Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence 1st Edition

I am writing this review in order to dilute the reviews by the religious people who attack Benatar and his life instead of his actual arguments, you know the sissy way out. Not one of his arguments was counter argued. Why? Because it is impossible to counter-argue his arguments in any real sense. But you know they aren't really attacking Benatar, they are defending themselves, or rather their huge egos. When they hear about the population control, they immediately bring up their supposed "right" to have as many kids as they can, and no, you DON'T have that right, you don't have the right to give birth to children when you can't even afford paying for rent, you can't have 10 kids and see 8 of them die of malnutrition while you believe that their souls are going to fly up to heaven and stay toddlers for the rest of eternity or be reincarnated into another child (and since there are more people every minute then where do these knew reincarnated souls are coming from?). What you have is a RESPONSIBILITY to your unborn children and to the civilization in general. The world is messed up because stupid ignorant and evil people are able to get away with overpopulating themselves, limiting the general availability of resources on the planet and living in total and utter crap-holes while believing that everything is going to be okay eventually and they will all spend an eternity with god and not get bored of existing after 500 trillion years in Heaven. But I don't want to get caught up in arguing the religious non-sense.But that's the thing, the only real "argument" that you can make against Benatar is by saying that god said to us: "be fruitful and multiply" - apparently god didn't know that he had created a limited biosphere that would not be able to support 15 billion people or ever 4 billion people for that matter. So do we HAVE to get religion out of the way first to push Benatar's argument? and it does not necessarily mean whether we should follow Benatar's argument or not, what's important to do FIRST is to see where he is right or not or whether he is MOST LIKELY right or not. The rest of the decision should come later on. It's not about what makes us good or not, it's about what the truth is, and if you can't accept the truth, if you can't handle the truth, if you see the ugly truth in the back of your head but you immediately veil that with Jeebus then just write a one sentence review on this book by giving it one star and saying the following: "I don't like the message that the messenger brings and I don't like the messenger for bringing it up in the first place and I don't like his nose and I don't like him making a hole in my faith, therefore I would like to prevent others from reading this book by decreasing its market value"What's interesting is that Benatar barely even touches the subject of religion in his book, he expects the readers to deal with the fact that the default assumption is that what follows death is exactly what precedes birth, total oblivion. Why would there be anything different than that outcome? well that is where Jeebus comes in and what is where people who are just blatanly afraid of death and non-existence come in, because THAT is the what lies at the core of it. That's why they are afraid of reality, that's why they are afraid of being a mortal human being, that's why they are afraid to accept the fact that we are nothing but the extravagant product of 4 billion years of evolution and 2 billion years of animals eating each other for no good reason whatsoever.Here is a simple equation that I could think of before I even heard of Benatar's book:existence = possibly good life (good) non-existence = no possibility of good life (-) neutral positionexistence = possibly bad life (bad) non-existence = no possibility of bad life (good)so you can see, that mathematically, (without involving subjective feelings or biases), it makes more sense to not exist because you would be able to avoid the most important thing in this universe - the ABILITY TO BE HARMEDand I'm not just talking about good or bad, like they teach us in kindergarten, I'm talking about cancer-bad, starving to death-bad, losing your family-bad, seeing your parents die-bad, seeing your children die-bad, being maimed-bad, living for 20 years in a nursery home-not-knowing-who-you-are-BADAnd the good life mentioned above in the equation should REALLY BE good, if the equation is to make sense. the good life with as less possibly harm as possible, which not even Bill Gates is immune from. By the way, I wonder if Bill Gates is going to hell, after all he is an atheist, even though he has donated hundreds of millions of dollars into Africa, which in turn actually only compelled people to make more children and inject more harm into the world, yup... I think he is going to hellRight now, there is a zillion of unborn people floating around in ether, in the non-existia, waiting to be born, SCREAMING in agony and cursing us for not bringing them here for 60-70 odd years(if they're lucky, and then dying peacefully, maybe), scoffing young couples who should be having sex RIGHT NOW and starting new lives instead of wasting the precious sperm. So obviously we all should be doing our utmost to work together and bring as many poor unborn children into this world, right? tell me if that makes any sense.I can almost understand or even respect someone who openly says that they are unhappy, they have an ego, they want to perpetuate their genes and their last names, that they want to have unconditional love by having a child or children, who will in turn make THEM happy and take care of them when they are old. By why should our unfortunate predicaments compel others to work for us, others who might actually tell us that they'd rather not be born at all. Others who have done NOTHING to deserve living on this planet, except being a possible part of us in some remote future.Why is it rational to have children? to be entertained by YOUR children? to work harder for YOUR children who don't even NEED to exist. Quality of life should always be above quantity. We could have 10 billion people tomorrow or in 9 months rather if we all have sex with each other, we can ALWAYS do that. But what CAN we do to improve of life already living on this planet? I can tell you that you will not be able to do that, unless you make damn sure that your child is going to be a vegetarian, hippy doctor who is going to save people in Africa or Bangladesh. But then again, why would you compel someone to do that when they don't even exist? Otherwise, it is most likely that your child will be cute for the first few years (awww, aren't they all?) then start going to school when they don't want to, hit puberty, talk back to you, survive puberty without getting pregnant or getting someone else pregnant, then work for most of your lives, then see you die and then die themselves, and no, you won't be seeing each other in heaven, since there isn't one; if you still think you are, I don't know why you are still reading this. Your child is most likely going to be a meat-eater, which will only increase the amount of suffering in the world. We already slaughter billions of animals who live in crappy conditions every year for our debauchery, ignorance and self-interest. So don't be talking about the sanctity of life when you openly rip the flesh off of dead animals. Even if you bought the meat, you still are a consumer and thus a contributor to the slaughter. So why not adopt? why not save a life which will be devoured by the African rebel militia tomorrow or be drowned by the flood in Bangladesh, instead of unnecessarily creating a new life? why not be a vegetarian? which isn't really a whole other subjectIt's another thing to argue that we have been programed by nature and crude evolutionary forces to have children, but that should not mean that we should not use our brains and outsmart nature when possible. Nature doesn't care about you, it only cares about your copy, that's why we have been designed to grow old die - to make way for your offspring, who will in turn repeat the same game thousands of years if not millions. Our ancestors been doing this successfully for quite a long time now. Nature never cared about you. We are born alone, scared and naked, in a world filled with things that can destroy us any minute. A sunset is subjectively beautiful, a green field is subjectively beautiful, but zoom into that field and you will see insects devouring each other. A lion is beautiful, a zebra is beautiful ----you get the rest. Is the symmetrical cancer virus beautiful? Hmm, why would god create that one, or what about lice? I think we could do without lice, polio, black plague, Spanish flu, etc... The fact is that what's subjectively beautiful should not be the argument here.This whole thing isn't hard to figure out if you just take an unbiased look at reality. You have to filter your previous misconceptions, your present conceptions, your wants, desires and feelings of self-importance. That way you will see reality for what it is, hopefully. And once you THAT, once you admit that we use our brains and scheming tools to manage reality and make our way in life, once you realize that you at the core are a selfish being, once you realize that you favor your OWN ethnicity that's why you most likely marry your ethnicity, once you realize that you have been fed that this life was worth living all along all your life instead of being told how bad it is for most people on the planet, once you realize that if there is something good to write on your tombstone like "this person made the world a better place with his or her existence", once you realize that living a happy life is different from living a truly productive life, once you realize that we have no free will but act in the accordance of the cause-and-effect principle, then everything I wrote above might actually trigger a certain chemical reaction in your brain if it hasn't already which will compel you to think about this whole thing many times over. Once you do all THAT, only THEN can you know what the problems are and how to fix them, you won't be able to fix them (given that you want to) by running away from them or creating new problems that should not even need to exist.I'm gonna throw in a little bonus. Especially for those who think bad of me or who want to try to counter-argue me, I'm gonna help you out a bit.For those who want to attack my character or depression - irrelevant to the argument. But for the record, I'm not depressed, I don't even know the feeling of depression. Whether I should crawl under a rock and die is again irrelevant to the argument. Whether I am in fact 22 or whether I could be 48 is irrelevant to the argument. Whether something really bad happened to me in my life is - irrelevant to the argument, something bad doesn't need to happen to ME for me to see the problems in this world. Whether I should be ashamed or concerned about your hurt feelings is - irrelevant to the argument. Whether I believed in god at some point is - irrelevant to the argument. Whether I am an actual person typing this or an unbiased computer software is - irrelevant to the argument. Whether I actually practice what I preach is - irrelevant for the argument, but for the record, yes I do. Whether I should be more patient or kind to the religious people who are uncontrollably reproducing - irrelevant to the argument. Whether I should stfu, mind my own business and not "tell people what to do" - irrelevant to the DAMN ARGUMENT. Whether I am a thick-glass geek or/and internet whiner or loser - irrelevant to the argument. Whether lots of girls get turned off when you tell them that you don't want kids - yeah, that's true.There is a price for our existence, nothing is free in this world, except cheese in the mousetrap. If we don't pay for something, someone else does. If you win the first prize, someone else doesn't. You can all go back to your relatively short and pointless cheese chasing game now, but be warned, you will never get the cheese. We are insatiable, selfish, hungry and horny mice, designed to eat, crap, want, screw, and die, any add-on is just spirituality or religion, void of any productive or intellectual value. We can either limit the price of our existence by becoming humane peaceful beings, or we can all go down in flames, like the selfish beasties that we are.

For sentient beings and for us humans especially, is life bad? According to South African philsopher, David Benatar, the answer is a resounding "Yes." Life is bad...so bad that it would be better if all sentient beings ceased with reproduction and went extinct after the current generation dies out.This view on procreation is called anti-natalism and is often met with a visceral reaction in most people that learn of it. But, is it really so off target as to be insane, as most people assert or is it a completely rational and logical way in which clear headed people can and should view our lives and the world that we inhabit? Benatar argues that there are scientific reasons that we overestimate the quality of our lives.In this book, he argues brilliantly, in my opinion, that procreation is not only irrational but it is immoral as well. He holds a candle for the "Pro-death"movement in that he believes women are morally obligated to abort their fetuses at the earliest stages of gestation. The visceral reaction that most people have to his view point is easily explainable, according to Benatar; humans have evolved over billions of years to be optimists. This is the way in which we survive as a species and it blinds us to the reality of our lives. In short, humans are delusional about their condition because nature makes us this way. This is very unfortunate, according to Benatar, because it leads us to the creation of new lives and new suffering.Why is life so bad? Well, according to Benatar, even the most priveleged and gifted lives are full of suffering and hardship. Humans are "centers of suffering" according to Benatar and we don't even realize it due to our optimism bias instilled by nature. Benatar claims that most people spend a large part of their lives lonely, sad, hungry, thirsty, tired, depressed, anxious, nervous, embarassed, in physical or emotional discomfort or otherwise suffering in some way. He believes that all pleasures are negative in character; that is, it is a relief from some pain that we are in. Benatar argues that pain is much more intense than pleasure. He holds that no one alive would take the option of an hour of pure pleasure if it was followed by an hour of the worst pain imaginable.Pain is also much easier for people to "catch" than pleasure. For example, everyone has heard of chronic pain but no one has heard of chronic pleasure. It only takes a moment for someone to be seriously injured in an accident that lasts a lifetime but it is impossible for someone to catch a type of pleasure which is as intense or lasts as long.Benatar implores us to observe the bad in the world we live in. Some facts he presents: There are currently 7 billion people on the planet and that number is expected to skyrocket in the coming decades. Over the past 1,000 years, 15 million people are estimated to have died in natural disasters. Approximately 20,000 people in the world die from starvation every day. The 1918 Influenza epidemic killed 50 million people. HIV kills 3 million people annually. 3.5 million people die each year in accidents. Wars have killed hundreds of millions of people. When the numbers were put together for the year 2001, 56.5 million people died. That is more than 107 people per minute. As the world population increases, the amount of death and suffering only magnifies.One thing that we humans are guaranteed is death. We all will die, either through the natural aging process or through a disease or accident that take us out prematurely. Our physical prime is only a tiny part of our life and the rest is our gradual, if not steep, decline. We are not guaranteed any pleasures at all.A potential parent should view themselves as the top of a pyramid, according to Benatar. As that parent creates more humans, they create more suffering and pain that is easily avoidable. If each parent has 3 children, that amounts to more than 88,000 humans over ten generations. To Benatar, that is a lot of pointless suffering that could easily be avoided if we would all just use birth control or have early term abortions.Part of the brilliance of Benatar's book is that he anticipates the readers objections and responds to them with clear and sound logic. The first argument against Benatar's views on life is that there are good parts of life that Benatar chooses to ignore; Benatar agrees with this but argues that the bad outweighs the good by a large margin.His key argument against reproduction is his assymetry argument; that is that pain is bad and pleasure is good. The best lives contain a lot of pain and pleasure as well, but, had we not existed, we would not have been deprived of pleasures. Only living beings can be deprived of pleasures, no one that does not exist can ever be deprived. When one does not exist, one does not feel pain, which is good and one does not feel pleasure, which is not bad, since one does not exist. Simply put, non existence means no suffering and no deprivation. Therefore, never existing is better than existing, considering all the suffering that humans must endure.Benatar urges us to look at Mars as an example. There is no suffering on Mars because there is no sentient life there. The Earth, however, is full sentient life and suffering. There is no pleasure on Mars but this matters not since there are no Maritians alive to be deprived. Do we Earthlings ever look to Mars and bemone the lack of pleasure that Martians do not have since they do not exist? Of course we don't. However, if Martians were alive and suffered as we humans do, we would certainly deplore their condition.One argument that always comes up against anti-natalism is the reaction that anyone that promotes it, such as Benatar, should commit suicide. Benatar does address suicide and believes that it is an option, but it should be used only as a last resort after one discusses it with many people. In general, he is against suicide because it not only causes the suicidee harm, it also causes harm to people around that person, including their family and those that care about them. Anti-natalism is not the belief that we should all commit suicide, but rather that we should analyze reproduction and our lives and come to the conclusion that we should not create more pointless suffering by creating new humans.Every person, even those opposed to anti-natalism, can agree that having a child is essentially rolling the dice with another person's life, without their consent. None of us can see into the future; the future that involves our future children may indeed be grim. Reproduction is a form of Russian roulette, according to Benatar. For example, in the United States, 1 out of 4 women in America is raped during her lifetime. That means, if we have 2 daughters, there is a 50% chance that one of them will be raped. Knowing this, is it moral for humans to go ahead and create those daughters? Benatar believes that is it morally wrong to do so.I loved this book. It can be dense at times as there is a ton of information in each paragraph; some parts of it can be hard to understand. That being said, this book is important and I don't see how Dr. Benatar's thesis can be refuted.

It's really incredible I appreciate his perspective on how not existing is actually a privilege over living beings and I agree 💯 it changed my view in life in a positive way [ recommended ]

A must read. The author makes a very strong case for antinatalism. Looking forward to reading The Human Predicament by the same author.

Attention: il ne s'agit pas d'un livre grand public. Il s'agit d'un livre de philosophie universitaire, de haut niveau, utilisant essentiellement la logique formelle, avec des démonstrations très cadrées, du type prémisses 1, prémisses 2.. conclusion(s). Cela m'a fait penser à un ouvrage scholastique, basé sur la raison pure et très vain au bout du compte.La thèse de l'auteur est simple: il pense qu'il vaut mieux ne pas être né et qu'il n'y a aucun intérêt à donner la vie. Donner la vie c'est même infliger un mal et donc il vaut mieux que l'humanité s'éteigne et le plus tôt sera le mieux.Pour prouver que la vie est un mal, l'auteur utilise une démonstration quasi mathématique (chapitre 2) : il fait le total des bénéfices de la vie et en retire les souffrances. Il compare cette somme à celle qu'aura la personne "qui n'est pas née". Cette personne n'aura pas les plaisirs de la vie, mais elle n'en n'aura pas les souffrances. L'auteur estime ensuite que tout compte fait, il vaut mieux ne pas naître.Dans le chapitre 3 il montre combien la vie est porteuse d'ennuis, de souffrances, de déplaisirs, déplaisirs que l'on aurait tendance à minimiser. Les plaisirs sont fugaces, les souffrances durent. On a souvent trop chaud, trop froid. On mange mais on doit aller aux toilettes..Cette vison de la vie m'apparaît excessivement comptable. J'ai l'impression que Benatar n'a jamais ressenti le "simple bonheur d'exister", indépendamment du plaisir ou de la souffrance du moment. Le bonheur d'exister, je le ressens dans des choses très simples: oui, on doit évacuer notre vessie et nos intestins, mais c'est un plaisir d'avoir une bonne défécation... Benatar ne parle pas non plus du plaisir sexuel, qui est un plaisir gratuit, que l'on peut avoir seul, à deux ou à plusieurs, et ceci très longtemps dans la vie. Le plaisir de l'action est aussi quelque chose dont il ne parle pas, au rebours d'un philosophe comme Alain par exemple.Le Bouddhisme est éliminé par une simple note de bas de page (page 81) alors que cette doctrine est pour moi riche d'enseignement en nous apprenant justement à considérer la vie avec détachement, qu'elle soit "bonne" ou "mauvaise" extérieurement.En bref cet ouvrage est extrêmement irritant. Rien à voir par exemple avec les maximes de Cioran ("de l'inconvénient d'être né") qui lui, reste dans un cynisme plutôt bon enfant. Aucune référence non plus à Camus, qui a écrit des pages essentielles sur l'absurdité de la vie, absurdité qui ne nous empêche pas de la vivre. Pas de référence non plus à Viktor Frankl ("the meaning of life") qui nous explique pourquoi donner un sens à sa vie permet de la vivre. Benatar se contente de citer ses collègues anglo-saxons (Maslow, Marquis, Peter Singer..) essentiellement pour les critiquer dans des joutes très formelles.Ce livre est pour moi le symptôme du nihilisme occidental actuel. L'auteur est certes très brillant, mais sa thèse est hautement critiquable.

Wenn ich die Dreiteilung der Kritiken zum Buch des Vor-Rezensenten übernehme, so kann ich mich dort zu denjenigen, die "genau das auch schon gedacht haben, es nur selbst nicht so gut ausdrücken konnten", zählen.Als Schopenhauer- und Cioran-Begeisterter war mir die Erkenntnis 'better never to have been' bestens vertraut, und ich teile diese Ansicht ohne jede Einschränkung. So sah ich zunächst keinen Bedarf, mir diese Erkenntnis durch Benatar auch noch analytisch-philosophisch beweisen zu lassen. Soll heißen, ich wollte dieses Buch ursprünglich gar nicht erwerben. Die Lektüre einiger Kritiken und Ansichten dazu erweckte jedoch meine Neugierde, so dass ich letztendlich nicht widerstehen konnte.Als Fazit kann ich mich kurz fassen: 'Better Never to Have Been' ist das Beste, was ich seit längerer Zeit gelesen habe, überdies eine ermutigende Bestätigung von dem, "was ich auch schon gedacht habe".

This book is nicely written and his argument is easy to understand fairly early in.His argument rests on an intuitive asymmetry between the 'good' that is the 'absence of pain', and the 'not bad(ness)' (or neutralness) that is the 'absence of pleasure'. His argument also turns on the distinction between two ways of talking about 'a life worth living'. We can (and ought to) separate our ideas on 'a life worth starting' from 'a life worth continuing'. This is very important. Where as some lives may be worth continuing (he agrees most are) NO life is worth starting. If i come down with a painful condition i may consider my life to still be worth continuing. However if i am faced with the choice whether to create a being who has such a condition it is As all life contains guaranteed harm the interests of a conceivable person are best served by not creating them.I am unsure the problem some of the other commentators have with this. This is a good argument.I think where one might want to attack his position, however, will be by rejecting the assumed asymmetry. But, as Benatar himself notes (near the end), such will be difficult to do without spawning other counter intuitive results. I would probably want to still go down this line - though i think his conclusion is rightEither way, i highly recommend this book