Jan 16, 2016 03:34 AM
(Jan 15, 2016 11:12 PM)elte Wrote: Reminds me of the efilism and antinatalism philosophies, which as alternatives to there miraculously being a benevolent deity, are the next in line positions that I settle upon. They observe the world as one of unimaginable pain, as countless animals, including humans, inflict suffering upon thinking animals, again including humans: predator and prey. Unfortunately, those philosophies could use better spokesmen since profanity tends to be too common.
I don't know about non-reproducing the human race away into extinction, but we truly don't need more than half a billion people (if even that amount needs to be burdening the planet).
David Benatar: “It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.”
Marilynne Robinson: “Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting... By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it.”
Arthur Schopenhauer: “If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
Gustave Flaubert: “The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.”
Gustave Flaubert: “He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that’s for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I’ll be bound – you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?”
