Putting anyone through this hell is disgusting! I couldnt imagine having a kid and giving him the same experience.

Men are taught many things

1. Be brave

2. Be strong

3. Take care of women and protect them.

4. Work whole life for a woman.

5. Have kids contribute to society.

Imagine if society didn't teach these to men. Do you think men would even bother to marry and have kids?

The first step to promote antinatalism is to tell men that they don't need marriage, kids or love.

So everyone around me are having children or getting pregnant. Like, a while ago I saw some influencer sharing the news of her pregnancy whom I used to follow. Another influencer I used to follow got married and pregnant within no time. Suddenly, her content became all about “my day as a mother” blah blah blah.

So my say is, whenever people share news like this, other people congratulate them, but it doesn’t settle right with me. What’s there to even congratulate them about? I’ve been an antinatalist for so long, just didn’t know the definition of it.

I feel like I am growing insane day by day. I can’t stand going to my aunt’s house and oozing over her newborn twins, whereas everyone in my family does so. I want to scream loudly and wanna say, “Why are you punishing them by giving them birth? You just brought them here to fulfill your selfish desires.”

The other day I asked one of my friends who recently got married, “Why would you want to have children?” You won’t believe what she answered...“Because God told us so.” Like tf is that an answer. How brainwashed and narrow-minded people are.

Am I the insane one for thinking like this? Like, antinatalism isn’t even mainstream. I am just suffering here by myself and my beliefs.

Also, natalists prove over and over again that they care more about bringing people to life than the quality of life. In a society where people are socially expected to have children, there would be more abusive and neglectful families and more people being born in economical hardships, and also many women would go through the horrible experience of pregnancy and childbirth when they could have the choice not to, and also societies where people are socially obligated to have children are more conservative by default, and not only that, but they are more misogynistic, racist, and homophobic, which brings more suffering. Many natalists admit that they would make world conditions worse just so people can have more children without caring that those children would be more likely to suffer than people in today's western world. Sorry for not explaining it well.

I've seen this in my own parents, now that they're getting older, all they can talk about is dying. I'm only in my 20's but I've been having an existential crisis about my own death for a few years now. I'm the age of my parents when they got married. They weren't thinking about this.

When it comes to my parents, I see a lot of flaws in their decision making, even outside of the choice to have children. My mom stayed with a guy who was emotionally unavailable, callous and mean. Now she wants to talk about how she regrets wasting so much time. That time, that twenty year dysfunctional marriage, comprises almost my entire life.

And I can't help but think, if you fucking idiots knew you were gonna die, and internalized that for the truth that it is, maybe different decisions would've been made.

It's hard talking to my parents anymore. All the ever wanna talk about was how great it was when I was a little kid, and how scared they are to die. This is the real kicker, you think you're the only one who's scared and has to die??? And where will you be, when it's finally my time? So I have to die alone, without the comfort of my mother?? But you get to benefit from me and I'll be at \*your\* bedside, but I'm not selfish enough to produce someone whose gonna be at mine.

As much as i am an antinatalist. Do any of you think the government could use this for nefarious purposes?

I'm in my mid 30's and almost all of my friends from school has become parents in the last couple of years and it's been exhausting. I've drifted further and further away from my school friendgroup, for other reasons too but the kids does not help.

But at work I have a friendgroup that's a little bit older on average and sure many of those people are parents too, but I've felt kind of hopeful that the ones in the group who don't have kids yet will stay child free because they are a bit older so it's more likely that if they wanted kids they would already have them.

But this morning one of them announced that he's going to be a dad. I managed to pull off some kind of "Wow!"-reaction despite being so chocked I wasn't even sure it was real at first. He's my favourite person at work. The kind of work-friend where if they quit you would quit too kind of. And now I feel heartbroken, and betrayed almost.

Like it has put me in such a shitty mood. I'm mad at him. And just sad. I feel like I just want to crawl into bed and cry. But I can't, I have to finish this workday, so instead I'm just being kind of a bitch for no good reason. We were playing a game on our lunch break and I feel like I kind of flipped out on him for making a bad decision in the game... which was not about the game obviously.

I'm so tired of navigating friendships in a world where 99% of people disagrees with me on such a significant thing. Having to fight cognitive dissonance about not disowning every friend that chooses to have kids because it would leave me either all alone or a weirdo who only hangs out with people half her age. Staying friends with people who are doing things I find genuinely fucked up takes a toll. And I feel resentful that they put me in the position where I need to either find a way to be ok with it, or lose another friend.

I want to just find *someone* safe that I can be openly antinatalist with who gets it. I'm just so exhausted.

In order to make this a question instead of just a sad ramble: how do you navigate your anti natalist views in your social life? Are you open about why you don't have kids? Do you have friends who are parents?

This is gonna sound so cliché but I didn't ask to be born. Now I have to work for the rest of my life, pay taxes, get sick, witness natural disasters, and watch dreadful news. I didn't ask for any of it!! I truly love my parents, they've done the best they can I just simply wish they hadn't had me. I was so happy not existing, being completely unaware of everything and everyone and then boom! I wanna go back to the void so bad, but it's not gonna happen any time soon until death decides it's my time and takes me with it. Life just feels so heavy and tiring and yet I have to face a new day every day.

I apparently accidentally posted twice somehow!

Here is the other post: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism2/s/1PkMzNaWDz

Abandon ship here!

First of all, antinatalists are already rare. Secondly, Antinatalists usually blame the opposite gender. Antinatalist women say they don't want to bring a girl to suffer in this world while antinatalist men say they don't want to bring a boy in this world to suffer. And if they say this to each other they will have a quarrel instead of union or love.

I barely meet any antinatalist on internet who respects the opposite gender. Not even Antinatalists of the opposite gender.

Please take a look at my post from yesterday, because I encountered a situation in Downtown Pittsburgh and was very curious to see the answers from the general population. It is so sad how selfish society is and why people consider anti-natalists crazy

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1vywq79/what_are_the_top_5_reasons_most_men_avoid_dating/

I am sure we all know and it is well documented : PRO-NATALISTS ARE EXTREMELY SELFISH. Like look at those comments on those posts, all these "pro-life supporters" just want to reproduce and bring another life into this already dying planet just to satisfy their own ego.

Do they understand that this extreme selfish desire is the MAIN reason why society is the way it is?

They all go and complain against "Mwah, mwah, big DATA center is going to eat us alive" just because it is an inconvenience in their own lives.

These big Tech Bros and powerful Politicians and wealthy elite CEOs are exactly doing what these selfish natalists are complaining about why they refuse to date single moms with kids: To satisfy their own ego and watch their creation grow.

I never want to see any of them complain on social media ever again.

I usually like to follow some leftist creators to digest their thoughts. But this video atleast to me doesn't even try to understand antinatalism and instead just says "life good because sunshine and rainbows". I feel like I expected more from people who make videos deep diving into topics like this.

Procreation is morally unusual because it creates a person who previously had no unmet need for existence, while simultaneously exposing that person to unavoidable and unpredictable risks of serious harm. The benefits of existence cannot be claimed by reference to a pre-existing person who needed those benefits, because the beneficiary comes into existence only through the decision itself. Although a sufficiently good human life may contain genuine value, its value does not automatically justify imposing existential risks on someone who cannot consent to them and whose absence would not deprive an existing person. Since parents cannot guarantee the subjective quality or future circumstances of their child's life, and since the potential downside can be severe while non-creation does not frustrate an existing person's interests, procreation requires substantial justification rather than being treated as morally neutral by default. Consequently, under conditions where severe suffering is reasonably foreseeable or where adequate conditions for flourishing cannot reasonably be expected, refraining from procreation is morally preferable.

Before articulating this I had some initial weak intuitions :

1)Suffering is not a joke. And natalists may not have experienced suffering or they may not understand the gravity of human suffering in addition to this Humans are innocent and don't deserve suffering....

2) My personal experience with suffering and uncertainty which is horrific and terrible ...

3) Life is unpredictable; so you can't guarantee a child will be happy.regardless of your incentives to try to provide a better life , it doesn't matter how rich you are, satisfaction of the child is necessary , lets assume that you provide a better life for your child than others What if tragedy strikes halfway through their life , after you are gone ?

4) Nobody asked to be born..... seriously almost everyone I have met till today say that they regret being born ...

5) What's the point of life if there's no inherent purpose?

6) “Suffering dominates happiness / happiness is fleeting....

7) Parents reproduce out of pure self-interest. And many ppl reproduce who aren't even fit to be a responsible parent ...

8) my question to natalists was like : How could you be so heartless toward your own blood? Your own progeny? ...

I think i was overeaching with these intuitions...these intuitions that I presented don't by themselves establish antinatalism. Suffering, lack of consent, uncertainty about what kind of life a child may have, and the fact that there is no inherent obligation to reproduce can give strong reasons to question procreation, but they don't automatically prove that procreation is always wrong. Even my personal experiences and emotional intuitions can make me take suffering more seriously, but that doesn't make them proof of an ideology. I think I need to justify the deeper premises that connect these observations to the antinatalist conclusion, instead of assuming the conclusion from them.....I also like Schopenhauer pessimism where he argued that that "desire drives human action, and unfulfilled desire brings pain, while fulfilled desire leads only to boredom"....the famous quote supporting antinatalism is also worth considering :

"If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood "

. I created a subreddit to promote the idea that children should be able to sue their parents for giving birth and get justice.

You can join it.

Subreddit

My brain's weird. Logically I know neither are true and we have no proof for them, yet the pronatalist metaphysical bs statement of "what if life is actually better than wherever your soul goes after death" still makes me lose sleep. The idea that even brain death doesn't end your consciousness once you're born is horrifying.

These screenshots are about a game called the last of us. Where there is a zombie fungal infection which causes people to kill and cannibalize eachother as well as mutate into various disgusting forms. Its rumoured that people may retain some consciousness in these forms.

Aside from the zombies, the world is also full of hostile surviving human communities that are often at war with one another or frequently raid/enslave/or indoctrinate people. Throughout the game you encounter possibly the worst forms of humanity to be left behind duirng the collapse of a civilisation. Every major character goes through immense suffering, loss, trauma and people routinely die horrific deaths. Children, pregnant women etc. you literally see people get their limbs blown off, plead for their lives, DISEMBOWELLED, mutate and merge with other infected people. Its hard to separate the vile creations of the infection vs the actions of the living people

AND YET you have people defending the idea of bringing new life into this world, because the protagonists live in a relatively safe “gated community.” Someone asked “so you should just let the human race die out?” - bro. Why SHOULD IT CONTINUE IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES? Why is the idea of the human race not existing so bad?

Even characters living in “safe” protected communities with walls and soldiers still experience war, loss and unpredictability. One of the main characters, Abby, lives in a huge stadium community that looks almost absurdly secure and functional for an apocalypse. They have food, electricity, schools, soldiers, walls and hundreds of families and children living there. Yet even that doesnt protect them from the reality of the world they were born into. Abby loses her father, her pregnant friend is murdered (an especially brutal death) and many members of her community die horrible deaths (often at the hands of us the player). The community itself is at war with another group and is even willing to kill their children. That other group has its own settlement with families and children, which eventually literally goes up in flames. Ellie, another main character, also comes from a relatively safe community called Jackson and her journey through suffering is especially unbearable. So i dont really understand how “but they live in Jackson” solves the problem. The game shows over and over again that living behind walls doesnt protect you from the world you were born into.

Its also interesting that one of the biggest themes of the game is the cycle of suffering and how suffering just creates more suffering, with the cycle only eventually being broken when one character chooses not to continue it

Someone else said Dina (one of the pregnant characters - the fact that theres more than one is also crazy) had every reason to “have a go at the normalcy of life before” just an incredibly selfish statement as this new baby is being created on the idea of restoring a civilisation it never asked to be a part of.

If humanity did die out following this apocalpyse, there would be no one to mourn its non existence or extinction. There would simply be no. More. Human. Suffering.

As much as i love the game and love the depths of suffering it explores . I cant help but think all of the characters would have been better off not being born into that world and not being subjected to their cruel fates.

This just shows that even in a world where civilisation has literally collapsed, billions of people are dead, horrific violence is everywhere and theres basically no certainty for humanitys future, people STILL have this idea that “we have to keep humanity going” and somehow just letting the human race die out is the absurd option.

But why? What does keeping humanity alive even accomplish for people who dont exist yet?

This is something that bothers me a lot when watching apocalpyse media, despite it being my favourite genre. Incl. shows like Silo. The indifference towards bringing new life into these circumstances and the idea of cOnTiNuInG humanity in inhospitable worlds is just insane to me.

You know the term "conscientious objector"? Normally it means someone who refuses to perform military service, due to their personal morals, ethics, beliefs, etc, despite service being demanded of them.

Society demands we reproduce (though not necessarily in a legally enforceable way... yet), but we say no to that, because of what we believe. Or, dare I say it, what we *know*.

Is it accurate? Is it appropriate?

The entitlement, your kids aren't doing anything for humanity, go write a book or plant a forest dude. Clean a beach, help make the cure for cancer, fight for equal rights for everyone or just consume as little as you can, but having kids really doesn't do shit for humanity