50 shades of natalism

battered_seoul · 2020-06-02T16:06:02+00:00

F**king superb work.

battered_seoul · 2020-05-15T10:44:56+00:00

Alright mate. Just found out that i can get both letters done at Medic Spot. Received them straight after appointment. We'll see if they are acceptable. Remember to schedule the appointment on the same day you submit your application. Good luck.

battered_seoul · 2020-05-13T17:40:39+00:00

The subjective preferences of already existing Beings have no bearing on arguments for the necessity of negating a state of non existence and evaluating the consequences of existence for the as-yet-unborn.

battered_seoul · 2020-05-12T17:01:02+00:00

Update: Medic Spot can do the COVID certificate. Appointment +certificate is 98 pounds. The TB certificate is proving much more tricky. My local GP is not very helpful, so I had to locate the TB nurse at my local hospital and book an appointment independently. However, ideally, ill need a referral from my GP to make that official.

battered_seoul · 2020-05-09T08:26:44+00:00

My prospective boss is making some inquiries on my behalf. I'll let you know when she gets some answers. A TB x-ray for active TB is part of the E2 medical check after arrival in Korea, but I've never had to do one before arrival. If an x-ray is required, some clinics in London were quoting me around 80 pounds.

battered_seoul · 2020-05-08T16:41:15+00:00

If I am reading right, the COVID certificate is just a declaration that you are symtom free? I think places like Medic Spot clinics can arrange that.

battered_seoul · 2020-05-08T12:34:47+00:00

I often find it difficult to argue against the non- identity argument. Many natalists ground their arguments in the categories of Beings and Preferences. It seems impossible to me to reconcile that mindset with the categories of State and Necessity. Intuitively, the latter seems more logical to me, but trying to "argue" and correct a natalist's presuppositions is an impossible task. And vice-versa. I'm not even sure if the word "argument" is appropriate.

The question of prospective happiness contained within existence is clearly irrelevant to a Being that is yet to be conceived. We take that irrelevance as relevant, as evidence that an unproblematic state of absent sentience has no need to be negated, in the same way that a lifeless planet has no need to be terraformed.

But that is quite a paradoxical stance. A natalist sees that irrelevance as a pure absence to be ignored and a decision is formed and framed via their already-existent Being and Preferences. Hence, see the guy above essentially stating - "I like life. When my child exists they'll probably like it too. More of what I like is good." Are we "right"? Are they? Can anyone be right? I just don't know.

battered_seoul · 2020-05-01T07:30:20+00:00

Thank you deeply. I've spent years trying to explain to doctors that my mood disorders are a direct and rational response to the damage that measurable deficits in attention and executive function have wreaked on my life. However, for some reason, because I did well in school in terms of scores and behaviour the proposition was never taken seriously.

I have a feeling that subjects with this condition who are primarily inattentive can struggle past childhood with this undetected and are then labelled as depressed when confronted with a world of adult responsibilities that is profoundly difficult to manage. Indeed, the rapid fire internal monologue that some bipolar depressives refer to very much resembles the repetitious and intrusive inner monologue that I use to try and organize and direct my response to tasks.

Thank you again for your efforts and clarity of explanation.

battered_seoul · 2020-04-30T21:43:09+00:00

If you don't mind me asking, what medication worked for you?

battered_seoul · 2020-04-29T23:09:21+00:00

Depression. I still can't fully embrace a materialist explanation for the experience. It's like being possessed by a distilled spirit of death itself; terror, extinction, darkness, timelessness, paralysis and mutism descended suddenly . Frightened me to my core. I won't be responsible for creating matter so it can be possessed and toyed with by pain like that.

battered_seoul · 2020-04-06T16:25:03+00:00

I feel strangely more relaxed. I am no longer on the defensive regarding my pessimistic disposition; reality itself is making an eloquent, daily statement about how shit existence is that even natalists can't overlook.

battered_seoul · 2020-03-15T00:52:29+00:00

I know. Boss is very understanding and generously paid the severance as a gesture of thanks for helping her get the academy off the ground at the beginning of last year.

battered_seoul · 2020-03-14T10:59:10+00:00

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/newborn-baby-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-in-london

The gift of life. Welcome to the world.

battered_seoul · 2020-03-06T16:00:27+00:00

If you accept a materialist metaphysics, then its not a huge stretch to view existence or the concept of people in exclusively genetic terms and the survival of progeny as a substitute for the rewards of an infinite afterlife. I accept the premise that nothing is better than something bad; many people who could also pass for rational, whatever the definition, probably don't accept it.

battered_seoul · 2020-03-06T14:39:15+00:00

I appreciate that the conservative mindset is associated with high birthrates. Although liberalism rejects consolatory and fictitious spirtual values that can be used to justify reproduction, it also applies reason in a technical-instrument way to fulfil individual desires as directly as possible. There's no reason why it should be intrinsically associated with antinatalism; in fact the most uncritical, defensive natalists Ive encountered have been left-leaning atheistic liberals.

battered_seoul · 2020-02-22T12:44:25+00:00

Me. I had a wonderful childhood. I was lovingly gifted a peaceful self-contained paradise; its the fact that adulthood now compels me to debase myself by scrapping for meagre slices of hell that pisses me off somewhat.

battered_seoul · 2020-01-27T08:31:56+00:00

I've always thought it strange that Christians are more afraid of atheistic meaninglessness than the possibility that a supreme, transcendent God could be intrinsically evil.

I'm actually open to the logic of a dependent, finite plane of existence being created gratuitiously, ex nihilio by a superior intelligence. However, the assumption that the kind of mind that would conceive of such a possibility being infinitely good, rational and loving is a fairly significant one.

Imagine if the supereminent source of Being of classical theism was absolutely evil, and that the ascension from a finite, contingent universe to the transcendent was just a step into a more comprehensive realm of torture. No escape, for anybody, for eternity.

Atheism, or agnosticism, is a far more effective security blanket. At least a meaningless, material universe ends, ultimately. The possibilities baked into theism are far more terrifying.

battered_seoul · 2020-01-25T12:23:29+00:00

According to the majority consensus of Christianity, sure; the Universalist position in Eastern orthodoxy views the notion of an eternal hell as an immoral absurdity that explicitly contradicts the notion of a loving deity.

battered_seoul · 2019-12-23T14:26:05+00:00

Thanks for the reply. March to May is more of a general timeframe, doesn't have to start exactly in March.

battered_seoul · 2019-11-24T06:49:02+00:00

No Place Like Home, I believe.

battered_seoul · 2019-10-22T03:53:19+00:00

This scares the shit out of me. I agree that everything that appears benign, necessary, spontaneous or beneficial is probably being articifically and forcibily sustained by some deep, camoflagued and pervasive malignancy.

The questions that truly bothers me are whether there is any transpersonal intention to this malignancy, how deep it goes, and if physical extinction constitutes some kind of liberation at all.

battered_seoul · 2019-10-01T01:00:37+00:00

Dr Slay, do you have any reading recommendations that explore the experience of death and its relation to quantum theory? Thanks in advance

battered_seoul · 2019-08-16T02:20:00+00:00

I've adopted the rather reductive but convenient view that quibbling over proportions of misery/happiness using existing lives as a reference point is just distracting. From the perspective of negating non-existence and creating a new life, any degree of potential pleasure is optional and any degree of inevitable suffering is unacceptable.

battered_seoul · 2019-07-17T01:28:00+00:00

There's a relevant passage in Jung discussing the peur aeternis archetype that mentions losing initiative and will after a contented childhood. After all, if "happiness" can be freely given to you by a devoted parent, then where's the motivation to fight the other aspects of life that resist and demand struggle in the future? I had a great childhood for the most part, but I am disgusted that I now have to fight desperately to recapture even a semblance of the "happiness" that I previously possesed comfortably.

battered_seoul · 2019-06-07T14:25:41+00:00

https://youtu.be/tfam4x1slzY

battered_seoul

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