The online echo chamber of Antinatalism

The antinatalist is in an interesting, but by no means unique position. He or she is, under most forms of antinatalism morally obligated to attempt to convert the natalist to his or her position. As such, the antinatalist forms a blog online, talks with non-antinatalists, and attempt so convert them to the position, under the hopes that at least some non-lives will be saved.

Which raises an interesting question: why are antinatalists avoiding the necessary missionary work?

Time and time again, Antinatalists shut down opposing viewpoints rather than waging war in hopes of converts. Comment filters are put up, trolls and adversaries alike have their comments deleted, or are blocked on youtube, and antinatalists simply refuse to engage online with non-believers.

To name specific examples, Francois Tremblay, Dimasok, Jim, and sadly, Karl who once prided himself on never deleting a comment have comment filters. Sister Y does not, but harshly deletes any comments questioning her racist views, which leads me to believe she has not actually read my blog. She notably did NOT delete obvious troll comments from white supremacist site My Posting Career. Speaking of which:

It is possible antinatalists do all their conversion work IRL, and simply view the internet as their personal therapist who will not judge them for rubbing salt in all their wounds. If so, I would wish that they state this outright, rather than pretend they are engaging in anything other than listening to the reflected sound of their own ideals.

A rebuttal to Say No To Life

There was once an earnest Puritan who held it wrong to dance. And for his principles he labored hard, his was a zealous life. And there loved him all of those who hated the dance; and those that loved the dance respected him too; they said "He is a pure, good man and acts according to his lights."

He did much to discourage dancing and helped to close several
Sunday entertainments. Some kinds of poetry, he said, he liked, but
not the fanciful kind as that might corrupt the thoughts of the very young.
He always dressed in black.

He was quite interested in morality and was quite sincere and there grew to be much respect on Earth for his honest face and his flowing pure-white beard.

One night the Devil appeared unto him in a dream and said "Well done."

"Avaunt," said that earnest man.

"No, no, friend," said the Devil.

"Dare not to call me 'friend,'" he answered bravely.

"Come, come, friend," said the Devil. "Have you not done my work? Have you not put apart the couples that would dance? Have you not checked their laughter and their accursed mirth? Have you not worn my livery of black? O friend, friend, you do not know what a detestable thing it is to sit in hell and hear people being happy, and singing in theatres and singing in the fields, and whispering after dances under the moon," and he fell to cursing fearfully.

"It is you," said the Puritan, "that put into their hearts the evil desire to dance; and black is God's own livery, not yours."

And the Devil laughed contemptuously and spoke.

"He only made the silly colors," he said, "and useless dawns on hill-slopes facing South, and butterflies flapping along them as soon as the sun rose high, and foolish maidens coming out to dance, and the warm mad West wind, and worst of all that pernicious influence Love."

And when the Devil said that God made Love that earnest man sat up in bed and shouted "Blasphemy! Blasphemy!"

"It's true," said the Devil. "It isn't I that send the village fools muttering and whispering two by two in the woods when the harvest moon is high, it's as much as I can bear even to see them dancing."

"Then," said the man, "I have mistaken right for wrong; but as soon as I wake I will fight you yet."

"O, no you don't," said the Devil. "You don't wake up out of this sleep."

And somewhere far away Hell's black steel doors were opened, and arm in arm those two were drawn within, and the doors shut behind them and still they went arm in arm, trudging further and further into the deeps of Hell, and it was that Puritan's punishment to know that those that he cared for on Earth would do evil as he had done.

Response to a commenter

New commenter Mitchell has some concerns with my project, which I will attempt to address in this post.

This is an odd little blog. You seem to be getting people's positions wrong, many times over. 
For example, you class Dima Sokol as a "misanthropic antinatalist", someone who says the world is wonderful and people make it bad. When has he ever said that the world is wonderful?!

As I have said before, this blog works according to The Principle of Charity. If I find that a position is simply nonsensical or non-tenable or laughably inconsistent, I will simply reconstruct it to make some kind of sense. The only explanation for Dima Sokol's nonsensical assertions that he both hates humanity and wants the best for them is that he is simply lying about what "the best" is and directing humanity towards the worst.

Or your category of "reactionary antinatalists", who you seem to define as people who long for a past of patriarchal rule by the white race, or something, but who so despair of it ever happening that they would prefer extinction instead. Presumably there are people who match that description, but I can't say it applies to any of the people you name. You list "metamorphhh" aka "Jim" as one of these. He was married to a black woman, and liked her enough to have two daughters with her.

Well, I for one can name multiple racists who have married outside of their own racial group. If Jim actually did respect all black people as human beings, he would not publish on a white power press like Nine Banded Books, nor would he be simply one degree of blogroll separation away from numerous white power sites like Vox Day or Unqualified Reservations.

And Sister Y is undoubtedly a philanthropic antinatalist. It seems that because she has come to entertain "reactionary" ideas, or simply skepticism about many "liberal" platitudes, that you are filing her in the wrong category. 

And the post where you try to deal with "philanthropic antinatalism" is in a way the most perplexing of all. Suffering doesn't exist, because you can't point to it in an fMRI machine? And you even seem to be hinting that people as such don't exist, perhaps because of some quasi-Buddhist deconstruction of the notion of identity? The convergence of views between Buddhists who analytically decompose the subject, and modern neuro-materialists who think there is only atoms, is an interesting cultural phenomenon. But if it is to be used as a way to deny the existence of suffering, then it has simply become evil - though hopefully an ineffectual evil. I call it evil because it tries to wish away something that is there. 

I am not denying the existence of pain! This is readily identified by neuroscience and a neurology interested friend notifies me that there exists special receptors known as nociceptors that exist to receive painful stimuli. I will simply give no credence to this mysterious metaphysical notion called "suffering" which is either a great pain or something intrinsic to being itself, if one listens to antinatalists. Do rocks feel suffering? What about computers?

Maybe you're just in denial about how evil life can be? Maybe out of your own sensitivity, plus a dose of wishful thinking, you're trying to find reasons to deny that the badness is there? Because if you won't confront it, you can never even begin to form an opinion on these matters. 
Life encompasses all the worst things that have ever happened to anyone - people tortured to death, buried alive in earthquakes, swept to sea by tsunamis, and dying by inches in terror and confusion thanks to modern medical care - just to mention a few things. Benatar's logic-chopping aside, if you would just care to notice the sort of things that happen in the world, then it should be obvious that antinatalists have a good case; because if no-one has children, at least things like all that can't happen to anyone. Call this "precautionary antinatalism" if you need a name for it. I'd like to see you tackle that version.

 Indeed! There is a great deal of pain in the world. HOWEVER. Antinatalists disregard all feelings or opinions or drives of sentient beings EXCEPT pain, arbitrarily. Second, antinatalists are simply awful at identifying current pains. Rather than speak of particular pains or troubles, antinatalists will ramble endlessly about boredom and futility. As if boredom and futility have anything to do with the problems of thousands of people who are going through REAL extreme pain every day! There seems to be almost a taboo amongst antinatalists of mentioning no-trivial current affairs that relate to antinatalism as if the plight of third world diamond miners or the rise of fascism or persecution of Muslims is simply beneath them. Call me when antinatalists can talk about the world and humanity as it is, rather than in abstract.

For extra credit, identify what historical event this song is referring to, AND what current event I am repurposing it to refer to WITHOUT using wikipedia!

"Reactionary antinatalism isn't a thing/is slander"