this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
511 points (94.3% liked)
Asklemmy
42520 readers
1293 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Nobody should have kids, we should just drift off into extinction. Nobody has been able to tell me why that would be a bad thing without using anthropocentric reasoning.
Anthropocentrism is good.
I actually agree.
Tell me why anything should or should not happen without using anthropomorphic reasoning.
If we all die who would take care of our pets?
They die before us
Some will but not all.
Well, can you tell me why it would be a good thing?
If you really think about it, why should life itself exist at all? The purpose of life is to simply reproduce. Well... what if it didn't? Nothing, it just wouldn't exist. It is a bad thing or a good thing?
You can get very philosophical with this one, but I do agree that we humans deserve to fade out. So many atrocities, so much... pain, and all for really stupid reasons.
Forget all the worst atrocities. Think about average people going about their daily lives.
It's the weekend. You go out and buy some food, some treats, a bottle of wine, some ice tea, some coffee, a new pair of jeans, you have an ice cream, etc. You could drink tap water. You could eat only rice with lentils. You could wear that old pair of trousers, even though they have a hole in them. That would have saved you 100 bucks.
You could have donated that 100 bucks to a charity that saved a child's life. We all know that 100 dollars goes a long way in the third world. Instead we choose to spend that money on luxuries. You could have volunteered at a local charity. Instead you chose to go shopping. If you saw some kid drowning in a puddle, watched the kid die a preventable death as you were eating an ice cream, that would be evil. We all do that on a daily basis. We know our choices cause suffering, but because that suffering happens far away and we don't get to see it happen, we happily ignore it. That's everyone. Some of us are "I'll sometimes buy an ice cream and let a baby cow get turned into pate" evil. Some of us are "I'll buy gold toilets while a hundred kids die." evil. But arguably no one is actually good.
I think the only way to forgive ourselves for our constant daily selfishness and depravity, is to accept that humans aren't that special. We're evolved primates. We are animals who act on instinct and lack the empathy or intelligence to ever become truly moral. You might as well expect a jelly fish to sing a ballad. It is not in our nature to become anything better than what we are.
I mean, your argument is "we can't ever be perfect so we should never even aspire to be good", which is sortof putting the cart before the horse. That we can even recognize the distinction of not being special already places in a position where we can try and do a little better. What is better, how much, or how? What even is good or morality? All of those questions are at necessity to even define good, let alone become it. Before even glancing at perfect. Sure it might be an eternal inane treadmill, but just as fish have gills to breathe, we by chance of fate have the organs necessary to think. And that's just as much in our nature. The fish doesn't consider how long it has to swim, it just does it towards a target it can see/sense. By the same mechanism that means we aren't special, why shouldn't, why wouldn't, we do the same thing? Just because what we can see/sense may be artificial, imagined, or drempt?
Lack of good = neutral
Lack of bad = good
Non-existence is always preferrable.
Funny how people asserting that, continues existing to assert that. I find that very inconsistent.
So you don't see a difference between never having existed and killing yourself? Weird.
You're the one whining about how to bad existing is. Fixing would be more consistent.
Mind you, I think you're wrong, but at least we would avoid the whining.
There is no fixing, suffering is inherent to sentient existence. Come back to me when you have actually thought about it instead of giving the typicsl knee-jerk reaction of "suicide tho", "whining tho".
I mean, I'm offering you a solution for your pain. But I find absolutely unbearable that you are intent on transmitting your misery and making life worse for everybody else. If you find life unbearable, please do so In silence.
I see you have decided to not think and instead continue to blubber. How trite.
It is difficult to overcome the survival instinct. Being compelled by instinct to continue living is not the same thing as making a conscious decision to continue living.
Yeah, well, that should curtail the holier-than-thou attitude, but curiously it doesn't.
Have kids and love them tremendously but the world is such a clusterfuck that I'm ok if i don't have grandkids.
There Are many ecosystems that hardly depend on human activity. Fields And cities, but also fragile places as orchid maedows.
In some parts of world (Europe definitelly), these ecosystems evolved right after the end of the last ice age, there was no interregnum of "Wild forests" (with this part I'm not so sure, but if it weren't true, It doesn't affect the main argument).
Without humans, these ecosystems would rapidly get destroyed by bushes And forests, part of the manifold world would have gone.
And yes, I aknowledge that were destroing these ecosystems too, by industrialized agronomy. And I understand the feeling nature=forests without human disturbing, but it's simply not the whole picture.
Your position is nihilist anti-intelligence, so it has nothing to defend.
We would be the first species on Earth to have ever done so.
Not sure if that's good or bad. Just thought it's an interesting point.
Pandas?
I'm not sure they're doing it intentionally.
There are a lot of people who don't have any kids and don't plan to, so I'm not sure why you think that's some kind of gotcha.