Is it Better Never to Have Been? | Bronwyn Williams Lawrence Anton | The Small Print
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- Subscribe to our Substack: discourseza.su...
---
In this episode, Bronwyn speaks to activist Lawrence Anton about antinatalism, the ethical view that creating life is morally bad. They discuss some misconception people have about the movement, Lawrence’s own reasons for becoming an antinatalist, the relationship between antinatalism and climate alarmism, veganism, and the problem of wild animal suffering.
Bronwyn Williams is a futurist, economist, trend analyst and host of The Small Print. Her day job as a partner at Flux Trends involves helping business leaders to use foresight to design the future they want to live and work in. You may have seen her talking about Transhumanism or Tikok on Carte Blanche, or heard her talking about trends on 702 or CNBC Africa where she is a regular expert commentator. When she's not talking to brands and businesses about the future, you will probably find her curled up somewhere with a (preferably paperback) book. She tweets at @bronwynwilliams.
Twitter: / bronwynwilliams
Flux Trends: www.fluxtrends...
Website: whatthefuturen...
Lawrence Anton is an antinatalist content creator and activist. He seeks to encourage others to question whether bringing new life into the world is a good thing, and those that have already reached this conclusion to work in making the world a better place with that in mind.
TH-cam - / lawrenceanton
Twitter - / lawrence_anton1
---
Follow us on Social Media:
TH-cam: bit.ly/2u46Mdy
LinkedIn: / discourse-za
Facebook: / discourseza
Twitter: / discourseza
Instagram: / discourseza
Subscribe to the Discourse ZA Podcast:
iTunes: apple.co/2V5ckEM
Stitcher: bit.ly/2UILooX
Spotify: spoti.fi/2vlBwaG
RSS feed: bit.ly/2VwsTsy
Intro Animation by Cath Theo - / cuz_im_cath
Cheers for having me on, most interesting questions I’ve had in an interview so far!
Agreed, good to have a diverse invigorating discussion on the subject.
@@shwedagonpaya Yep, Bronwyn asked questions that are not the standard ones antinatalists get. I enjoyed them!
How much people pay for rent in London's suburb?
Antinatalism is Love 💕❤
💌🙏🏽❤️🩷
Hope this blows up 🫶
It won't, but we can keep hope alive 🤞
It would have been great if you two had invited David Benatar on. I have Better Never to Have Been in both paperback and hardcover. The hardcover version has Oxford in gold letters down the spine of the book. I am so glad prestigious Oxford University Press published it!
I think Benatar does more harm than good for anti Natalism because he makes a particularly ineffective argument, that being he makes objective claims about life being more suffering than good. I am anti Natalist, but I can't deny the subjective nature of how much of life is suffering, not to mention the fact that even people who suffer immensely may still value their life. A lot of the rest of what he says is obviously true, but this is a flaw imo.
A fine in depth discourse on anti-natalism. I tend to concentrate on the non-consensual angle. Once an anti-natalist always an anti-natalist I would have thought. Another topic for discussion. And procreation is the ultimate Ponzi scheme.
Some very interesting points and great questions. Thanks to you both.
From what I understand, AN philosophy is irrefutable on principle grounds.
So is theism, solipsism, and man many other things.
But the thing is, for Benatar's Asymmetry Argument to work, there would have had to been a peaceful existence before birth.... Which is a completely unfounded belief.
Well said, selimgure.
Wrong. How the F is theism -- believing in fantasy comic book characters like gods - "irrefutable"? It is NO different than believing in Spiderman or Superman.@@naturalisted1714
I am traumatized every day knowing that I will be deteriorating and have to face my own death. I am still traumatized over my grandmas deterioration, death, burial and her dead carcass being eaten by the bugs in the ground. I am still traumatized over my dead relatives that were burned cremated into ashes. I OBJECT to having to die. How dare my selfish breeder parents puck me into a deterioration trap and death trap. My breeder parents belong in prison for creating my death. I NEVER agreed to any of this.
So then THEIR parents should be/have been similarly imprisoned. And their parents before them. And THEIR parents before them.
Ad infinitum et ad nauseam.
YOU are probably the first generation of your family to realize you actually have a choice so maybe be slow to judge them so harshly?
Disown your parents, that's what I did.
If insufficient sentience is present for suffering, then sufferig is not present. If sufficient sentience is present for suffering, then suffering is present. Deontologically this can be our only shared concern, and pragmatically we have to argue it out from there.
❤
Even if we had some sort of "pre-existence" from which state we could try to evaluate the pros and cons of coming into the world, how would we do that? We'd have no bases of comparison by virtue of having experienced absolutely nothing of the state of being we'd be trying to assess.
Then again, how would that pre-existence differ from our actual "earthly" existence in that, what would become of us if our evaluation was that we did NOT wish to be born?
Would our pre-existent "selves" be killed?
How would that differ from our current condition?
disabled, born with pain, tortured, war child, starved to death, raped by a sadistic serial killer, child dying of malaria in her mother's arms, mentally ill psychotic fears, etc. What was I supposed to say?
Thanks for the vid Yes no more kids no more suffering on this hell realm cheers
My intuition is that, if it exists in this universe and can't suffer, it's not really intelligent.
But, if an A(quasi)I can't suffer, can it experience sympathy/empathy for entities which can?
How might that asymmetry affect relationships between the two life forms?
My intuition is that, if it can't suffer, it's not an intelligence.
Another question: would an A(quasi)I which could not experience suffering be able to sympathize or empathize with intelligences which can?
I see no point in procreating even in the event that my offspring had a 100% chance of ending up in some sort of Paradise.
The non-existent don't need Paradise and will never miss their chance to have been sent there.
Now, for those of us already in the soup, as it were, for whom the Rubicon has been irreversibly crossed, it'd be very nice if we could end up in some sort of heavenly state.
I don't count on it though.
The only exception I can imagine would be if the Hindu/Buddhist concept of the cycle of death and rebirth---where our "spirits" must keep being restalled into successive meat puppets in order to undergo a purification process and that that process only comes to an end when each of us achieves "enlightenment" and enters in the state of Nirvana---were to prove valid.
I suppose that could serve as a justification for procreating lest those never-to-be -embodied spirits end up consigned fo a state of endless......what?
That said, I'm not a dualist and I don't believe human beings are spirit-meat hybrids of some sort, so that notion has no force with me.
It is indeed
Little does he know: Bron worships cheese. Basically bathes in it. Tsk, tsk.
Life is funny and the joke is on mankind.
Listen to more Smiths and join Exit International.
Oh yes, it's Best to never....
God is an imposer of life. Neither you nor I have a choice in this - people will be born until the soul count is all met. Not having kids just makes it worse since we have less control over the upbringing of the future generation of humanity.
Um.........WTF?
What type of religious nonsense are you talking about??
Also what mythical god/gods are you referring to as I can't keep track of them all?
Imagine there's only one brain in the entire universe. So there's consciousness. Just because you don't exist (in this scenario) doesn't mean there's no consciousness, or a lack of it. There is conscious experience, and that's the experience -- not a peaceful black void as a result of you not existing.
This illustrates that if it were not this life (the one reading this right now) then it'd instead be one of the lives that _does exist_ right now.
If it isn't one life it's another.
Only experience is what's experienced.
This makes David Benatar's Asymmetry Argument absolutely worthless.
You said the magic word: imagine. made up whimsical scenarios from inside YOUR specific brain does not impose some sort of grand reality for everyone else to experience. dude, fix your gut and microbiome. The microbes have completely taken over your brain and are going haywire. your weird insanity is just more proof of how humans need to call this failed experiment quits. it was embarrassing even 50 years ago.
I feel sorry for you that you lack compassion. Every day I think about loosng my family, friends and pets to gruesom agonizing diseases. People who lack compassion always desire to create more deaths via breeding. Breeders are sadistic. STOP making excuses for creating more gruesome and agonizing deaths.
Your "arguments" are garbage, naturalisted.
What about imaging something that is not dumb as hell?
If I do not exist in to any scenario , my consciousness is not there. If a consciousness exist, it was produced, does not matter if it is yours or mine.
Now, the lack of a bad is good no matter if experience is added to the equation. the lack of torture my grandpa has in this moment , is good not mattering if he does not experience that because is dead or not-conscious
Your argument was lost at "Imagine".