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

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.

I'm giving this book 5 stars mainly on the basis that books that deal with topics, or express opinions, that are very unusual, particularly in the field of human behavior, jolt us out of complacency and make us think. The main theme of the book that the author attempts to develop is his opinion that it is never a good thing, and is (nearly) always wrong, to create new sentient life because sentient lives created are always subject to what he believes is more bad than good, and that lives never created cannot be either subject to this bad or deprived in any way. I can agree -- since it is pretty obvious -- that lives never created cannot be deprived in any way. I can also agree that, in general, people really need to give more thought to whether they are suitable to be parents, financially, emotionally, and otherwise. I agree that human overpopulation is destroying this planet, I wrote a college thesis on this many years ago. I don't think it is very debatable that religions or other philosophies such as nationalism and special interests such as the corporate/business economy that push reproduction at any cost are doing a vast amount of harm and creating immeasurable suffering -- this has been a topic of widely read books. What I am not convinced of in reading this book is that the author has proven his point that procreation is always (or nearly always, as he vacillates on this), for everyone, morally and practically wrong. He uses pure philosophical reasoning and gyrations but does not stop to examine the most fundamental premises on which the arguments are based. One can sometimes, but not always and probably not even often, decide that a condition is "bad" or regrettable and have it apply universally. This is patently false collectivist and stereotypical thinking. While I agree (again it is pretty obvious) that people procreate based on their own needs and interests rather than the needs and interests of their progeny, selfish reasons for procreation can be very good reasons. For example, many people selfishly want children because they are lovers of life and people and want to give this love to a child. Many people have worked very hard on themselves and know they would be good role models for their kids. The author acknowledges this but insists adoption would better fulfill these needs. Again, that would depend on the individuals; people have the right to make their own reproductive decisions. The author has not brought in any opinions from expert figures in human psychology and this is a serious weakness. For only one example, Aaron Beck, the founder of Cognitive Behavioral Psychology, I think would be rolling in his grave were he to read this book. Beck showed us how we are prone to cognitive or thinking errors of the pessimistic sort and how we tend to let such premises slide by in much of our thinking. Added to this, we are all individuals -- what affects us and how it affects us is subject to tremendous variation. Shinzen Young's The Science of Enlightenment and others that back up the evidence he presents on meditation have agreed that a serious meditation practice can eventually lead to a condition of happiness, independent of conditions, and this includes most conditions. While this is not an excuse for irresponsible reproduction, which I vehemently oppose, it still tends to show that extreme statements such as that all sentient life on balance entails mainly suffering can be rationally challenged. The author's premise may on balance be correct -- for reasons additional to what he gives -- but by the same token it may be false -- there is really no way to know. By making us think more deeply about reproduction, this book is worthwhile but I see as a detraction that the author overstated the case. Lastly, let's assume for the sake of argument that the author's premise is correct ... it will never make a difference anyway. Evolution of sentient life from basic chemicals on this planet is a paradigm for the entire universe, which is unlimited in space and time. There are an infinite number of planets "out there" with conditions suitable for evolution of life; this has always been and will always be going on, as life is created and destroyed. How soon life will be destroyed on earth is unknown, but what is certain is that earth is an infinitesimal speck in an endless universe in which nature dictates that life is born and evolves to become more complex and sentient over time, be that good, bad, or indifferent. Bottom line, a worthwhile read from an author who is courageous enough to express a highly unorthodox opinion.

I'm consider myself to be more of a nonreligious theist, and perhaps I'm one of the few theists who would consider this book to be a positive. The entire book here makes arguments which for the most part are centered around the asymmetry between pain and pleasure during the course of a sentient entity's existence (or life if you will). As a theist who accepts the evidence for the continuation of our egos/minds after physical death I was interested in incorporating Benatar's asymmetries in regards to a potential afterlife. Benatar's asymmetry regarding pleasure and pain is entirely accurate in my opinion, but there are two major flaws of which I've found in the book. I'll cover the first argument that others have made in a critique to this book, that people are poor judges when it comes to evaluating the quality of our lives. This contention is much too subjective to be taken seriously since if I can't trust my own senses then what can I trust? Can I realistically trust another's assessment of my life, but yet not my own? I can only stop at saying that if we feel happy, regardless of what someone else feels about this, then I really am happy as far as I'm concerned. I also don't feel that simple inconveniences in life (such as a papercut) will always offset great pleasures, or should be a motivator for nonexistence in themselves. My biggest critique perhaps, and one that I havn't seen brought up yet so far, is that there's always the possibility for sentient life to evolve to a point in the future which could make existing a very pleasurable experience for most all of us. Also, if there's an afterlife, and there is a good deal of evidence which points in that direction in my opinion, then perhaps what awaits us could make existing be worthwhile. It is possible if an afterlife exists that it could be very bad too. A good deal of eastern and western mysticism considers physical life to be hells in their own rights. The book covers religious/spiritual arguments on only a brief note, and pretty much dismisses these as being nonfactors. My arguments in this paragraph are: "what if we do have a spiritual nature"? I don't want to get into reductionist/theistic debate here any further but I wanted to make a point. It's a very quality book, and you don't need to be a philosopher to understand a good deal of the material in it. It's a very straightforward book, and unlike a few other books written by pessimistic philosophers that I've read it stays technical for the most part while avoiding the poetic harshness of other works. Better Never to Have Been is a great conversation piece and a great book for the nonphilosopher or nonpoetic type. I would hope that people would read this book with an open mind, and I've noticed that some of the lower star reviewers admitted that they didn't read the entire (or even most) of the book.

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 position existence = 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 HARMED and 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-BAD And 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 hell Right 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 subject It'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.

Applied Ethics. Very argumentative. Benatar has caused turmoil in some philosophical circles. He's been read by people in Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton and other great knowledge centers. His ideas are indeed a threat to many of our naive assumptions. He criticizes common moral conclusions using premises that are generally accepted. He assumes for example that the reader agrees that: 1) it is wrong to bring someone into the world if that is going to cause that person too much pain. e.g. If you are sure that person is going to have AIDS or live in extreme poverty, so that she will suffer an immensely excruciating pain. He, then, argues that: 2) All lives, even the best ones are very bad. So you know, for sure, that by bringing someone to life, that person is going to suffer so much pain. Far more than pleasure. 3) Therefore, it is wrong to procreate. Further conclusions: In this line of thought, abortion, for instance, in the early stages of pregnancy is not only right, but morally mandatory. In addition, he establishes a very important difference between "lives worth continuing" and "lives worth starting", arguing that we are not morally obliged to kill ourselves. Absolutely not. But since by bringing someone into life I will expose this person to serious harm, it is best not to bring anyone into life. Arguments to defend 2: 1) Pleasures and the hedonistic project are condemned to defeat, since any pleasures you have will not be able to undo the pain you will necessarily suffer. 2) Pain is part of the structure of the world and by bringing someone into life you are, ipso facto, exposing that person to serious harm. We entirely overlook the daily discomforts of daily life, even though they are so pervasive. Even the best lives are very bad, because our pleasures or moments of desire fulfillment are so few compared to the common negative states we constantly experience everyday. And this, in a healthy common life, not to say someone who has a terminal disease or something worse. 3) Happiness is but a temporary absence of suffering, satisfaction is the ephemeral fulfillment of desire. e.g. After one has eaten or taken liquid, bowel and bladder discomfort ensues quite naturally and we have to seek relief. There are moments or even periods of satisfaction, but they occur against a background of dissatisfied striving. All that said, if you had never existed, you would not feel pain, nor die everyday, constantly, bit by bit. Therefore, someone who hasn't been brought to life, who technically isn't even a person yet, is in clear advantage to someone who came into being. Ergo, it is wrong to bring someone to life. I believe this book will become a philosophical classic, probably not as much as Nagel's Mortal Questions, but perhaps something close to it. He's certainly an author I liked to read. His book is very clear. It is important to mention that he does not assume prior philosophical knowledge from the reader and that the book is very concise. I highly recommend it. I sincerely hope my review was of some aid. Please don't forget to vote in case this review was helpful to you.

I am over 70 and decided in my early 20s to remain childfree. I saw many advantages to that decision. I would never have to endure the discomforts and risks of pregnancy and childbirth or the possibility of having a child with disabilities or special needs. I would not have to face the difficulty of dividing my time between parenting and pursuing my educational and career goals. I could avoid passing my family's genetic problems on to another generation. I did not want to contribute to overpopulation. I could avoid the expense of raising of child, and could, instead, save for my own retirement. I lacked the temperament and patience to be a consistently loving, involved, nurturing parent. I was aware of the strain the addition of a child could sometimes place on a marriage. I was also aware that my decision put me in a very small minority. As I matured, I increasingly valued my decision and began noticing additional reasons that, for me, made it a sound decision. For one, because I have no children or grandchildren, I maintain a relatively small carbon footprint compared to most people in advanced nations. I became interested in reading about and talking to others who had made the same decision. That's why I was curious about Benatar's opinions on the matter - so I bought and read this book. It was not easy reading, because he writes from an academic background of philosophy, citing other writers and theories with which I am not familiar. Nevertheless, I got the gist of his ideas. For Benatar, the decision to remain childfree is not a matter of personal convenience. It is a philosophical stance based on the human condition itself. His basic tenet, as I understand it, is that human life, while it offers moments of great joy, is mostly, for many in this world, suffering, struggle, and loss. Millions are born into poverty in which they will face the possibility of starvation, or disease, or death from lack of proper medical care. No matter what humans do, in the end they die - and many die a tedious, lingering, often painful and debilitating death. Moreover, humans inflict a great deal of cruelty, pain, and violence on one another. Humans routinely inflict violence and death on the animal kingdom. Overpopulation is draining the world of its resources and contributing to massive economic inequality. Humans are destroying the planet, as evidenced by the ravages of climate change. For all these reasons, Benatar makes the case that it would be a matter of virtue and kindness to future generations to abstain from bringing more people into the world. I don't expect that Benatar's recommendations will have any effect on the birthrate since most people want children for a variety of reasons. For me, however, his viewpoint further validated the wisdom of that decision that I made over 50 years ago.

I was recently introduced to a philosophical tenet of which I had never heard: anti-natalism. It popped up on a social media newsfeed as a radio interview with the author of Better to Have Never Been (The Harm of Coming into Existence), David Benatar, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. This is a radical view which argues that coming into existence is harmful to the point that maybe human extinction would be a good thing. The only previous instance I've come across which even touches on this is the fictional True Detective, season one, where one of the two primary characters is given to such pronouncements: "I think human consciousness, is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight - brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." It has been said that the writer of the series, Nic Pizzolatto, was influenced by the concept of anti-natalism. Anti-natalism seems like something the average person wouldn't contemplate even for a moment. When we think about the savage and brutal suffering of millions throughout human history, maybe we should consider it. The closest I've come to this is that It occurred to me that if, before I was born, I could see a preview of what was to come, 3% happiness/ joy, 97% drudgery with the odd tragedy thrown in, and I were given a choice, what would I do. Of course that's pointless speculation. My odd "tragedies" compared to the suffering of others is nothing, but if asked what if you could choose to avoid it altogether. The closest example in contemporary history with real unimaginable horror is the Holocaust. Or, a nuclear war scenario where the living envy the dead. Why endure the suffering in the death camps? The only explanation is that we have some hard-wired survival instinct that overrides the impulse to simply end it. In one Woody Allen film, a character says, "Just on the basis of the Holocaust alone, you could argue for the extermination of the entire human race." It's not an off-handed joke. But Benatar does not equate anti-natalism with suicide. He feels that once we are here, we should make the best of it. Pleasure and happiness are possible but some anguish is inevitable. I still don't fully grasp the nature of existence. Do I exist? Is this reality? That's going into another philosophical branch, ontology, the study of the nature of reality. Trying to live a good life and help others a wee bit in itself is the only reward. I've seen too many cases of good deeds "going punished." It may lead to less suffering and pain, but it doesn't omit it. In yet another Woody Allen film, Shadows and Fog: "You mean you can't make the leap of faith that God exists?" "I can't even make the leap of faith that I exist." Existence has to make sense; when it doesn't, we may even ask is this real? Of course living in the current climate and culture of America does not help. I'm not expecting answers anytime soon. Just acceptance, even resignation. I have one son whom I love very much. We are both seriously comforted knowing there won't be any grandchildren. Many people are shocked and outraged, particularly believers. I suppose because they cannot contemplate the possibility of life without meaning and believe life is worth any amount of harm and suffering. My Dad is almost 94. I don't want to live to be that old. Not the way things are going.

I suspect many of the people responding negatively to this book are expecting something that reads like other antinatalist and pessimist works. Benatar's aim, rather, is to use the field of applied ethics to make a rigorous, logically sound defense of a neglected—or to many, indefensible—claim: that no one ought to be brought into existence, and that we should do as much as we can to mitigate the harm of existence by bringing fewer or, ideally, no more humans into existence. For lyrically pessimistic prose, read Cioran or Schopenhauer (I would highly recommend them if you haven't). Benatar reads more like Kant: deeply profound ideas presented with the style of an instruction manual. There are even diagrams. As beautiful as Cioran or Schopenhauer's writings are, they're the furthest thing from modern academic prose, and had Benatar written his book that way, it simply would not be considered a legitimate academic study (unfortunately). While this makes the book a bit more of a chore to read for nonspecialists, it ensures the argument comes across as serious and grounded in claims derived from academic journals and philosophy departments. This is, for better or worse, a simple rhetorical necessity. Personally, I find the book clear and compelling. In short, Benatar introduces into the dry language of ethics a position that many antinatalists may find intuitive or obvious, but perhaps hard to argue rigorously. This book provides a means to defend a negative assessment of existence in terms less hyperbolic and more logical than are found in other pessimist-antinatalist works. For this we are in his debt.

Not always easy to read, but a necessary book and thinking. In future editions it may be advisable to be more detailed and granular in describing the many forms of human suffering.

This book is not for normal and depressed people

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 ]

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".

Phenomenal. Perhaps the most profound, important and certainly the most eye-opening book I have ever read, and I've read alot of philosophy - way back from the Ancient Greeks. If I had it my way, Chapters 2 and 3 would be mandatory reading in all high schools - the topic needs to be discussed and really thought about. A very taboo subject and it couldn't have had someone better to set it out in such an unbiased and unemotional way. It really does antinatalism justice.