Janissy wrote:
Would I personally? No. But Easter ended recently so with that on my mind I guess there is precedent for the torture and murder of one innocent soul just so everybody else gets a chance at redemption.
Ok.....consider the following short story by Ursula K. Le Guin entitled; "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". Basically it's about a utopian society called Omelas in which every person constantly experiences the "Summum bonum" (The highest good/happiness) save one unfortunate soul. I will include the few paragraphs most relevant to this thread:
"In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes-the child has no understanding of time or interval-sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others are never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good" it says. "Please let me out. I will be good"! They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa", and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it HAS TO BE THERE. Some of them understand why, and some do not, BUT ALL UNDERSTAND THEIR HAPPINESS, THE BEAUTY OF THEIR CITY, THE TENDERNESS OF THEIR FRIENDSHIPS, THE HEALTH OF THEIR CHILDREN, THE WISDOM OF THEIR SCHOLARS, THE SKILL OF THEIR MAKERS, EVEN THE ABUNDANCE OF THEIR HARVEST AND THE KINDLY WEATHERS OF THEIR SKIES, DEPEND WHOLLY ON THIS CHILD'S ABOMINABLE MISERY".
Aren't all the happy and fortunate people of this world, "the citizens of Omelas"? Aren't all the suffering, destitute, tortured, oppressed, diseased, disabled and otherwise unhappy and unfortunate souls of this world the wretched child?
Procreative instincts aside, CAN we morally/ethically justify our existence when we know EXISTENCE ITSELF will inevitably entail inexpressible amounts of suffering and misery and little else BUT suffering and misery for billions?
It's as if we're saying...."Yes, when we bring any child into this world we know there is a decent chance it will suffer terribly and know little or no happiness. We know there is little or nothing we can do to prevent the suffering/unhappiness of many who are thrown into this world. We know that in many, if not most, cases the suffering/unhappy people also can do little or nothing to prevent their own suffering/unhappiness. And we don't always know who will suffer/be unhappy before they are born as suffering/unhappiness has myriad causes. Just because a child is born in a wealthy, modern and industrial society is no guarantee it won't experience grave misfortune and little else BUT grave misfortune. But we feel the sacrifice of billions is worth it somehow. Because many other billions WILL experience great happiness and good fortunate, at least relatively speaking. So based on the inevitable happiness and good fortune of many, we feel the continuation of our species is morally/ethically justified irrespective of the countless number of people who have yet to be born who will know little else but suffering and unhappiness".
What if 75% of the humans born into this world were bound to experience terrible suffering and unhappiness and little else?
Would the continuation of the species still be justified then?
Is it justified now simply because a lesser percentage are bound to experience terrible suffering and unhappiness and little else?
I realize human existence just essentially IS and that unrelenting suffering/misfortune is unavoidable for many born into this world. Animals suffer too, but animals don't really have any conscious control over whether they choose to continue to perpetuate their species or not. We humans do have that choice...we COULD simply refuse to procreate. We could engage in a pre-emptive mercy killing of sorts. We could neutralize both human happiness and suffering. We could simply cease to exist in 80 years or so if everyone stopped procreating now. Maybe these are totally idiotic and insane thoughts i'm having....IDK. But considering what most of us believe about morality/ethics, considering how most of us would answer moral/ethical dilemmas....I can't see how the continuation of the human species is justified by the usual moral/ethical reasoning. Sure morals/ethics are subjective and we can justify human existence any other way or not at all if we prefer.
But I DO NOT see how we can justify it according to the moral/ethical standards most of us adhere to however "subjective" said standards may be.
It seems as though we are very inconsistent in our application of these moral/ethical standards.
Apparently....i'm not the only person in history to view the continuation of our species as morally unjustifiable per the usual moral standards. My own view is simply not influenced by any spiritual belief system. So I am simply an atheist and materialist guilty of contemplating the potential wisdom of the "Gnostic Temptation" the author of the following is referring to:
Theodicy shading off into Anthropodicy in Milton, Twain and Kant
Antinatalism as Eve’s Escape Route in the Face of Wrongful Creation, Unrequested Existence and the Evil of Freedom
von Karim Akerma
Through the ages the established Christian Church has tried to eradicate the Gnostic image of an evil Creator. Even though John Milton was not a Gnostic and perhaps not even a heretic, there is Gnostic imagery in his poem Paradise Lost. In what follows, I will elaborate on the Gnostic element in Milton’s poem that perhaps has not attracted due attention. It is the anti-natalist stance: the idea of rejecting procreation so as not to produce further evil. I suggest we call this stance the Gnostic temptation. After dealing with Milton, I will present the late Mark Twain as someone who – presumably unwittingly – illuminates Milton's subtextual Gnosticism I will conclude with some pertinent reflections on Kant.
Anti-natalism and suicide as escape routes from existence in Paradise Lost
To minimize contact with the demiurg’s world, the Gnostics propagated asceticism. Accordingly, and in order to shorten the concatenation of evil on earth, man is not to procreate. If man does not procreate, the divine souls incarcerated in the human flesh – with the right amount of wisdom and insight – will eventually return to where they belong and will reunite with the supreme deity. Hence the Gnostics’ antisomatism and antinatalism.
In Paradise Lost, after the Fall and before the expulsion from paradise, it becomes clear to Eve that all future generations will have to suffer as a result of the first parent’s sin. In the face of future suffering, she suggests to Adam to either refrain from procreation or to commit suicide:
If care of our descent perplex us most,
Which must be born to certain woe, devoured
By death at last, and miserable it is
To be to others cause of misery,
Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring
Into this cursed world a woeful race,
That after wretched life must be at last
Food for so foule a monster, in thy power
It lies, yet ere conception to prevent
The race unblest, to being yet unbegot.
Childless thou art, childless remain: So death
Shall be deceaved his glut, and with us two
Be forced to satisfie his ravenous maw.
But if thou judge it hard and difficult,
Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain
From love’s due rites, nuptial embraces sweet,
And with desire to languish without hope,
Before the present object languishing
With like desire, which would be misery
And torment less then none of what we dread,
Then both our selves and seed at once to free
From what we fear for both, let us make short,
Let us seek death, or, he not found, supply
With our own hands his office on ourselves;
(Tenth Book, 979-1002, p. 512)
Milton’s Eve is promoting here either abstention from procreation or suicide to escape from the suffering of existence. In the face of wrongful existence for the future members of the human race, Eve first suggests the anti-natalist option, then suicide.
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14 Apr 2010, 6:27 pm
lol
I'm an author and public speaker on autism, gender, and sexuality 
