Recently, a number of people have expressed to me that they don't believe this world is a good place to bring new lives into anymore.
Part of me can't help but agree, though part of me also thinks that every generation echoes this same sentiment at one point or another.
I will say however, that this is the first time I'm hearing it on a fairly frequent basis and I can't help but wonder if there is more validity to it now in contrast to previous generations.
That said, I can't help but think about an article my brilliant friend/artist/philosopher Elk sent me from the New York Times a few weeks back. It raises a number of important questions, namely, why people decide to have children, and how much thought they really put into it - taking into account a variety of factors, including overpopulation, whether or not your child will be happy, history of family illness, and the value of life overall, based on general satisfaction.
Peter Singer, author of the blog, references a few philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer, who basically felt that life inevitably only brings fleeting satisfaction, and David Benatar, author of the book, “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.”
Needless to say, both paint a pretty negative picture of reproduction and its ramifications.
Peter Singer takes it a step further, proposing a future world with no sentient beings at all, so that those of us who are here now could, "...party our way into extinction." Clearly a radical idea, and an idea that would never fly - but an interesting concept nevertheless.
In any case, the article further contributed to my confusion about whether or not to have children, though it did push me further in the direction of adoption if we decide to kid...
I've barely done Peter Singer's full NYT piece justice, so you can read it all here:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/should-this-be-the-last-generation/
In the meantime, I'm seriously contemplating picking up a copy of David Benatar's book.
