Life is Suffering: Have Babies Anyway. (Against Anti-Natalism)

I mean I think there's also a false
assumption here on both sides which is very closely parallels on the debate in veganism all the time the personal choice fallacy this is just a personal choice so you know kind of one side tends to say well this is just a person choice it's just up to the individual to decide what not the one have kids and then the other side will say no no no you're beholden to the world ecology etc you have to make a decision that reflects world of a population hello Olympics and the truth in this case is actually someone between politics matters local government policy matters you know etc government policy if you're encouraging people to have as many kids as possible or as few as possible even if it isn't enforced with prison sentences it matters if this has outcomes and this is in the middle you know so yes to some extent it's a personal choice even here in China some people make the choice to have two kids or five kids my cousin flew to America every second kids right some people run away or dead more kids but obviously a lot cheaper you can walk across the border here you can escape from China into northern Myanmar have more kids there people still make those decisions as individuals so that's always immature to some extent but then also collectively and politically you know we make a decision as governments and countries some governments are more democratic than others you know about how many kids people ought to have then how we're going to pursue that goal unless you know the truth is in that sense that one winner this video opens with the usual caveat if I look exhausted it's because I am exhausted I got way too damn little sleep last night but nevertheless for just $1 a month on patreon I answer your questions I got a series of questions and comments on patreon from a supporter who pays just $1 to make this channel what it is or to stop it from ceasing to exist or to stop it from turning into a series of fitness and lifestyle videos bread baking videos what thanks anyway join patreon pay the $1.00 if you want to talk to me and you too will get this this kind of service but here I am taking some time in my day just to respond to patreon supporter who made a reasonable request that I should make a video stating what I think about 18 Adel ISM in districtís says that wasn't what our what our earlier video was about and he sent some links to YouTube channels that he follows that he feels make a rational well reasoned case well proven case for antenatal ism in the strictest sense of the term look guys I recently had a series of conversations with charming young youtuber named ask yourself and in them I pointed out you know while we were having conversation the difference between his mode of reasoning and mine again and again he was asking questions at a kind of nebulous abstract level of what is the ideal what is the what is the ideal goal the ideal outcome for example in reference to First Nations like whoa okay so what's the ideal situation for a language like curry or a jib boy or a mohawk and in my responses I was consciously and intentionally refusing to do that I was working from the ground up I was working from real-world facts I was respond to that by not telling him what my ideal was what objective was but by saying well look here are some puris in particular real world facts you have to hear something you don't know here's some that really matters here's why the problem is the way it is and why I'm talking about problem solving the way I'm talking about it this isn't always the case but very often these kinds of discussions which are ultimately about politics that are ultimately about government policy those who approach it from the top down from the conceptual and abstract level look like fools compared to those who approach it from the ground up from real-world political examples real-world political experience if you want to talk about effective population control there are two examples in real-world political science that matter the two most overwhelming moats are the most significant examples in history of the world are China and Iran and there are two totally different examples of government policy to constrain population growth in China the one-child policy was based on coercion and violence in Iran and it only lasted for a few years but was unbelievably effective the Iranian intervention against population by excess population growth is considered the most effective mr. world it was instead more like getting a driver's license Iran has a culture that's really hung up on marriage you know it's not like it's not like people have a relaxed attitude towards having kids out of wedlock in Iran everyone is part men as well as women they really want to get married and I said okay if you want to get married just like getting a driver's license you have to get a marriage license and you have to come in for a series of educational sessions and bonded I'll write a test you have to qualify to get married and have kids and in those sessions the educated people they talk them through the economics of look here's what happens if you have seven kids here's what happens you have five kids here's what happens if you have two kids or just one and the very clear point was if you have large families you are locking yourself into a life of poverty you're destroying your children's prospects for education and career these are the implications in the real world looking ahead for the next century and it had this unbelievable impact so all of the United Nations projections for Iran's population growth which by the way are made by real demographers people with PhDs and demography and economics people know what they're doing that all of these projections for Iran facing a huge population crisis because they had a culture that valorized large families they had a culture that regarded woman women as good and great if they had seven kids and five kids would that really was their culture in a major way and with just a few years of government policy that radically changed and instead the dominant culture in Iran became okay - kids - kids maximum it just it just created a pragmatic social awareness and again so if you're actually studying this from the ground up the world of political science then these are the two most important examples in this well of course there will be a couple of others to pick and choose from but again Iran and China are huge countries they're not countries with an unlimited budget not in that period of time we're talking about China's much wealthier now than it was just a few decades ago these were countries with limited resources facing a terrible crisis in terms of overpopulation and in two very different ways one really involving coercion and one not so much but you know but also very different cultural context they very successfully intervened to constrain population growth now if you did not pose the question in terms of antinatalism but in terms of how do we effectively constrain population growth or how do we achieve negative population growth because a one-child policy by definition if if families are having a maximum of one child per family and of course some percentage of people are going to choose to have zero instead of one absolutely by definition that's gonna that's going to lead to a plummeting population within within one generation you know you know if you have a two-child policy again in reality you know if you have a maximum of two children per family in reality you will have a more gradual decline in population so yes I am very sympathetic towards those those policy goals stated as political science policy goals not stated as antenatal philosophy as I think we cannot - I totally categorically reject antenatal aasif II both in terms of ecology in terms everything else but if you're talking realpolitik if we're just talking about a world where government decisions matter and change people's lives and she's the fate of the world change the future this is what we're talking about and sure again it'll be different in different countries but if I mean if you're in a third world country like Laos and you decide well we now want a constrained population growth which for a long time they didn't again politics matters Laos was under populated when I was there it was under populated because somebody's country because her country it States of America bombed the [ __ ] out of it they dropped more bombs on Laos and they dropped on Germany and Japan combined during World War two Laos is normally ranked as the most heavily bombed country history of the world that was obliterated war and I lived in part of Laos that was completely depopulated by the Americans where they went from village to village and removed all the population where the population was actually reduced to zero and then they were in a struggle to repopulate so those are those are particularly situations and I talked to government officials in Laos who talked about that they actually had a policy in Laos you could get a free vasectomy or free hysterectomy you could get you know that kind of intervention but only if you had four children so the government was encouraging people look if you've had four kids then come in and get an operation for free you know manna the woman or whatever never never had more kids because they didn't support people having seven kids and nine kids my own father had nine kids by the way in case you think white people don't do that [ __ ] um you know it's this is not a problem that only exists in Africa or only exists in Southeast Asia my father was a white man and then got a vasectomy clap-clap a responsible choice after his ninth kid which was me anyway look you know so their policy was look the country is actually crucially under populated due to this recent history of warfare and poverty and what have you and so they want to recover the population but even then they didn't want people having more than four kids per family because they recognized it led to basically an education that deficit I guess you could say I don't know even a nutrition deficit but if a parent of parental care deficit when you have nine kids how much care can you possibly abort each one how much can you invest in their education or just even pay attention to them let me tell you my father never knew my birthday the level the amount of space in his brain for each of his nine kids was very limited very so I you know uh the the parental neglect becomes a problem I would I would say after one kid you know I've you've heard me say this in the recent videos I think I think one is enough or one every ten years we're gonna have two kids spacing out by at least ten years or something well that's that's my personal that's just a down-to-earth thing that's not one of these nebulous top-down idealistic philosophies such as antinatalism claims to be so again everything I've just stated we're coming to now dealing with antinatalism and it's in a strictest sense none of this is ante natal list you know whether it's the track government of China that formerly enforced a strict one-child policy it's now been upgraded to a two-child policy you know and it is done through coercion or it's the government of Iran having a kind of licensing scheme which can didn't last for that many years but transform the culture transform the attitudes of the whole country and at the unbelievable measurable impact on their actual birth rates and their actual current population and their levels of education it impacted exactly all those things that was supposed to impact those are real-world political science tools that we have that we can use right now and in any given country it's a hard decision to make it's actually not easy for me to say I remember debating this in Cambodia whether or not it is a good time for Cambodia to try to cut off population growth variety of very complex reasons it's not easy to say in the case of Canada or Japan Japan is now in a downward population spiral what should be the government policy now should they cope with this however fundamentally those real-world policy choices I'm sympathetic to I think they matter and those are choices that we make not just for ourselves not just selfishly that's delusion that having a kid is just about your own self-indulgence or pleasure or something you know their questions they're their questions we have to ask in terms of what kind of society do we want to have what kind of people do we want to be in the future what kind of nation do want to be in the future and also sure what kind of planet do what I have in the future absolutely and I think you know anyone in the right mind for any given country well again I can't generalize because the situation allows is not the same situation Canada but you know in a situation like Canada the United Kingdom or something it may well be you do the research you didn't run the numbers and it's like well we should maybe have a maximum of three children per family because we have a significant percentage of people we're gonna choose zero and you've got a hash out all those numbers you've got to really do the math you've got to really do the study you know maybe it's a three child maximum in each country it's gonna be something different but even Laos they're not telling people to have nine even in a situation of the country being obliterated they're talking about four kids is enough and I remember sir one of the government officials said when parents ask why the doc this is this is government policy they said remember you can have three of your children died in one motorcycle accident I think you see the reality of that even here you often have three people crowded onto one motorbike so they should have four kids because maybe three to four died on one and one motorbike accident ouch all right so look antinatalism per se by contrast I think is a very easily refuted and ultimately silly ideology I'm a nihilist I'm an historical nihilist I can deal with these questions that just have done on a pragmatic level government policy political science but if you're stating this as an ideal probably the most honest school of 80 nihilism is the the antinatalism is the the vehement school of V HEMT the voluntary human extinction movement because they say what they would really like to see is basically the decline of disappearance of the human race if that's not your position in antinatalism then maybe you need to clarify you actually are just so much who wants something like China's one-child policy or Iran's more education if that's your case then you're not really an antenatal as' but true antenatal ism is that you're aiming for the you know exponential diminishment of the human race of the absolute disappearance leaving race through people you know refusing to reproduce the actual arguments I see are deeply flawed even in terms of ecology well okay I should state again I want to keep this very much in the first person okay I'll first state objectively why it's flawed I don't know if you've seen these statistics whether it's for water footprint or for air pollution you know this guy just wrote to me saying well a vegan still has 0.9 9090 percent as much negative environmental impact as a meat-eater I'm sorry my dude but a kid who grows up in Lesotho Africa does not have 0.9 of the impact of an American kid a Cambodian kid does not have 0.9 of the impact of an American kid it's unbelievable how much worse the environmental impact is of being born in and growing up in United States of America compared to Lazaro Africa or Cambodia Laos and again when you break down the numbers it's really sad what the crucial things aren't through person in fact someone that someone who literally works on a rice farm their entire lives and will never own a car and will never fly in an airplane ever you know the specific type of upper atmosphere air pollution from an airplane is really crucial these are what really drive the numbers this is what really inflates your your ecological impact and that is that's sad and interesting and you can look at those numbers but you know I mean it's interesting basically these specific antenatal lists are saying that vegans Ernie on an ego trip because we maybe just have a 10% better impact on the environment compared to other white Western people living in decadence that's I mean that's interesting I sympathize with where you're coming from then there but your your conclusion is that we shouldn't have children at all on on an abstract level the thinking here goes and this this may be true of some of you watching the video the thinking here goes that ecology consists of self-abnegation and my model of ecology is not based on self application not at all my model of ecology is not based on minimizing my impact in the world it's based on maximizing my impact in the world and now there are some other vegans on YouTube you can take this argument too so if you take this to mod vegan mod vegan identifies as a minimalist and she's someone who's really concerned about using a recyclable glass jar a reasonable glass jar instead of using a plastic jar she's interested in zero right a zero waste lifestyle she's really concerned about the bristles on her on her toothbrush removing the bristles from her toothbrush and biodegrading the toothbrush handle and this kind of stuff she is approaching ecology and for some people this is the first premise that brings them to veganism as an extension her principle is to look at the human being as the center of a chart with a circle around it and the circle indicates harm or negative impacts and if trying to shrink down that circle as much as possible that is not my perspective at all I've said this in videos but I think more than one year ago I remember doing podcasts on this I see myself in the center of that circle and if you ask me okay so aisel you're going run for election for the Green Party quite a likely scenario actually you're gonna run for election for mayor or governor or provincial Parliament or whatever it is you're running for an election do you want to minimize your environmental impact by refusing to take a single airplane why don't you just do the whole campaign over Skype I'll just do political lectures over said I'll do I'll do a zero-waste political campaign I won't use I won't use any disposable drink containers no [ __ ] that [ __ ] you I'm leading a meaningful life in pursuit of meaningful goals where I want to have the maximum positive impact so I'm gonna get on that plane I'm gonna burn that [ __ ] jet fuel I'm gonna take that helicopter from town to town across Canada and I'm gonna drink Gatorade out of disposable bottles I hate Gatorade so is it the only thing that's vegan and I'm gonna throw them in the [ __ ] garbage and you will know me by the trail of dead behind me I'm gonna burn and pillage I'm gonna light the forest and burn it down and you're gonna see the red glow and the smoke rising over the horizon this is high-impact political reality and I'm gonna struggle to the maximum impact because I really believe that you should vote for me and even if I can't win the election the Green Party it's very rare for them to win an election I really think my message in politics is worth getting across I really want to have that impact I want to take it from town to town I want to do that my life isn't something meaningless I'm stuck in a pattern of making excuses for my life isn't something I'm gonna apologize for trying to minimize my negative impact for I'm telling you I actually believe in the positive effects I'm having with this specific project with running for government and I I have no doubt in my mind that this justifies a hundred disposable plastic bottles going in the landfill or whatever but the forest trail of dead jet fuel being spent etc that's my message is don't get stuck in a mentality of minimizing your collateral damage maximize your collateral damage but believe in the goals you're pursuing now by the same token I don't believe in downhill skiing my girlfriend when she first kind of met me was a little bit shocked to that she's like why are you so why are you so much against skiing why do you deem that ski I don't believe in that [ __ ] at all there are people who take helicopters to go downhill skiing that's quite common in Canada they take a helicopter to the top of the mountain there are people of course take airplane tickets they fly across the country go to Banff and go skiing there are people who use up jet fuel and alcohol and marijuana and cocaine going skiing skiing in Canada is a big part of the unexamined life and I'm against all of it okay no there are a lot of things in life I think are meaningless self-indulgence and they don't justify the air you're breathing and the urine you're putting into the sewage system the jet fuel or any of the rest of it for sure but you know if you're looking at the impact of bombing Mosel you what do you want to evaluate well you know these US soldiers and Mosel they're using a lot of disposable plastic bottles yet they're also putting bullets through people's head okay the question we want to ask here is is it right or wrong is it good or bad to be putting bullets through people's heads to try to shut down Isis an international terrorist organization and a part of a civil war and a you know separatist political movement Isis is what it is do we or do we not want to pursue the elimination of Isis and the conquest of Mosul and all costs at any cost at what cost those are the real-world political science questions would ask am I willing to run for the Green Party run for election in Canada and all cost at any cost at what cost those are the questions we go to ask and they're all about pursuit of a meaningful objective and then the the Empowered have the maximum impact in order to pursue that objective now of course actually by the way the ecological impacts of war are terrible but this is the world I live in and this is the world I understand it when people take this mouthy part of me mouth the attitude mousy mousy attitude like I'm this dot in the middle of this chart and all I can do is go live in a cave and recycle my [ __ ] toothbrush and this kind of [ __ ] you're stepping aside so the Joseph Stalin's of the world are on that podium okay the real tragedy of human history is that Joseph Stalin and people like Joseph Stalin end up in power again and again and again evil happens because good people aren't are not stood up and heard they're not good people who stand up and put their lives on the line for if we're being all the way real about it okay the struggle is real the struggle is terrible the struggle for ecology is a political struggle period and I do not subscribe it all to the view that the most impact you can have especially not if you live in a liberal Western democracy that the most impact you can have is by deleting yourself from the census or deleting your child from the census if you really believe that think about what a [ __ ] terrible character judgment you've just made on yourself do you really believe you are such a piece of [ __ ] that all you can do is minimize your impact as a consumer why the [ __ ] can't you do more now look some people I mean you know maybe you're so disabled physically or mentally look like my heart goes under there are some people who probably are so disabled one of my one of my fans you know one less person failure he's in a wheelchair but he's still out there doing vegan activism you know I mean some people you know he's out there literally handing out pamphlets on his campus and he writes to me sometimes about how tough it is so you know but there are people there are some people I got one brother who's so disabled he can't say a single word in English he's totally disabled he's a total ward of the state or whatever you know you know but I mean there are some people are so disabled that may be true of there's no way they can have a positive impact in that struggle okay peace is an illusion peace is the shadow of war okay you may think you live as as just a consumer looking at the bottom line looking at this equation of how much you can subtract from your clutch limp that you're not this is the war of all against all baby and you know who who's gonna define the politics of the 21st century and the 22nd century if you want to stay in your cave and let Donald Trump do it or let the next Joseph Stalin do it [ __ ] you go out get on the airplane get on the campaign trail and if you've got to burn some plastic water bottles to do it find a project find a way so you can make this crucial difference in the world and I think you should be committed to it and willing to make willing to make those willing to make those impacts this is a motivational video obviously I'm obviously being a bit you know a bit provocative I have been in the situation where I was part of a Nicola sorry pardon me I was part of a humanitarian project that nevertheless had some negative ecological impacts it was trying to have positive ones actually you know like you know we were involved in agriculture we were involved in people starving to death food security providing food and what I do there were over ecological questions but you know in the real world when you're looking at the real balance of what your project is you say okay we're trying to help these people not starve to death we're trying to improve their agriculture but you do actually have to sit there and look at the balance of what you're doing and say how many people are we putting on intercontinental flights and is it worth it and in those villages the other people is working with more not vegan talking about a poverty-stricken village there was a horrible ecologic Olympic visible just from having a bunch of foreign experts like you pay some technical experts in forestry and agricultural science to come to a small village and Laos and they're all eating beef every day and you could see it you'd see the blood in the river the blood and the people in the river from the the animals being slaughtered to feed the rich foreigners who'd come there to help people in a you know in a humanitarian project you know for real when you're designing a humanitarian project and when you're designing a political project there are responsible decisions you can make that are gonna limit or minimize the ecological impact while still maximizing the positive impact you're in pursuit of there's no doubt and I'm sure you know probably the Green Party does it when you're designing your coast-to-coast tour they're responsible choices you can make about airplanes versus taking a bus versus hitchhiking and you could be a cute thing too maybe you fly some of the stops and then you hitchhike down the road and you film it and put it on YouTube and say hey in order to save some jet fuel in order to minimize our impact we're doing this you know in humanitarian projects or political projects yes what I despise is the profound assumption that you are nothing but a passive consumer in this equation and therefore all you can do is be as passive as possible and unified Syria fact as a consumer as much as possible you're not you're not those same statistics that show that someone in Africa who's never going to ride a car and never gonna fly in an airplane has so much less of an ecological impact and that you have so much you can ecological impact guess what on a global scale you're part of the and you may not think of yourself as the power lead but the fact that you're in a country where you can lobby Parliament where you can go to City Hall where you can change the world we can't can't have these these these kinds of impacts in a lot of ways compared to that person who may have seven kids because on their farm that's the only labour they have is employing their own children to engage in subsistence agriculture that still exists on planet Earth you know if talking about remote parts of Papua New Guinea or some parts of Africa and so on in South America there's still real poverty there's still people who are in that who are in that category no this is not a case where we want to build an ideology starting from the raw statistic of world population and work down and it's not a situation where you should think of yourself as a vampire sucking the blood at a planet Earth who's trying to put yourself out of minimal diet try to cut down on how much you're you're sucking of the ecology if that's what your life really is and that's who you really are you have to change but I think fundamentally this antinatalism is basically in ideologies for self pitying video game players who you know don't want to deal with the political reality I talked about in the first 10-15 minutes of this video they don't really want to deal with the ecological reality and they don't want to take on an active role of fighting this war whether it's the war against Isis or the role for fundamental you know ecological change the war however you see it to make the world a better place to change things here and now for the future but as soon as you take on any goals like that as soon as you become a goal oriented person then you're not just talking about the dot in the middle and remove reducing the halo of harm that you're doing you're not thinking about this in terms of harm reduction you're looking at a balance because now there are two dots on the map right there's you and there's the harm you're doing and there's the positive outcome you're in pursuit of whether that's helping starving people trying to prevent Korean age away from going extinct running for the Green Party or trying to conquer Mosul whatever it is now you've got a goal and now instead of harm reduction and trying to have zero kids and trying to use zero plastic or whatever it is now you're saying okay how do I get from here to there as fast as possible with as big an impact as possible making the most change I can make making the most positive change we can and how can I in a responsible way obviously eliminate irresponsible waste and harm to get from here to there I actually got one comment saying that Melissa contributes a lot because she has such expressive eyes well so that's that's one of your fair nice nice thing to say but you were just saying to me that in terms of both antinatalism and ecology and the kind of the question of the impacts of her daily life you know a turning point for you was watching cowspiracy there's always a turning point for this youtube channel wasn't really a turning point for me and like my private life of beliefs and that before that to some extent maybe you knew about this you know conceptual apps web but you were in denial about it yeah yeah like I knew about environmental impacts from using your car like you know just everyday everyday things like traveling on an airplane and I was and I felt really helpless about it I remember talking to multiple family members and I made like a Facebook post I was like you know what can I even do at this point like I feel like I I don't like as you were talking about in your last video um you know my family does ski and so you know when I was a kid you know I was involved in these ski trips but like as an adult I didn't travel and endlessly I was really living a frugal lifestyle before I was vegan and I I wasn't earning that much money to begin with but even if I had been I would have been fiscally responsible and like not gone on extravagant vacations or like just been wasteful in general like I I knew not to be wasteful and if I could have had an electric car or something like that you know in the Motor City you kind of have to have a car but um so yeah like I I had known that there were there was a lot of environmental impact that I could be reducing and but like I felt like helpless like what what can I possibly do at this point and then when I watched house tears I was like oh well I can go vegan that's pretty right that's pretty simple I think I think it's baby I think one of most boring things you said they're a little bit too brief em it was just the few of hopelessness right there like before you felt view found veganism in looking at those facts and factors you felt hopeless in beholding yeah well what are you gonna do just minimize the harm by you know by minimizing your airplane flights and so on what what is everything that yet yeah I mentioned video about having kids like that I did look on child freed like the subreddit I mean like I said there's an awful [ __ ] some people yeah logical approach 19:8 ilysm like we just watched a video that was recommended by somebody on patreon about antinatalism and it was a comedian like it was a clip from a comedian's show but it was really abrasive and just terrible to hear like somebody's the the antenatal this perspective can be really just awful like the worst of human nature to say like that you should insist that other people shouldn't have kids you know like and that we should all just die off like that that is such a negative way to view human life but like you know I can I can definitely sympathize because at the time I was looking for ways to minimize my impact and I also was already thinking of not having kids and like trying to think oh you know I was planning on not having kids and I was trying to reassure myself that this was the right decision and this was another reason why it was a good decision because it reduces your environment environmental impact and that bolstered my opinion on being like powerful this is the right thing to do and and I can't see like another argument that a lot of people made was that it was selfish to have kids and like there's this and I know that's just so irrelevant to me and people have kids for all kinds of different reasons right yeah we want to do measure the value of the delusions of parents some people are selfish and some people that some people are absurdly altruistic and it's it's just as absurd I know yeah there are definitely some people that have kids for some selfish reasons I'm sure that's not the only reason you but um anyway yeah I sorry this is like this is not really cool directed and it's kind of kind of aimless talking with you about like it's an issue care about more keeping Rihanna that's what YouTube's all about I mean you know I think one of the questions here obviously is what society do you want to be a part of and it's not that we have no choice if anyone who can afford an airplane ticket you have limited choice right like you know there's a real alternative here you can be a part of China with its one-child policy which has now been amended to be a two shell policy by the way you can it's your choice right now I'm living in China it's not that hard you know if you want to live in a country with strict population controls and see the advantage of that you can move to China I mean you know part of what I have to say is you know China's one-child policy works it's brutal and it has negative impacts we know someone personally here who really suffered she had an abortion that she really didn't enjoy that she really regrets but because she already had one child that's the Jewish she was in you know and also because she was a government employee by the way because the pressure on you was more actually supposed to be a member of the Communist Party then you know the consequences are higher she would have lost her job as well as being punished if she had a second kid ya know it's based on coercion but it works and I and there were people who both philosophically morally really support China's one-child policy I I say it's imperfect but it works antenatal is bulge it does not you know antenatal isms well so I think that's not but China's much hopefully you have a choice and no no no but just just one more to include Japan if you want to live in a country that's going through demographic collapse you know your shrink population you can move to Japan you can at least visit you couldn't you can live there and it's different you know I'm not I'm not gonna say Japan is bad there were good things about and there are bad things about but that's a contrast in society do you think people in Japan are less selfish then cultures that have lunch family Japan it's an incredibly selfish culture but it's a low birthrate culture it's a culture where you know they're there they're dipping below the replacement rate for births and you can see all that means including going out to the countryside where you go to towns and countries it's all elderly people it's all elderly people and people on temporary migrant worker visas you know they get in some people in the Philippines and from China to do to do jobs and it's it's a bit bleak and depressing but you know sure those are you can see it you can live it you know you have some choice and they're looking looking to your own future if you're from Canada you know to what extent you want the future Canada to be like China the what that you want it to be like Japan to what extent you want to be like Iran talked about in the other video you know there there were countries that have different systems of population planning and public education and and different you know different realities coming out of that I think those are reasonable questions to ask and reasonable ways to challenge yourself whereas the kind of antenatal aesthetic we've seen is in many ways unreasonable yeah it's not convincing anybody else other than people who are you know it seems like this was just preaching to people who are already under this belief that having kids is selfish it's like like why is this even a an argument it's not well that that's also I mean look I mean again I come out of a you know nihilist background and philosophers like Max Turner and so on I mean any argument that says well my opponents are only self-interested it's kind of a dead end it's kind of so what you know oh well America is only bombing Mosul you know is only attacking Isis for America's self-interest so what like you think you think you've missed the argument as opposed to America is bombing another country out of altruism or to benefit some other country like you cost me so lots you know so I'm just saying though any of those arguments I find just implicitly observed or self-defeating yeah right exactly just something that he was saying in the video that we were just watching is that like you don't know for sure if your child will turn out to be vegan even if you want to raise them to begin in the same sense if somebody has a kid and they don't have any clear direction on what they want their child to grow up being um it's possible their child will grow up to be a really positive member of society like sure you know your father had a lot of children and I'm sure he didn't like have a plan for all them but you know I feel like the world is better for you being in it oh thanks babe yeah you know I can't necessarily say that I don't know your eight siblings but probably probably a small percentage of my brothers and sisters or decent human beings but sure yes yeah so and you know we were just talking a couple weeks ago we had you know I raised this question because in one of the discord chats like people were talking about this book about antinatalism and I was thinking like in the past I thought like oh the people that shouldn't be having kids are having a lot of kids are you know yeah you said be under this impression but like right um you know you can't you can't say like because the parents shouldn't be having kids that the kid won't turn out to be a decent member of society or like try not to beat somebody well I mean I think there's also a false assumption here on both sides which is very closely parallel design we debate in veganism all the time the personal choice fallacy this is just a personal choice so you know kind of one side tends to say well this is just a personal choice it's just up to the individual to decide whether or not that when I have kids and then the other side will say no no no you're beholden to the world ecology etc you have to make a decision that reflects world overpopulation ecological impacts and the truth in this case is actually somewhere in between politics matters local government policy matters you know etc we were talking about an economic issue recently and I remember I just said to you I said look you know it really matters whether the government is encouraging companies to pay their employees minimum wage to grind down wages or if you have a government that maybe not even through explicit laws but is is constantly pushing people as Bill Clinton did and so on you know actually to raise wages to invest more in people and education and skills where the government policy to say no we encourage what's called an economics the virtuous cycle of upward productivity and upward wages and the wages should reflect in that when there are improvements in productivity or profitability that the worker should be paid more that you shouldn't be quieting in wages those kinds of government policies matter now likewise government policy if you're encouraging people to have as many kids as possible or as few as possible even if it isn't enforced with prison sentences it matters if this has outcomes and this is in the middle you know so yes to some extent it's a personal choice even here in China some people make the choice to have two kids or five kids and just pay the fines and go to prison and some grunt across the border here they escape to Myanmar they want to have more kids so they leave China worker she said her cousin flew to America to have her second kid right right so some people run away under more kids but obviously it's not cheaper you can just walk across the border here you can escape from China into northern Myanmar and have more kids there people still make those decisions as individuals so that's always immature to some extent but then also collectively and politically you know we make a decision as governments and countries some governments are more democratic than others you know about how many kids people ought to have then how we're gonna pursue that goal I mean that's you know the truth is in that sense somewhere between yeah so the other thing that we were talking about the other day like I guess the premise of this book that was linked is that because life is so miserable most of the time like right we have it's better it's better not to exist at all basically right yeah yeah you see yeah like you've said that's that's easily refutable because to you life is not about enjoyment life is not about happiness right so that is actually right that is actually a profound argument that I forgot about today you're right yeah yeah so you know you shouldn't in the same way you can be led to madness by thinking of reducing your impacts environmental impact to zero I think you can be driven to madness by making your life as happy as possible we're like trying to say because life is miserable let's just end it all like that to me that that is madness like well why would you say this I don't know it's a really weird thing for because you know many vegans not all that many that I see on the Internet identify positively with utilitarianism and this is a weird case where I like rejects antinatalism for the same reason for some of the same reasons I reject utilitarianism which is that no I don't see life about the pursuit of pleasure and avoiding suffering I see the truth I see life in the phone way you're going to suffer the choice you have to make is between meaningful suffering and meaningless suffering and now I really feel having a child a child not ten not five having a child one is a lot more meaningful than skiing it's a lot more meaningful than playing video games it's a lot more meaningful than cocaine and you know again I think doing humanitarian work in Laos and Cambodia is more meaningful than what I could have done in Canada at that time that phase of my life and actually the reverse is true now I think the political difference I could make in Canada you know through our demo is more meaningful than any difference I could make in Cambodia Laos so I actually that's an interesting double example but once you have one of these missions once there is something meaningful you're you're trying to accomplish suffer go out there and suffer yeah sure life is suffering and brace it but I think it's totally false to bring that object like Oh huh so their question is how do we minimize suffering and some people answer this way some people answer that way in terms of utilitarianism and the antenatal assay we'll the way to minimize suffering is to minimize life itself not the easiest Segway I can understand you know if you have a kid it's it would be pretty hard to explain to them some of these adult concepts about why the world is in the state it is and of course this I think this would be even more difficult in World War two you know explain music it's what was going on and like why the Holocaust was happening you know and this in in the same way like you have to explain to your children like these horrible things that happen in the past and what's happening now how we can improve like there's a certain amount that that is kind of awful the the idea of having to teach your kids like that life is suffering like more often than not so like basically where I'm going with this is I can understand like why people would be like you know the world is in a shitty condition life is tough life is hard so why bring another life into it to experience this I could sympathize with that like yeah you know so we talked to the world war two couple weeks ago and I actually got quite emotional because you were asking me the hypothetical question if you were alive at that time and these kind of circumstances what we do and for me it is emotional cuz I you know over my life and total I've done a lot of research on that period of history and I said you look I mean you know this is one of the reasons why I'm kind of well this is one of the reasons why having a son is kind of harder for me than having a daughter because I think especially with a son because the reality of military service and someone is what it is the reality of civil war is very gender unequal but I said look you know like I really dread having to teach my son look there are some circumstances where you have to give up all the bourgeois comforts of life and go to the jungle or go to the cave and join the resistance and it's you know it's war its war to the knife you know it's but you don't yes you know my answer is if I was alive at that time I probably would have died you know I would have had to and even those choices are very tough and so if you look at the reality of the French Resistance you know there weren't easy moral choices you know I wouldn't want to join the Communists just because I'm fighting against the fascists I wouldn't really want to join the anarchists either you know very often the groups you had to sign up with but we've seen that just play with the serial so serious the civil war well if you want to fight against one side which side of you with I mean the the choices are often really bleak and really morally murky but yeah well I said you know there's some of these circumstances so extreme that I feel absolutely the right thing for me to do if I was an able-bodied person I would have to you know I would I would have to immediately go into combat you know in clandestine combat not even joining a forum whole army I'd have to be involved in in guerrilla war now so I mean that's heavy for me I don't say that in a flippant way you can tell I'm not like bragging or something you know I think that's awful and I know enough I've done enough historical research about people who literally lived in a cave and literally lived in the jungle have read there were council what that's like it's it lay your life is suffering you know but surviving the war is a lot more suffering than dying in it in a sense that the dying part is easy you know then you don't have to plan for what you're gonna eat the next day you know and just easy start starvation as part of war too it's it's grim but but here's the but sorry here's the buggy's no I'm saying this but I think there are other people in that war you know who are alive at that time who felt like the most means the thing they could do was having raised a child where they saw these towering you know political figures and ideologies beyond their control and beyond the comprehension and they decided well what I'm gonna do is close my toe or close my windows and try to raise my own child to be a good person and even though I think that's the wrong decision I can sympathize that decision and again I live like when I was living in Laos I was looking around people who didn't understand politics at all the people who had no clue and you realize these people some of them went through the war in Laos and they literally didn't know what the word communism means and they did they have no idea what the two sides fighting are and for a lot of them that was the decision was to say well I can't understand this it's dangerous all I can do is close my door and focus on raising my own child to be a good person and I think in the strict sense I think that is pathetic like I think it's a pathetic decision but it has real pinkos you know what I mean I can sympathize with that with it like if you're literally an illiterate peasant it Laos or maybe you're illiterate but the language you're literate and none of this information is is publishing you're literate in a indigenous I think minority languages and allows there's like you know oh you're only sources of information are a Christian missionary who's been left behind by the French Empire and a radio that just has Pro communist propaganda it's tough so I do think whether it's world war two or you know Vietnam or whatever there were people who made that choice instead that they weren't gonna go sign up for a suicide mission with an ideologies they don't believe in because the ideology is fighting against is even worse they said no they're gonna try to insulate themselves and extricate themselves and just focus on raising their own child to be a good person and for the most part those are the people who now populate these countries they're the children of cowards because cowards survive and cowards are the ones who have kids and the brave men of principle like me or run often die and don't have kids or don't raise them that's part of the cycle of suffering in this life I knew a Holocaust survivor I'm not gonna say to you I knew ten Holocaust I knew one you know I knew a Holocaust survivor when I was a kid he was an old man and one of his mantris in life something he said again again I mean he invented it himself you know somebody else's Provo said he said survivors are not heroes he said when he was in the ghetto and Poland or whatever you know what he would you know he said the heroes were the guys who stood up and got shot in the head by the Nazis the guy they didn't die in the concentration camps they didn't let themselves get taken to the Constitution the heroes were the guys who stood up in farm photography go through you know it's it's hard it's extreme but he said you know the survivors he said are people like my parents his own parents he said they were cowards they did whatever they had to do to survive and that's why they survived you know I'm sorry I actually forget it I think his parents did die in all cost I think I think they died they just died later and I just they just live for a few more years before they died so I don't even think that's true but you know he said survivors are not heroes and yeah so those are those are really hard decisions and again I mean I guess my overall light motif I guess we got to cut off this video because they're both we pay you know the overall legacy for this video was I'm against these overly abstract ideological approaches in the top-down and what I'm in favor of is the grassroots empirical bottom-up approach where we look at political reality of it and that political reality includes includes these horrors and that life is suffering and includes a lot more something that you said you know who has suffered less like think of all the past sure what has happened like what time better what time is better than now like sure sure and but for if you're talking about something like ecology all of this is kind of directly and indirectly about ecology if you think about the suffering that's ahead of us in ecological politics you can really ask who has suffered less compared to any of these you know political calamities in the past or even the struggle for black organizing labor and stuff late but in whether it's labor movements or human rights movies or anything I mean if you look ahead even if you think of like the worst case scenario like I don't know employees of chemical corporation beating up ecologic protesting he does who has suffered less yeah so yeah that the the suffering ahead of us it certainly doesn't I mean again given that people did have kids when they were literally living in a cave in Laos and the US Army was dropping bombs all around you know I knew one woman who grew up in a cave in whole and not ancient times people 1970s you know I mean those people were committed to having children and raising them and educating them and trying to get them a good quality of education she did she got a PhD eventually I guess you didn't whew in the cave but she learned she learned to read and write and she studied literature and history and politics in the cave seriously yeah she was doing homework they didn't they didn't just relax because they were in a cave and the u.s. was dropping bombs and that's no excuse you still have to do your homework you know they were they were still committed to surreal parenting and [ __ ] right and that's the resilience the human spread those are the people who survived the war right those are the people who carry on the next generation do right but they're not heroes they did run away they were in the cave they're not fighting for a better tomorrow they're just escaping for a better tomorrow you know they're there if they're literally and figuratively running away yeah but ya know there's no comparison we can say well the struggle we're facing in terms of ecology is so dire that we can't possibly have children we have to take to the hills and join the resistance or something yeah and even if it is so I you know I was thinking something you said about Communist China how people there would be sweet little interactions between people like like a guy would help a woman take out the garbage or something like that would be there the extent of their relationship or something would grow from there because so many well you know Cuba has been through periods of time because of its ridiculous political situation where they had no gasoline and very little electricity and so on I've always felt one of the strengths of ecology is that even even when you have no gasoline I think the pleasures that really matter to people are still there you know and I'm not saying the pleasures of studying ancient Greek philosophy which is something I enjoy me and 1% of the population enjoy but you know when there's no gas and there's no electricity people still get together and play lie music that was a huge revival during that time in Cuba cuz people would just get together and they'd have garden parties and they'd play live jazz and oh they dance and so on because that's that's what they had you know and there was actually a whole culture of having improvised instruments because ruins they wouldn't have a real drum kit so they'd make drums out of you know farm tools you know different things you can do you know and you know music and sex and gambling and swimming in the ocean the pleasures of life that really mattered people were all there they just couldn't drive a car to get to and from them I do think one of the strengths of an ecological mindset is that so much of what people really care about not just the 1% of reading philosophy or care about politics you know I think they're still there for people and you know what she's alluding to is that during the more extreme periods of poverty in China here you know if you liked someone you couldn't give them roses but you could literally carry their laundry and stuff like this you could bring them hot water in a in a thermos you know these were the gestures this is the you know these these were the little forms of generosity and human warmth that that people use during the the bad old days the revolution 100 ecological destruction you know I feel like there are still little moments and in life even though life is majority suffering that make it worth getting through and making it worth producing another life to experience right well I think ok I think another huge issue here that we can deal with pretty briefly we heard this stand-up comedian he's an antenatal estándar comedian talking really about his hatred for people who choose to have children now obviously he was he's a comedian he's exaggerating I mean he is stating his political view I think one of the other fundamental problems we have in in politics is misidentifying who are your enemies so if antinatalism is gonna matter if it's gonna have a future and I don't really think it does who are your enemies the the moderate political position have pointed out of saying look let's learn from the experience of China with the one-child policy let's learn from the experience of Iran and let's talk about responsible you know government policy have to moderate or constrain population growth or actually have negative population have to have you know to have the situation Japan already has of people having fewer babies than the replacement race here your populations I shouldn't decline okay you know we can have that but who who is your enemy you know it can't be the standard comedian made the joke of smashing the windows of a car because it's a baby seat in the back you know like you know to express his hatred you know if your Radiology is based on the view that the people who have children are your enemies I think that really does indicate implicitly how wrong your ideological approach is and you know there may be some groups that are your enemies you know in the United States there's a religious movement called the quiver full movement terrible name but it is Christian the cult or Christian subculture that's based on putting emphasis on the the be fruitful and multiply have as many children as you possibly can philosophy just by the internet a guy wrote to me about a friend of his and his wife had become a religious maniac of that kind and he actually secretly had a vasectomy cuz she had adopted the few that she should get pregnant of his nature as she possibly can and I forgot after they had three kids or something you know and he lied to her he just said God doesn't want you to get pregnant so well I guess it's a sign from God for something I'm trying not even you know yeah so you know I'm not saying you know nobody's your enemy probably there are specific religious groups I can't imagine really secular groups maybe there are some you know that are in favor of people having you know more than two children and more than four children and maybe you do have to have education campaigns or even confrontational political you know interactions people say no you know it's not responsible for you to have nine kids it's particularly horrible when people see antenatal let's see children as the enemy it's like man do you have no like sympathy do you have no ability to empathize with other creature like it you know it being gains that's his stick you know like he hates kids but um you know reading some of some stuff like that and hearing people saying that they hate children look I think also a lot of these people are wimps I mean in a very specific sense you may have met people with sciatica with spinal conditions okay so there are people for whom life is constant suffering in the most direct physical sense to a physical pain from their spine their whole lives you know or intermittent really sharp pain they have spinal problems maybe not that condition but there are various spinal problems that are like that if the best solution you've got is suicide or not being born it doesn't doesn't speak well to your philosophy now I actually don't live in wrong I respect the decision all kinds of people do have medical conditions where they make the decision to commit suicide or make the decision to commit suicide when they reach a certain age and their body is breaking down I actually I do think that's an individual decision you can make but you know the the perspective of a teenager lists in the strictest sense again it's really kind of a shallow ripoff with philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer or one one aspect of Arthur Schopenhauer my philosophy is to say life is suffering life is bad therefore the way to minimize suffering is not to live at all and part of my answer as well is that the best you've got now again maybe you know maybe there are some people who there's a very small minority before him that's true you know again there are there are terrible health conditions there are people in terrible suffering and they can't do anything about it and they've lost the ability to lead a meaningful life I've actually seen some interviews with those people where they discuss their decision to commit suicide before doing so I remember one guy he was losing control of his body and he decided that when he lost the ability to talk he would kill him like he'd already lost a foot he used his legs and arms I think but he said okay when I lose the ability of time I saw one of those progressive one of those progressive diseases that's where he decided to draw the line but there are plenty of people who are mute and choose to live unfair comparison what comparisons are odious but you know you know this is a kind of diagnosis of the human condition for everyone as being so crippling and terrible that yeah and that for everyone that we're all worse off than someone with sciatica and there are plenty of people with medical issues with spinal conditions or what-have-you who will say no damn you my life is worth something I'm accomplishing something meaningful whatever I paint pictures I'm a political activist whatever it is they're doing things they consider meaningful and you know who are you to say my life is worthless just because it has suffering some of us are tough enough some of us are not wimps some of us can embrace the significance of suffering our lives and pursue things that are meaningful beyond that you know in spite of that or because of that or what have you you know you hear that coming up that attitude that wimpy attitude like you know there are people who say like for example in the prostitution issue there are people are like oh well like this person shouldn't live because they have a they have a shameful you know you know a shameful profession it comes in it's like well you know and again I think people just lack real-world experience you know huge centers your prostitutes that do that job for like one year or less one year maybe even five years there's a brief period of time and then they go on to other job in other education and in many cases they conceal it they keep it secret whatever job they don't want to nobody in that job ever knows that this this past and so on but I mean you know what what is your judgment on humanity that people lack the imagination and initiative to make something positive of their lives just cuz they have a spinal condition just cuz they had a period of life what they did something like a being a prostitute that they may indeed feel shame about not all do there are prostitutes who are proud and say they feel my shame but whatever or that gives them a disadvantage let's at least say that that they're disadvantaged in life you know it's it's this it's this very strange mode of reasoning that then leads to just trying to minimize and minimize and minimize where life is being regarded only in terms of what's bad and then the question is how can we minimize the the bad things about it as opposed to saying yeah they're suffering and the commitment to live is a commitment to suffer and we can commit to pursue positive goals positive achievements positive change obviously including ecology in my case that's that's high up the ladder and dammit I'm gonna live and I'm gonna fight for my daughter to live and again there are limits I don't think anybody should have nine kids my father did and you know and there are I think there are questions I think you can have laws we already talked about this whether it's Iran or China I mean I think there really is a question about how you how government policy ultimately has to draw a line there are some people in America with 30 kids you know one man with multiple women and so on there are I've seen documented cases of that that exists we'll you know ultimately what is the coercion whether the cutoff is at for kids or three kids or two kids or one or whatever you know what is what is the point at which you have government policies step in and say look this isn't your decision anymore before you were making a decision for yourself but now you're making a decision that impacts all of us too much what we're you know we're stepping in and saying you know what saying whatever we're saying you know yeah obviously it was recklessly responsible for my father have 19 and it's something I debated with them you know III talked about it I mean his excuse this is his line of reasoning so allegedly allegedly when he had the first kid he didn't understand contraception and he didn't understand right allegedly there are a lot of reasons why that story doesn't hold water his proposed MA thesis was on contraception in Hinduism before he had children at all the timing of it the timing of of when he but anyway he claims when he had the first kid he had no understanding of where babies come from and how a contraception works and it's like I'm pretty sure after you had one two or three children the doctor would have sat you down what somebody your own mother somebody you you know you were illiterate in the English language again it's not only being literate only language is lotion you have no access to a library there are people who live in ignorance in this world and you ain't one of them dad you ain't one of them you know I'm pretty sure somewhere between kid number one and kid number five even if the first pregnancy really was out of like total ignorance of how contraception works somewhere in the first five kids the concept of contraception would have would have gotten across to you so II I mean it's [ __ ] but he treated that like it was a blanket you know excuse for the [ __ ] in his life and it was part of what he was covering up for he was he was a true believer and a weird kind of Christianity in Christian socialism which I mean I think at that stage in his life I think you could tie him down and torture him and you couldn't get him to be honest about what he believed what he thought he was so it was so important to him to lie to himself about that and what role Christianity played in his decision to have so many kids during one brief time in his life and they're all they're all kind of clustered together you know yeah so look you know political decisions make people into your enemies you know it's sad but I think that's true I think I can just kind of say that but it's worth examining the advantages and disadvantages of your your your political views the philosophy you a dog in terms of who does this who does this make into my enemies who does this make anyone you know I'm self-critical I can look at decisions I've made and say well because I take this position you know because I take this position on refugee policy a video now what my position is some refugee policy I think I have a moderate reasonable position but I can recognize this makes some people into my enemies and they they you know yell me about it but I mean if your if your position is one that does make people people to make the decision to have one child into your enemies people are decision about two children into your enemies I think you have a deeply deeply flawed political position and again I encourage all of you to work from the bottom up if you want to live in a society that's in in demographic collapse or people are having fewer and fewer children go to Japan you you have a choice and you you can look at the advantages and disadvantages of that and Japan's accomplishing it without without a one-child policy like China has you can come to China you can study the real political history variants of countries like China in around that's a wrap yeah that's a wrap a bonus yen