Harry Tormey

As the title suggests this book concerns itself with antinatalism, a philosophical school of thought that is against human beings reproducing. In a nutshell the book contends that the human race should voluntarily become extinct by not producing more children.This viewpoint is explored through various short essays relating directly or indirectly to the authors less than idyllic life. The book is similar in tone to Jim Goads the redneck manifesto or some of Henry Rollins writings on the less savory aspects of working class American life. As such most of these essays come across as a caustic blue collar rant about why life sucks for most people and hence why bringing more people in to the world is a bad idea.

Needless to say this is not the book to get someone as a present for their baby shower. Setting writing style and the fact that this book is ninety percent navel gazing polemic aside for a moment lets attempt to distill the main perspectives the author puts forward to justify this position:

1) Buddhism or rather his take on one of the “four noble truths”. AKA, the first one: All life is suffering.
2) The work of David Benetar a south african philosopher who advocates antinatalism.
3) The authors experiences and subsequent disillusionment with being a christian fundamentalist.

Position number one pretty much consists of the authors condensed version of the early life of Siddartha told in an extremely mocking tone, stopping at the realization of the four noble truths where upon a brief commentary is provided on each of these aforementioned truths. Suffice is to say all apart from the first truth, all life is suffering, a maxim which the author agrees with, are subjected to a folksy bar room style critique and are rejected as valid techniques for coping with reality or justifying bringing more kids into existence. Being as I am not a buddhist this position is not really that interesting to me, hence I am not going to explore it any further.

Position number two: David Benetar is the author of a philosophical work entitled better never to have been (which I am currently reading, it’s quite dry). The main argument put forward in Benetar’s book relates to a perceived asymmetry between the positive and negatives aspects of life and how this asymmetry relates to those yet to be born. The argument is expressed as follows: 1) The presence of pain is bad. 2) The presence of pleasure is good. 3) The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone. 4) The absence of pleasure is not bad unless these is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation. The argument pretty much boils down to the fact that by not bringing kids into the world you don’t expose them to pain which is good but you also deny them the possibility of pleasure which is not considered bad because they never experienced pleasure in the first place. Therefore don’t have kids. Jim’s contribution to this argument is a bunch of crappy analogies and some bitter personal anecdotes which don’t add anything to the discussion in my humble opinion.

This position itself however does interest me a great deal, so lets dig into a bit. I am currently still in the process of reading Benetar’s book and doing my own research so my opinion on this is a little half baked right now. My basic problem with it boils down to the question, what is pain and how does it relate to pleasure? I don’t think you can neatly separate the two or represent them on a one dimensional graph, like temperature, with a sliding scale going from playing with a puppy dog to being crucified. As such I don’t think you can make assertions such as pain is the opposite of pleasure, I think physical experience is too full of nuanced mixed pain/pleasure sensations for such a crude model. For example how do you account for painful experiences which become pleasurable i.e endorphins released during sports like running or other intense physical activities which cause pain with transitions into a pleasurable sensation. Also just the fact that in some cases pain can be useful (alerting you to the fact that you might bleed to death unless you get medical attention) and in some cases pleasure can be quite harmful (drug overdose much?) kind of make me suspicious of this argument. In any case, I digress, Crawford does not do a good job on expanding on Benetars argument and if you are interested in learning more about this position you would be better served going straight to the source material.

Position number three: Jim takes the position that if you are a Christian fundamentalist who believes that the rapture will come and that most of humanity (8 out of 10 people) won’t get into heaven then statistically this means if you have kids they will in all likelihood go to hell (i.e suffer the worst pain imaginable for all eternity). By not having kids you wont expose them to all the pleasures of life but then again you don’t put them at risk of such torments, therefore you should not have kids. I am not nor have I ever been a fundamentalist Christian so I am not going to comment on this point of view.

I would rate this book at about 2 and 1/2 amazon stars mainly because I enjoy the authors angry writing style and think he comes across as pretty articulate and at times amusing (I have a pretty dark sense of humor). However, if I were to travel back in time and buy this again I probably wouldn’t pay more than $3-$4 for this book. At the time of writing thats about the price of a pint of PBR which I would happily buy the author in sympathy for his crappy life. The reason why I dock the other two and a half stars is that this book pretty much reads like a collection of reasonably well written blog posts cobbled together into dead tree format. Their is little depth to any of the opinions proffered here most of which you can find on the authors blog for free.

In case you are wondering why I bothered with this book in the first place: I am a huge Thomas Ligotti fan and am in the process of reading the conspiracy against the human race (which I am enjoying thus far). Jim Crawford/David Benetars names popped up pretty frequently in discussions surrounding the book hence I decided to buy them. I am not finished with conspiracy against the human race yet but I would recommend it over this in a heart beat as it covers much of the same material but does so with better style, greater depth, more variety and less personal anecdotes.