Incident Encyclopedia of Philosophy argues, if a theory
Speaker 1: implies that the creation of all human life is a
Speaker 1: moral mistake, that conclusion itself might be reason to doubt
Speaker 1: the theory. This is something called the repugnant conclusion objection,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, because it's repugnant. It's intuitively repugnant
Speaker 1: to most people to hear that existence is a mistake.
Speaker 1: Nobody should be alive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, what, No, absolutely not, get your
Speaker 3: shit worked out exactly.
Speaker 2: Betray the logic here.
Speaker 1: Not great, Like you were saying, Yeah, there'll be a
Speaker 1: lot of things in this in the world that suck
Speaker 1: right now that cause suffering, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: present joy is alongside that present suffering. But there's also
Speaker 1: the value to be had in that potential joy. You know,
Speaker 1: the potential possibilities have value. If potential suffering has value,
Speaker 1: potential joys should also have value, the potential of creating
Speaker 1: a better world, each new child bringing the potential for
Speaker 1: greater love, for incredible arts and crafts, for a scientific breakthrough,
Speaker 1: is for reshaping the world in a positive direction. You know,
Speaker 1: the potential for the unique goods that each individual life
Speaker 1: can bring. I believe justifies the risk of suffering because
Speaker 1: the world without those future goods would be worse than
Speaker 1: a world with them. And yes, humanity can cause harm,
Speaker 1: where we are also capable of extraordinary good we can change,
Speaker 1: we can reduce suffering over time. New generations are going
Speaker 1: to be part of that solution, I will say, though
Speaker 1: two anti nationalists credit. One of the points of the
Speaker 1: Internet and Psychlopedia of Philosophy points out is that the
Speaker 1: debates of what antiinnacialism is theoretical. You know, this is
Speaker 1: stuffy philosophers sitting around exchanging notes and writing books. Right,
Speaker 1: most of its advocates are not actually putting forward policies
Speaker 1: that are restricting people's ability to create life. But the
Speaker 1: same cannot be said for the other side of the coin,
Speaker 1: the pro natalists. Yep. So, in broad terms, pro natalism
Speaker 1: or just natalism, is the belief that reproduction is a
Speaker 1: societal good or even the society needs more children. This
Speaker 1: movement is getting louder and louder these days. It's shaping
Speaker 1: policy debates in the US, in Europe and Asia and beyond, because,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned in the previous episode, fertility rates are
Speaker 1: falling almost everywhere. Countries like South Korea, Italy, Japan, and
Speaker 1: the US are seeing fewer booths than needed to sustain
Speaker 1: their current populations. So you're going to be seeing pronatalism
Speaker 1: in various forms shown up in politics and even in
Speaker 1: tech circles, especially in those ways taxles. Now, prenatalism is
Speaker 1: a broad umbrella. You know, you can have the mild
Speaker 1: the position of supporting families with policies, and most people
Speaker 1: are not opposed to that, But you also have the
Speaker 1: strong pronatalist stands, which is actually urging or incentivizing or
Speaker 1: mandating both for cultural, economic, or ideological reasons. Pronatalism was
Speaker 1: motivated by a few different reasons. You know, there's the
Speaker 1: economic anxiety of a shrink in population meaning fewer workers,
Speaker 1: more retirees, and strained pension systems. There's a nationalistic argument
Speaker 1: of worries about cultural continuity, which tend to titter into
Speaker 1: the reactionary directions, and the pronatalism today is very much
Speaker 1: political as a result. In the US, Republicans have been
Speaker 1: leaning into it, framing the low booth rates as a
Speaker 1: national crime. And in Europe you have countries like Hungary
Speaker 1: under Victor Auburn which have made pronatalism a signature policy.
Speaker 1: It's a very ineffectiveness. The religious motivations of pronatalism are
Speaker 1: also pretty interesting. You know, you have the being fruitful
Speaker 1: and multiply directive in the Bible, which some take as
Speaker 1: far as the quiver full movement, which is the whole
Speaker 1: thing about having children by like the dozen no more.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then you have the tech elite circles pushing pronatalism because
Speaker 1: it connects with the ideas of human progress. One of
Speaker 1: the pronatalists who most famously practices what he preaches mostly
Speaker 1: for worse is he on Musk. Yep, right, he's he's
Speaker 1: a big Nazi about it. For one, because of this
Speaker 1: we'll worry about white facility rates. But he also thinks
Speaker 1: that global rates as a whole or a bigger threat
Speaker 1: than climate change. So I mean it seems like he's
Speaker 1: single handedly trying to fix that with his seed is spreading. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is his assembly line of children with the accompanying product
Speaker 1: barcodes for names, and I just feel bad for them, honestly,
Speaker 1: to have that as a father.
Speaker 2: No, it sucks. Yeah, it's not great. It's not good.
Speaker 1: And so he and his billionaire bodies of the belief
Speaker 1: that civilization will collapse if we don't make more babies,
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley circles are funding pronatalist think tanks and embryo
Speaker 1: optimization projects. A lot of policies are also coming out
Speaker 1: of the pronatalist camp. Unlike the anti natalists. Historically, countries
Speaker 1: like the Soviet Union hand their off medals like Mother
Speaker 1: Heroine for women with large families, and the Russia of
Speaker 1: today has revived similar awards recently, alongside like I mentioned
Speaker 1: in the previous episode, banning anti natalist propaganda. Now some
Speaker 1: countries are offering tax incentives for both and even proposing
Speaker 1: baby bonuses of thousands of dollars is paid for each booth.
Speaker 1: Thousand said dollars per birth is kind of a spit
Speaker 1: in the face because that's not even going to last
Speaker 1: the first couple months of a child being born. Let's
Speaker 1: be real, children are extremely expensive. Yeah, yeah, proniceists also
Speaker 1: tend to push things like expanded family benefits, child allowances,
Speaker 1: or holes and subsidies for parents. These, I would say
Speaker 1: are the more liberal minded or progressive minded pronace lists
Speaker 1: as much as you can be a progressive and a
Speaker 1: proniac list, because they're actually considering the ways that they
Speaker 1: can make actually bearing children and raising children a bit
Speaker 1: easier for the people who have to do it. That
Speaker 1: sort of support also includes things like expanding IVF access,
Speaker 1: subsidized and fertility treatments, you know, improving embryo screening, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Places like Scandinavia also have generous leave policies,
Speaker 1: which are often cited as a model of soft pronetalism
Speaker 1: because it makes it easier for people to balance work
Speaker 1: and child rearing. But he don't tend to hear these
Speaker 1: policies coming out of the much louder pronatalist conservative camp. Right.
Speaker 1: What you get from them and from their pronatalism tends
Speaker 1: to be restrictions and women restrictions and abortion and body
Speaker 1: autonomy policies that conflict with the goals of reproductive justice
Speaker 1: and gender equality, sometimes putting women's health at risk. And
Speaker 1: also conservatives push lots of narrative with their pernatalism, large
Speaker 1: families sense of valorise. They frame childbearing as a civic duty.
Speaker 1: You know, they appeal to legacy and culture and identity.
Speaker 1: When you get into that white supremacist camp, and you
Speaker 1: also get the whole eugenics of it, you know, the
Speaker 1: tech elite prenatalist wing. They're pushing for things like gene editing,
Speaker 1: embryo selection, and the sort of stuff that Musk is
Speaker 1: talking about with his racial replacement anxieties. In any case,
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of even the few positive policies has been
Speaker 1: pretty mixed. Countries have tried pumping billions into subsidies, and
Speaker 1: often fertility rates have barely budged deep structural issues like
Speaker 1: the cost of living, cultural norms around gender, career paths,
Speaker 1: health concerns. All these often we the incentives of a
Speaker 1: couple of thousand dollars or extended opportunity leaves. You know,
Speaker 1: if people don't want to have babies, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: have babies. If they're not confidence in their ability to
Speaker 1: have children raise an environment that they feel is best
Speaker 1: for them, they're not gonna have children. You know, people,
Speaker 1: more than ever have that choice, and unfortunately a lot
Speaker 1: of the pronacialist policies don't care about making child bearing easier,
Speaker 1: you know, easing the path to make that choice. They
Speaker 1: just want to pressure people to have children. Yep, you know,
Speaker 1: they loose right back to misogyny, a reaction against women's freedom,
Speaker 1: pushing them back into the kitchen, pushing them back into
Speaker 1: that Subsivian position in society. So I have to look
Speaker 1: at both sides, right, you have the anti natalists and
Speaker 1: the pronatalists. Don't create life to avoid suffering, or you
Speaker 1: must create life to preserve society. I guess you could
Speaker 1: call me a centrist. The anti natalists repulse me, and
Speaker 1: the pronatalists equally repulse me. You know, I'm wary of
Speaker 1: anyone claiming that you must have children or you must
Speaker 1: not have children. I'm weary of a world where these
Speaker 1: kinds of choices are couced by others. You know, As
Speaker 1: an anarchist, I'm a firm believer in autonomy, in personal
Speaker 1: freedom and the ability to decide one's own life. That's
Speaker 1: what matters to me. You know, I don't intend to
Speaker 1: have children myself. I do like children a lot. I
Speaker 1: was once a child myself, and I look forward to
Speaker 1: being an uncle. A godfather and all that, but that's
Speaker 1: my choice. You don't let your choice be your choice
Speaker 1: and my choice be my choice. Make choices freely, resist
Speaker 1: the pressure for me the camp and keep the agency intact.
Speaker 1: That's all I have to say on it.
Speaker 2: Honestly, Yeah, I mean honestly. That covers that stuff I
Speaker 2: was gonna say so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean with that, if be can wrap it, yeah,
Speaker 1: all the poets, all the people this has been, It
Speaker 1: could happen.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.