Anti-natalism is an ideology that believes that any life born in the world is harmful, and therefore we should not create new life in the world, and that it would be better to exterminate humans as soon as possible. Anti-natalism has spread rapidly in recent years, with the writings of D. Benetar. This argument is certainly persuasive in principle. However, it is only valid in the ideas, and it is fundamentally impossible to bring it into human reality. In real life, we cannot choose to eliminate a particular pain
(impossibility of eliminating pain), and we cannot choose a particular action in a situation at will(impossibility of choice). We cannot grasp our own life as
independent of the lives of others, and we cannot hold ourselves responsible for it (impossibility of independence).
However, the reason why this ideology strikes a chord with so many people living today is because there is something in it that justifies a particular sentiment held by people. Underlying this sentiment is the belief in
unlimited responsibility , the belief that one should take full and unlimited responsibility for all one's actions that include affecting others and creating new life. In real human life, one cannot live alone, but must influence others to live. Likewise, if new lives do not come into being, those who have come before them will face tremendous hardship. There is a distorted
world view =
human view that denies these many realities and fails in trying to take responsibility that cannot be borne in the first place.
This illusion of
unlimited responsibility , however, has only recently appeared in history. The more fundamental problem is that modern society lacks the ‹trust› to share responsibility for each other's lives. If we, as a society, continue to be unable to foster the ‹trust› , and if we continue to be mired in the illusion of independence, we will be forced to become more and more anti-natalist.
View full abstract