Natalism feat. Andrew

few people. But the question of making people or not making them has been the subject of a few ideological classes. There's a whole movement of thinkers who argue that in new life into the world is a big mistake. These are the anti natilists. On the other side, you have those who say that having children is good and essential. That's the proneat to list cap. So in this episode will be getting into that tug of war philosophically and

weighing the issues with both. Because I'm not going to make it a secret, I'm not a fan of either of them. I don't know, how do you feel about.

very reddit. But you know, it's something that has been around since before the Internet. While not himself an anti natalist, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who lived in the nineteenth century, is taught by some anti natalists as a contributor to their philosophical foundations. In his description of life as constant, striving frustration and pain. In the twentieth century, the Romanian writer Emil Choran argued that non existence is the ultimate

form of peace. His philosophical pessimism regarded individual life and human history as a whole as a record of error, illusion, and futility. And most famously, South African philosopher David Bennetta laid out one of the main anti neatilist arguments in his book Better Never to Have been the harm of

coming into existence. It's a bang aside, though. Now you can find theoretical contributions to anti natilists thought in Buddhism's idea that life is suffering, or incidant interpretations of it rather or incident gnostic traditions that saw the material willed itself as a kind of cosmic mistake. Now, there are a lot of reasons that anti natialists put forward for

their stance. There are philanthropic misanthropic arguments an planutialism. You know, the philanthropic ones focus on harm to the individual who is brought into existence, while the misanthropic arguments tend to focus on the harm that new people cause to the will. So there's the consent argument that Mia would have mentioned. You know, basically, a child that cannot consent to be inborn,

so by creating them you're forcing them into life. They didn't ask for a life that will inevitably include suffering. Another argument is in that sort of negative utilityianism camp. It's the idea that our moral priority should be reducing suffering, not increase in happiness. In fact, they don't see the potential or actuality of pleasure as an offset to suffering

at all. You know, under their view, even a single unit of suffering is unacceptable, and since every new life will include suffering, not creating life is the surest way to reduce it. If Benetta had the famous asymmetry argument, which is that the presence of pain is bad, the presence of pleasure is good, but the absence of pain is always good, even if no one appreciates that good, and the absence of pleasure isn't bad unless there's someone

missing out. So put simply, according to the argument, by not having a child, you avoid guaranteed suffering without depriving any person of joy because that person doesn't exist. So that equation is probably one of the main pillars, i'd say of the anti Natilists as a movement. You know, you might be thinking to yourself, Oh, but I'm glad to be alive.

according to him. Do you think people are deceiving themselves when they say that they enjoy their lives?

on the world. Yeah, and they're anti nelists who take it a step further as well, And they're not just antilists for humans, they're universal antiseilsts. So they believe that not just human births are problematic, but existence itself, sentient beings across the board, human or animal are better off never being brought into life at all.

life are not inevitable. The famines, the wars, the suffering, the poverty, it's not inevitable. It's a product of economic and political systems that we have the power to change. And yes, there will always be suffering. They may always be some diseases, there will always be death, right, but that doesn't mean that existence is worse than non existence. I'm glad to exist. Me. I feel like you're probably glad to exist. I'm glad you.

for their well being, for their benefit. And I don't think while consent is an important factor in the way that we increaters others, I don't think consent is the only factor for a framework of determining what is moral and immoral. You know, you can't use consent to determine whether it's moral or not to exist. I don't feel like those two pieces meshed together very well. Yeah.

know that. And that's the thing that you can actually actively do something about that you didn't consent to, that is actively harming you and everyone else around you, versus like being born and making that the thing that you're doing is like okay, like we didn't get set to living or capitalism. We didn't. We didn't consent to colonialism, like we didn't ge set to any of the ship And that's something you could, you know, make not happen, versus you being born, which there is nothing you can

do to change the fact that you were born. And it's like, oh, well, focus the next generation children, Yeah, you want you want you want to focus on like reducing the amount of suffering the next generation will create in the world. Have you considered the climate change?

the theory. This is something called the repugnant conclusion objection, you know, I mean, because it's repugnant. It's intuitively repugnant to most people to hear that existence is a mistake. Nobody should be alive.

the potential possibilities have value. If potential suffering has value, potential joys should also have value, the potential of creating a better world, each new child bringing the potential for greater love, for incredible arts and crafts, for a scientific breakthrough, is for reshaping the world in a positive direction. You know, the potential for the unique goods that each individual life

can bring. I believe justifies the risk of suffering because the world without those future goods would be worse than a world with them. And yes, humanity can cause harm, where we are also capable of extraordinary good we can change, we can reduce suffering over time. New generations are going to be part of that solution, I will say, though two anti nationalists credit. One of the points of the Internet and Psychlopedia of Philosophy points out is that the

debates of what antiinnacialism is theoretical. You know, this is stuffy philosophers sitting around exchanging notes and writing books. Right, most of its advocates are not actually putting forward policies that are restricting people's ability to create life. But the same cannot be said for the other side of the coin, the pro natalists. Yep. So, in broad terms, pro natalism or just natalism, is the belief that reproduction is a societal good or even the society needs more children. This

movement is getting louder and louder these days. It's shaping policy debates in the US, in Europe and Asia and beyond, because, as I mentioned in the previous episode, fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. Countries like South Korea, Italy, Japan, and the US are seeing fewer booths than needed to sustain their current populations. So you're going to be seeing pronatalism in various forms shown up in politics and even in tech circles, especially in those ways taxles. Now, prenatalism is

a broad umbrella. You know, you can have the mild the position of supporting families with policies, and most people are not opposed to that, But you also have the strong pronatalist stands, which is actually urging or incentivizing or mandating both for cultural, economic, or ideological reasons. Pronatalism was motivated by a few different reasons. You know, there's the economic anxiety of a shrink in population meaning fewer workers,

more retirees, and strained pension systems. There's a nationalistic argument of worries about cultural continuity, which tend to titter into the reactionary directions, and the pronatalism today is very much political as a result. In the US, Republicans have been leaning into it, framing the low booth rates as a national crime. And in Europe you have countries like Hungary under Victor Auburn which have made pronatalism a signature policy.

It's a very ineffectiveness. The religious motivations of pronatalism are also pretty interesting. You know, you have the being fruitful and multiply directive in the Bible, which some take as far as the quiver full movement, which is the whole thing about having children by like the dozen no more.

single handedly trying to fix that with his seed is spreading. Yeah, is his assembly line of children with the accompanying product barcodes for names, and I just feel bad for them, honestly, to have that as a father.

of the pronatalist camp. Unlike the anti natalists. Historically, countries like the Soviet Union hand their off medals like Mother Heroine for women with large families, and the Russia of today has revived similar awards recently, alongside like I mentioned in the previous episode, banning anti natalist propaganda. Now some countries are offering tax incentives for both and even proposing baby bonuses of thousands of dollars is paid for each booth.

Thousand said dollars per birth is kind of a spit in the face because that's not even going to last the first couple months of a child being born. Let's be real, children are extremely expensive. Yeah, yeah, proniceists also tend to push things like expanded family benefits, child allowances,

or holes and subsidies for parents. These, I would say are the more liberal minded or progressive minded pronace lists as much as you can be a progressive and a proniac list, because they're actually considering the ways that they can make actually bearing children and raising children a bit easier for the people who have to do it. That sort of support also includes things like expanding IVF access, subsidized and fertility treatments, you know, improving embryo screening, that

sort of thing. Places like Scandinavia also have generous leave policies, which are often cited as a model of soft pronetalism because it makes it easier for people to balance work and child rearing. But he don't tend to hear these policies coming out of the much louder pronatalist conservative camp. Right. What you get from them and from their pronatalism tends to be restrictions and women restrictions and abortion and body autonomy policies that conflict with the goals of reproductive justice

and gender equality, sometimes putting women's health at risk. And also conservatives push lots of narrative with their pernatalism, large families sense of valorise. They frame childbearing as a civic duty. You know, they appeal to legacy and culture and identity. When you get into that white supremacist camp, and you also get the whole eugenics of it, you know, the tech elite prenatalist wing. They're pushing for things like gene editing, embryo selection, and the sort of stuff that Musk is

talking about with his racial replacement anxieties. In any case, the effectiveness of even the few positive policies has been pretty mixed. Countries have tried pumping billions into subsidies, and often fertility rates have barely budged deep structural issues like the cost of living, cultural norms around gender, career paths, health concerns. All these often we the incentives of a

couple of thousand dollars or extended opportunity leaves. You know, if people don't want to have babies, they're not gonna have babies. If they're not confidence in their ability to have children raise an environment that they feel is best for them, they're not gonna have children. You know, people, more than ever have that choice, and unfortunately a lot of the pronacialist policies don't care about making child bearing easier, you know, easing the path to make that choice. They

just want to pressure people to have children. Yep, you know, they loose right back to misogyny, a reaction against women's freedom, pushing them back into the kitchen, pushing them back into that Subsivian position in society. So I have to look at both sides, right, you have the anti natalists and the pronatalists. Don't create life to avoid suffering, or you must create life to preserve society. I guess you could call me a centrist. The anti natalists repulse me, and

the pronatalists equally repulse me. You know, I'm wary of anyone claiming that you must have children or you must not have children. I'm weary of a world where these kinds of choices are couced by others. You know, As an anarchist, I'm a firm believer in autonomy, in personal freedom and the ability to decide one's own life. That's what matters to me. You know, I don't intend to have children myself. I do like children a lot. I was once a child myself, and I look forward to

being an uncle. A godfather and all that, but that's my choice. You don't let your choice be your choice and my choice be my choice. Make choices freely, resist the pressure for me the camp and keep the agency intact. That's all I have to say on it.