What Are You Going Through

by Sigrid Nunez

Life is suffering, birth feeds death, to bring a person who has no say in the matter into this world is morally unjustifiable, goes the anti-natalist philosophy. That life might also bring an individual a great amount of pleasure changes nothing, the anti-natalists say. Unborn, the person would not have missed life’s pleasures. Born, he or she has no choice but to endure its multitude of physical and emotional pains, such as the pain that comes from aging or disease or dying. The possibility of a happier future, in which suffering would be vastly diminished, cannot be a justification for the suffering that exists today. And in any case, according to a leading contemporary anti-natalist, a happier future is an illusion. The main problem was, is, and ever will be human nature, the anti-natalist says. Everything could have been different, true. But that would have required us to be a different species. Humans don’t learn. They make the same terrible mistakes over and over, he says. “We’re asked to accept the unacceptable. It’s unacceptable that people, and other beings, have to go through what they go through, and there’s almost nothing that they can do about it.” When he’s asked whether or not he has any children, the anti-natalist won’t say.