Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Monday 2 September 2019

Urrrgh, breeders !

Well now I mean the world can be a pretty crappy place, but bad enough to want the species to go extinct ? Hmmm...
"Wouldn't it just be better to blow a hole in the side of the earth and just have done with everything?"Thomas, 29, lives in the east of England, and although his idea of blowing up the world is something of a thought experiment, he is certain about one thing - humans should not have babies, and our species should gradually go extinct.
Thomas's idea of blowing a hole in the side of the earth - he imagines a big red button that would end human life and says he'd "press that in an instant" - is actually highly controversial because of a key anti-natalist principle: consent. Put simply, it's the idea that creating or destroying life requires the consent of the person who will be born or die.
Which I find immediately to be fundamentally and irredeemably stupid. You can't give consent unless you already exist.
Kirk lives in San Antonio, Texas. He says he recalls a conversation with his mother when he was just four years old. She told him that having children was a choice. "This doesn't make any sense to me, to voluntarily put someone who has no needs or wants prior to their conception into this world to suffer and die," he says.
Kirk, you're an idiot. Yes you are. I don't care much about how you've reached that conclusion, it's bloody stupid. It gets more sinister :
Posters frequently share experiences of their own mental health, and occasionally condemn those with mental health problems for having children. 
Among the intense philosophical and ethical debates going on anti-natalist groups, there's a darker and less edifying undercurrent. Some routinely insult parents - calling them "breeders". Other slurs are directed at children. "Whenever I see a pregnant woman, disgust is the first feeling." wrote one user next to a picture that said: "I hate baby bump".
In some anti-natalist groups, users allude to the notion that babies shouldn't be born in war zones, if there is a high chance of disability, or even to low-income parents. 
Yes, because eugenics and disgust at other human beings has always worked out ever so well in the past. See, I see nothing wrong with encouraging people to have fewer children for environmental reasons, but to insist that the species goes extinct is a truly perversely pointless kind of defeatist nihilism. It doesn't make any sense to me at all.

The people who want you to stop having babies

They believe humans shouldn't have children. Who are the anti-natalists - and how far are they willing to push their ideas? "Wouldn't it just be better to blow a hole in the side of the earth and just have done with everything?"

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