At its core, the concept of antinatalism revolves around assigning a negative value to birth and procreation. I know that this may sound pessimistic and cynical, but look at the world we live in today. We suffer from war, poverty, and famine, along with an exorbitant amount of people; way more than the planet can sustain. In lieu of all this, along with trying to figure out this life I live, I realize that I wouldn’t be doing any benefits to anybody by bringing more life into this world. As for the child I would bring in, I don’t want to subject it to the constant fears and worries we go through on a daily basis. But there are also more reasons as to why I believe that we shouldn’t bring any more people into this paradox we call life.
One of the biggest reasons to not bring any more people into this world is that we are on the brink of overpopulation. We are quickly depleting our resources and polluting our land due to the 7 billion plus people in this world. If there is one thing we need on this earth it is proper sex education and more acceptance of birth control and prophylactics. English philosopher Aldous Huxley said that overpopulation goes far beyond environmental and social concerns; he said that with more people, more resources are spent, and to conserve those resources, dictatorships with sprawling bureaucracies will form. Look at countries like China and India–their populations are more than sustainable and as a result, unnecessary bureaucracy and stricter governments have formed, along with having the highest pollution levels in the world. By not having any more children, not only will we reduce our carbon footprint, but we will also preserve democracy by making it less possible for dictatorships to form.
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Of course, some people may not want children for financial reasons, or they don’t trust themselves to be parents; this is especially common amongst millennials. With our current economic system, not many people can afford to have children and not many would want to spend that amount of money on a child. With the national debt we have along with student loans, and credit card debts, we are already having the money sopped out of us and most people could agree that we don’t need a child to add onto that. After all, with the nature of children, being a parent is a thankless job. If you’re going to have a kid, you’d better be ready to spend a lot of money and put up with a lot of crap.
But there is also a more philosophical point to why I choose not to have kids. If I can’t figure out the purpose of the life I live, then am I doing any favors to myself or anybody else by bringing in another confused being into this world? Buddhism itself condemns human reproduction as it states that to eliminate death and old age, people must stop reproducing. It does make sense though when one thinks about it; if someone doesn’t want their child to suffer through old age and death, the simplest solution is not to have one. Since we are all born and alive, old age and death are something we are going to have to face at some time or another; some may have it better than others, and some may not even make it to old age, but death is something that we all have to face. By bringing more people into the world, all we are doing is bringing people to life just so they can die. Some may live long and prosperous lives, whilst others may not live such lives, but at the end of the day, all our graves will be the same size.
I don’t mean to sound grim or cynical, but what I’m trying to say is that this life we live is a fluke. Over a million years ago, we evolved from primates and gained abilities that no other animals had before, conscious thought being one of them. With that, we quickly populated the planet, only bringing more people into the question of our existence when not even we knew the answer to it, and may never know. All I know is that if we want to eliminate human suffering, we must cut down our reproduction rates and focus on the people who are already here.
As Adam said in Milton’s Paradise Lost:
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay/To mold me Man, did I solicit thee/From darkness to promote me?”
