Reprinted from: The New York Times
Date: June 6th, 2010
Author: Peter Singer
My purpose is to perpetuate Mr. Singer's question and its exploration into a new medium for discussion or reflection. No copyright infringement is intended; I do no represent this work as my own in any way. A link to the original article at The Times is provided here. No changes have been made to the text whatsoever.
Should This Be the Last Generation?
By PETER SINGER Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem? The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself.
Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.
Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.
Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.
So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!
Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.
Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?
I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?
5 comments:
My viewpoint is the same as the author of the book whom the article cites - David Benatar. And it seemed the author of the article was right with me until the first half of his last paragraph.
After constructing a logical scaffolding upon which one ought to conclude that not existing has no value at all, for good or ill, while existing brings with it inevitable suffering (as the Buddha maintained over 2500 years ago), how he can then suddenly assert that he's an optimist and does feel most lives are worth living, or at least will be in the future, seems to me to be a cop-out; a ninety-degree turn into Wishful Thinking country and off the road of logic.
Yes, it is depressing for those of us living to contemplate, perhaps, but to state that most people live happy lives is patently not true, in my estimation, when you at humanity as a whole, including all the parts of the world ravaged by war, poverty, and disease.
And to place bets on what is at best an extremely uncertain future, especially as fossil fuels run out, is in my view naive. But the rest of the article is well-stated.
I agreed with Schopenhauer before reading this and I still do; it's nice to know I'm not the only one who can imagine a universe which does not contain us without being looked at as somehow evil (as though I meant to bring about that state by genocide or in some other radical way), or at minimum as a member of another species, one which doesn't have a Biological Imperative to continue and spread the species by any means.
It's just that I recognize this desire (which most people possess, but by no means all) is our genes "speaking," as it were, those genes being the descendants of others which by chance had both the knack and the "desire" (again to anthropomorphize) to themselves survive whilst others not so constructed failed to do so.
It's a self-fulfilling state of affairs that organisms in a limited environment will end up either dying or prospering in a way which brings about a domination of those most suited and keen to continue to dominate. "Existentialist" bacteria don't live very long in petri dishes!
Anyway, I hope the article made you think and didn't depress you too much. I think the idea of universal sterilization would be grand - imagine 10 billion children, maybe many, many more, who will after you have read this be born into a world which already lacks the resources to support the population it has, and the misery they will suffer as the forests continue to be cut down, sea levels rise, droughts and famines strike, and nature does her own culling. Yes, some fraction will end up the rich barons of a new post-oil age. But the great majority will be no better off than the poor at almost any time in human history have ever been. That is to say, their lives will likely be brutish, nasty, and short.
I would feel better to never bring future generations into existence than to contemplate a possible post-apocalyptic scenario such as that waiting in store for humanity as I trundle off to my own grave.
This is from Hans' mom: Actually just talking about this with Heath 2 days ago - it would be a better world without sentient beings. The world would regulate itself without human interference. Humans have done more harm than good - most people aren't happy - and from now on, people should adopt the children already born and sterilize everyone. Give the world back to the innocent and maybe we can do some good afterall.
Agreed! Good ideas.
But who would look after all the cats?!
More seriously, I like the idea of an Earth without humans. I think the reaosn many people have children is to make sure they'll be looked after in their old age. Although with the stresses and attitudes of life today, I don't think even having offspring is a guarantee of that for many people in "developed" countries.
If we were all sterilised, would another form of sentient being evolve again? And the cycle restart itself?
Good questions... Some maintain the development of sentience was entirely accidental, others than some unknown mechanism of evolution directs life toward increasing complexity and eventually sentience. I think the real answer is nobody knows. Will we ever know? Probably.
The universe does seem to exhibit many anti-entropic organizing trends, such as the tendency of complex elements to emerge from simpler ones in the furnaces of the largest stars, for amino acids and then proteins to form, which must at some point produced an RNA-like molecule capable of copying itself, at which point natural selection could begin acting on the slightly varied copies, and then you have the runaway effect of Darwinism.
But all of that runs counter to the second law of thermodynamics, which holds that order breaks down into chaos, energy capable of useful work into waste heat. Like a wind-up mechanism left alone, it never goes the other direction. So why does life seem to buck this trend? My answer again is simply that we don't understand the laws of physics as well as we think we do.
As far as looking after the cats, I think they'll manage just fine. In fact, I think they are probably just waiting for us to sterilize ourselves so they can take over the planet and start owning dogs and running the show. Except for the poor Persians, who without human intervention will all die of matted fur and sinus infections.
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