Perpetuating life is unethical

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170832 wrote:

A challenge can be enjoyable or unenjoyable though. If the challenge is enjoyable, its not suffering, if its not enjoyable, it is suffering. The outcome may have benefit, and in some cases the suffering be worth it in the mind of the individual suffering it.

I still pose that there is, has been, and likely will be suffering for which there is no ultimate benefit or enjoyment, and in great quantity. The fact that some unenjoyable things aren't suffering, and that some hardships are merely challenges that have beneficial side-effects does not negate the existence of true suffering.

So what? Why is challenge that is enjoyable good, and challenge that is not enjoyable bad. A person climb a mountain, and the whole experience is painful, and this person eventually drop down from the mountain, and die. There is no happy ending. Why do this person climb the mountain? This person climb the mountain not because it is enjoyable, or not. He climb because it makes him happy. Some how, challenge lead to happiness.

@TuringEquivalent,

In your example, semantics aside, the climber chose to climb the mountain. There was also the benefit of climbing it making him happy.

Victims of circumstance or malevolence do not choose, and it is extremely unlikely anything about the experience makes them happy.

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170342 wrote:

By propogating a new generation, we ensure that there will be more suffering. To say that your joys are worth the price of the suffering of others is a poverty, an injustice, and entirely immoral.

The question is, which is there more of, happiness or pain? At what point is life no longer worth living? When it's 49% happiness and 51% pain? Where do you draw the line? I do think that each generation gaurantees that more people will feel pain. However, I also think there is a gaurantee of some happiness. Unless you can demonstrate that the pain will far outweigh the happiness then your argument fails. Yes there will be pain but that's part of the cost and it is worth it.

@Night Ripper,

I don't think that you can weigh pain vs happiness. I don't think that is a valid scale at all. Let's build a hypothetical model of the extreme. Let's say that everyone who ever lived was immensely happy and life was peachy all around (semantics aside about perfect world not being perfect). However, there is this one person in utter and complete agony, and did not choose to be as sacrifice for everyone else of their own accord, but was a victim of circumstance. This person never gets to see or know about the happiness of anyone else, never gets to see the fruits of their pains. This person wants nothing more than for the agony to stop.

By any measure, it seems that there is more happiness than misery because there are so many more people living in incredible happiness, and only one person in utter agony. I say that even in this model, if it were possible for those happy individuals to release the tortured one from pain but it required them to forgo their own continued existence and they did not do so, that would be an unethical and entirely evil act.

The happiness of one group is not weighted evenly against the pain of another.

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170850 wrote:

I don't think that you can weigh pain vs happiness. I don't think that is a valid scale at all. Let's build a hypothetical model of the extreme. Let's say that everyone who ever lived was immensely happy and life was peachy all around (semantics aside about perfect world not being perfect). However, there is this one person in utter and complete agony, and did not choose to be as sacrifice for everyone else of their own accord, but was a victim of circumstance. This person never gets to see or know about the happiness of anyone else, never gets to see the fruits of their pains. This person wants nothing more than for the agony to stop.

By any measure, it seems that there is more happiness than misery because there are so many more people living in incredible happiness, and only one person in utter agony. I say that even in this model, if it were possible for those happy individuals to release the tortured one from pain but it required them to forgo their own continued existence and they did not do so, that would be an unethical and entirely evil act.

The happiness of one group is not weighted evenly against the pain of another.

Why doesn't the person in pain just kill themself? Why do you require the extermination of the happy people as well?

If there are a million happy people and 1 person in pain then why do you think that the million happy people owe anything to the person in pain?

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170850 wrote:

I say that even in this model, if it were possible for those happy individuals to release the tortured one from pain but it required them to forgo their own continued existence and they did not do so, that would be an unethical and entirely evil act.

You say this, but why? If your posts were making me unhappy, would it be an entirely evil act for you to keep posting?

@Jebediah,

The person in this model can't kill themselves, its an eternal system.

Its analagous to the actual finite system of life we do have, because individuals cannot choose not to be born into a life that will lead them into suffering any more than the person in my model can choose to kill themselves.

I am not forcing you to read my posts. By perpetuating a new generation, we are forcing existence upon new individuals, some of whom will suffer.

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170858 wrote:

By perpetuating a new generation, we are forcing existence upon new individuals, some of whom will suffer.

So what? Suffering is unpleasant but it's usually worth living through. I've had a great life yet if I were suddenly stricken with a painful disease it would not negate my earlier good experiences. The value of my life is not defined by the maximum feeling of pain.

The fact that people in great pain do not always and instantly kill themselves is strong evidence against your views.

@Night Ripper,

If you read my first post, you will find that I outline the possibility that this phenomenon of people being willing to stick through pain is a product of a biology and cause and effect system into which the person is forced. In this model, biology is forcing the conciousness to continue on, not the other way around. This argument is also not about one's own choice to continue living for themselves, but about forcing existence on the next generation and all others. It is staking your own desire, whatever that desire is, against the existence of other's pains, not your own pains.

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170839 wrote:

In your example, semantics aside, the climber chose to climb the mountain. There was also the benefit of climbing it making him happy.

Victims of circumstance or malevolence do not choose, and it is extremely unlikely anything about the experience makes them happy.

If he is not happy, then why did he climb?

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170858 wrote:

The person in this model can't kill themselves, its an eternal system.

An imaginary system.

Quote:

I am not forcing you to read my posts. By perpetuating a new generation, we are forcing existence upon new individuals, some of whom will suffer.

But we aren't forcing suffering on them. Existence is not suffering.

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170863 wrote:

If you read my first post, you will find that I outline the possibility that this phenomenon of people being willing to stick through pain is a product of a biology and cause and effect system into which the person is forced. In this model, biology is forcing the conciousness to continue on, not the other way around. This argument is also not about one's own choice to continue living for themselves, but about forcing existence on the next generation and all others. It is staking your own desire, whatever that desire is, against the existence of other's pains, not your own pains.

Biology doesn't prevent people from committing suicide. That should be evident from the daily suicides.

Forcing existence on others would be wrong if and only if you could demonstrate that life is usually not worth living. You haven't done that at all.

If every baby born was immediately tortured and then killed you would have a point. However, most lives aren't like that. Most lives are actually quite worth living, even if a few aren't.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;170867 wrote:

If every baby born was immediately tortured and then killed you would have a point. However, most lives aren't like that. Most lives are actually quite worth living, even if a few aren't.

And we look after our own children.

@Jebediah,

Jebediah;170869 wrote:

And we look after our own children.

I wonder how many of those children thank their parents for bringing them into this world vs. cursing them for it?

@Night Ripper,

If even one life is not worth living, that comes at the cost of everyone else's decision to perpetuate life for the worth of those that are.

Similarly, though I do not believe in hell, some do. The quality of an action being described as unethical or evil depends on the understanding of the one who is acting on it. If you believe even one person born will go to hell, then perpetuating life towards that inevitability is evil. Again, I don't think the hell model is real, its imaginary, but it demonstrates that people are valuing the good of some lives against the bad of others.

Hell aside, there ARE lives that have been just completely miserable and of no note whatsoever. Human life is not the only life either. There are billions upon billions of pointless existences, punctuated by fear, agony, and a gruesome death. There are many examples of unbearable and fruitless tragedy in human lives as well.

And biology does prevent suicide in most cases. Our enjoyment, desires, and distractions from the bad come from a system adapted specifically for self-preservation and progeneration. In some cases the immediate stimuli of the bad outweigh this system and suicide occurs.

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170893 wrote:

If even one life is not worth living, that comes at the cost of everyone else's decision to perpetuate life for the worth of those that are.

I don't look at it like that but if it were true then you would only be adding to a person by saying that their suffering enables an entire species to exist, most of which are happy and content.

@Night Ripper,

Well, there is only one way to prevent this suffering of this person or persons. You make it so that no future life meets the standard of being worthlessly full of suffering. There are two ways to accomplish this: make all lives forevermore good enough to pass muster by whatever definition of "good enough" is satisfactory, or disallow any more lives.

Neither of these seem within our power, but the knowledge that this dynamic exists alerts us to the consequences of our selfish actions in perpetuating life on a smaller scale, as all the smaller scale perpetuations equal the whole.

@setzer9999,

setzer9999;170909 wrote:

Well, there is only one way to prevent this suffering of this person or persons. You make it so that no future life meets the standard of being worthlessly full of suffering. There are two ways to accomplish this: make all lives forevermore good enough to pass muster by whatever definition of "good enough" is satisfactory, or disallow any more lives.

Neither of these seem within our power, but the knowledge that this dynamic exists alerts us to the consequences of our selfish actions in perpetuating life on a smaller scale, as all the smaller scale perpetuations equal the whole.

but life is good because there is challenge.

@TuringEquivalent,

TuringEquivalent;170910 wrote:

but life is good because there is challenge.

In the face of the suffering and lack of worth of another life for which this does not hold true, this only illustrates the point. You pose that life is good because there is challenge. That is subjective to your experience. There are circumstances in which the challenge is not good in any sense, or in which there is no challenge, only certainty of failure to find joy.

By supposing that life is good because you focus on the good and you like something it offers, and basing your decision to perpetuate life on this, your behavior indicates a greater value is placed on that than on the suffering of others. You like that life has challenge, and state that it is worth the suffering that will exist to allow this challenge to continue to be possible.

@TuringEquivalent,

TuringEquivalent;170910 wrote:

but life is good because there is challenge.

Go ahead I know I shouldn't do this but it is a good point.

I apologize for going off topic here. But it is not completely off topic.

Your statement above is why an afterlife in some kind of heaven simply would not work. The reason being? You would have absolutely no challenge and it is this very reason that life does not become boring. The only way heaven would not become hellish is if there were challenges to face, things to achieve and strive for. Yet I have never once seen it depicted in that way.

I agree, the reason there is value of living, is that life is not easy. If it were easy there would be a lot more people jumping off bridges.

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Perpetuating life is unethical

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