To Be or Not To Be

How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world?

And why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth?

Furthermore, is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

All questions raised in a provocative article in the New York Times entitled Should This Be the Last Generation?This article sparked a firestorm.

Bloggers across the web posted their thoughts on the internet, arguing for this stance believing that ending the human race with our generation would be beneficial. Somehow ending the human race would save the world.

I do not fully comprehend this thinking. Even if ending the human race would save the world, it seems ironic, why would the human race want the world to be better and more livable if there would be no one to live in the world? Stopping all human life to preserve the earth would be equivalent to building a mansion that no one can look at or live in. What would be the point?

The New York Times article also comments on South African philosopher David Benatar. “To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her.”

Posts about Antinatalism all share similar beliefs to this. The Antinatalism thought process claims “Life should not be brought into this world” this thinking urges us to not have children because it is selfish to want to bring a child into this world for our own entertainment. This leads people to believe it’s inhumane to bring a child into this world of suffering.

I agree completely that life on this earth is also accompanied by suffering and there is no getting around that, but is it inhumane to bring someone into suffering?

I believe quite the contrary. Suffering is what makes life living. Is not life really just growth? The point of life is to grow and learn in all aspects, a simple concept that all can understand. But I ask you how are we to grow without suffering and hardships? Much greater thinkers than I have reflected on this.

“To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.” ~Oscar Wilde

“There is no success without hardship.” 
~Sophocles

“The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials.” ~Confucius

These great thinkers and many others have all come to the same conclusion as I. More appropriately I have come to the same conclusion as they.

To reduce our lives to life without suffering would be no life at all. So to make the decision to not let future generations live because of suffering is choosing for them not to live because of life. This is both an illogical and paradoxical thought process.