Source
r/negativeutilitarians•
Theemulators

The suffering we create by being alive

Every single day I kill billions of life forms just by breathing. As a vegan I subject many innocent animals to death when my food gets harvested. Literal wageslaves pick my bananas and create my clothes. By working a job to sustain myself I give legitimacy to corrupt capitalistic markets. By driving there I pollute the world even more, and the same happens no matter how I spend my paycheck. And the best I could hope to archieve in life, which likely will not happen, is saving maybe a few people, thereby prolonging their suffering. I inflict so much suffering each day, and I will never not be avle to so as long as I survive. Why wuld the utilitarian viewpoint of someone who wants to do the best thing, the most noble thing that helps the most life, not be to just quit life? This is purely hypothetical and does not condone suicide in any way.

Posted Mar 3, 2020, 10:58 AM UTC · edited

3330
ChristianGoldenRule•

A few things:

  1. All Suffering is temporary

  2. You have the opportunity to make the world a much better place.

  3. You are already here. I know you are not saying this but as you know, trying to end it would take any pain you feel and magnify it 100,000 times to those around you. It would be making things so much worse for the world. If you care about suffering, which I believe you do... that would be the worst thing possible. Tim Ferris’ thoughts on suicide is pretty good and a pretty crazy story of why he is still here today with a strange coincidence at his library and also what seems trivial to us but was very real and painful to him at the time https://www.google.com/amp/s/tim.blog/2015/05/06/how-to-commit-suicide/amp/

  4. You say you literally kill billions of life forms by breathing... Are you causing suffering to these life forms? Are these advanced enough to actually “suffer”?

  5. You are definitely looking at the glass as half empty. The problem is that in this analogy, someone who looks at the glass half empty is “right” but they forget about the people who are “right” about it being half full.

  6. I will admit that if I believed there was nothing after this life it would be a lot more daunting. I firmly believe there is more than just this life.

  7. I disagree that the best you could hope to achieve is to save a few lives. Think of the flip side... if it is as bad as you say... then little things will make a huge difference. For example, I have thought about if I convince just 2000 people to give up only half their meat consumption, that would save over a million animals from going through factory farms. That is doable with compassion and a way to spread anti-speciesist ideas (not to mention investing in cultured meat could prevent billions or trillions of animals from going through factory farms.

  8. I normally would not say something like this but have you read the three gospels and particularly the Sermon on the Mount? Even if I was an atheist I would say this is the best teaching I have ever heard. There is going to be suffering but what do we do with this suffering? “Is God to Blame” and the problem of suffering - https://reknew.org/book/is-god-to-blame-moving-beyond-pat-answers-to-the-problem-of-suffering/

  9. Helping others is a great way to dedicate your life and small acts make a huge difference.

Don’t give up. There is much suffering you have yet to help alleviate and the world needs you.

17
Kietu•

I have thought about this a lot, because I have wanted to justify suicide. But consider if in your life you just convince one person to go vegan. You have already done a great good by preventing harm. If you devote your life to changing people's minds about just veganism, then you will have had a positive impact that far outweighs your negative impact.

10
DoctorTobogggan•

I agree and here’s the solution that can never come true r/efilism. ^vegan ^btw

5
ZenApe•

We can dream, though....

2
redditsselloutbiddy•

Personally, I stopped holding utilitarian views as a consequence of this line of thinking because I ultimately concluded that suffering is intrinsic to universal physical laws. But I still like being around negative utilitarians, and many disagree with my conclusion. For example, the hedonistic imperative originated by Pearce upholds the hypothesis that genetic engineering can reduce or eliminate the suffering organisms experience. More research is needed, but some find this plausible. So I'm surprised you say the best you could ever hope to achieve in your life is to temporarily prolong a handful of other lives. Do you mean by earning to give to medical intervention charities? What are your life plans right now?

5
thatguywithhippyhair•

I ultimately concluded that suffering is intrinsic to universal physical laws

If this is true, why would this be a refutation of (negative) utilitarianism? The fact that a moral philosophy is very difficult to consistently live up to (or die for, perhaps) isn't a reason to think it's false.

3
redditsselloutbiddy•

I question whether "true" and "false" are appropriate categories for moral philosophies. I'm more inclined towards labels like "systematic and "unsystematic". A systematic moral philosophy is one aspiring to internal consistency. I have no interest in refuting negative utilitarianism. Though acting on it consistently is difficult, and I did personally conclude that moral philosophies are merely pragmatic social maps rather than objective mathematical structures.

2
cutelyaware•

The single biggest burdon people place on the world is having children. Whatever average footprint a person creates should also include those of their children and their children's children, etc. I'm not saying that everyone should go child-free, but if everyone had one fewer child than they otherwise would, they've earned my approval to live as large as they like, because it's unlikely anything else they do will have a larger positive impact.

4
HelloIamC•

While this might be true, there is a dancer in too, I found. I live in Europe. We have a lot of immigration from North Africa and the Middle East. These people literally just replace the previously existing European population in the was our governemnt is set up. They habe higher birth-rates. And their culture is further away from veganism. If you habe kids who are vegan they will more likely be part of future groups who create societal pressure - instead of having a idiocracy type of scenario.

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cutelyaware•

Idiocracy is fiction. Poor people having lots of children is normal. People naturally have fewer children the wealthier they become. Turning them away will not help. The enemy is not the hungry hoards. The enemy is poverty itself. Europe's demographic is getting older. You don't need more babies, you need more immigrants to take care of you. If you don't take them in, you will create the very desperate hoards on your doorstep that you worry about. We need to come together as a planet to solve our planet-wide problems.

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HelloIamC•

Europe's demographic is getting older, because we have less children, right?
What I argue is, when we have more children (especially vegans) who grow up in our education system, we will have a different education level and culture, than if we take in millions of young migrant men, poorly educated, who already have a strong cultural (often islamic) imprint, and higher reproduction rates.
Continuous mass migration from such places, with declining birth rate of the native European population in the longterm is a threat to our democracies. Then you don't even wanna start talking about veganism.
A healthy democracy with educated people is the most fertile soil for veganism.

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HelloIamC•

Not to mention the exodus of young men from Africa stabilises the poverty and dictatorships. Wouldn't you agree? Families spend all their savings, thousands of dollars, on illegal smuggle structures, to send their son to Europe instead of building and investing in a local economy.

1
Nixenbachbitchmob•

You have to think very carefully about how much of those bad things you mentioned are really “caused” by your existence and if not existing is the bests option (over some kind of action)

3
zellfaze_new•

I am not sure what the solution is to this. I wouldn't recommend death; your suffering matters too and dying sucks (and not just for you). I do think it is logical to not have children as to avoid the entire conundrum.

I think we just have to keep doing what we can to alleviate suffering. Sorry that I don't have a better response.

3
DefinetelyNotAPotato•

This is a very interesting and selfless phylosophical thought, but it is important you don't shame yourself. All life goes on by trempling over and devouring other life, and there is no fault on that as long as you try to minimize your damage. You can buy vegan foods, second hand clothes, volunteer, spread positive, respectful awareness about what you think is right. Once you do your part, you are done and no more weight should rest upon your shoulders. Life itself is suffering and there is nothing that can change that.

Your own suffering is something to take care of, too, so it is important to not drown yourself in your quest to help others.

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