A man named Raphael Samuel from India has recently made the news after announcing in a Youtube video his intention to sue his parents for giving birth to him. He asserts that, since his parents did not seek his consent to bring him into the world, they have no ownership over him. His parents, both attorneys, have kindly offered to “destroy him in court”.
Wishing You’d Never Been Born
Samuel is a proponent of antinatalism, the philosophy that believes procreation is morally wrong. Antinatalists typically argue that humans will inevitably experience suffering. However, the absence of any experiences, whether suffering or pleasure, cannot be a bad thing. Therefore, it is better to avoid creating a human and putting them in a situation where they could suffer.
After glancing through the subreddit r/antinatalism, which has 23,100 subscribers, I realised that antinatalism isn’t just a profound exercise in thinking that people consider from time to time – it’s actually quite popular on the internet. Just recently, a poster was even found in Nanyang Technological University encouraging people to become antinatalists. Are they planning to convert the whole world into antinatalists and drive humanity into extinction? Probably not, but if you’re antinatalist, you wouldn’t see that as a bad thing, since there will be no one around to experience suffering.
But it’s gotten me thinking: what a sorry state humanity must be in if some have concluded that a life of experiencing the world is not worth creating? Are there more unhappy than happy people around? Are people unsatisfied with the 9-5 work cycles they have to repeatedly endure to survive? Is anyone truly happy?
Has humanity failed as a species?
A Biological Paradox
Warning: The following segment discusses death and suicide which may be triggering to certain individuals
While the term “failed species” isn’t exactly a scientific term, the idea that the human species is inherently a walking contradiction could qualify it as such. Other living creatures tend to follow their natural survival instincts, but not all humans do. Our needs have outgrown our instincts.
Philosopher Peter Zapffe believes that the human species is cursed with a desire for knowledge that supersedes the answers that nature can provide. Therefore, humankind, unlike any other species, is a paradox of nature. We ask questions about life, death and existence, questions that we attempt to answer through science, philosophy and religion, even though we understand that they simply cannot be answered.
Antinatalism is far from the only philosophy that views humanity in this pessimistic light. For hundreds of years, thinkers have been questioning the very meaning of life itself, under schools of thought like nihilism and existentialism. Albert Camus writes that “there is but one truly serious philosophical question, and that is suicide”, while in possibly the most quoted line in literary history, Prince Hamlet weighs the value of life, “to be”, against the peace of death, “or not to be”.
But thinking this way runs contrary to almost every rule of nature. A living thing’s natural urge should be to survive and to procreate. No other species has been found to understand the concept of their own mortality or display deliberate suicidal behaviour (the actions of male spiders and praying mantises can be attributed to sexual cannibalism and do not encompass a willful intention to die). Human cognition has been cursed with more than it can carry, and perhaps humanity was always destined to be unsatisfied from the beginning.
“Human Nature” – A Life Sentence?
Perhaps we should consider that antinatalists are actually on to something. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have kids, that’s kinda extreme – but maybe we should examine why every human understands the capacity to suffer, yet still knowingly creates more of it for one another? There has never been a time in history where humans have been universally at peace – in fact, the present time is likely the most peaceful time there has ever been in history, with institutions like the United Nations designed to foster peace. Yet, we aren’t anywhere close to being free from war and conflict as a species.
In the animal kingdom, territorial animals fight aggressively to defend their territories, while others fight potential competitors over a mate. It doesn’t seem ridiculous to imagine our intelligence should allow us to resolve differences in more civil ways. Yet, it could be this very intelligence – the diversity of ideas – that creates the differences in the first place. We are capable of both remarkable kindness and extraordinary evil, of heroic self-sacrifice or destructive mass murder. One man’s sacrificial hero is another man’s suicide bomber. Different point of views inevitably result in disagreements on what is truly good or evil. No one ever said intelligence is always a good thing, and we may have become too intelligent for our own good.
Even barring human cruelty and evil, we aren’t safe from the sufferings of our own minds – we often experience mental struggles like discouragement, feelings of meaninglessness, depression, disappointment or even guilt, most of which scientists believe animals are unable to experience. It’s hard to accept that there isn’t any reason for these ailments besides that they’re simply part of being human.
Maybe we’re really just a species destined to ask the questions we cannot answer, and to disagree when we try to answer them anyway. If so, then a failed species we are, but possibly one that was doomed from the start. But whether or not you plan to have kids, one thing’s for sure – if you’re reading this, you’ve had the blessing/curse of being born into the world. It’s up to the ones already on the planet to make life better for each other. Yes, it’s harder than it sounds – but the least we can do is to agree that our species is capable of better.
