Anti-natalism: Misanthropy on steroids

Antinatalism or antinatalism is the ethical view that negatively values procreation. Antinatalists argue that humans should abstain from procreation.


It is really true that a lot of us wish that we had never been born?

The other day our very own MercatorNet ran an informative though disturbing piece entitled “Meet the advertising expert who inspired today’s anti-population propaganda.” Didn’t want to meet him. But the essay graced the pages of our esteemed journal, so I was compelled to read it.

The article was about one Hugh Moore, a crackerjack advertising executive who, back in the 1950s, got his knickers in a twist about people having children. According to Peter Jacobsen’s piece Mr. Moore coined the term “population explosion” (leave it to an ad man).

Now if Mr Moore didn’t want children, that was his business. But excoriating the rest of us is not good.  What likely prompted Mr Jacobsen’s article was an ultra-woke campaign based in Portland, Oregon urging people to quit having children. The campaign is run by an organization called Stop Having Kids. Here is what they say:

It Is Usually The Case That Humans Have Children For Reasons Rooted In Egocentrism.

Besides circumstances related to some type of force, the creation of human life is typically justified by reasons that spring from self-absorbed thinking and lack of adequate consideration for the interests of one’s own potential children, including the individuality, feeling and future outcomes of those potential children.

Also:

Those who procreate don’t acknowledge that the future person they are creating may not want to be born and may even one day wish they had never been born. At its core, voluntarily having children is a selfish act that doesn’t adequately consider the interests of future life and already existing life.

Stop Having Kids has sponsored billboards in the Portland, Oregon area. One of their signs on Interstate 5 in the vicinity of Salem, Oregon reads: “A Lot of Humans Wish They Had Never Been Born.”

WOW. Talk about a bunch of unhappy folks! Where do we start to unpack this line of reasoning?

First, why do people have children? This will apparently come as a surprise to Stop Having Kids, but having children just comes naturally. Birds do it, bees do it, etc. Saying that people procreate because they are selfish, egocentric, or riddled with anxiety, depression or some other malady is way off and strikes yours truly as a tad neurotic. But in an utterly materialistic society with most everyone aboard the produce-and-consume treadmill, neuroticism is not surprising. After all, millions of moderns see prioritizing acquisition of creature comforts over family as an eminently reasonable proposition. Doing without or saving up for something is deemed old-fashioned, “not progressive,” or just plain stupid.

Second, there has got to be someone (already born) who is the driving force behind all this. Veronica Bianco, an enterprising reporter at Willamette Week, investigated and discovered that the person who incorporated Stop Having Kids is one Eric Dietz Goldberg, variously described as a photographer and/or “activist.” From what I gather, Mr Goldberg himself hasn’t had much to say about his enterprise, just the messaging on his website.

The message? You know, the stuff about babies as the product of pure egocentrism and wishing you were never born. Misanthropy manifests in myriad ways. Anti-natalism is the most militant. On the warpath against your own kind is a pathological condition, infused with smoldering self-hatred, a ruinous remorsefulness for one’s own existence to the point of promoting passive-aggressive omni-cide. Such thinking is inevitably rooted in a lack of faith or any notion that God or some force in the universe is greater than the grey matter between our ears. The Enlightenment come home to roost…

There is a temptation to feel sorry for such unhappy folks, much as you feel sorry for some drug-fueled scumbag breaking into your home. But the problem must be dealt with forthwith. Sympathy comes later. The problem is that this pathological ultra-woke ideology is spreading through the academy, mass entertainment and government. This unmitigated absurdity should be exposed.

Anti-natalism is nothing less than the logical extension of PC brainwashing. How’s that? Bear with me.

PC is about race and gender. The narrative is that whites (especially white males) should hate themselves and wallow in PC-concocted guilt. Nothing the benighted white folks have built – no good they have done – matters. They are to blame for everything, and everyone else (non-whites and females) are victims of their oppression. So maybe the next step is to harness PC’s fixation on race and extend it to the entirety of homo sapiens for an infinitely more immense immersion in inappropriate guilt – to the point that not having children is the only way to relieve such pathological penance.

Aside from misery, what on earth could be the ideological underpinning of such an argument? My guess is climate change (formerly known as “global warming”). So in order to save the planet we should extinguish ourselves! I know there is a tendency to laugh at this. Nothing that crazy could ever get traction. Well think again. Who would have thought, as recently as ten years ago, that biological males would be competing in women’s collegiate athletics? Now we have that, and it is staunchly defended in the mainstream media.

So back to Stop Having Kids. On their page “Why Humans Have Kids” they have a heading “Increase Life Satisfaction” (apparently, that is a bad thing). Below that are three bullet points:

  • Give purpose and meaning to one’s life
  • Desire to relive childhood
  • Have a mini me/someone to control

Just below those bullet points is a photo of a father and son playing. They look as though they are enjoying themselves. They are black folks. Is the father a “control freak?”

The photo of a racial minority in the West is “inclusive,” as PC minions would say. Is this the Stop Having Kids way of telling black folks to knock it off with having children?

The Stop Having Kids way to celebrate diversity.

AUTHOR

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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