Sooo, being an anti-natalist on the Internet doesn't exactly lend you great number of people who share your ideas. Fortunately, however, there is a burgeoning (and I use that word loosely) anti-natalist community on YouTube, and while there's not a lot of us, the ones we do have are very passionate about the subject.

One of them has even made a movie/documentary/thing (pretty much all by herself) in support of efilism, a philosophy to which anti-natalism is branched. It essentially takes the anti-natalist ideal of voluntary human extinction and extends it to all life on the planet.

So I thought I'd post it here.


If you can stomach some of the more... cringeworthy parts (her acting and her little skits are insufferably corny, not gonna lie--but at the same time, the amount of effort she put in to this is undeniable), you'll find that she illustrates the philosophy extremely well, so if you ever had any misgivings about anti-natalism, I'd say give this a watch if you have time.

I mean if I looked like that I'd also try rationalizing never having sex.

Quote from: Flee on January 23, 2016, 11:26:32 AM

You people really need to find someone who knows what they're doing to get your philosophy and message across.

Nothing and nobody will ever make this movement appealing to a large amount of people. That's just the truth.

Depends on the person in charge. There's been some charismatic people in the past who've convinced people to kill themselves. Like the big death cult with 116 people or something.

Or, just take a look at the two predominant religions. Christianity and the arabaic one. Muslims. That's a big fucking percentage of people believing in a better afterlife and if history has shown anything it's that both religions follower's were just peachy with giving their lives for their cause.

Or hell, if you want another example, just look at patriotism and soldiers.

So, it's actually pretty easy to convince people to sign up to get themselves killed. If somebody who was charismatic as fuck and intelligent in the right ways got behind the wheel, they could easily, easily turn the movement into something bigger.

It'd take a couple generations though.

And of course, naturally, the wrong kind of person could get behind the wheel too. And they might pursue things in a violent manner. And who knows, they might even succeed if they played their cards right.

Quote from: Sandtrap on January 23, 2016, 05:53:31 PM

Quote from: challengerX on January 23, 2016, 02:19:11 PM

Quote from: Flee on January 23, 2016, 11:26:32 AM

You people really need to find someone who knows what they're doing to get your philosophy and message across.

Nothing and nobody will ever make this movement appealing to a large amount of people. That's just the truth.

Depends on the person in charge. There's been some charismatic people in the past who've convinced people to kill themselves. Like the big death cult with 116 people or something.

Or, just take a look at the two predominant religions. Christianity and the arabaic one. Muslims. That's a big fucking percentage of people believing in a better afterlife and if history has shown anything it's that both religions follower's were just peachy with giving their lives for their cause.

Or hell, if you want another example, just look at patriotism and soldiers.

So, it's actually pretty easy to convince people to sign up to get themselves killed. If somebody who was charismatic as fuck and intelligent in the right ways got behind the wheel, they could easily, easily turn the movement into something bigger.

It'd take a couple generations though.

And of course, naturally, the wrong kind of person could get behind the wheel too. And they might pursue things in a violent manner. And who knows, they might even succeed if they played their cards right.

The main difference being there's no glory, there's no afterlife, there's no dogma.

It's literally just "life sucks we should not exist".

Somebody playing their cards right wouldn't say that plain out. Anti-natalism would have to take a religeous stance on things and interject some peachy afterlife into things. Stick with that for a couple of generations and you'd have a genuine death cult ready to rock and roll.

For a minute there I thought the lady in the video was a man.. <.<

She's trans.

Quote from: ねこ on January 23, 2016, 03:37:19 PM

For a minute there I thought the lady in the video was a man.. <.<

She's trans.

Your movement attracts the worst of fronts to present itself.

Nothing against trans folks but damn.

Likewise the same thing's been said by many movements that have failed.

Statistically speaking there's probably been more stated movements or ideas to fail that actually have failed then there have been successes. I know it's your favorite movement here and all, but optimism isn't gonna cut you any slack.

I'm not advocating for the philosophy because I think it's going to work. I'm advocating for the philosophy because it's the right thing to do. Don't ever call me an optimist again.

Quote from: Fuddy Duddy II on January 23, 2016, 06:54:25 PM

Quote from: ねこ on January 23, 2016, 03:37:19 PM

For a minute there I thought the lady in the video was a man.. <.<

She's trans.

Your movement attracts the worst of fronts to present itself.

Nothing against trans folks but damn.

if you judge an ideology by the attractiveness of its followers you need to get your dick out of your brain

No anti-natalist argument has provided a compelling reason why suffering should be considered supremely morally wrong any more than an atom losing or gaining electrons.

But nobody has made this argument. The value of suffering isn't a question of "morality." Suffering, in all its forms, represents a body of negative sensations that sentient beings can experience--its because of its intrinsically negative nature that we must logically conclude that it is to be avoided at all costs.

There is no logical justification for imposing an existential state on another sentient in which they can experience anything called "suffering". Ant-natalists haven't provided a compelling reason why suffering is bad? No. Natalists haven't provided a compelling argument for why suffering shouldn't be avoided at all costs--even if we are driving ourselves to extinction.

Sure, suffering isn't fun but "happy = good and pain = bad" is like the pre-school level of philosophy, and anti-natalism isn't much more profound than "the sum of human endeavors results in a greater net suffering than happiness, therefore human existence is morally wrong."

And this is, like, a totally glib and pre-school appraisal of the philosophy. What's "pre-school" about the recognition of suffering as a negative sensation that is to be avoided? It's not MEANT to be a profound statement. It's an incredibly simple question--What gives you the right to impose life?

I know the question of why anti-natalists don't just commit suicide is a tired one

Extremely.

but if you truly believe your existence represents a net suffering on others there's really no reason to not do so, flimsy rebuttals of educating others of the philosophy aside.

"There's no reason for you not to kill yourself, except for all those great reasons you have not to kill yourself."

The agency argument is a farce; nobody believes babies, toddlers, children, or even teenagers are autonomous.

Why is that relevant? What the fuck is that?

Teenagers aren't autonomous--says who? You're telling me a teenager isn't capable of rationalizing his or her actions? Where's your evidence for this?

I mean, goddamn, you've said some stupid shit in the past, and this is right up there. Even if you were right--why is that an argument anyway? What relevance does a sentient organism's autonomy have to anything?

It's no more an affront to a person's agency to give birth to them as it is to give them a gift that they didn't explicitly ask for.

People already argue that life is a gift. They're fucking cunts, but they're out there.

Quote from: eggsalad on January 23, 2016, 07:13:33 PM

if you judge an ideology by the attractiveness of its followers you need to get your dick out of your brain

I think he meant the fact that this person's presentation is stupid as hell, regardless of whether or not there was good content in the video.

Content aside (Arguably), this video is fucking garbage.

We're discussing the content.

Read the title as "The Elfist", well there goes my interest.

No anti-natalist argument has provided a compelling reason why suffering should be considered supremely morally wrong any more than an atom losing or gaining electrons.

What ethical arguments do survive this counter? Was the Holocaust not unethical because it came about by deterministic means? 

Consciousness is a spectrum measuring awareness and reaction to outside stimuli; humans demonstrate the highest known form of this by responding with an array of emotions, and atoms display the most basic form by attracting and repelling other atoms. Sure, suffering isn't fun but "happy = good and pain = bad" is like the pre-school level of philosophy, and anti-natalism isn't much more profound than "the sum of human endeavors results in a greater net suffering than happiness, therefore human existence is morally wrong."

And?

I know the question of why anti-natalists don't just commit suicide is a tired one, but if you truly believe your existence represents a net suffering on others there's really no reason to not do so,

Absolutely not necessary to anti-natalism. Anti-natalism is about the moral value of the act of creating life, not the existence of life itself. If a person is alive and enjoys their existence that is absolutely fine and dandy. It's when they believe that they can make that decision for others that there becomes issue.

The agency argument is a farce; nobody believes babies, toddlers, children, or even teenagers are autonomous. I'd argue that the very idea that humans are capable of autonomous reasoning is critically flawed by the social nature of our species; if we were, there'd be no moral argument against suicide of anti-natalists -- or anyone, for that matter -- or even against the murder of others to prevent reproduction.

Even if we are not violating the consent or whatever of the unborn, birthing them is deemed irresponsible by antinatalism due to a large list of possible negative outcomes that can only truly be prevented by not birthing them. There life could potentially be great, yeah. But that doesn't make the decision to take that gamble any less irresponsible, and if practiced enough, prone to produce the feared results.


I've weighed the values of murdering people who would otherwise reproduce before. It's troublesome of course because it would justify the murder of literally any one individual who could potentially create an ever growing lineage.

The argument against doing such a thing would be that doing so would probably create a world with more suffering, and ultimately would create more suffering than it prevents. Most anti-natalists agree that they'd only murder all life if they could do so instantaneously and completely, to prevent any consequences towards the currently living.

It's no more an affront to a person's agency to give birth to them as it is to give them a gift that they didn't explicitly ask for.

The two situations are absolutely different in scope.
A person gifting you a blender is not the same as a person "gifting" you a job that you didn't ask for, a job that can range from giving you painful colon cancer to giving you chronic depression or whatever awful conditions you want to imagine.

If a person doesn't want the blender they can dispose of it rather easily, a trip to the dumpster at most.
If a person doesn't want their life, they likely already had to go through a good decade and a half of it, be socially conditioned to fear death, overcome natural stress and apprehension towards death, then go commit suicide with variable degrees of effectiveness that might just put you in a hospital and put you in a whole new world of hurt as everyone you never chose to be surrounded by as a child is put through a ton of suffering.