tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post435772282679745153..comments2024-02-13T12:50:30.457-05:00Comments on Rants Within the Undead God: The Unmasking of Misanthropy: Jordan Peterson and David Benatar on Antinatalism Benjamin Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-43776105641043947742023-01-23T15:24:03.103-05:002023-01-23T15:24:03.103-05:00Some mental illnesses are surely debilitating, whi...Some mental illnesses are surely debilitating, while others may have an upside. Plenty of artists have sublimated their suffering to produce great art. Certain mental illnesses can freshen your perspective or detach you from the herd, enabling you to be impartial. <br /><br />But that's a big question, whether we should trust reason or intuition. I think Dostoevsky's point is that reason by itself doesn't dictate what we should value. We take a leap of faith in the worthiness of some lifestyle or social pursuit. Reason can tell us how to get from A to B, but not whether to value B in the first place. Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-49059323697712447162023-01-22T07:32:20.014-05:002023-01-22T07:32:20.014-05:00https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/20/the-...https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/20/the-last-generation-young-chinese-people-vow-not-to-have-children?CMP=share_btn_tw<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-79610963514475348412023-01-18T10:43:11.764-05:002023-01-18T10:43:11.764-05:00In all honesty mental illness plays a part in my o...In all honesty mental illness plays a part in my own dark view of things bipolar lows can really take me to a place where Benatar, Zapffe and Ecclesiastes all make perfect sense. But I don’t construct a philosophy out of my darkness. And I often return to the Dialogue between Ivan and Alyosha… even if Ivan’s Misotheism were to be legitimate the question remains, how shall we then live? When I despair I think of Alyosha who could find no adequate answer to Ivan and yet one knows intuitively his was the better way… Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07042253552463857546noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-25459587048031914472023-01-18T09:36:16.634-05:002023-01-18T09:36:16.634-05:00That's a good point about the contrast between...That's a good point about the contrast between the alleged motive in love for humanity, and the abstract, logical presentation of the argument. That applies even more to Inmendham, the YouTube antinatalist and pessimist because he gets furious at the drop of a hat. <br /><br />I don't think it's as clear-cut as being an intellectual exercise, though. Antinatalism is more about therapy and social signaling. The arguments are rationalizations. If the antinatalist were genuinely appalled by human behaviour and suffering, that oversensitivity could just as easily express itself in fascination with the aesthetic properties of nature. Why the obsession with ending suffering when in the long run our species will go naturally extinct at some point anyway? If we last a century, a millennium, or a million years more, what's the difference compared to the universe's duration? So why rush to end everything?<br /><br />Mental illness seems to me at the bottom of at least your average antinatalist.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-25490075294554351292023-01-17T15:30:52.416-05:002023-01-17T15:30:52.416-05:00Fascinating… both sides of the debate. I have both...Fascinating… both sides of the debate. I have both Benatar’s books and find have at times found his position compelling - and yet … there is something mechanical and cold about his relentless logic … I know he argues that he disavows life on grounds of compassion - but it always sounds oddly sinister.<br />But tyen again I can’t contemplate the Holocaust or torture or animal experimentation or the animal Industrial complex or child cancer without feeling that perhaps it all rewlly would be ‘better never to have been’ … but then again - the fact is we ARE here, so what’s the point really in his arguments? People are never going to - in Zapffe’s words … <br />“Know yourselves - be infertile and let the earth be silent” so antinatalism is finally a sort of intellectual exercise. Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07042253552463857546noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-62729447735582932622023-01-17T15:04:34.956-05:002023-01-17T15:04:34.956-05:00🙌🙌Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07042253552463857546noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-5847347369673350862023-01-17T14:34:20.423-05:002023-01-17T14:34:20.423-05:00Sure, living in the moment could make you happier....Sure, living in the moment could make you happier. But ignorance, too, is bliss. It's not obvious to me that happiness, as in contentment, is as honourable for people as it is for animals.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-66244618858716385762023-01-16T07:37:05.068-05:002023-01-16T07:37:05.068-05:00There are also many who are happy. There are other...There are also many who are happy. There are others who become happier later on in their lives. Unfortunately, many of the positives of life are hidden because people don't feel the need to constantly put out stories of their joyful experiences the way they do with the negative ones.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-43734708491232435482023-01-16T07:35:33.074-05:002023-01-16T07:35:33.074-05:00Perhaps, in such cases, one should consicously cea...Perhaps, in such cases, one should consicously cease thinking about everything in a reductionistic manner and appreciate the uppsr layers of the experience via focusing on the moment. If love is ultimately just a chemical process, the only way it would lose value for me would be if I would be just thinking about that fact instead of the actual experience of loving someone.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-69812248788469548372023-01-16T07:22:03.030-05:002023-01-16T07:22:03.030-05:00Having no debt allows one to possess the opportuni...Having no debt allows one to possess the opportunity to feel relaxed as they are finally free of the burden and can begin earning again. However, those who don't exist don't acquire any positives from the void. Pessimists often say that not exisit8is not bad because nobody feels a desire for good things when they don't exist. But if this is why not existing is purportedly good, we could nullify that claim by pointing out that inexistent souls are not in a state of fulfilment due to their absence of existence. I don't think that non-existence has any value (not even "neutrality", which seems to be something that has both positive and negative elements). But even if it is, a positive state of affairs (and there are innumerable sentient beings who find great value in their lives) is also better than a neutral one.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-72089693406083600032022-06-02T07:05:02.838-04:002022-06-02T07:05:02.838-04:00I agree that Peterson isn't taken seriously in...I agree that Peterson isn't taken seriously in academia. He's a dilettante. I'm not a follower of Peterson or of Nietzsche, though, so you seem to be misconstruing where I'm coming from. I criticize Peterson's worldview in the articles linked below. My point about Nietzsche in the comments above was just that Peterson's Nietzschean case seems stronger than Benatar's Benthamite one. That doesn't mean I have to agree with Nietzsche on everything or even on much. <br /><br />Likewise, it's possible to not have kids for different reasons than for those offered by someone who rejects having kids in principle. The same outcome can have different causes, so your charge of hypocrisy is fallacious. <br /><br />https://aninjusticemag.com/jordan-petersons-muddled-worldview-f7506703d691?sk=8ca821e06d5ceef83b4cd277b7bebc96<br /><br />http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2018/02/jordan-petersons-just-so-stories-of.htmlBenjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-13798585822406316022022-06-02T05:38:43.558-04:002022-06-02T05:38:43.558-04:00"The quasi-autistic antinatalist says we shou..."The quasi-autistic antinatalist says we should give up on life, because the costs are too high. Those with at least half a Nietzschean soul put their faith in the glory of tragic heroism, in the honour of those complex emotions which are mixtures of pleasure and pain and which the autistic type may not be capable of experiencing. It could be that these antinatalists are mere midgets, spiritually speaking, that they're wusses who haven't learned to suck it up like honourable adults. Yes, some lives are surely so horrific that those unfortunate individuals would have been better off not having been born in the first place. But given our ability to be inured to unpleasant circumstances, to adjust our expectations for happiness to suit our environment, those hellish lives are exceptions that prove the progressive rule."<br /><br /><br />You should not speak disparagingly of antinatalists, that only shows the weakness of your character.<br /><br />I am a follower of Nietzsche, but Jordan Peterson has nothing to do with him, he is a limited and repulsive subject, by God. Nietzsche would blow his brains out to see what kind of followers he has. Nietzsche was a failure and did not sell books, JP is a hero of social networks with thousands of followers, but in academia or in the world of philosophy nobody takes him seriously. Zizek, another hero of social networks but an excellent thinker and tireless writer, destroyed JP in a debate.<br /><br />And no, you are not a superman and Nietzsche failed because vitalism did not arrive, only a profound nihilism.<br /><br />JP and you seem more Christian than Christ, hahaha, Nietzsche shit on all that compassionate morality in the antichrist.<br /><br />By the way, you said you don't have children, so what the fuck are you arguing about criticizing anti-natalism? Nietzche did not have children either, and really he was a Darwinist, he did not believe that everyone had the right to have children, having children was a privilege of the strong. Read the chapter on sons in Thus Spake Zrathustra.<br />Beti onahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02543020149605728459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-66615292134313633832021-05-22T20:50:57.268-04:002021-05-22T20:50:57.268-04:00https://news.yahoo.com/only-one-policy-shift-save-...https://news.yahoo.com/only-one-policy-shift-save-120025970.html<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-91200525995209033382020-09-09T20:08:43.908-04:002020-09-09T20:08:43.908-04:00Thank you for the good explanations. Keep up the g...Thank you for the good explanations. Keep up the great work with the blog. I don't know if you have already, but have you ever tackled subjects like moral nihilism which Inmendham seems to scorn? I.E. Mackie's error theory or Stirner's theory on ethicsBornonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-40375550692916585122020-09-09T19:59:19.736-04:002020-09-09T19:59:19.736-04:00Anyway, Gary wants to refute nihilism by saying th...Anyway, Gary wants to refute nihilism by saying that obviously pleasure and pain matter to all normal people (and even to animals). Again, I’m not a nihilist, but this is a strawman criticism of nihilism. Nihilism would be formulated as the view that there are no moral goods worth pursuing, that all grand meanings in life are charades. The nihilist is hardly committed to saying that scientific theories of our traits’ evolutionary functions are false. Of course the nihilist can say we instinctively react in certain ways to pleasure and pain. The fallacy is in equating those reactions, those causal relations to moral values. Again, no scientific theory or nontautological, empirical argument establishes that we ought to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. You have to add moral assumptions to the explanations of how certain causal mechanisms work, and those evaluative assumptions are typically subjective and faith-based.<br /><br />Indeed, we’ve evidently grown beyond some of our evolutionary functions. Notice in particular our godlike lifestyle as occupants of the internet-using developed world. Notice how we control our reproductive systems with birth-control devices and employ reason not just for local Machiavellian purposes but to fathom the nature of existence far beyond our evolutionary purview. Thus, we can understand that some pleasures are bad and some pains are good, contrary to our small-minded evolutionary functions. Eating too much fat or sugar is bad. Accepting the pain of making hard but necessary decisions can be good. Most importantly for my writings, avoiding the pain of accepting life’s absurdity is bad, which means existentially-inauthentic pleasures are bad. Anxiety, depression, horror and disgust can be morally praiseworthy if they demonstrate courage in facing up to harsh realities. So existential philosophy is at odds with crude evolutionary psychology. <br /><br />As I recall, Gary is wont to say at this point that he’s not interested in “morality.” But that would be a cheap flight to semantics. The kind of goodness and badness that matter and that would refute nihilism are called “moral” or “normative” in the philosophical literature. You can label them differently if you like, but that wouldn’t change the conceptual distinction between, say, a neural mechanism and a value that dictates what ought to be done universally, not just in the evolutionary context. <br /><br />If Gary thinks we’re all still in the evolutionary context, why does he insist on following logic and science rather than his genetic impulses? Why does he care about the pain of animals that aren’t in his genetic lineage, when he evolved to hunt them and eat those critters for dinner?<br />Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-85921371631443776062020-09-09T19:58:59.270-04:002020-09-09T19:58:59.270-04:00This argument about the objectivity of morality is...This argument about the objectivity of morality is directed against nihilism and, I suppose, against something like postmodern relativism. I actually argue for a different objective basis of morality, but I reconstruct morality along aesthetic lines, since the aesthetic stance overlaps with scientific detachment, as I argue in “Life as Art.”<br /><br />So it’s not that I reject the spirit of Gary’s argument; what should be dismissed, though, is the crudeness of his assertions. What’s objective about the neural basis of pleasure and pain is the evolutionary function of those signals. To equate all evolutionary functions with moral values would entail nothing like Gary’s utilitarian love of all animals. On the contrary, we evolved to be omnivores. If our formative evolutionary period inclined us to be hunters as well as gatherers, and the causal role of those instinctive behaviours amount to moral obligations, we’d have a moral duty not to be vegetarians but to kill animals. Indeed, our supreme intelligence on earth would likewise oblige us, on objective, moral grounds, to lord it over the other species as we’ve been doing for thousands of years, thanks to our invention of civilization.<br /><br />In short, Gary’s worldview is incoherent here as at so many other points, as I demonstrated years ago. He wants to pretend he’s a tough guy with cold-blooded, objective, logical morality rather than mere wishy-washy feel-good values (like the evolutionary psychologist Jordan Peterson). But of course, these tough guys don’t go all the way towards social Darwinism, since that takes you to something like the Nazis’ dog-eat-dog cynicism. On the contrary, like Richard Dawkins, they embrace liberal moral values that have no such straightforward logical or neurological basis. <br /><br />A utilitarian might stipulate that pleasure is good and pain is bad, and might infer that pleasure ought to be maximized, but those stipulations don’t follow from any biological theory of how the brain works or how we evolved. The naturalistic fallacy stands in the way of any such crude reduction. Again, the evolutionary functions are objective, not the moral imperatives or the stipulated identities between goodness and pleasure, and badness and pain.<br /><br />Our pain receptors aren’t supposed to warn us that something is morally bad, since the genes know nothing about morality, as it were. Natural selection is quite amoral. Our neural mechanisms evolved because they were useful in our formative ancestral environment. But why should we infer that whatever was useful to hunter-gatherers hundreds of thousands of years ago in Africa imposes on us today a moral obligation to carry out the same behaviour? Racism, sexism, aggression, and rape might have evolutionary functions. Does that mean we have a moral duty to be psychopaths? <br /><br />Gary’s crude reductionism is exactly what you’d expect from a sophomoric philosophy student, from a young intellectual who’s stuck in his Nietzsche phase. You’re supposed to keep reading and grow out of it. <br />Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-76923514890814902402020-09-09T17:20:57.459-04:002020-09-09T17:20:57.459-04:00Hello Benjamin. I came across your blog a while ba...Hello Benjamin. I came across your blog a while back and have been going through them ever since, especially the stuff on Anti-Natalism. One thing that really sticks out to me is your debates with the Efilist Inmendham. I know you're probably sick of talking about Efilism, but I've argued with them a few times in the past and as someone whose comebacks weren't as razor sharp as yours my points were moot. If you can spare any time for an internet stranger, what are some counter points to these Efilist arguments:<br /><br />"Suffering is objectively bad because we have pain receptors that go "Ouch" when a negative sensation takes place. It's an objectively unpleasant experience which would fall under the definition of bad. Cancer is not a pleasant experience and nobody thinks it is. This is decided by our physiology, not our psychology, therefore it is not a choice or interpretation. I think the objectivity of ethics are pretty clear, anything that causes a negative sensation to a sentient creature is bad (Cancer, starvation) and anything that causes positive sensation or prevents negative sensation is objectively good (orgasms, satisfying a need.) We know this because we are logical creatures and can see the clear signs of discomfort when something with a brain is suffering, and we know that we wouldn't want it to happen to us. Whether or not it is beneficial to the universe as a whole is irrelevant because ethics only apply to feeling creatures. We only experience pain for the purpose of influencing certain behavior to satisfy a need. It very clearly works well but it's extremely expensive and there's a disproportionate amount of suffering imposed on sentient creatures for a pointless DNA replication process. To this point life as whole is objectively a negative thing due to the completely out of balance pain/pleasure ratio.'<br /><br />"It's very liberating and easy to believe that nothing is objectively wrong in this life and that nothing at all matters ever, there's no value here to be wasted, life is fun fun fun, let's pretend we're all partying on a yacht when we're all actually sinking on the titanic. "Nothing matters LOL" says the moral nihilist. Yeah, nothing matters except for when it's your arm on the chopping block then somehow it matters. It's very stupid to pretend like there's no objective difference between eating a cupcake and getting your arm chopped off."<br /><br />Sorry if this is a lot but you're the only philosophically minded person I've seen properly manage to point out what's wrong with Gary Inmendham's ideas. I find these deeply pessimistic ideas stressful to think about. Bornonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-58948141263417014752019-02-26T10:39:32.820-05:002019-02-26T10:39:32.820-05:00This issue of determinism came up in my debate wit...This issue of determinism came up in my debate with Inmendham, the YouTube antinatalist. He says he expects most people to be selfish and opposed to antinatalism, but he persists in his evangelism to flip the script, to act as a link in the chain that forces people to change their ways. Of course, his disgraceful conduct in his videos does the opposite: it repulses lots of viewers and makes antinatalists look unhinged. He'd say he's just being monstrous to monstrous meat-eaters and procreators.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-89742566609631755792019-02-26T10:26:28.376-05:002019-02-26T10:26:28.376-05:00Well, my grandmother just died this morning, the l...Well, my grandmother just died this morning, the last of my grandparents, so I'll likely be writing again about death soon. The notion "better never to have been" is incoherent, since the world without us is amoral and value-neutral. So better for whom if no one's alive?<br /><br />I think that Cioran quotation ("not worth the trouble") is nice but it's an understatement. We should carry on to avenge ourselves against inhuman nature. That vengeance is perfectly irrational and fictional (since the universe doesn't care either way), but it's also glorious, even if we're the only ones who can appreciate the honour and the glory. Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-9628344072698763472019-02-24T10:57:14.308-05:002019-02-24T10:57:14.308-05:00Apologies for the typos. This subject just keeps b...Apologies for the typos. This subject just keeps bothering me. Benatar, Zapffe, Schopenhauer, Cioran seem to have a point about 'life as suffering' = better never to have been. Yet their pessimism doesn't address what C.S. Lewis articulates in "Surprised by Joy" - that even a few moments of knowing love outweighs the pain. I'm not fully convinced of either extreme. Guess that's why the subject keeps needling me, and doctrinaire viewpoints put me off. My own views seem overly influenced by my own depression, and a desire for nonexistence. I often walk through a local victorian cemetery and read the names and dates on the gravestones. Emily died aged 6. Edward died Aged 24. That sort of thing. And I look at all the gravestones and think what pain they represent, and all the lives that are gone, as ours will soon be, and I wonder if it is all worth while, if it would not have been better that the whole thing never happened, but that as Cioran observed with his caustic tone (in 'The trouble with being born'), "It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late". Thus: we are here, so we may as well get on with it. As for conceiving children knowing a grave awaits each one... I am more and more uncertain... I have a child and each moment of her existence is of immeasurable value to me and I think to her too... yet those gravestones bother me....Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07042253552463857546noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-3392708053400380642019-02-23T19:05:58.319-05:002019-02-23T19:05:58.319-05:00Humans co-evolved with drugs. They alter our perce...Humans co-evolved with drugs. They alter our perception, both reducing pain and perception of truth. Its not a myth that the highest number of conceptions take place over Xmas/New Year. It becomes a vicious circle. Drugs and alcohol dull the pain but create more pain in the world and more babies. But this is only one source of suffering and trying to remedy addiction is likely to create a new set of problems like religiosity or new drugs. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00770202954421987852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-41526209962128521912018-07-21T17:09:57.826-04:002018-07-21T17:09:57.826-04:00An FB page for people who regret having children. ...An FB page for people who regret having children. Seems to be a lot of them.<br /><br />https://www.facebook.com/pg/IRegretHavingChildren/posts/?ref=page_internal<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-24478949580158763412018-06-20T08:24:32.853-04:002018-06-20T08:24:32.853-04:00I'm amazed at how my brain has changed since I...I'm amazed at how my brain has changed since I was younger. I am now middled aged, and also can no longer appreciate most movies, stand up comedy, cartoons like South Park, etc. I now watch true crime shows, and read about climate change. Ugh. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-3151831820161892892018-06-19T20:25:26.326-04:002018-06-19T20:25:26.326-04:00I agree that cynicism comes with age. South Park d...I agree that cynicism comes with age. South Park did a couple of masterful episodes on this point (season 15, ep. 7 and 8), that the downside of experience is indeed that the novelty of life wears off. This has happened to me with regard to movies and novels. It's harder and harder to find one that can sweep me up in its story. Youth is wasted on the young.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-52975808738440428912018-06-19T10:39:09.912-04:002018-06-19T10:39:09.912-04:00I think the problem comes with knowing how the mag...I think the problem comes with knowing how the magic trick works. Sure we can still be impressed by it, but it ceases to have the same effect. <br /><br />"He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone."<br /><br /> SchopenhauerAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com