Man to sue parents for giving birth to him
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
> "I wish I was not born. But it's not that I'm unhappy in my life. My life is good, but I'd rather not be here. You know it's like there's a nice room, but I don't want to be in that room"
So leave.
Camus famously said "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy"
Every teenager goes through an angsty "I didn't ask to be born!" phase. Part of become a thinking adult involves fully accepting that you are here, that can leave at any time, but looking inside yourself to fully understand why you don't want to.
Camus called this "absurdism" but a lot of people have written about it.
> So as we didn't ask to be born, we should be paid for the rest of our lives to live
None of us asked to be born. You owe the rest of us just as much as we owe you. How much that is exactly, is left as an exercise for the reader.
Yeah, that's the point. Once we're here, we generally don't want to die either. In fact, we have to endure the terror of knowing that we have to die at some point. That does mean it's a dick move to create a new existence.
> None of us asked to be born.
So? You do not justify why his parents don't owe him support for their desire to have a family. "Your suffering is tradition, child. Now, help your old man to the potty."
For me the really hairy discussion would be about what's to be said about unwanted pregnancies. But for the narcissistic self-fulfillment fantasy in a modern family, the answer is pretty clear in my opinion.
This is like being unwillingly thrust on the top antenna of a skyscraper, barely hanging on, and you saying "Don't like it here? Then jump."
As cringy as this may be, it's depressing how many people I can name off the top of my head who had children because they wanted a pet. Subsequently they figured out that having a kid is hard and instead of facing the consequences, they resorted to buying expensive toys in order to keep them quiet and not have to deal with them. Needless to say it didn't end well for the kids.
Imagine a child that was born with birth defects that reduce their life expectancy and quality of life. If they can prove their parents knew of the high likelihood of their condition, and still chose to go ahead and birth them, they might have a case.
Abortions are a very difficult topic.
Wouldn't there be a lot of court fees associated with this?
Seems like an expensive joke.
Not sure about India though. Ultimately it’s attorney fees that getcha.
Hallelujah! Armed with this knowledge, I will lose sooo many friends now!
/r/antinatalism
/r/childfree
Not having children is wildly popular in gen-Z folks. And I get them. To be honest, I cannot really do the mental gymnastics to see bringing a natal child into this world, at this moment in time, as an act of love. It's actually rather cruel.
The path towards Enlightenment is not unlike the five stages of grief. The realization of pain and suffering, the anger towards it, the desire to change it, the depression resulting from realizing our inability to change it, and finally the acceptance of life as it is and the ability to find joy in what we can.
Many of us have been through it and survived, coming out a tad bit wiser. Let's hope that he, too, will be able to find at least something that'll make him realize that it's not so bad after all.
"But it's not that I'm unhappy in my life. My life is good, but I'd rather not be here. You know it's like there's a nice room, but I don't want to be in that room"
Having children is a form of public participation.
--
That would also add a data point for: "All unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways."
So, basic income would solve it.
Thought Experiment: Let's say we eventually have a super robot, which can build other robots which can produce all the goods and services the humanity can consume sustainably.
Now, You(Government representing the people) can print money and give it to all of humanity to buy the goods and services from this Super Robot. At the end of the year, this 'super robot' (or the owner of the super robot) will have all the money that is printed.
Next year, you can
a) Print a fresh set of money and distribute, leading to this super robot accumulating all the money (but really who cares, you can make laws that limit how much non-renewable assets a single person or robot can own)
b) Tax this 'super robot' 99.9999% and redistribute it again.
Repeat (a) or (b) forever
https://taxfoundation.org/top-1-percent-pays-more-taxes-bott...
Don't let your bias or brainwashing go against facts. It is inevitable that the top 1% will be bearing most of our taxes
Donald Trump was elected by a populist movement, not by the donor class.
Government also printed $10 Trillion in the last two years and gave it away to mostly poor
Incorrect. QA/corporate bonds have been out of control, PPE etc loans that will be forgiven en masse after being given to the best and coziest customers of the large banks, etc.
[posts a graph that shows top 1% bears about 35%, not most, of income taxes, ignoring payroll and other regressive taxes]
Compare to https://i.imgur.com/KLmRsY8.png , which indicates that the top 1% have about 20.9% of income and pay about 24.1% of taxes.
Because you have no right to kidnap someone else’s child. Because the human rights of the parents to raise their child and the rights of the child to be raised by their parents both determine that you shouldn’t. Because you have no authority to determine what is better for the child. Because the ends don’t justify the means. Take your pick.
> Because you have no right to kidnap someone else’s child. Humans also have a right to live. Parents with better opportunities(whether through a better lifestyle or through better medicine) will be able to grant a better life expectancy for the child than the biological parents. This means that while there's no defined right to "kidnap" someone's children, the non-existence does infringe on an existing right.
> Because the human rights of the parents to raise their child and the rights of the child to be raised by their parents both determine that you shouldn’t. Ditto.
> Because you have no authority to determine what is better for the child And who does exactly? The people bringing the child to this world without consent? The government? Hypothetical better parents? Once a child grows up to a sufficient age we assume that the person has gained enough sufficient mental capacity to decide for themselves(which is also debatable but let's leave that for another day). That line gets only more blurry the younger the child is and how do we know who exactly has this "authority" to determine this?
Modern family structure gave this authority to the biological parents due to the complexity of the question above but this is still a debatable point in my opinion. I heavily doubt that the status quo will be challenged in the near future.
> Because the ends don’t justify the means. I agree with this as taking children of people can cause significant distress for reasons I assume evolution related. And moving whether ends justify the means or not aside, no one has the authority know whether an outcome is the "better" outcome for a child or not so the ends are also blurry.
The right to life doesn't confer an obligation on or a right to another person to interfere to maximize the length or quality of someone else's child's life. Kidnapping would be a grossly unreasonable means to achieve that end!
> And who does exactly?
For the sake of this argument the only thing necessary to establish is that an individual has no authority to decide what is best for someone else's child save for instances of grave and imminent danger which this scenario of merely longer life span does not describe. Whether it's the parents, the state, or the tribal leaders, etc, it is never random individuals!
> Modern family structure gave this authority to the biological parents
The authority of a mother and a father over their child predates civilization let alone modern society. There is an extremely high bar for denying natural rights.
> I agree with this as taking children of people can cause significant distress for reasons I assume evolution related.
It causes distress because the parents love their child and they have no idea what is happening to them or if they're safe. It's an absolutely heinous crime and it's why kidnapping is treated to seriously in all just societies.
It absolutely does. This is why various child welfare social services exist in various countries, precisely so that someone can interfere to maximize the length and quality of someone else's child's life.
Firstly child welfare services aren’t there to give another few years of average lifespan to poorer kids. They’re there to protect children from neglect or danger. Secondly they’re not acting as mere individuals but as agents of the government which gives them that authority.
Huh? What do you think is the result of protection from neglect and danger? It's like you're saying, doctors aren't there to extend lifespan either, just to protect from danger.
Have there been any updates?
To be fair, it's been a long couple of years.
And concepts like justice are only meaningful in the context of intelligent life so it’s hard to argue that justice requires the elimination of the only known life-form that has a concept of justice.