David Benatar Quotes

One particularly poor argument in defence of eating meat is that if humans did not eat animals, those animals would not have been brought into existence in the first place. Humans would simply not have bred them in the numbers they do breed them. The claim is that although these animals are killed, this cost to them is outweighed by the benefit to them of having been brought into existence. This is an appalling argument for many reasons [...] First, the lives of many of these animals are so bad that even if one rejected my argument one would still have to think that they were harmed by being brought into existence. Secondly, those who advance this argument fail to see that it could apply as readily to human babies that are produced only to be eaten. Here we see quite clearly that being brought into existence only to be killed for food is no benefit. It is only because killing animals is thought to be acceptable that the argument is thought to have any force.

Each one of us was harmed by being brought into existence. That harm is not negligible, because the quality of even the best lives is very bad—and considerably worse than most people recognize it to be. Although it is obviously too late to prevent our own existence, it is not too late to prevent the existence of future possible people.

Although there are many non-human species — especially — that also cause a lot of suffering, humans have the unfortunate distinction of being the most destructive and harmful species on earth. The amount of suffering in the world could be radically reduced if there were no more humans. Even if the misanthropic argument is not taken to this extreme, it can be used to defend at least a radical reduction of the human population.

Further insight into the poor quality of human life can be gained from considering various traits that are often thought to be components of a good life and by noting what limited quantities of these characterize even the best human lives. For example, knowledge and understanding are widely thought to be goods, and people are often in awe of how much knowledge and understanding (some) humans have. The sad truth, however, is that, on the spectrum from no knowledge and understanding to omniscience, even the cleverest, best-educated humans are much closer to the unfortunate end of the spectrum. There are billions more things we do not know or understand than we do know and understand. If knowledge really is a good thing and we have so little of it, our lives are not going very well in this regard. Similarly, we consider longevity to be a good thing (at least if the life is above a minimum quality threshold). Yet even the longest human lives are ultimately fleeting. If we think that longevity is a good thing, then a life of a thousand years (in full vigor) would be much better than a life of eighty or ninety years (especially when the last few decades are years of decline and decrepitude). Ninety years are much closer to one year than to a thousand years. It is even more distant from two thousand or three thousand or more. If, all things being equal, longer lives are better than shorter ones, human lives do not fare well at all.

[T]he optimist’s impatience with or condemnation of pessimism often has a smug macho tone to it (although males have no monopoly of it). There is a scorn for the perceived weakness of the pessimist who should instead ‘grin and bear it’. This view is defective for the same reason that macho views about other kinds of suffering are defective. It is an indifference to or inappropriate denial of suffering, whether one’s own or that of others. The injunction to ‘look on the bright side’ should be greeted with a large dose of both scepticism and cynicism. To insist that the bright side is always the right side is to put ideology before the evidence. Every cloud, to change metaphors, may have a silver lining, but it may very often be the cloud rather than the lining on which one should focus if one is to avoid being drenched by self-deception. Cheery optimists have a much less realistic view of themselves than do those who are depressed.

It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.

The prospect of one’s own death, perhaps highlighted by a diagnosis of a dangerous or terminal condition, tends to focus the mind. But the deaths of others—relatives, friends, acquaintances, and sometimes even strangers—can also get a person thinking. Those deaths need not be recent. For example, one might be wandering around an old graveyard. On the tombstones are inscribed some details about the deceased—the dates they were born and died, and perhaps references to spouses, siblings, or children and grandchildren who mourned their loss. Those mourners are themselves now long dead. One thinks about the lives of those families—the beliefs and values, loves and losses, hopes and fears, strivings and failures—and one is struck that nothing of that remains. All has come to naught. One’s thoughts then turn to the present and one recognizes that in time, all those currently living—including oneself —will have gone the way of those now interred. Someday, somebody might stand at one’s grave and wonder about the person represented by the name on the tombstone, and might reflect on the fact that everything that person—you or I— once cared about has come to nothing. It is far more likely, however, that nobody will spare one even that brief thought after all those who knew one have also died.

A few of my critics have claimed that I am committed to the desirability of suicide and even speciecide. They clearly intend this as a reductio ad absurdum of my position. However, I considered the questions of suicide and speciecide in Better Never to Have Been and argued that these are not implications of my view.
First, it is possible to think that both coming into existence is a serious harm and that death is (usually) a serious harm. Indeed, some people might think that coming into existence is a serious harm in part because the harm of death is then inevitable.

Consider an analogy. If one is playing a game of backgammon, it is entirely reasonable to make various moves. Indeed, one is not playing backgammon unless one is making (permitted) moves. There are justifications for this move and for that one. It is an entirely different matter to ask what the point of backgammon is, whether one should be playing backgammon at all, and whether one should pass it on to the next generation (by teaching it to children—or by creating children to whom one can teach it). Similarly, it can be entirely reasonable to relieve headaches and prevent harms to children and yet worry that one’s life as a whole—or human life in general—has no cosmic purpose. The absence of cosmic meaning may provide one with a reason to regret one’s existence or to desist from perpetuating the whole pointless trajectory by abstaining from bringing new people into existence.

Killing people or helping them to kill themselves is usually wrong, because continued life is, we assume, usually in those people’s interest. It is extremely implausible, however, to think that continued life is always in a person’s interest. Quality of life can fall to abysmal levels. While there can be reasonable disagreement about how poor the quality must be before life is not worth continuing, it is an indecent imposition on people—an unconscionable violation of their liberty—to force them to endure a life that they have reasonably judged to be unacceptable. Accordingly, it is incumbent on liberty-respecting states to allow assisted suicide or euthanasia for those whose lives have become a burden to themselves.

It is unlikely that many people will take to heart the conclusion that coming into existence is always a harm. It is even less likely that many people will stop having children. By contrast, it is quite likely that my views either will be ignored or will be dismissed. As this response will account for a great deal of suffering between now and the demise of humanity, it cannot plausibly be thought of as philanthropic. That is not to say that it is motivated by any malice towards humans, but it does result from a self-deceptive indifference to the harm of coming into existence.

If we take a cold, hard look at the human condition, we see an unpleasant picture. However, there are powerful biological drives against fully recognizing the awfulness of the human predicament that explain why so many people succeed in putting it out of their minds for much of the time. This is a mixed blessing. Ignorance is an existential analgesic, but those who do not sufficiently feel the weight of the human predicament are also vectors for its transmission to new generations.

Disability rights advocates also correctly note that quality-of-life assessments differ quite markedly between those who have impairments and those who do not. Many of those without impairments tend to think that lives with impairments are not worth starting (and may even not be worth continuing) whereas many of those with impairments tend to think that lives with these impairments are worth starting (and certainly are worth continuing). There certainly does seem to be something self-serving about the dominant view. It conveniently sets the quality threshold for lives worth starting above that of the impaired but below normal human lives. But is there anything less self-serving about those with impairments setting the threshold just beneath the quality of their lives? Disability rights advocates argue that the threshold in most people’s judgements about what constitutes a minimally decent quality of life is set too high. However, the phenomenon of discrepant judgements is equally compatible with the claim that the ordinary threshold is set too low (in order that at least some of us should pass it). The view that it is set too low is exactly the judgement that we can imagine would be made by an extra-terrestrial with a charmed life, devoid of any suffering or hardship. It would look with pity on our species and see the disappointment, anguish, grief, pain, and suffering that marks every human life, and judge our existence, as we (humans without unusual impairments) judge the existence of bedridden quadriplegics, to be worse than the alternative of non-existence.

Life's big questions are big in the sense that they are momentous. However, contrary to appearances, they are not big in the sense of being unanswerable. It is only that the answers are generally unpalatable. There is no great mystery, but there is plenty of horror.

It would indeed be wonderful if there were a beneficent God who had created us for good reason and who cared for us as a loving parent would for his or her children. However, the way the world is provides us with plenty of evidence that this is not the case. Imagine you were to visit a country in which the evidence of repression is pervasive: There is no freedom of the press or expression; vast numbers of people live in squalor and suffer severe malnutrition; those attempting to flee the country are imprisoned; torture and executions are rampant; and fear is widespread. Yet your minder tells you that the country, the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” is led by a “Great Leader” who is an omnibenevolent, infallible, and incorruptible being who rules for the benefit of the people. Other officials endorse this view with great enthusiasm. There are impressive rallies in which masses of people profess their love for the Great Leader and their gratitude for his magnificent beneficence. When you muster the courage to express skepticism, citing various disturbing facts, you are treated to elaborate rationalizations that things are not as they seem. You are told either that your facts are mistaken or that they are reconcilable with everything that is believed about the Great Leader. Perhaps your minder even gives a name to such intellectual exercises—“Kimdicy.” It would be wonderful if North Korea were led by an omnibenevolent, infallible, and incorruptible ruler, but if it had such a leader, North Korea would look very different from the way it does look. The fact that many people in North Korea would disagree with us can be explained by either their vested interests in the regime, by their having been indoctrinated, or by their fear of speaking out. The presence of disagreement between them and us is not really evidence that deciding the matter is complicated. Not all of earth is as bad as North Korea, but North Korea is part of “God’s earth”; so are Afghanistan, Burma, China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, and Zimbabwe, to name but a few appalling places for many to live. Even in the best parts of the world, terrible things happen. Assaults, rapes, and murders occur, injustices are perpetrated, and children are abused. Fortunately, the incidence of such evil in places like Western Europe is lower than in worse places on earth, but my point is that they all occur within the jurisdiction of a purportedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. Nor should we forget the horrific diseases from which people suffer around the globe, or the fact that every day, billions of animals are killed and eaten by other animals, including humans.