Life, what is it good for?

[Nearly Sane]

I read this and thought of our own dear Keith Maitland. I do find the whole anti natalist approach based on a strangely objective claim about how other people feel. There's a weird little idea that there is a truth being accessed by those who want to tell you how sad you should be, as if that isn't obviously subjective.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-case-for-not-being-born

[floo]

KM would most likely see it that guy's way.

[Udayana]

If one feels that way, don't have children. Why bother trying to persuade others to follow the same path?

Of-course, by the time you feel like that, it may well be too late.

[Shaker]

KM would most likely see it that guy's way.

He definitely does so - Keith mentioned reading Benatar's book Better Never to Have Been a long time ago. I read it several years ago; well written and extremely well argued - not that I needed convincing anyway.

[Shaker]

If one feels that way, don't have children. Why bother trying to persuade others to follow the same path?

Because of the harm involved: to the subjects (the children/adults) themselves and to the environment - and other sentient creatures - by uncontrolled and relentless breeding.

[torridon]

I wonder if this provides one unsettling solution to the Fermi paradox (why is there seemingly noone else out there ?).  Maybe sentience is good, up to a point, cows in clover, say, but perhaps there is an upper limit beyond which awareness and sentience becomes more of an intolerable burden than something enjoyed.  Maybe that border line comes before a species achieves interstellar technology and they choose to stop further progress or self-eliminate on grounds of compassion and reason.

cheery thought 

[Shaker]

Cheery or not cheery is irrelevant - it's interesting.

[Rhiannon]

If one feels that way, don't have children. Why bother trying to persuade others to follow the same path?

Of-course, by the time you feel like that, it may well be too late.

Having children wasn’t a choice fir me. Having them terminated was an option. Maybe some would advocate that as the path of less suffering. ‘Your kids would be better off dead’. Nice.

[Rhiannon]

I read this and thought of our own dear Keith Maitland. I do find the whole anti natalist approach based on a strangely objective claim about how other people feel. There's a weird little idea that there is a truth being accessed by those who want to tell you how sad you should be, as if that isn't obviously subjective.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-case-for-not-being-born

Yes, the one thing I have objected to all my life is being told his yo tjonk. Thus isn’t the presentation of an interesting idea, it is simply someone explaining to the little people how shit their lives are.

[Shaker]

Yes, the one thing I have objected to all my life is being told his yo tjonk. Thus isn’t the presentation of an interesting idea, it is simply someone explaining to the little people how shit their lives are.

That makes it sound as though "telling the little people how shit their lives are" comes from a bigger person who doesn't think his own life is also shit in pretty much exactly the same sort of ways. This is nonsense.

[jeremyp]

Why bother trying to persuade others to follow the same path?

Because there are too many people on the planet already.

There's a real conflict here because we live on a planet with finite resources and the future would be a lot easier with fewer people.

But

individual societies need a continuous stream of new people to remain healthy. There's the practical point that you need young people to generate the wealth needed to support the old people who are no longer able to work. Also new people invigorate societies by bringing new ideas and ways of thinking. My life is better in tangible ways because of all the younger people coming up with new ideas, inventing new things, making new art.

The planet would be better off if fewer (ideally no) people were having children, but we, as individuals, would be worse off.

[Rhiannon]

That makes it sound as though "telling the little people how shit their lives are" comes from a bigger person who doesn't think his own life is also shit in pretty much exactly the same sort of ways. This is nonsense.

No. He is coming from the position of enlightenment as to how shit it all is. He just wants us all to realise the same as he does.

[Shaker]

No. He is coming from the position of enlightenment as to how shit it all is. He just wants us all to realise the same as he does.

Not exactly unusual when you write a book, apparently.

Since he's a professional philosopher though it's not unusual to expect him to have thought deeper, longer and more clearly - better in all ways generally - than the average run of people. If that wasn't the case we wouldn't have professional philosophers or indeed expertise in anything at all. And the point that Benatar isn't pronouncing from on high but making a case that all lives - his included - are pretty much shit in the same few general ways remains.

There's nothing new in this: in essence it's the foundation of Buddhism.

[Udayana]

Because of the harm involved: to the subjects (the children/adults) themselves and to the environment - and other sentient creatures - by uncontrolled and relentless breeding.

Noting NS's objection re. objective/subjective claims, Benatar is equating all life with meaningless suffering, or at least that is how I am reading him. ie. it's not only his own life that is unwanted, but everyones. And if existence is pointless for humans then surely it is also pointless for animals, plants and everything else too? It is a kind of solipsism.

Alternatively, if existence is meaningful for one entity, then surely it is meaningful for the rest of us - as we constitute some part of the universe in which it exists?
 

[Rhiannon]

Not exactly unusual when you write a book, apparently.

Since he's a professional philosopher though it's not unusual to expect him to have thought deeper, longer and more clearly - better in all ways generally - than the average run of people. If that wasn't the case we wouldn't have professional philosophers or indeed expertise in anything at all. And the point that Benatar isn't pronouncing from on high but making a case that all lives - his included - are pretty much shit in the same few general ways remains.

There's nothing new in this: in essence it's the foundation of Buddhism.

Except he hasn’t moved beyond the first of the Nobke Truths. Buddhists aren’t known for being miserable. It’s like this guy hasn’t done the work. He’s stuck at the start.

Of course what is interesting is the Buddhists very often don’t tell people want to think. They provide waymarkers.

[Udayana]

I wonder if this provides one unsettling solution to the Fermi paradox (why is there seemingly noone else out there ?).  Maybe sentience is good, up to a point, cows in clover, say, but perhaps there is an upper limit beyond which awareness and sentience becomes more of an intolerable burden than something enjoyed.  Maybe that border line comes before a species achieves interstellar technology and they choose to stop further progress or self-eliminate on grounds of compassion and reason.

cheery thought 

Actually, on the cheery scale, that thought is about middling. My expectation is that the actual situation is far, far worse

[Udayana]

Except he hasn’t moved beyond the first of the Nobke Truths. Buddhists aren’t known for being miserable. It’s like this guy hasn’t done the work. He’s stuck at the start.

Of course what is interesting is the Buddhists very often don’t tell people want to think. They provide waymarkers.

Exactly ... he has barely scratched the surface.

[Rhiannon]

Noting NS's objection re. objective/subjective claims, Benatar is equating all life with meaningless suffering, or at least that is how I am reading him. ie. it's not only his own life that is unwanted, but everyones. And if existence is pointless for humans then surely it is also pointless for animals, plants and everything else too? It is a kind of solipsism.

Alternatively, if existence is meaningful for one entity, then surely it is meaningful for the rest of us - as we constitute some part of the universe in which it exists?

Yes, this is my problem with it too. Anyone if free to judge that their own life is meaningless and unwanted with no objection from me. But I fought tooth and nail to get a meaningful life and I continue to fight, because I find it worthwhile. That others find my existence pointless really doesn’t bother me. I carve out my own meaning.

[Shaker]

Benatar does touch on Buddhism briefly in his book; his argument is very densely constructed and too complex for me to go into here (it's a great book but often hard going) but a quick and dirty version would be that the Buddhists are (a) wrong insofar as their prescription for the end of suffering (i.e. eliminating attachment) is wrong and (b) are performing a sort of wilful self-deception or self-delusion in thinking that this is possible or desirable.

[Shaker]

Noting NS's objection re. objective/subjective claims

I don't think that this really stands up. Suffering is certainly subjective in the sense that it's relative: by temperament what one person may shrug off may have another person throwing a rope over the rafters. Like Buddhism however Benatar argues that unless you "get out early while you can" (Larkin) everybody without exception is going to face/experience suffering (of all kinds) from illness, aging and death, even though one's own death itself causes suffering only in prospect. He considers this suffering to be sufficiently bad that it is immoral to compel a subject to undergo it.

Benatar is equating all life with meaningless suffering, or at least that is how I am reading him. ie. it's not only his own life that is unwanted, but everyones. And if existence is pointless for humans then surely it is also pointless for animals, plants and everything else too?

Except that for these the issue of a point to life doesn't even arise, not even (as far as we know) in the other primates. It's a uniquely human attribute, so far anyway. Only one primate definitely has its withers wrung by the idea of a point or meaning to existence.

It is a kind of solipsism.

Wrong -ism, I think. It's not so much solipsism as absurdism. Or cosmicism.

Alternatively, if existence is meaningful for one entity, then surely it is meaningful for the rest of us - as we constitute some part of the universe in which it exists?

That sounds very much like the fallacy of composition to me.

[Rhiannon]

Of course reality is illusory - even the perception that those that do not wish they had never been born are self deceiving is. But it’s also false to believe that those who seize life do so because they are ignorant. We know it hurts, to love, to be happy, we know it. But we take the view that the payoff is worth it. Life sucks, we suffer, we get it, but there’s those moments when your kid tells you they love you for the first time, or you lose yourself in another human being, just for a moment, and the exquisiteness of it melts the pain.

[Shaker]

Possibly the most original part of Benatar's thought is that those "just for a moment"s are too slender a thing to hang an existence upon, because most people practice a sort of distraction technique/self-deception as to how much suffering their lives contain. In short, there's an asymmetry between pleasure and pain: pleasure is less pleasurable than pain is painful. He deals with this in Chapter 2 of BNtHB which is in many ways the nub of the book, but relies heavily on diagrams I can't reproduce here.

[Rhiannon]

Possibly the most original part of Benatar's thought is that those "just for a moment"s are too slender a thing to hang an existence upon, because most people practice a sort of distraction technique/self-deception as to how much suffering their lives contain. In short, there's an asymmetry between pleasure and pain: pleasure is less pleasurable than pain is painful. He deals with this in Chapter 2 of BNtHB which is in many ways the nub of the book, but relies heavily on diagrams I can't reproduce here.

Again, maybe it is a deception, but even with the use of sciencey graphs and things it is subjective because we are dealing with feelings and thoughts. But you are ignoring the point that moments of happiness - which nobody sensible will argue is our default setting - are worth the bad times, even if bad times are the norm.

Maybe it’s a choice that we make on some level, to make life our own according to whatever we value. A bit like Christmas.

[Shaker]

Again, maybe it is a deception, but even with the use of sciencey graphs and things it is subjective because we are dealing with feelings and thoughts. But you are ignoring the point that moments of happiness - which nobody sensible will argue is our default setting - are worth the bad times, even if bad times are the norm.

Benatar's whole point in the book is that they're not, though, due to the asymmetry between pleasure and pain. The good isn't as good as the bad is bad. Life is ruled by Sod's Law, basically.

Maybe it’s a choice that we make on some level, to make life our own according to whatever we value. A bit like Christmas.

Because it's been several years since I read the book I don't know if Benatar regards any of what we feel as a choice - that would seem to be invoking the kind of libertarian free will that Alan Burns for example is always going on about.

[Rhiannon]

Benatar's whole point in the book is that they're not, though, due to the asymmetry between pleasure and pain. The good isn't as good as the bad is bad. Life is ruled by Sod's Law, basically.
Because it's been several years since I read the book I don't know if Benatar regards any of what we feel as a choice - that would seem to be invoking the kind of libertarian free will that Alan Burns for example is always going on about.

But people do see the good as better than the bad, even if though the bad is our ‘normal’. How can Benatar be sure that is self deception? It’s just that person’s subjective reality, as unknowable as Benetar’s own.

Yesterday on the Xmas thread you described at length how you chose to make Xmas special even though your experiences of it were painful. Why doesn’t that translate to everyday life?