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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 14 2019, @03:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the are-you-"kid"ding? dept.

Anti-natalists: The people who want you to stop having babies

They believe humans shouldn't have children. Who are the anti-natalists - and how far are they willing to push their ideas?

"Wouldn't it just be better to blow a hole in the side of the earth and just have done with everything?" Thomas, 29, lives in the east of England, and although his idea of blowing up the world is something of a thought experiment, he is certain about one thing - humans should not have babies, and our species should gradually go extinct.

It's a philosophy called anti-natalism. While the idea dates back to ancient Greece, it has recently been given a huge boost by social media. On Facebook and Reddit, there are dozens of anti-natalist groups, some with thousands of members. On Reddit, r/antinatalism has nearly 35,000 members, while just one of the dozens of Facebook groups with an anti-natalist theme has more than 6,000.

They are scattered around the world and have a variety of reasons for their beliefs. Among them are concerns about genetic inheritance, not wanting children to suffer, the concept of consent, and worries about overpopulation and the environment. But they are united in their desire to stop human procreation. And although they are a fringe movement, some of their views, particularly on the state of the earth, are increasingly creeping into mainstream discussion. While not an anti-natalist, the Duke of Sussex recently said he and his wife were planning to have a maximum of two children, because of environmental concerns.


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:58PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:58PM (#880495) Journal

    Even that won't work. Humanity is taking an increasingly large share of the available caloric input (from sun to chloroplast), and everything else needs to survive on the residue. Vegan will decrease the share, but also decrease the non-human lifeforms supported by human desires. As the population increases, we'll quickly reach the same point again. This may be a part of the "great filter".

    The only real answer is to decrease the human population. Everything else is a stop-gap...and probably insufficient. Space colonies have the potential of increasing human population without much limit[*], but they don't have the potential of decreasing Earth's population. (Except, of course, via war...but we don't need space colonies for that choice.)

    * "without much limit" doesn't imply without limit. Even if our habitable sphere expanded at the speed of light there would be a hard limit, and exponential reproduction could quickly reach it. What the limit is can't be specified, as it depends on technologies that have not yet been developed.

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