Every time I think I’ve found the limit of human stupidity, someone surprises me. There’s a “movement” out there that proposes that humans stop breeding entirely and voluntarily go extinct so that we can “end suffering”. It’s part of a larger concept called “antinatalism”.
These people are fucking stupid.
Without going into too much detail, they think that life is inherently filled with suffering and therefore, since all suffering is to be avoided, we should all die and thus end suffering.
Except it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t stop all suffering, just human suffering. If all humans just vanished off the planet tomorrow, suffering would continue. That Thompson’s Gazelle is still going to suffer when the cheetah eats it. Animals are going to die, animals are going to get diseases, the suffering won’t take a moment’s break just because humanity is extinct. The plan fails.
What’s worse though, their entire methodology fails. They claim that their aim is to stop suffering so they’re just going to die a natural death. What about all the suffering they cause while they’re here? Every second they spend on this rock causes an immense amount of suffering to everyone around them! Every breath they take kills millions of microscopic lifeforms. Their immune system kills billions more every day. Even though bacteria don’t feel pain as we recognize it, they still demonstrably move away from dangerous situations, they recognize, in a non-sentient manner, that something is bad for their survival. I don’t see how you can call that anything but suffering. So you idiots, STOP BREATHING!
Further, every time you eat, you’re causing suffering. You must kill something, in fact, lots of somethings, in order to have a meal. It doesn’t matter if you’re having a salad or a side of beef, something died to give you that food. You’ve directly caused suffering! But wait, you’ve also indirectly caused suffering. By ingesting that food, you’ve deprived someone else, somewhere in the world, of the ability to eat it. Everything you do, every day, causes suffering. You use energy that others could otherwise use, you wear clothes that others could otherwise wear, you live in a house that others could otherwise inhabit. Every second of every day that you’re alive, you are causing untold suffering. In fact, by remaining alive at all, you are refusing to feed the bacteria and insects that will digest your body and break it down into component atoms for recycling. How dare you!
I guess that brings us down to nuking the planet to a charred cinder. End all life on Earth and thus end all suffering! Except for the aliens, of course. It’s absurd to think that there are no aliens out there in the universe, the odds are absurdly against such a thing. Assuming for a second that they are anything even identifiable as life, they must also suffer in one way or another. If we’re supposed to oppose *ALL* suffering, then we have to end their suffering too. That means ending all life everywhere in the universe. How we’re going to kill everything, everywhere, I have no idea, but it must be done!
See, these people really don’t want to end suffering or they’d be out offing themselves right now. None of them want to do that. They want to live out a long, happy, healthy life and die of natural causes. This isn’t about suffering at all, it’s about wanting to remain childless and they’ve come up with this load of crap as a rationale to do it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t give a damn if they want to breed or not. In fact, these people are so damn stupid, I’d rather their genes not get passed on to the next generation. But seriously, enough of this idiotic rationalization nonsense. They don’t mean it, it’s just an excuse so that when people ask them why they haven’t had kids and they’re not brave enough to be honest, they can pull out this ridiculous cock-and-bull story.
So let’s summarize. They don’t really give a damn about suffering, only about specific kinds of suffering for one specific species. They’re not really all that worried about that, they just want it to end at some unspecified time in the future because they can’t be bothered or inconvenienced to take steps to stop it right now. And they want to be taken seriously?
Ha.
Of course, then you go off the deep end with this group. Why, exactly, is there anyone around to maintain that web site again?
