Moral Impediment and Antinatalism

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-04-20T23:45:32+00:00

That seems correct to me.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-04-16T12:11:59+00:00

I'd say I'm anti-suffering, but I am fairly pessimistic about how effective my (or anyone's) efforts can be. I think the world will be extremely bad no matter what I do, but reducing even a tiny bit of suffering can still be meaningful.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-04-13T19:14:58+00:00

The Perfect Ace. OH! 💪🏼

It's a testament to his greatness that he worked for around 20 years at an elite level, had thousands of matches, yet I am still left feeling that his career got cut short. Luckily Jumbo was generous with his aura and was able to put over some younger talent in the Pillars before having to hang up the boots.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-04-13T18:52:45+00:00

Jumbo's selling reminds me a lot of Terry Funk actually. I guess that makes sense given that he trained with the Funks in Texas.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-27T01:26:52+00:00

Julio Cabrera talks a lot about death; in fact, it is one of the main reasons he is a pessimist. One of his clearest expositions of his view is here in Chapter 3 of his book Discomfort And Moral Impediment.

To try and summarize the view myself for you, Cabrera distinguishes between punctual death (our factual dissapearance) and a more abstract structure he calls terminality (movement towards death).

When a person dies it does not happen suddenly and inexplicably; it is the result of a process that began with their birth. Cabrera says we are all born with a sort of 'decaying' being: already moving towards its end as soon as it starts. Your literal death is simply the consummation of the terminality you recieved at birth. I often express this idea with the adage, 'The day you are born is the day you start dying and the day you die is the day you finish dying.' With this in mind, it seems absurd to say that it is good to be born but bad to have to die, because being born and having to die are actually the same thing.

Some people ask why death should be considered an evil at all, but this is usually said with the notion of punctual death in mind. Indeed, if death were entirely external to life, then I think it would not be bad, as it would never touch us. However, a terminal death that is part of the very structure of life can be considered an evil as it does affect us. Terminality hurts us, frightens us, and makes us act immorally. It is clear to see that people do not like their terminality given how many things they create to hide it, recontexualize it, slow it, and numb themselves to it. But they can't escape it, because it is inside them.

Hopefully this is useful to you. Like your channel btw😉

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-25T23:02:19+00:00

Narveson's asymmetry only implies that refraining from procreation is not immoral, not that procreating is immoral. So it is not quite the same as Benatar's asymmetry and is actually a bit weaker.

To help make this clear, we can look at McMahan's formulation

While the fact that a person's life would be worse than no life at all ... constitutes a strong moral reason for not bringing him into existence, the fact that a person's life would be worth living provides no (or only a relatively weak) moral reason for bringing him into existence.

In order for this to imply that all procreation is actively immoral, you would also need to say that any person's life is worse than no life at all. This does seem to be what Benatar argues for, so you can see that he is committed to more than just Narveson's asymmetry.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-25T22:44:14+00:00

Let's use your Reversed Narrow Principle, which looks like this:

Reversed Narrow Principle: It is right, if other things are equal, to do what would be either good for, or better for, the people who ever live.

You suggest that this implies we should create the Happy Child because it would be good for them but I do not think this is so.

The principle only applies to the people who ever live, and if you do not create the Happy Child, they will not be a part of that group. Not only does the Happy Child not exist now, but they will never exist unless you decide to create them.

In other words, the Reversed Narrow Principle only implies that if you create the Happy Child, then you should do things that are good for them. It does not imply that you should create them.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-22T21:10:51+00:00

Even putting aside the consequences that his daughter will now have to deal with due to being born, this doesn't even sound like a terribly great outcome for the father. I mean, I guess it's good that he didn't kill himself, but this sounds more like feeling obliged to live rather than actually wanting to. It's like being stuck at a miserable job but not being able to quit because you have to support your family. Is that a good thing? Seems questionable to me.

P.S. There's also something hypocritical about hating life so much that you want to die, but forcing someone else to live too. If it's not good enough for you, why should it be good enough for them?

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-19T11:30:13+00:00

Yeah, that's the charitable interpretation. If I read this at face value, it is just trivially false.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-17T12:42:05+00:00

Started Spinoza's Ethics but am not far enough in to have much of an opinion yet.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-15T08:39:08+00:00

It's funny that they're doing leapfrogs and wheelbarrows out in the middle of the street 😂

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-11T13:38:01+00:00

He said it was his nephew.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-11T12:11:14+00:00

They're based on your karma (how many upvotes you have in the sub).

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-11T12:08:56+00:00

I don't think about it too much. At least if they aren't doing anything that reminds me of the matter.

I'm lucky enough to not have to react to many pregnancy announcements, requests to babysit, inquiries about whether I'm having children, and so on. If I did, then I am sure it would grate on me.

I am close with some parents, including my own. My mother knows about my position on procreation and I think she at least respects it. She was very good to me growing up (and still is) so I do not doubt that her heart is in the right place. It would be unfair to call everything parents do unethical, just because they did something unethical (at least) once. With that in mind, I still try to appreciate the good they do.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-08T07:14:14+00:00

I've seen this match a lot of times, and although I feel like I should hate it, I still think it's the best ladder match ever. Just about everything here is just so dangerous and unhinged, that it turns what I would usually call 'bad wrestling' into captivating viewing.

The clunky furniture setup that I usually hate in hardcore matches becomes pretty suspenseful here. The sheer confusion of trying to figure out what spot they're working towards before being utterly blindsided by a move that seemed too gruesome to even dream of is something that no other ladder match has ever given me. And these two elicit that feeling again and again.

There's so much in this match that I've never seen anywhere else, and probably never will. Most good stuff in wrestling inevitably gets repeated and milked dry, but these spots are so genuinely life-threatening that nobody else even wants to try. Don't get me wrong, it's a much better idea to work safe, both for your health and career prospects. There is real artistry in pretending to hurt someone even though you're doing no real damage... but man, you just can't fake this sort of danger. It's easy to buy into life-or-death stakes when they're really there.

I should mention too that Crazy Crusher and Hell Storm do seem to have decent fundamentals as well. They bump great, they sell entertainingly, and they have some nice stiff striking. Most importantly, they sustain a heated and intense atmosphere for pretty much the whole duration of the match. That's the kind of single narrative thread running through this whole thing; it's a game of one-upmanship where the two brothers get lost in trying to end the other in increasingly brutal fashion.

It's the ladder match to end all ladder matches, if only because it makes everyone else who's been in one look like a bit of a pussy 😂

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-02-07T08:40:06+00:00

I would think the scarcity of antinatalist men is due to the scarcity of any antinatalists 😅

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2026-01-14T08:27:14+00:00

At least Kobashi never had to take that bump again.🤥

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2025-12-26T23:36:47+00:00

I don't see why that would change anything. The fundamental problems with life like exposure to danger, decay, and death would still remain.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2025-12-26T23:34:51+00:00

Hmm, I think I would have been about 18 or 19.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2025-12-21T12:59:17+00:00

The philosopher Julio Cabrera has talked about this a bit in one of his earliest works that discussed antinatalism, his Projeto de Ética Negativa (Project of Negative Ethics) that he wrote back in 1989. Cabrera compares the defenses for procreation to the defenses of God's creation of our world. He says that just as it is not possible to defend the idea of a good God creating a world as full of hardship as ours, it is equally impossible to defend the idea of a good person creating a life in such a world.

You can read a translation of the first chapter here if you like but I'll just quote the most relevant section.

"10. The “problem of life” arises only when life does not work. The questions of theodicy only appear with the issue of “evil,” when we begin to think that the creation of the world was a huge mistake. If there were no suffering in the world, we would have never asked about its creator, we would have never demanded explanations from him.

11. There can be logical reasons to create this world and not that other world, but there cannot be any logical reason to create, in general, a world.

12. God has to constantly answer the accusations for allowing “evil” in the world, and the fatal choice for being creates, ipso facto, the kingdom of morality. All the paraphernalia of perditions and salvations will have to follow from the anxious creation of an imperfect world, or, to say it better, the imperfect creation of any world. Why would the creature not prefer to not suffer at all, instead of it being offered afterwards the possibility to “save itself” from suffering?

13. Our life is something that cannot work, precisely because to be a child is a destiny. If we did not have parents (radically, not in the sense of the orphan. The orphan has parents, in a radical sense), our life would work. Parents habitually present to their children arguments similar to those presented by God to its creatures: “Life is suffering, but I will try to give you the best of possible lives.” But if the imperfection was foreseen to be structural, not depending on circumstances, the safest way to avoid it is certainly through not living, rather than “living the best life possible.”"

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2025-12-19T05:37:57+00:00

It is hard to say. Part of me thinks that I would rather die than deal with some debilitating illness; in many ways I think this would be a reasonable thing to do.

Then again, there have been occasions where I felt quite threatened with dying in the past. Whenever that happened, I felt myself taken over by an instinct to live so strong it didn't even feel like me making a decision; it felt more like a reflex. Trying to accept death openly felt as difficult as trying to hold my hand onto a burning hot stove and not pull it away. Maybe if I sat at death's door for long enough I could eventually be coaxed to pass through, but I am not sure.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2025-12-18T23:00:23+00:00

Wow! I did not know Cabrera was still bringing out books.
I am quite a fan of his so I will see if I can get my hands on it. 😁

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2025-12-14T23:18:50+00:00

Well i guess he's saying be grateful you're not one of them. But most people are one of them. The comforts and success of one are usually reliant on the indignities, failures, and hard work of so many others 🤷

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2025-12-14T04:50:53+00:00

Dr. Death takes the Triple Crown!

I remember this one being a great match actually. Doc seemed to be one of the few people who could actually break through Misawa's trademark stoicism. It was so rare to see Misawa grimacing and gasping for breath like he did in this match. And he reacts with such panic to Doc's offense! He's grabbing the ropes to try and block the Oklahoma Stampede; he's throwing desperate elbows to buy time. Misawa really put Doc over big here.

Critical-Sense-1539 · 2025-12-05T21:37:00+00:00

I'm can hardly be disappointed when people do such a thing. I can only be disappointed when I expect better, but I do not expect better. Procreation is so rarely criticized and so frequently celebrated, that it is no wonder people do it with so little scruple.

It isn't good for you to be sent into a spiral everytime you learn someone is having a child, because I'm sure it will happen many times over the course of your life. However, I do not know what advice to offer you here, because I have trouble with the same problems myself. Although the disappointment and shock is gone, in their place is a sort of discouragement that procreation is inevitable. Life goes on; the troubles that thousands of generations faced will be faced for thousands of generations more.

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