CMV: Anti-natalism and suffering; how and why life worth it
Mainly not about why life is beautiful. I understand argument from both side logically, the good of life and the bad of life.
I’ve been thinking a lot about birth, suffering, and whether existence is actually justified and worth it in the first place. I understand why many people see beauty in creating life whether love, family, meaning, growth, art, humor, connection, curiosity, all the good parts of being human. I also acknowledge that even pro life or natalist don’t deny suffering exists. They just believe the positive parts of life make existence worth experiencing despite pain, randomness, and mortality. But what I struggle with is this: suffering seems guaranteed as an axiom of existence, while nonexistence harms nobody. A person doesn’t exist by default until someone deliberately creates them, and that creation automatically imposes vulnerability, loss, death, psychological risk, and uncertainty onto someone who never asked for it. People often argue that beauty, art, love, meaning, etc. justify life, but I keep wondering whether many of those things are partly coping mechanisms that only exist because suffering and lack exist in the first place. If nonexistence removes both suffering and the need to cope with suffering, why is creating life considered ethically justified? I’m not asking this from a purely edgy “life bad” angle. I genuinely want to understand how people who acknowledge both the beauty and horror of existence still conclude that existence itself is worth imposing onto another person
Ultimately when I debate thing like this I want to know why love, humor, connection, curiosity, art, creation, let’s called them “meaning”. I want to know why from y’all view meaning as an axiom worth it and justify suffering as another irreducible axiom.