The End of Greatness

or; is it right to just fuck it?
or; pessimism tends not to be naturally selected...



IT gives us the anti-natalist position par excellence. It always seems to come down to a question of framing, however. IT rightly takes issue with the 'butbecomingaparentissonaturaldontchaknow' attitude by pointing out that making life is merely one of a number of urges that we, as political animals, generally subdue in order to function a little better together; in this way it could be said that the anti-natalist is just setting their moral threshold of acceptable behaviour at a different level to the happy parent, and perhaps this might be so.

However, I often come back to the (probably apocryphal) response from Beckett, questioned about his lack of progeny:

"Neither I nor my wife can bear the thought of committing a child to death."

According to this maxim, life is a trouble, and an unnecessary one; all of the infinity of potential humans are currently in an infinitely blank limbo, which in all cases is preferable to actually being brought into existence. Never having existed is always preferable to existing. This attitude leads on to the foster parent scenario - there are suffering human beings that need everybody else's help; they are here now, let's ease the pain as best we can. Sisyphus.

The other aspect of the Beckettian attitude is the role of time; and here we have to wrestle with more inconsistency; the virtual human is indeterminate, but the moment of conception sets forth a process that includes the potential for a senile, cancerous old human suffering constant pain. And of course, it is tempting to see that vision when one is in the wrong mind and in the company of children; a baby crying and dribbling? Imagine them crying and dribbling seventy years from now...

And another time problem, and this is where Beckett's Proustian influence becomes important. Proust is, of course, nearly all about the infinite and horrible tyranny of the Present, of now-ness, and the very small and very rare occasions (fuck it, let's call them events, shall we?) where the sensation of the past, another time, becomes stronger than the banal suffering of the Now. Included in the concept of time that Proust and Beckett subscribe to is of course the end as the prominent moment; bitter reminiscences of the all-too-real decaying body, terrifyingly present.

But to see life in this way, as a series of accumulating sufferings masking the vain pleasures and phyrric victories over time and nature is no more consistent than fucking away and feeling some form of specialness for having been able to spawn. Beckett himself, of course, never got to fully enjoy his withering away, as his mind took leave of him before his body did, which is of course the way the vast majority of us go.

Benatar, of course, tries hard to wrestle with these problems. He appeals to the pollyanna principle, saying that even when we think that our lives are pretty good, the opposite is the case, but then, the gaping logical hole here is, to whom does this matter? If all our lives are worse than we think they are, what could it possibly ever matter? There is a transcendental guarantee here required, an observer that is not human and is capable of perfect judgement of the quality of human life. Remind you of anything?

The video at the top is a simulation of the structure of a universe with physical laws like our own. I think it represents a problem that a certain aspect of the human mind wrestles with all of the time. To commit to a materialist ontology often includes a commitment to letting your investigations take you where they want to go, and that can spell trouble, perspectival trouble. But thus far there has never been a human that could escape its embodiment, its courage and its cowardice, its capacity for abstract thought and inability to transcend its own limits. Perhaps we're not far off from a real qualitative change, post-humanism either of transcendence or extinction, but that's another issue. Whether we think that childbirth is part of an 'avalanche of reproductive misery' (Benatar) or not, there's no outside point from which we could make it matter.

limmy - nothing

Reading list...

I haven't read this yet, but I get the impression that it's probably something I won't be able to find a single fault in. Forget anti-capitalism, we need anti-natalism...

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence---rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should---they presume that they do them no harm. Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence. Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence. The author then argues for the 'anti-natal' view---that it is always wrong to have children---and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a 'pro-death' view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct. Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.

The only problem with the LHC is that it's only a 1 in 5 million chance...

Serendipity

Out and about recently I found a little book, lying in the rain. I picked it up to find that it was "Death; A user's guide", which was unfortunately not a long lost work by George Perec, but the cosmic gesture was appreciated anyway.

Lovely Penguins

In response to Owen, I thought I'd point out one of my two favourite penguin covers (the other being Beckett's 'Malone Dies', black cover with grey type and a Giacometti skull drawing, of which I cannot find an image). Technically this one is a Pelican, but I think that's actually more appropriate to the discussion. The two main bits of information I can remember from 'Dying' are that a) only a very small proportion of people properly gain consciousness on the day that they actually die, and that b) generally the most physically distressing thing about dying is the difficulty in breathing that comes near the end.
Hooray for egalitarian educationalism!

BBC demands (I)

If I was part of the takeover of the BBC, I would ensure that Werner Herzog replaced David Attenborough as the human face of nature TV. We need more family programmes about the 'harmony of overwhelming and collective murder' on at six o'clock on a sunday afternoon.