Misanthropic Antinatalism

Misanthropic Antinatalism is probably the AN contingent with the largest internet following. Misanthropic antinatalism is, true to it's name based on a deep contempt for humanity. But the most important thing to remember is that MA is not so much a philosophy as a set of strategies for the annihilation of the human race.

I confess that I was initially confused by MAs. Why, if they cared about suffering, as they said they did, did they react so angrily to people who were not suffering or at least claimed to not suffer? Why, if they claimed to hate humanity so much, did they want humanity to stop suffering in a state of nonexistence? But in a flash of inspiration, it all became clear to me: Misanthropic Antinatalists do not actually think existence is basically bad.

Once this is accepted the MA "strategy" become clear. Misanthropic Antinatalists believe the world is basically good, so they are attempting to usher humanity off it by

A: Spouting miserabilist rhetoric(none of which, let's be clear, they actually believe) in order to make humans as miserable as possible.

B: Making happiness seem to be an ethical violation, to take people's motives to stick around.

C: Actively making things worse by refusing to do anything to improve the state of the world and humanity's place in it( a tactic I will call antinatalist accelerationism)

Now that I have blown the doors wide open on Misanthropic Antinatalism, I can only expect some rather harsh denials will follow, but I will take all these denials as proof that I have hit upon at least unconscious motives amongst MAs.

Next up: a piece on those wacky postmodern libertarians, reactionary antinatalists. Sadly because RA blogs long ago started deleting my comments, I will be unable to get any RAs to come over here and engage with me, unless some helpful reader is able to do it.(hint hint)

Odds and Ends

The entry on Misanthropic and Reactionary antinatalism are coming, I promise. I've been busy with the odds and ends of the life Reactionary and Philanthropic antinatalist so despise. I'll almost certainly have both posts done within the next few weeks. You can all look forward to:

• The world's first expose of the Misanthropic Antinatalist strategy, which, to my knowledge, has never been clearly and openly articulated
• A clear-eyed reveal of the way the obscurantist whispers of postmodernism have influenced Reactionary Antinatalism
• And an open debate post, in the comments of which I hope to engage ANs of all stripes.

Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to Misanthropic Antinatalist Dimasok, who has seen fit to advertise my blog on his blog. Dima is the blogger, who, besides Karl of Say No To Life, has been the most help in revealing the structure and ideas of Misanthropic Antinatalism. He does, however, appear to be unaware of the writings where Sister Y and Chip Smith have been explicit with their Reactionary Antinatalism, so I will simply point him towards their twitters, where their positions are clearly articulated in debate with fine thinkers like My Nationalist Pony and poet of fascist transhumanism, Konkvistador.

Philanthropic Antinatalism

Philanthropic Antinatalism, while not a popular position on the internet, is one of the three main strands of antinatalism as a whole and must be dealt with. The position that it is better that humanity not be because humanity is good and existence is bad has been advanced by Patrick Benatar. At first Benatar's metaethical imperative to avoid causing suffering seems appealing. And it is, initially at least, hard to argue that suffering is a part of being is also hard to argue. But it is these very premises that must be deconstructed(I am here using the phrase "deconstructed" in it's normal sense, not in the sense used by obscurantist deconstructionists like De Man and Deleuze)

First off what are these "metaethical imperatives" Benatar speaks of but Deontology, a philosophy that has been shown to be very faulty by Professor Sam Harris a leading expert in both neuroscience and moral philosophy. As Harris showed, brainscanning technology like MRI machines are the center of  information for our moral universe, and "suffering" is something that has yet to be shown in an MRI machine, when all that can be found is specific pains. No "suffering" to speak of! Further more Benatar's use of philosophical terminology would likely be laughed at by Sam Harris who said:

I am convinced that every appearance of terms like "metaethics," "deontology," "noncognitivism," "anti-realism," "emotivism," and the like, directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. 

Moreover, while antinatalists speak if "being" do they really have a good grasp of what it means? Languages like Russian, Ainu, and Arabic do quite well avoiding the use of words like "be" and "is" and created languages like E-Prime actively seek to avoid it. The philosopher Quine famously said "To be is to be the value of a variable", and an Amazon commenter insightfully says of Benatar's book

I haven't read the whole book, so I might have missed something but I fail to see how you can harm someone who doesn't exist.

Very wise, and a statement antinatalists would do well to pay attention to.

The Basic Argument

The single, basic argument advanced by Elfists and ANs is that it is better that humanity not exist, however, different justifications are given for this argument, and three main strands of antinatalism may be divined.

Philanthropic Antinatalism says that it is better that humanity not exist because suffering exists. As far as know, only East African professor, Patrick Benatar and blogger Francois Tremblay hold this position.

Misanthropic Antinatalism on the other hand, holds that the world is a wondrous and beautiful place, and as such, a wretched virus like humanity does not deserve to live there. This position is advanced by such bloggers as Dimasok, Karl, and Shadow, as well as the youtube Elfists, who are too numerous to name here.

Finally, Reactionary Antinatalism holds that because the world is wretched cesspool full of minorities and women who do not know their place, the world would be better off not existing, both so that the universe would not have to see the indignity of blacks in the office, as well as freeing white people from having to deal with other races. This position is advanced by Sister Y, Jim Crawford, and Chip Smith, as well as being advanced in a different form by a Continental theorist of Marx and Deleuze, Nick Land.

From such a complex series of views, it is difficult to extract a single theme, but I have been able to see the theme that it is better not to be running through each of them. But what are the problems with each strand of antinatalism? And what is, "is" anyway? These and other questions will be answered in my series of blogposts on the weaknesses of each strand of antinatalism.

(Here I should pause to note that this blog operates under the Principal of Charity or Steelmanning as it is sometimes known by reactionary antinatalists. It seeks to present antinatalism in it's strongest possible form to see if it stands up, and to advance the positions of antinatalism in a stronger, clearer, more consistent way than antinatalists often do. If my descriptions of antinatalism do not precisely match the beliefs of individual antinatalists, so much the worse for the antinatalists!)

Introduction

In this blog I will examine the many ways the philosophy of antinatalism, or elfism as it is sometimes called, is wrong. Antinatalism has been advanced by any distinguished thinkers, like West African college professor Patrick Benatar, American horror author Thomas Ligotti (author of such works as Teatro Grotesco and The Shining) and German philosopher Friedrick Nietzsche, as well as postmodernists like Sartre and Camus. Antinatalism uses logic and reason to try to establish that it is better that humanity end. But is the logic and reason ANs use sound and coherent, or does it fall apart under examination? I will address these, and other questions on my blog.