Several articles in the foreign press alert that something like a “birth strike” is beginning to be detected, especially in South Korea, the country with the lowest fertility rate in the world. In the United States, The New York Times reported this year, more and more parents acknowledge feeling overwhelmed by the new demands of parenting. In China, there is a generation of young men who do not find a partner and many professional women who, deterred by the high cost of housing and education, prefer not to have children.
The decline in the birth rate seems to be proving the supporters of not procreating right, as well as some surveys: a 2022 sample reported by The New York Times, revealed that more than half of young people believe that “humanity is doomed” and “the future is terrifying”. A generational despair, reported the Big Apple newspaper, which started on Twitter "but has migrated to serious Facebook pages, Netflix and books." Series like 'True Detective' are already benchmarks for the increasingly supporters of the anti-natal movement, which also has inspiring philosophers in Spain.
In South Korea, women adhere to the 'four no's: no dating, no sex, no marriage and no parenting, as the government desperately tries to persuade women to wake up their instincts maternal despite the machismo that continues to prevail in couple relationships. The rejection of the 'patriarchal culture' has motivated that, according to a 2022 survey, 65% of women do not want to have children. In 2020, deaths in South Korea have already exceeded the number of births.
Still with wet hair, due to the unusual downpour that has just unloaded, Miguel Steiner, PhD in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona, affirms, in short, that living does not compensate for the multiple forms of suffering. And he cites hunger, wars, natural catastrophes, torture, accidents, refugees, physical and mental illnesses, climate change, the disappearance of species, air pollution, the unstoppable number of suicides...
Despite being numerically four cats, according to Steiner, author of the novel The Antinatalist (Avant) and the doctoral thesis Ethics, suffering and procreation, the antinatalists have distinguished thinkers in their ranks, in the case of Thomas Ligotti, the author of The Conspiracy Against the Human Species (Valdemar), one of the books that inspired Rust Cohle, from the True Detective series; Colombian writer and biologist Fernando Vallejo, author of El desbarrancadero and La virgen de los sicarios (both in Debolsillo); the Argentine philosopher Julio Cabrera and his "negative ethics"; the psychoanalyst Corinne Maier, author of No kids; American writer Sarah Perry and her book Every cradle is a grave...
Supporters of antinatalism for ethical reasons also organize through Facebook pages such as 'Antinatalism Philosophy'. One of its factions, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, an organization with thousands of followers in the US, believes that the best thing humans could do to help Earth is to stop having children. For these philanthropic anti-natalists, it's not life that's the problem, it's us. Recently, some groups that defend animals have joined the cause: the vegantinatalistas.
For anti-natalists, when it comes to having children, the best option is to adopt. This is the case of Steiner, an Austrian who moved to Barcelona at the age of 22, who has two adopted daughters. "And I would say the same with pets," he adds from a cafeteria in the San Martí district of Barcelona to which he has brought his novel about an obscure organization called Devotos de la Bella Vida and his essay On happiness and children ( Proteus).
In Steiner's opinion, already put to live, it is better to be optimistic and supportive. And yes, there are things that he likes, such as Beethoven's music, literature (he quotes Javier Marías) and the Camino de Santiago. On the other hand, what is not worth it, he points out, is to start living...
His motives resemble those of the most emblematic figure anti-natalism has today: David Benatar, the director of the School of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town and the author of the book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence (Better never to have existed: the harm of coming into existence).
In Benatar's opinion, “reproducing is intrinsically cruel and irresponsible”, not only because a horrible fate can happen to anyone, but because life itself is “permeated with evil”. Perhaps for this reason, Benatar is considered a pessimistic and gloomy philosopher, two adjectives to which he is very accustomed and to which he usually responds, like veteran boxers who have practiced their counterpunching, arguing that only pessimists want to change the world. Well, for the optimists, it's fine as it is.
Contrary to what could be interpreted, anti-natalists do not hate children like some people who stay in hotels where their entry is not allowed, but rather they say they love them so much and feel such compassion for them that they advocate not bringing them into this world to prevent them from suffering.
Steiner is not the only antinatalist in Spain. Miguel Ángel Castro Merino has recently published (accompanied by his mother…) The cursed gift of being born. An anti-natalist essay (Didot Point), in which he relies on philosophical currents that start from Homer. As he declared in a recent interview in the Diario de León, "bringing children is ethically problematic." For this philosopher and psychologist, humanity walks in the opposite direction to which it should be, so if what you want is to prevent the unborn from being slaves to our mistakes, it would be best not to make them.
Josep Sampere, author of the science fiction book Five Green Tears (Canalla Ediciones), also shows sympathy for this philosophy. In fact, his novel poses a disturbing enigma: if a fetus knew what awaited it in this world thanks to a telepathic connection... would it want to come? It comes in his book, but because his mother convinces him with a story...
When Sampere is told that the good experiences that life offers (falling in love, enjoying nature, enjoying gastronomy, bathing on a lonely beach at sunset, reading a good book, etc.) more than compensate for the bad ones, indicates that it is an asymmetrical relationship and that while the moments of joy are very brief, suffering colonizes a large part of our lives. "There is chronic pain, but there is no chronic pleasure," he jokes.
Supporters of antinatalism distance themselves from childfree, an Anglicism that names those who claim the right not to have children so as not to see their professional career interrupted or have more time for themselves.
For the anti-natalists who rely on ethics, it is a self-centered and comfortable position that has nothing to do with empathizing and showing solidarity with those who suffer the worst in the world, whether they are refugees, the homeless, or those who suffer from incurable diseases. .
The good or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that the world population, estimates the United Nations, will increase by almost 2,000 million people in the coming years, reaching 9,700 million in the year 2050, thanks to the increase in the hope of life and a decrease in infant mortality.
In fact, when social psychologists poll people to rate their lives on a scale of one (“worst possible life for you”) to ten (“best possible life for you”), the perception is either good or very good. In recent years, even in countries like India or Zimbabwe, the answers to this question have tended to rise.
When discussing these data with the anti-natalists, they respond that people are mistaken, live on illusions or prefer to build castles in the air, because "the quality of human life is, contrary to what many people think, quite frightening," Benatar notes. in The Human Dilemma (Alliance).
