Anti-Natalism - A solution for ending materialistic human suffering

[zurew]

36 minutes ago, zazen said:

The issue is less of their worldview being bad or good and more about it being untrue. It essentially boils down to a materialist vs anti-materialist debate because its from that premises that follows all the assumptions and views being made. That's the foundation. Doesn't actualized.org and Leo etc already cover how the materialist worldview is untrue? Like that thread where someone shared Bernardo Kastrup and Alex O'Connor discussing materialism and idealism on the philosophy sub-forum.

Im not tracking how being an idealist would be relevant or how it would solve any of this.

Idealism doesnt presuppose moral realism and you can have any set of moral intutions as an idealist.

Do you think moral-antirealism is incompatible with idealism?

 

Also not sure what is meant by the view not being true. I understand that when it comes to metaphysics, but when it comes to moral realism I have no clue what kind of norm is invoked.

 

Or I could ask it this way: What do you think the error is in a person's position who is an idealist and an anti-natalist at  the same time?

Edited November 6 by zurew

[zazen]

6 hours ago, zurew said:

Im not tracking how being an idealist would be relevant or how it would solve any of this.

Idealism doesnt presuppose moral realism and you can have any set of moral intutions as an idealist.

Do you think moral-antirealism is incompatible with idealism?

 

Also not sure what is meant by the view not being true. I understand that when it comes to metaphysics, but when it comes to moral realism I have no clue what kind of norm is invoked.

 

Or I could ask it this way: What do you think the error is in a person's position who is an idealist and an anti-natalist at  the same time?

Not sure if you were also asking whether anti-realist views can exist within an idealist world? In which case yes, but belief being able to exist is different from it being true. Subjective anti-natalist views can exist within existence but that doesn’t make their universal claims about existence true. Just like someone can believe in Santa, without it being true.

As for idealism (non-materialist worldview) and anti-natalism being incompatible or not - they just don’t resonate with each other at the ontological level of how they view existence. Anti-natalism assumes creation as causation - that you can “bring a being into existence” who previously wasn’t. That idea only makes sense in materialism, where matter precedes consciousness.

But in idealism, consciousness is fundamental and eternal. No one “creates” a conscious being - consciousness already is and simply manifests through different forms. There’s no non-being to violate or new entity to “impose” existence upon.

So the antinatalist’s moral claim - “it’s wrong to force life into being” - loses its metaphysical ground. From idealisms pov it’s like saying the ocean is morally wrong for making waves

That’s why I said it’s not about their worldview being bad as much as it is about being untrue - unless seen from a purely materialist paradigm. But it doesn’t reflect how reality operates in an idealist paradigm. Their ethics depend on the metaphysics of materialism - which see’s a world of separate agents manufacturing life as if in a factory. Once the premise changes, the conclusion evaporates with it.

In other words: the idealist paradigm (that conciousness is primary) is at odds with the materialist paradigm on which anti-natalism depends. The foundational premise from which all assumptions are made is materialist. If the paradigm is widened to include a spiritual metaphysics then the old one is no longer coherent. The premise changes, and along with it the assumptions and the conclusions. The conclusion of the material paradigm is that life is a non-consensually imposed net negative on a new life - therefore anti-natalism makes the correct conclusion that life is best not perpetuated.

[zurew]

34 minutes ago, zazen said:

But in idealism, consciousness is fundamental and eternal. No one “creates” a conscious being - consciousness already is and simply manifests through different forms. There’s no non-being to violate or new entity to “impose” existence upon.

I think now I kind of track what you meant by it being false. You didnt try to make a case for moral realism, you simply said that if idealism is true, then certain moral claims become false (on descriptive grounds) just given the nature of the world.  So if a claim relies on X and there is no X, then the claim is false.

But I dont think thats the case, and here is why: there is an equivocation on consciousness there. Everything is consciousness, but not every single thing is conscious/sentient (unless you are a panpsychist).

 

And as a side note: You can be a physicalist and believe that the Universe is eternal (it doesnt have a beginning)

Edited November 6 by zurew

[Twentyfirst]

Babies come from sex and you can't stop people from having sex. Best to regulate it and produce good families. People from good families don't even think about anti natalism. It's always people from messed up backgrounds now they automatically think that family = suffering 

[zazen]

17 hours ago, zurew said:

you simply said that if idealism is true, then certain moral claims become false (on descriptive grounds) just given the nature of the world.  So if a claim relies on X and there is no X, then the claim is false.

But I dont think thats the case, and here is why: there is an equivocation on consciousness there. Everything is consciousness, but not every single thing is conscious/sentient (unless you are a panpsychist).

True, it's not that their equivalent but that they are on a continuum. Their different degrees of the same phenomenon - different in degree but not in kind.  I think the best word to describe it is that there is distinction within consciousness, but not separateness. Consciousness and sentience are distinct but not separate. Sentience is in and of consciousness just like a wave is in and of the ocean  - the wave is in the domain of and of the same substance as the ocean.

From that view, sentience is never added or imported into consciousness as something separate. And if nothing new is being added from outside, then anti-natalism has no foundation - because anti-natalism requires separateness, and idealism denies separateness. That idea of separateness only works within a materialist paradigm. Idealism acknowledges distinction but not separateness. Materialism acknowledges everything as separate to each other - different materials coming together to be configured. In this case humans are made as if on a factory assembly line being configured like Lego.

The logic follows that if separateness is the case, then anti-natalists can argue something was added to reality (rather than emerging from it) - a new ''sentient being'' ie baby. Then they can make an argument against adding that new consciousness that will suffer and that didn't consent to that suffering. Anti-natalism hinges on that gap and separation existing - which idealism dissolves because it claims consciousness as a continuity. In idealism or a non-materialist worldview - everything only ever comes out of consciousness, rather than gets added and thrown in from somewhere else outside it.

If consciousness is primary and fundamental then birth isn't creation of a new consciousness but a transformation of existing consciousness. In that paradigm nothing new (a sentient being) is being brought into reality from the outside, but is emerging out of consciousness itself. Concioussness is just individualising or localising itself into a particular form, like the ocean forming a wave.

In the same way then - sentience is just consciousness configuring itself to such a degree as to become sentient and ultimately aware of itself.  Ice, water and steam are all water in kind, though they differ in form. There’s no clean break or gap between consciousness and sentience in which we can say that something new was added to consciousness from the outside - there was no addition to consciousness only transformation.

 

Again using the ocean/wave analogy:

Materialist view: Each wave is a NEW entity that gets ADDED to the ocean. Before the wave, there was just ocean. After the wave, there's ocean PLUS wave.

Idealist view: The wave IS ocean. It's not added TO the ocean, it arises FROM the ocean. It's ocean expressing itself in wave form. No addition occurred - just transformation.

Your trying to have it both ways which mixes a materialist ontology with a idealist one which then causes some incoherence - "everything is ocean (consciousness is primary)'' but waves are genuinely new separate things that get added (sentient beings emerge as new entities)" or ''everything is consciousness, BUT new sentient beings emerge as genuinely new separate entities that can then be morally wronged."

But if everything is ocean, waves aren't separate entities - they're temporary forms the ocean takes.We (sentient beings) don't arrive from somewhere else into this universe/consciousness. We arise out of it - like apples on a apple tree. The apple tree doesn't "create" the apple as something separate from itself. The apple IS the tree, expressing itself in fruit form.

Similarly, parents don't "create" consciousness as something separate. The child IS consciousness, expressing itself in human form. Humans can decide to participate in that impulse or not. Creation is happening within consciousness and emerges - but creation isn't happening externally and then getting added to consciousness or reality as something separate.

Edited November 7 by zazen
Making it make sense in less words but hard lol

[zurew]

On 2025. 11. 07. at 3:24 PM, zazen said:

and if nothing new is being added from outside, then anti-natalism has no foundation

I dont think this is true.

We are talking about certain "emergent" properties and the issue about them won't go away, just because give an explanation why and how they emerged.

Whether the explanation is a different configuration of the same thing or its about an ontologically different thing doesnt matter in this case, what matters is your contribution to it.

On 2025. 11. 07. at 3:24 PM, zazen said:

Idealist view: The wave IS ocean. It's not added TO the ocean, it arises FROM the ocean. It's ocean expressing itself in wave form. No addition occurred - just transformation.

You can define it this way (I personally wouldnt,  but we can sidestep that and I will try to engage with how you defined things), but again this just pushes the issue down one more layer.

You are making the problem about transformation now and as long as you contribute to that transformation, the issue about ethics (under anti-natalism) will still remain.

Using your analogy it would be like creating ice from water (and creating the "emergent" property of the water being frozen) and then pretending that just because its fundamentally still the same thing, that "emergent" property is now not an issue somehow.

Edited November 9 by zurew

[Oppositionless]

You think you wouldn't suffer if you weren't born as a human ? For all you know you would incarnate as something worse if not human .

[Enigma777]

On 2025-10-31 at 9:50 AM, bringa said:

 

In the material realm, Anti-Natalism is the solution to end all human suffering. Some people tend to straw man it by saying that I'm talking about genocide or I should kill myself; the answer a straight BIG NO. 

It's about stopping procreation. Don't procreate. End of story.

 

You are possessed by the devil.

[BlueOak]

As i've mentioned before, I've watched some of Inmendham who is probably the most depressed atheist around.
https://www.efilism.com/  Again a warning, don't go there if you are depressed, as he certainly is.

This is a more extreme own-brand of natalism. His science series on things like there being only one force in the universe might even be worth a look, it was a different perspective. (Draft science at the bottom)

But for me, its depression talking. It comes from the view that we inflict a great deal more suffering as a species. But it requires everything be measured in value judgments (including life itself), and that suffering itself have less value in that person's mind than in reality it has. It requires the person to want there to be an end goal to it all, or a scale to weight it on, when there is none, other than experience itself.

Does anti-natalism or efilism still make sense when value judgments are removed?

If survival is the highest priority of a species. No it doesn't. Because it'd be dead.
But, the birth rate certainly needs to be lower for our species to continue having a reasonable quality of life, or space colonisation to happen as quickly as possible.

For me suffering drives a lot of life's growth and development. Its like the moment you become conscious of the suffering you were experiencing was in fact your own creation; those kinds of moments, the exact time it happens as a situation is unfolding, are awareness jumps where you experience considerable growth in perception. I'd like to know why they take as long as they do sometimes but hey ho. 

 

On 01/11/2025 at 10:45 PM, Basman said:

No one is really upset that they where born. Those rare exceptions who wish they weren't born have more so an issue with the extreme suffering that they might be experiencing rather than existing in of itself. 

 I've described the level of depression I felt to be the equivalent of a constant broken rib (only as a full-bodied sensation) and I wasn't the worst off out there. I use that analogy, as I've had the pain of a broken rib. There were days when it was considerably worse. - Its not as rare in moments as you make out.

On 06/11/2025 at 2:37 PM, zazen said:

On some level most people feel it to be off. Anti-natalism is moral intuition that’s right but incompletely applied to life because its stripped of a larger metaphysical context within which to make sense of suffering. Whether people can articulate it or not - the same thing in people that responds to art, love and beauty is the same thing that rejects anti-natalisms universal claims about life being net negative. Anti-natalists themselves are living proof of the thing they condemn. They are a life passionately arguing that life shouldn't continue to exist through natalism - while demonstrating through that very passion that life finds meaning, purpose, and value in its own expression

 

Very well put. Almost poetic.

I would caution, however, in using the language 'value' as that in itself is where the problem lies. Diminishing everything to a value judgment.

Life doesn't sit there with scales weighing itself for example. And while a person can choose to not have a kid because they believe the patterns they experienced were too painful - I in part did this knowing those patterns were still part of me, and thus would become part of the child - its impossible to make that decision for anyone else. So someone making an ideology around this very personal choice is flawed.

[zazen]

On 11/9/2025 at 9:38 AM, zurew said:

We are talking about certain "emergent" properties and the issue about them won't go away, just because give an explanation why and how they emerged.

Whether the explanation is a different configuration of the same thing or its about an ontologically different thing doesnt matter in this case, what matters is your contribution to it.

On 11/9/2025 at 9:38 AM, zurew said:

You are making the problem about transformation now and as long as you contribute to that transformation, the issue about ethics (under anti-natalism) will still remain.

Using your analogy it would be like creating ice from water (and creating the "emergent" property of the water being frozen) and then pretending that just because its fundamentally still the same thing, that "emergent" property is now not an issue somehow

Of course - the problem isn't about emergence itself, its whether its responsible or not to participate in it given a individuals circumstance - its local, situational, particular, case by case. But anti-natalism isn't claiming that - its making a universal claim about life itself or the emergence of it being wrong regardless of any particular situation. Or does it not?

Is anti-natalism saying ''for some people in poor circumstances it would be wrong for THEM to participate'' or is it saying ''it's always wrong for anyone to procreate, regardless of circumstances''? Maybe I've got the wrong definition or understanding of what anti-natalism is.

No-thing cannot be wronged. But it can still be wrong for someone to participate in the creation of a life that will be heavily wronged due to their personal circumstances not being great - that's about localised responsibility - not a universal claim that life and procreation itself is wrong, or being is wrong. Someone in the middle of a war zone having a child is irresponsible - someone who's reasonably healthy and economically stable having  child isn't. But anti-natalism doesn't think along those line - it simply states procreation itself is wrong, regardless. And the only way that exists is due to base assumptions about the fundamental nature of reality - which rests upon a specific ontology - whether anti-natalists know it or not.

See what BlueOak is getting at below - the thin line we're treading is the difference between taking responsibility for procreation as a local personal choice vs a universal claim being made about procreation. If a universal claim is being made, then it follows that it must be defended onto-logically.

On 11/14/2025 at 8:04 AM, BlueOak said:

I would caution, however, in using the language 'value' as that in itself is where the problem lies. Diminishing everything to a value judgment.

Life doesn't sit there with scales weighing itself for example. And while a person can choose to not have a kid because they believe the patterns they experienced were too painful - I in part did this knowing those patterns were still part of me, and thus would become part of the child - its impossible to make that decision for anyone else. So someone making an ideology around this very personal choice is flawed.

Wholeheartedly agree.

 

Edited yesterday at 11:25 AM by zazen