Antinatalism

"Regarding sexual intercourse, their position was that any form of intercourse was acceptable (and, according to some, celebrated), so long as it did not result in procreation."

"Cathars believed the whole of humanity, and each man individually, is the children of Satan. Why, then, serve their reproduction, if not for the duplication of suffering, and the triumph of Satan?"

"The Cathar troubadours with an unknown then refinement loved beautiful French and Italian women. At the same time, they were unequaled promoters of the idea of "pure" love, i.e. love that does not lead to pregnancy. The Cathars thought that the devil had "equipped children of this world with the seed"; they identified the conception with the spawn of satan, they were cursing pregnant women."

"This great senseless, wasteful, cruel spawning of life upon the earth! I see not only its pain, but its pleasures, and its joys annoy me more than its sorrows, for I don't want to lose them."

"Nature knows nothing about right and wrong, good and evil, pleasure and pain; she simply acts. She creates a beautiful woman, and places a cancer on her cheek. She may create an idealist, and kill him with a germ. She creates a fine mind, and then burdens it with a deformed body. And she will create a fine body, apparently for no use whatever. She may destroy the most wonderful life when its work has just commenced. She may scatter tubercular germs broadcast throughout the world. She seemingly works with no method, plan or purpose. She knows no mercy nor goodness. Nothing is so cruel and abandoned as Nature. To call her tender or charitable is a travesty upon words and a stultification of intellect. No one can suggest these obvious facts without being told that he is not competent to judge Nature and the God behind Nature. If we must not judge God as evil, then we cannot judge God as good. In all the other affairs of life, man never hesitates to classify and judge, but when it comes to passing on life, and the responsibility of life, he is told that it must be good, although the opinion beggars reason and intelligence and is a denial of both. Emotionally, I shall no doubt act as others do to the last moment of my existence. With my last breath I shall probably try to draw another, but, intellectually, I am satisfied that life is a serious burden, which no thinking, humane person would wantonly inflict on some one else."

"To spare you all that I have seen, The losses I have sustained, I withstood the human impulse within."

"There is no need here to detail again his thoughts on the futility of procreation and mankind's strange urge to reproduce. The child's constant wailing, however, moves him to infer that he (or she, as the case may be) is sickly and weak, and to remark with bitter irony, "The first present he received from his loving parents is weakness and ill-health.""

"Celebrating a birthday is nothing but celebration because of a sinister farce that our parents arranged for us by bringing us to the world."

"No, I would not like it if there was no end, it is literally something we can influence: a peaceful end to humanity. Let no one – this is the first thing I wish – become a parent anymore. It does not hurt the unborn, and saves them a lot of trouble."

"In fact, what right did this Nature have to bring me into the world as a result of some eternal law of hers? I was created with consciousness, and I was conscious of this Nature: what right did she have to produce me, a conscious being, without my willing it? A conscious being, and thus a suffering one; but I do not want to suffer, for why would I have agreed to that? . . . And finally, even if one were to admit the possibility of this fairy tale of a human society at long last organized on earth on rational and scientifc bases; if one were to believe in this, to believe in the future happiness of people at long last, then the mere thought that some implacable laws of Nature made it essential to torment the human race for a thousand years before allowing it to attain that happiness that thought alone is unbearably loathsome. Now add the fact that this very same Nature, which has permitted humanity at last to attain happiness, tomorrow will find it necessary for some reason to reduce it all to zero, despite the suffering with which humanity has paid for this happiness; and, more important, that Nature does all this without concealing anything from me and my consciousness as she hid things from the cow. In such a case one cannot help but come to the very amusing yet unbearably sad thought: "What if the human race has been placed on the earth as some sort of brazen experiment, simply in order to find out whether such creatures are going to survive here or not?" The sad part of this thought lies mainly in the fact that once again no one is to blame; no one conducted the experiment; there is no one we can curse; it all happened simply due to the dead laws of Nature, which I absolutely cannot comprehend and with which my consciousness is utterly unable to agree."

"Feminism must be equipped with fire and brilliance. It's the holiest ideal of this time. That the noble natural rights of women have been discovered so late shows a dreadful spotlight on the history of so-called human development. There may appear to be something weird in feminism for the uninitiated, but as soon as we reach that point, philosophy will raise its aristocratic head and say to us: "The new doctrines involves the priesthood of only women, it proves the truth of pessimism and the necessity of worldwide misery in the current system, but not that of an endless continuation of existence." Then, according to the women's higher mission, women will recognize themselves as superior beings, as the priestesses of their race, as natural nobility. Aware of the higher law of life, at that same time, under their perception of the higher law of life, women will become fully aware of their higher purpose, to appear as the leaders towards death, preparing the end of the end. This then becomes the ideal, and take the place of any ideal without end or goal!"

"So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of "such as were" oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors "there was" power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better "is he" than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun."

"Other groups, like the Encratites, saw procreation as the diabolically inspired evil that perpetuates our imprisonment within these mortal coils. They argued that total purity would disentangle trapped souls, reuniting them with the light."

"Jung: "Somewhere on earth certainly still are people who do not accept this suicide law of extinction." Cassius: "If it is a hope for you, that somewhere people gathering new forces to again tear apart each other in even more bloody wars, so let it, have such hope.""

"To those, on the other hand, who under a pious cloak blaspheme by their continence both the creation and the holy Creator, the almighty, only God, and teach that one must reject marriage and begetting of children, and should not bring others in their place to live in this wretched world, nor give any sustenance to death , our reply is as follows."

"For mortals it is better not to be born than to be born; Children I bring to birth with bitter pains; And then when I have borne them they lack understanding. In vain I groan, that I must look on wicked offspring. While I lose the good. If the good survive, My wretched heart is melted by alarm. What is this goodness then? Is it not enough That I should care for one alone And bear the pain for this one soul?" And further to the same effect, "So now I think and have long so thought Man ought never children to beget, Seeing into what agonies we are born." But in the following verses he clearly attributes the cause of evil to the primal origins, when he speaks as follows: "O thou who art born for misfortune and disaster, thou art born a man, and thine unhappy life thou didst receive from the place where the air of heaven, which gives breath to mortals, first began to give food for all. Complain not of thy mortal state, thou who art mortal." Again he puts the same idea in these words: "No mortal is content and happy Nor is any born free from sorrow."

"What could be worse? Sex leads death's dance, In childbirth grief begins."

"Where shall I be a hundred years from now? Where will all the present dwellers of the Earth be? To die, for ever and ever; to have existed but for a moment! What a mockery! Would it not be better a hundred times over never to have been born? But if it be our fate to live eternally and never to be able to change anything of the fatality that carries us along – having endless eternity always before us – how can we bear the burden of such a destiny? Is that the doom awaiting us? If we should tire of existence, we should be forbidden to fly from it; it would be impossible to end it. In this conception, there is far more implacable cruelty than in that of an ephemeral life vanishing away insect's flight in the fresh evening breeze. Why then were we born? To suffer uncertainty; to find after examination not a single one of our hope a left; to live like idiots if we do not think, like madmen if we do?"

"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?"

"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."

"Suppose for a moment that all procreation stops, it will only mean that all destruction will cease. Moksha is nothing but release from the cycle of births and deaths. This alone is believed to be the highest bliss, and rightly."

"The ideal brahmachari had not to struggle with sensual desire or desire for procreation; it never troubles him at all. The whole world will be to him one vast family, he will centre allhis ambition in relieving the misery of mankind and the desire for procreation will be to him as gall and wormwood."

"If destruction is violence, creation, too, is violence. Procreation, therefore, involves violence. The creation of what is bound to perish certainly involves violence."

"What shall I write ...? If I say that is good, it would be a lie. If I express sorrow, it would be violence. ... I would only say and wish that you learn to control yours senses."

"Answer without flinching: if there existed a solution that could abolish the totality of all evils inflicted on disastrous humanity, if it was possible, by some simple remedy, incredibly cheap, immediately accessible, scrupulously inoffensive, of absolute and definitive efficiency, to stop all distress, all cries, all cries of pain, all pathologies, all protests of ill-being, all despair, all cataclysms, all anxiety, all unhappiness, in short all tortures afflicting the human species, would you have the macabre stupidity to reject such a remedy, to disdain such a miracle cure? No, that goes without saying. Well this solution does exist, and the mysterious is thereby delivered to us: it consists simply, in its saintly simplicity, to not procreate."

"Significant symbolism: we are all born in filth and suffering, of course in the suffering of our mother, who, however, has no right to complain if it was her choice, but above all in the one we experience, the victims, the unfortunate exiles from emptiness, who being in paradisiacal pelagic darkness, in which no anxiety reached us, we suddenly start to struggle, terribly squeezed, almost grinded, choking and fainting, because we are forced out through a poor quality birth canal, designed by this incompetent handyman called Mother Nature."

"Another argument is often made by the irresponsible ones who breed us – that it is an act of "leaving a trace" – strange impulse! Let us immediately observe that from an ethological point of view this is akin to the attitude many mammals have to leave droppings on the ground to mark their path or territory. The dog urinating against a lamp post also leaves a trace, one however which, unlike the baby, benefits from the privilege of not having to endure the grueling stresses of life."

"If it was otherwise, if procreation was not the result of the most scandalous narcissism, if our odious parents were really moved by some generosity, prospective adoption candidates would be incredibly more numerous than the millions of children who wait, right now, to be adopted! But talk about adoption and you'll see a big frown of "yes-but-not-for-me" form on their face, greedy to possess a prey coming entirely from their bodies. "Orphans? Someone else's baby? Come on, get scientists to help vanquish my infertility instead!""

"The predispositions and motivations of the obviously noble individuals are assessed, individuals who want, through adoption, to help existing child swim in the hell of existence, but even the most ominous fool, if he only has such a wish, has absolute right, through creation, to immerse them this hell, without having to justify it in any way."

"How is it that in no epoch of history, in no place on earth, a sect of wise men has been formed with the aim of making human life die out in the face of the cruelty of its evils?"

"Imagine that it's possible. This is what I think. . . . When I was young this I thought and still think to this day, that I do not know how all of it works and where it is leading... what would I tell a child about all this, why was they born and for what purpose? . . . We breed, we give birth without thought. But then, when the child says: I never asked for this – we find ourselves bereft of answers. A multitude of misfortunes are happening on earth, life is a great risk, and it often hurts terribly... So should one take responsibility, bring someone into the world, "bestow the gift of life"?"

"I am able to find meaning in my life, but I do not feel entitled to impose it to anyone."

"Didn't Conrad, in his great novel "Heart of Darkness", had this feeling of deathbed despair, when he mentions Kurz's doubtful fight with death – fight without confidence? Same Conrad, who put in one of his novels Calderon's words, that the biggest misfortune of man is to be born, as a tagline? This coincides with your repeatedly spoken thesis, that the biggest iniquity is to bring children to life, because giving them birth is sentencing them to death. We are pulling them out from the nothingness, from the state of complete unconsciousness into reality – and then we command them to undergo the agony of death, which they wouldn't have to experience without being alive in the first place."

"For the bodily procreation of children (let no one be displayed by this argument) is more an embarking upon death that upon life for man. Corruption has its beginning in birth and those who refrain from procreation through virginity themselves bring about a cancellation of death by preventing it from advancing further because of them, and, by setting themselves up as a kind of boundary stone between life and death, they keep death from going forward."

"There are two most conscious actions that man can act upon: suicide and desisting procreation."

"For instance, people call me a pessimist; and if it is pessimism to think, with Sophocles, that's not to have been born is best,' then I do not reject the designation."

"Humans are the most destructive creatures on the planet. We cause vast numbers of animal deaths (both directly and indirectly). We destroy habitats. We damage the environment. We are currently heating up the world's climate in a way that is likely to be detrimental to countless numbers of animals (ourselves included). And we have the means, nuclear weapons, to destroy everything at the push of a button. We came perilously close to pushing that button on one occasion (the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962). The best way to stop the destruction is to remove the destructive force; to remove humans by refraining from procreation. In short, the colossal amount of harm caused by humans gives us a moral reason to boycott the human species."

"It might be pointed out that we cannot gain someone's consent to exist; we cannot gain their consent before they exist and by the time they exist it's too late. But the fact that we cannot gain their consent does not mean that we are free to do without it. Suppose you wish to torture someone against their will, you cannot seek your victim's consent – the torture would not then be against their will. It would be absurd to argue that for this reason we are permitted to torture people against their will. Similarly, the fact that prospective parents cannot get the consent of those they plan to bring into existence doesn't magically mean it's OK. Quite the opposite – if you can't get the consent of the person you're going to significantly affect by your action, then the default position is that you don't do whatever it is that's going to affect them. There are exceptions. Pushing someone out of the way of a falling piano is morally right even if no prior consent can be given (if, for instance, there isn't time). But in this kind of case you are preventing someone from coming to great harm. To procreate – to subject someone to a life – does not prevent them coming to harm. Not being created cannot harm them because they don't exist."

"It therefore seems there are at least two prima facie duties that push towards making procreative acts wrong overall: our prima facie duty to prevent pain and our prima facie duty not to seriously affect someone else without his prior consent."

"I believe it is morally wrong to cause avoidable suffering to other people. This belief gives rise to two different objections to human reproduction. On the one hand, since all human beings suffer at some point in their lives, every parent who could have declined to procreate is to blame. On the other hand, since potential parents cannot guarantee that the lives of their children will be better than non-existence, they can also be rightfully accused of gambling on other people's lives, whatever the outcome. Because of the uncertainties of human life, anybody's children can end up arguing that it would have been better for them not to have been born at all. The probability of this outcome does not necessarily matter. It is enough that the possibility is real, which it always is."

"Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all."

"Wouldn't it be nice to have a kid, to have this fresh, clean slate, which we could fill, and a little clean spirit, totally, you know, innocent, and to fill it with good ideas. Yeah, yeah, how about this? If you're so f#####g altruistic, why don't you leave the little clean spirit wherever it is right now? Ok? Horrible act, childbirth. It's a nightmare. Bringing – I would never bring a kid to this f#####g planet."

"The mother instinct is something of which I am completely devoid. I explain it like this to myself: life is a vale of tears and all human beings are miserable creatures, so I cannot take the responsibility for bringing yet another unhappy creature into the world."

"The transformation of part of the northern part of this continent into "America" inaugurated a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation, and thus deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto, with or without the participation of those who wish they had never been born."

"I respect the deserters and solidarize myself with the forcibly recruited."

"Mankind's only aim is to reproduce, to continue the species. Although this aim is obviously insignificant, mankind pursues it with terrifying relentlessness. Men may well be unhappy, atrociously unhappy, but they resist with all their strength the thing that could change their fate: they want children, and children similar to them, in order to dig their own grave and perpetuate the conditions for unhappiness."

"...I am not cut out to be a parent. Besides, I consider marriage a sin and having children a crime. ... It is also my conviction that he who takes upon himself the yoke of marriage is a fool, even more a sinner. A fool, for in so doing he disposes of his freedom without gaining a corresponding compensation; a sinner, for he gives life to children without being able to give them the certainty of happiness. I despise mankind in all its strata; I foresee that our descendants will be far more unhappy than we are — would I not be a sinner if, in spite of this view, I did not care for those who are to come, that is, for those unhappy beings? - No sight fills me with greater melancholy than that of an innocent little child. I cannot help myself to think every time of the sufferings, which it ripens towards. All life is a great nonsense. And when one has toiled and researched for eighty years, one must admit that one has toiled and researched for nothing. If only we knew why we are in this world! But everything is and will be enigmatic for the thinker, and the greatest happiness is to have been born stupid."

"The whole earth, believe me, Philo, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent: weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life: and 'tis at last finished in agony and horror."

"Happiness doesn't exist for anyone, because it's not in the immanence of nature; instead, misfortune is the common law; it's the eternal fatum that weighs down on all beings, one which we must either submit to or withdraw from: But the foolish love of life is so strong, that the vast majority submit and resign themselves to suffering. If man only accepted this burden personally, he could be forgiven; but, passive to the end, he obeys his enemy: instinct, and perpetuates the cursed heritage by giving life to beings who don't ask to be born."

"Whatever the feeling of those who procreate, as long as they act knowingly not unaware that they are creating organisms for pain, souls of disappointment, harmful beings, both victims and executioners, they are malefactors, and the child has the right to consider his father and mother as mere murderers. Yes, murderers! Because giving life means also giving death. A look from this perspective should be enough to demand abstaining from begetting. And then what? End of the world! Of course, it would be the end of the world in the short or long term and I do not see any problem with it."