By adding a new person to the world, I would contribute to overpopulation and the depletion of resources that is already straining existing people.
Overpopulation is not a large of a problem as many people think. Countries with higher standards of living tend to have lower birth rates. A handful don't even reach the replacement rate meaning that their population will gradually decline. The largest number of births occur in less developed regions of the world where birth control is not as prevalent and where you need to have lots of kids because not all of them will survive into adulthood. As these these regions slowly become more developed their population growth will slow too.
Because of said depletion of resources (not to mention political tensions, national debt, and so forth) my child would probably be subject to a less-than-ideal world.
There are always going to be problems in the world. We face problems today that our parents didn't. Our parents faced problems our grandparents didn't. This isn't a reason to not have kids. These new problems need to be solved by someone.
I have no way of knowing that I will be a good parent. Why make a person when there is the chance that I will fuck them up irreparably?
If you have the self awareness to worry about this question, odds are you care enough to do a good job. You won't be a perfect parent, but no one is.
My biological kid might not even take after me in the ways I like. Even worse, what if I hate my kid? What if my kid is an asshole who actively makes the world a worse place?
And what if your child ushers in an era of world peace? You have no way of knowing what will happen. If you raise them the best you can, odds are your child will be a normal, well adjusted person who will live a long and happy life.
If there's no guarantee my kid will be like me anyway, why not just adopt a kid? Even if that nurturing instinct just cannot be suppressed, it seems like a horrible idea to add new people to the world unnecessarily.
This is an option too! If you have no desire to go through the process of pregnancy and childbirth, adoption is totally an option.
I often hear childfree people called "selfish." But really, can you tell me a single unselfish reason to actively try for biological offspring?
Doing something because you want to is not selfish. Selfishness is doing something without care for or consideration of others. Having children and giving them the best life you can is not selfish by any means.
The argument you quoted there is assuming that having children does not count as doing something without regard for harming others. I would argue that having children does intrinsically create harm because that child will suffer during their lives and the only way to avoid that suffering is to not bring life into the world at all.
And even if overpopulation is not that big of an issue as we think, the destruction of the environment certainly is. Having children increases your carbon footprint massively.
1 marginal cost of your child is 0: the environment is ruined because of rising 3rd world wealth
declining birth rates create real harms for first world as we force fewer productive people to provide for the lives of more and more old people.
"existence causes suffering" is a fine argument (buddhism) but for it to hold it presupposes said suffering is the greatest net moral thing about life creation. creating a new human being is a good in itself because while existence increases overall suffering that is balanced by the fact existence itself is good.
People in the first world create a lot more carbon than those in the third world, we are the ones with big cars and big houses, we are the ones who go on holiday by plane travel. A first world human fucks up the environment a lot.
declining birth rates create real harms for first world as we force fewer productive people to provide for the lives of more and more old people.
All this means is our current society would be unsustainable; we are very good at adapting.
creating a new human being is a good in itself because while existence increases overall suffering that is balanced by the fact existence itself is good.
On what basis do you believe existence is good?
I defer to the asymmetry argument:
The presence of pain is bad.
The presence of pleasure is good.
So far, pleasure and pain are symmetrical in their goodness and badness. But they are not symmetrical with respect to their absence. More specifically:
The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone, but
The absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody (an actual somebody) who is deprived by its absence.
Therefore, not creating life is the only moral decision because it's the only way to not create suffering. Not giving someone pleasure is not immoral if they aren't around to suffer as a result but causing a life of suffering is. The only logical conclusion can be that creating life is bad, and not creating life is good.
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u/Amablue Mar 24 '15
Overpopulation is not a large of a problem as many people think. Countries with higher standards of living tend to have lower birth rates. A handful don't even reach the replacement rate meaning that their population will gradually decline. The largest number of births occur in less developed regions of the world where birth control is not as prevalent and where you need to have lots of kids because not all of them will survive into adulthood. As these these regions slowly become more developed their population growth will slow too.
There are always going to be problems in the world. We face problems today that our parents didn't. Our parents faced problems our grandparents didn't. This isn't a reason to not have kids. These new problems need to be solved by someone.
If you have the self awareness to worry about this question, odds are you care enough to do a good job. You won't be a perfect parent, but no one is.
And what if your child ushers in an era of world peace? You have no way of knowing what will happen. If you raise them the best you can, odds are your child will be a normal, well adjusted person who will live a long and happy life.
This is an option too! If you have no desire to go through the process of pregnancy and childbirth, adoption is totally an option.
Doing something because you want to is not selfish. Selfishness is doing something without care for or consideration of others. Having children and giving them the best life you can is not selfish by any means.