Keywords

1 Introduction

In this article, I reasonably affirm the following propositions.

  1. I.

    It is good that no one exists.

  2. II.

    Furthermore, the number of people should decrease more than now.

  3. III.

    The extinction of humans causes great harm to our last generation.

My proposal is shown below.

  1. (1)

    The existence of human beings is always harmful.

  2. (2)

    The existence of humans should be denied.

  3. (3)

    I deny childbirth.

  4. (4)

    I affirm suicide.

  5. (5)

    I affirm homicide.

  6. (6)

    The extinction of humans causes great harm to the last generation.

  7. (7)

    Life-prolonging technology enables people to live indefinitely.

  8. (8)

    Brain remodeling nullifies human pleasure and pain.

    New technologies make life much more valuable than it is today.

  9. (9)

    First, one survives indefinitely in a life worth continuing.

  10. (10)

    Second, a person lives a life free from harm and pleasure.

  11. (11)

    Therefore, the development of new technology may affirm (1) and avoid extinction.

  12. (12)

    There is a possibility of making (1) meaningless and avoiding extinction.

I don't think (9) is always good. Therefore, I support (12). I call it true social antinatalism.

In this article, we consider antinatalism advocated by David Benatar, considering whether the existence of those who continue to produce and consume is ethically justified for the value of our lives. We also explain three arguments related to the convergence of the Anthropocene, which is independent of the conclusion that antinatalism should be affirmed. One is the extinction of human beings, the second is the continuation of life by machines, and the last is the continuation of quiet life. Finally, I consider the implications of endless antinatalism with respect to the metaphysics of personal self-identity surrounding death.

2 To Pro Mortalism and Anti Survivalism from Anti Natalism

Our living is hard. We should not be born, should not give birth to our children. This is antinatalism. Among antinatalists, David Benatar [1] does not deny staying alive, and he rationally proposes antinatalism on general moral principles. However, it leads to the pro-mortalism [2] and the anti-survivalism.

Our society is more mature than any other society so far. Should we be grateful for this happiness? Our standard of living is equal to or better than the former royal aristocrats. In all generations, peoples often feel more pain than pleasure. We are expected to work hard by society. In modern times, it is the self-management ability. The self-management leads us to social success. If self-management ability is evaluated as poor, all my failures are my responsibility, which is resolved by self-help effort ability. In society, the crime is considered selfish. This is plausible. We can only behave self-centeredly in social structure when an event occurs that exceeds a self-managing threshold. Is this personal selfishness? We comply with the law as a social norm. This is because by adhering to social norms, even if we suffer short-term disadvantages, we will benefit in the long-term. Therefore, suicide and murder mean mistakes by the society.

Importantly, Benatar's proposal makes a difference between a life that deserves to begin and a life that deserves continuation. Whether or not to continue life should be left to the person who is living the life. However, when I reasonably judge that the harm of staying alive outweighs the harm of stopping it, I think that even if there is a desire to stay alive, that desire is not rational. Therefore, I affirm suicide. If it is not good to be born, it is also good that there is no more.

Furthermore, I call the idea of allowing homicide as anti-survivalism. I also affirm anti-survivalism. Because by executing murder, we can end the undeniably good life of the murdered partner. We should quietly proceed to the destruction of mankind. It is possible to draw such a conclusion by pursuing Benatar's idea. However, I affirm homicide and suicide, but deny hurt and violence. Because it is harmful to be all present, and therefore I oppose war and the death penalty.

The question of why murder, including suicide and homicide, is the difference between recognizing and not recognizing the right not to be killed.

This article aims at minimum to fill-in a lacuna in the literature on anti-natalism, thereby contributing to future discussions of the topic.

3 Lemma to Benatar

If I affirm Benatar, the proof should show that it is harmful to needlestick pain. However, your denial of him should show that such harm is not always correct for the being. For many, no matter how terrible they are objectively, the harm is not decisive if they are satisfied. This shows the confrontation between Benatar and the opponent. This is explained by Yoshizawa [3] with the argument that Benatar's asymmetry should be distinguished from value-theoretic asymmetry as moral asymmetry.

If I explain this, he replaces pain and pleasure with misery and happiness, respectively. This appeals to our intuition. However, I think that rationality should be prioritized in consideration of multiple lemmas.

I think that everyone can feel distress, and the harm caused by distress is harmful, more or less.

If we eat delicious food that we have never experienced, what we think is delicious will be unpleasant. Moreover, poking a finger with a needle is better, but worse, than breaking a finger. That is, the good thing is that if anything unfavorable happens from there, it will be bad.

In the counterargument to Benatar, Morioka argues that it is meaningless to think of harm and pleasure for someone that does not exist. The original title of Benatar's paper is “BETTER NEVER TO HAVE BEEN”, not “BETTER NEVER TO BE”. The existence of X is only confirmed at time t, and the existence or nonexistence of X is not determined at t + 1 (the future is unknown). With this, Benatar's asymmetry holds at any point in time, except that it exists at time point t. If X is at point t and knows that he will experience the maximum amount of pain in his life at t + 1, even if he gets the maximum amount of pleasure in his life so far, then X is point t + 1. Do you want the future?

This is always better than the fact that one does not exist at any time by accepting Benatar's asymmetry in pain and pleasure.

4 Debt of Living

Mark Fisher [4] advocated accelerationism. During his lifetime, Fisher considered the inevitable prostitution of capitalism in capitalist realism. This means dedicating oneself to society as a commodity.

In modern times, this is a contract with our society. In this society we are not allowed to be lazy, and there is no way out because the safety nets are not working. All failures are lack of self-help efforts and no mistakes are tolerated. Social success is the only thing that is desired. That is, contribution to capitalism is the only condition for success in our lives. Losers are born in endless competition, and losers are given only the despair of being socially worthless. Those who do not work should not eat, but those who cannot work should not live.

In such a society, suicide is a passive escape measure for those who are disqualified from finding value in themselves, and homicide is an active escape measure. The birth is the act of creating new debt of living.

5 Reject of Birth

The education interferes with children’s work and their parents’ expectations for their work.

It makes them more dependent on their parents. Children make adults a lot of money and time. In the presence of these conditions, the demand for children is apparently low. People increasingly would rather spare their possible future children the burdens of existence, in order to maximize well-being and status for their existing children and, perhaps, for themselves.

Alone among animals, humans have brought reproduction (the most important evolutionary act) under conscious control. Conscious control of reproduction has thus become a locus for selection, with new niches arising for biological and cultural adaptations that promote reproduction against the dangerous innovation of human consciousness. Fertility is not the only evolutionarily crucial domain that has come under conscious control.

6 Affirmation of Suicide

People have been able to consciously control the length of their lives as prolonging their lives simultaneously. It's suicide. The suicides are significantly less culturally adaptable than their own biological adaptability if people live in a community, that is, they are productive but have zero commercial value, or produce in the first place. They are extremely incapacitated, and as long as they survive under these circumstances, they not only contribute nothing to their genetic existence, but rather deplete the resources of their genetic relatives. That is, their continued survival is contrary to their genetic existence. The suicide occurs when one's existence is harmful to others or in the community.

The survival of human society and the destruction of humans do not matter to the earth. What humans have created is only needed by humans, including God.

Society certainly seems to be gradually in equilibrium for the better, after a major historical conflict. However, I think that human society will never improve. Because, if we maximize the utility of society, some people will be unhappy.

According to Benatar, the extinction of humans is the path that humans should aim for. The question to consider is not to find out whether extinction is good or bad, but to find a solution to how it will be extinct. When the population is reduced for extinction, the quality of life of human beings is significantly reduced due to the collapse of society due to the increase of non-producers or the extreme decrease of human beings. Extinction of human beings is necessary, but it is necessary to avoid harming existing human beings by reducing the population. Benatar advocates gradually erasing the number of people at a constant rate. However, the last generation of human beings cannot have hope and must live in a collapsed society.

7 Affirmation of Murder

Why murder is affirmed? The anti-survivalism denies painful violence, war, and the death penalty. Now, as a basic rule, it is a sin to cause pain to others.

Unless you have a strong reason to violate this rule, you need to obey it. If everyone hurt someone or hurt someone for the purpose of murder, he will experience pain. However, if everyone gently hits a someone’s head with a muzzle and attempts to murder, and that is successful, then this extremely violent act does not cause pain.

The opponent who does not notice the existence of the gun will die without feeling anything before the trigger is triggered, and there is no pain.

If everyone is a healthy young person, he may be asked how terrible it is to rob him of his promising future, but he can’t feel his loss. That is, it is harmless. The pain and death are unrelated.

Many people will be disgusted with the murder, but the murder cannot be banned on the basis of harm to others.

It means there is no legal or ethical reason to prohibit an unexpected and painless murder of a person. However, when you imagine living in such a situation, the life of a person who has no close relationship with others cannot be protected.

You will experience constant fear of being killed painlessly. This is painful and harmful. In the end, two options are left. One is to be frightened of harm and commit suicide.

Do you make rules to lose harm?

8 Transhumanism [5]

Anti-survivalism affirms death and thinks that death is inevitable, but in the first place, what is the reason why people die rather than die naturally?

Peter Zapffe [6] says that non-human creatures concentrate on living, but the overly strong self-consciousness that separates the inside from the outside world acquired during human evolution is confusing us.

As an alternative to escape from death as a whole, transhumanism is in a position to use emerging science and technology to evolve the human body and cognitive abilities and dramatically improve human existence. Specifically, transhumanism is also an area for studying what may happen in the future through the expansion of human functions and the development and use of other future science and technology.

Transhumanism studies the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that can overcome fundamental limitations, including human genes, and the ethical limitations of using those technologies. The most common transhumanist claim is that one eventually transforms from one's current state into a different being with significantly expanded abilities, pursuing the possibility of becoming a posthuman being.

However, Thomas Rigotti [7] calls transhumanism one of the ways to kill time in life. We are mortal beings, and it is inevitable. Even if we could upload knowledge to a computer, there would be no end to it if the earth was destroyed.

However, if technological evolution can create a set of suppressed self-consciousness, such as the collective consciousness, then by realizing eusociality [8], we may be able to find a way to survive. We remain trapped within the world that others have built for the benefit of others. We need to rethink our identities.

9 Alternative Future and Conclusion

Our identity makes us our feet. A highly digitized society is a world in which we can reconstruct relationships as relative actors involved in the world.

Even if the electrodes embedded in the brain can suppress our emotions [9], we feel the fear of loss of identity. However, our distinctive identities slowly disappear, creating new, unique and wonderful identities, or collective identities.

I call this state a decentralized network of minds (collective consciousness). Although the self exists in the collective consciousness, the self is only a part for achieving an arbitrary purpose with ensemble, and is swallowed by the continuous survival. In other words, making the self as small as possible makes the harm of the individual as small as possible and eventually disappears. Transhumanism just rejects human biological/mental limits and creates new individuals.