In this episode, we talk about the growing anti-natalist movement, its origins, and what it means for the future of the world. We also talk about why the pro-natalism movement is not as insane as it sounds.
00:01:35.300Through the generosity of the Survival and Flourishing Fund, a significant amount for pronatalist advocacy work, which got us really tapped into the community, to the global landscape.
00:01:48.820We've spoken with journalists across the world, Germany, France.
00:01:57.800And I came in with a very different perception of the forces arrayed against pronatalism that I have now at the end of the year.
00:02:07.760I came in thinking the forces arrayed against pronatalism are just it being hard to have kids, it being expensive to have kids, it being daunting to have kids, the regulatory load being too high.
00:02:23.140But what I'm realizing is really at play, and this is something that came up at the natalism conference in Austin that we attended in December and spoke at, was it really what this is, is there is a growing, there is a war on the horizon.
00:02:38.480And it is between people who are pro-humanity, pro-existence, sentience, life.
00:02:46.580I'm not saying pro-life like anti-abortion.
00:02:48.680I'm saying pro-life like, I like the fact that things exist and feel, and anti-life.
00:02:54.340And this is something that we first got the rumblings of in like various off-the-record salons and dinner parties we were hosting where we would bring up demographic collapse and pronatalism among major leaders, investors, politicians, influencers, etc.
00:03:07.780In a common, the most common pushback we got, it was never any of the things I thought were the big bads.
00:03:13.220It was never expensive, blah, blah, blah, regulatory, blah, blah.
00:03:15.840No, it was, but wouldn't the world be better off without humans?
00:03:41.580And in the frame of modern, progressive, urban monoculture society, it is the logical conclusion because it is a negative utilitarian mindset.
00:03:53.220Yeah, if you're interested in going into our deep dive on negative utilitarianism, why we are not negative utilitarians, go find our video on negative utilitarianism.
00:04:01.800Just so people know, whenever I mention a video in one of these videos, typically, I'm going to post something which will appear like a little link that you can click if you're on YouTube, which will take you to that video.
00:04:14.180And I often also, at the end of a video, include in the recommended videos the videos that we have been talking about in that particular video to make it easier for you to find them.
00:04:23.000And in this one, I'm almost certainly going to include, if I remember, the video on negative utilitarianism.
00:04:29.060So, you know, these are individuals who essentially believe that while negative emotions are a thing of negative value, positive emotions are not a thing of positive value.
00:04:36.640It's not as insane as it sounds if you go into it in detail.
00:04:39.580But this philosophy is the core philosophy of the anti-natalist movement.
00:04:44.860It is not the environmentalist philosophy.
00:04:53.580But if you look at, like, Ethelus, right, which is one of the core players in this community, which we'll go into in a second.
00:04:59.320Or if you look at, like, negative utilitarianism we have debated, they actually don't want humans to stop existing right now because we don't yet have the capacity to kill all animal lives before we kill ourselves.
00:05:10.120And so they want to ensure that we can do that so there's not a risk of some other animal coming to evolve into humanity or the horrible things that are happening in nature all the time.
00:05:25.600And this is something so Malcolm's referring to Lawrence, Anton and company, a group of anti-natalists based in the UK who are among the leading anti-natalists.
00:05:35.140And they're both very logically consistent and reasonable.
00:05:38.180They're the ones who hold the view that they want all sentience to end because all sentience is suffering.
00:05:41.980And it is very logically consistent on their end to be like, man, have you, like, seen how animals die?
00:05:46.700Like, it's way worse than, you know, like, there's a lot more suffering units going on there than, like, the human suffering units if we're looking at this, practically speaking, especially in developed societies.
00:05:54.440It's like the UA community and shrimp.
00:05:56.060Yes, but then there is, there are also the environmental anti-natalists who just think humans are bad.
00:06:10.820So, they're called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, if you want to look at this.
00:06:14.140And they say on their website, phasing out the human species by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health.
00:06:23.320Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.
00:06:28.320I love how, like, underplayed that is from Voluntary Human Extinction.
00:06:32.720See what's been happening lately in the movement.
00:06:34.760They're talking about how they were interviewed recently in the movement.
00:06:37.620They're talking about Elon Musk, who they hate.
00:06:55.100And I think it's the most consistent, like, when people at those salons we've hosted have said, wouldn't it be better if humans didn't exist at all?
00:07:04.520And I think this is, in terms of people who don't put thought into this, and that is the majority of people, they're in this group.
00:07:11.420Yeah, the environmentalist group is dumb.
00:07:14.500Yeah, but it's, but also, like, the, and keep it, again, most people don't put thought into this.
00:07:19.560Most people who aren't putting thought into this are just tacitly assuming humanity bad, humans evil, corrupt capitalism, blah, blah, blah.
00:07:28.060Right, which is different from the negative utilitarian group who want all animals dead.
00:09:23.980And I'm like, wait, like, wait, is humanity really?
00:09:27.860Like, I lose the plot because I'm also like, in any social situation, I'm like an LLM.
00:09:33.460I'm just trying to, like, give whatever response and follow whatever reasoning, like, pleases the crowd the most.
00:09:39.680And I really do feel like this is how many people may have felt in Nazi Germany when they're like, we shouldn't be...
00:09:47.460Wait, but why do we hate Jews so much?
00:09:48.660Yeah, they're like, but, like, haven't you seen what the Jews do to society?
00:09:52.940Haven't you seen that everything that's terrible is their fault?
00:09:55.960Don't you understand they're the only thing standing between us and the perfect society?
00:10:00.660And, like, you're sitting there and you're like, this can't be right, but you're making me feel really bad.
00:10:06.400Like, you're acting like I'm the baddie here.
00:10:08.780And, like, that's the thing is I do feel like this very large and growing proportion of society is just like, well, it's so obvious that humans are the bad guys.
00:10:18.180It's so obvious that we need to get rid of all humans that a lot of people are being gaslit.
00:10:22.940And, again, this is the people who aren't putting much on into it.
00:10:25.040It's a follow-on from what these groups have done before.
00:10:27.120So these groups, as a form of penance and a form of status signaling, they have increasingly, you know, to status signal to their community, talk about how bad their group is.
00:10:38.620And, you know, this started with white people are evil.
00:10:44.980You know, if they're Americans, they can say that and that grants them status within their community because it makes them look, like, introspective and humble.
00:10:52.020Even if they don't understand really why they're saying what they're saying.
00:10:56.040And so this has just expanded outwards and outwards and outwards to humans are evil.
00:11:01.240Where the larger an in-group that they are targeting with their this group is evil rhetoric, the more that they gain status within these communities.
00:11:11.680And so it's just a natural descent from that.
00:11:14.800In addition, it removes more responsibility from them.
00:11:18.040If humans are evil, then they can do whatever they want.
00:11:19.940But I want to go over, you know, like, let's just go to the FLISM subreddit right now.
00:11:23.480Like, what are these people talking about?
00:11:25.180Because I think the people, this is life spelled backwards.
00:11:28.160They don't really understand how extremist these communities are.
00:11:32.200So the top vote on FLISM right now is a poll that says, seriously, why are there so many antinatalists obsessed with consent?
00:11:40.720And the point that they're citing is, what will you do if 99.99% of people on Earth accepted the truth of antinatalism in the future?
00:12:29.620Like, we are a genuinely pluralistic movement fighting for pluralism.
00:12:32.580They are a totalitarian fascist movement that wants to take away other individuals' rights.
00:12:37.820Well, no, so here's the thing is, again, like, Lawrence, Anton, and company, like, that group of antinatalists very vehemently believes in consent.
00:12:45.540And it's logically consistent with their views because they're very against causing human suffering.
00:13:17.320And so in the end, there is no choice but to take away your autonomy.
00:13:21.680Here's a short video by one of the leaders of the antinatalist community.
00:13:25.020Yeah, so look, in the interest of the end, if you could end suffering tomorrow, yeah, probably anything is justifiable.
00:13:34.900Afflicting just about anything is probably justifiable.
00:13:37.820Imposing just about anything is probably justifiable if you can end it.
00:13:43.320If you, if there's literally, you can guarantee no more ouch ever again, then there probably isn't a big enough ouch you could make that wouldn't be justified in the interest of that end.
00:13:58.740Like, if I found out tomorrow that the only way that you could, that sentient extinction could possibly happen was skinning all the living things alive slowly.
00:14:10.300I'd hate it, but I would probably, I would say that it's what we have to do.
00:14:15.940I'm totally, I'm, I'm totally on board with the idea that, that the, the only thing that really matters is the suffering coming to a finality.
00:14:25.660So, yeah, any, anything in the interest of that, if you can guarantee that, even, even despite whatever imposition or, or nastiness might be necessary.
00:14:38.480What's, what's interesting about this poll that does show that still 63% of antinatalists, like even mine, that means a lot don't feel this way.
00:14:45.36063% still wouldn't force that last 0.001% to be infertile.
00:14:53.260And I think that's, you know, when you look at, and when we talk about in the Pragmatist Guide to Life, objective functions, you know, like what are your inherent values?
00:14:59.760You can have a, a basket of objective functions.
00:15:03.300And I think what you're looking at is there's a segment of the population here that, you know, holds a bunch of different values.
00:15:09.960One of those values involves consent and not coercing people into things.
00:15:13.980And that ranks a little bit higher than exterminating all sentience.
00:15:20.420So, you know, for that group, that matters.
00:15:22.400Whereas for the other group, exterminating all sentience and all suffering is more important than the inherent value of, of consent and, and, and non-coercion.
00:16:19.960They are not as competent as pronatalists, but the IQ of antinatalists isn't as high as pronatalists.
00:16:24.820I mean, keep in mind, these, as we say, the greater replacement theory that the intelligent autists are going to replace everyone else because that's mostly within the pronatalist movement.
00:16:32.500You know, these are, these are people that are, and this is something that Dutton pointed out on our show.
00:16:37.180When you have one thing that's a genetic problem with you, you're likely to have a cascade of other things.
00:16:41.420So, you know, if you're low IQ, you're less likely to be attractive and you're less likely to be happy.
00:16:46.240You know, I said at the highest levels of IQ where you do get some depression issues.
00:16:49.300But, you know, even still, like these individuals are just not fit individuals and are dealing with a lot of mental internal stress.
00:16:57.080And that is something that even people within the movement are like, this is a really big problem.
00:17:00.600Like there are just a lot of very depressed people here.
00:17:03.940Well, and so I'd point out, and what I'm, what I'm pointing out here is the pronatalist movement is much smaller than the antinatalist movement right now.
00:17:10.840And the amount of funding that we have is much lower than the amount the antinatalist community has.
00:17:15.220And yet you look at their websites and they look like, you know, the first one, the Voluntary Human Extinction, I'll post a picture of it here.
00:17:21.380It's literally like an all text website.
00:17:43.320It's a free website that has royalty-free, like public domain, stock images, you know, they could have gotten everything they needed there.
00:17:53.800But instead, they're like, I'm just going to use AI to make the creepiest image possible.
00:17:56.980So they've got things like make love, not babies.
00:18:08.580Use your voice to speak out against procreation.
00:18:11.120Aren't distractions wonderful to have?
00:18:13.320But why bring someone into the world to distract yourself from how bad life is or something?
00:18:18.960But I mean, I agree with that, though.
00:18:20.680Like, again, like I don't think – I'm super okay with antinatals convincing people who are, you know, deeply unhappy people who wouldn't be good parents to not have kids because they shouldn't have kids.
00:18:33.060And you know they're like funding like billboards and stuff.
00:18:35.200If only we could – well, I guess we would never spend money on something so wasteful.
00:18:38.360Like, people often do not stop to question having children before opting to procreate.
00:18:43.400What's interesting is we agree with them on a lot of stuff.
00:18:46.540We want to change that by ensuring that people consider the option of not reproducing as valid, rational, and responsible in an ethical lifestyle.
00:18:55.580If you look at the top of their website, it's we want a future where creating biological children is no longer an expected norm or something most people casually do without putting substantial thought and investigation into it.
00:19:32.360Well, this person's like, I'm a happy person and I'm an ephilist, right?
00:19:36.040Because some people say that ephilist Redditors are just depressed people projecting their pessimistic worldview.
00:19:44.160Well, I still hold the argument that – you know, they're like that this is prejudice.
00:19:48.640And it's like, well, yeah, except realistically, the reason why this is one of the top posts here is because the vast majority of ephilists are not happy.
00:20:01.820And, you know, even one of the posters on here says, is it really pure prejudice?
00:20:05.800Though, if a high percentage of the posts and comments on here are from people who obviously are upset, distressed, depressed, or even razzle.
00:21:41.420Like, if you watch Dream Home Makeover on Netflix with this, like, couple that – I think they're a Mormon couple, and they, like, redo the houses of really wealthy other Mormon couples who have a billion kids.
00:21:53.740Like, it's super common to see, like, they've adopted some.
00:21:56.180Same with, like, if you go on Instagram and look at really large families, like, you know, one or two or sometimes even more of the kids are obviously adopted.
00:23:35.540You have to be somewhat blinded to the truth to stay alive in this hell world.
00:23:40.180Life is all about pointless suffering and chasing pleasure to get temporary relief from suffering.
00:23:45.680Then you pass on the torch to the next generation so they can repeat this cycle.
00:23:49.860If you manage to do that, then you, quote unquote, won it, life.
00:23:52.860Like, so I love this idea that life is all about pointless suffering and chasing pleasure to get temporary relief from this suffering.
00:24:02.260It's like, speak for yourself, motherfucker.
00:24:05.100Like, and that's, and that's the core reason that these people are so unhappy, I think, is, yeah, for them, that's really what life is all about.
00:24:18.040And, and, and they, because that's what they think life is about, you know?
00:24:22.180The children for them are just another source of masturbating their own egos and their own self-worth and their own happiness.
00:24:29.540They do not understand, as one of my favorite comments ever underneath our own channel stated, it was, why are you worried that the future is going to be a worse place?
00:24:37.860Why are you trying to make the future a better place if you are not personally going to get to experience it?
00:24:42.800Well, this, I think, is the core difference between meaning pro-natalist and anti-natalist is this idea of, that's the point.
00:24:53.160The truest form of happiness, the form of happiness that you personally have been unable to achieve yourself, comes from meaningfully living conscientiously and intellectually sound value systems.
00:25:07.940When you know what's right and what's wrong and when you live by that value system and you don't have some sort of doubt, like it's not something that's meant to just justify what you wanted to do already.
00:25:19.040When you are making actual sacrifices, both intellectual and personal, to make the world a better place and you see success in those endeavors, that creates a form of happiness that is more indelible and more persistent and more genuinely fulfilling than anything these anti-natalists can feel because they aren't living in that world.
00:25:41.780And so they likely have really never experienced true happiness.
00:25:46.900Yeah, but let's, so let's, let's talk about the, the broader issue, right?
00:25:50.580The coming war, because I think this is, this is what matters.
00:25:53.300And I do think that a problem that we will face with the pro-natalist movement is that a lot of people who would otherwise, who really probably want to have kids who, who would tend toward that lifestyle.
00:26:08.500Like, look at me, right? Like I was raised in a very anti-natalist society.
00:26:13.580You know, no one, none of the girls that I was friends with ever planned on being mothers or planned on getting married.
00:26:20.500It was just not like part of life, right?
00:26:22.920You, you maybe started a business and all this other cool stuff and you travel and have fun, but like you weren't going to become a parent.
00:26:29.220I do think that this growing divide of like humanity bad versus no, let's have kids and families is going to be something that picks off a lot of people who would otherwise be amazing parents, love being parents, raise awesome children, you know, really enjoy this.
00:26:47.940And people who will be a lot more miserable without that lifestyle, you know, how, how do we, how do we deal with that?
00:26:54.340Like as, as pro-natalists, how do we head that off?
00:26:58.620I mean, I think a lot of it comes down to our education reform work, right?
00:27:01.880Like giving people a different pathway to become empowered professionals.
00:27:06.840We need to take them out of the existing cultural framework because the existing cultural framework is toxic and what leads to this.
00:27:11.820The dominant, the virus, the cult, whatever you want to call it, it is what's causing this.
00:27:15.920And it is what is nurturing this, but, you know, I went to the most voted effilis things in the last year.
00:27:23.420And they have a meme where it's a crying guy and then Chad guy and crying guy is saying, but to eliminate all suffering, we would have to destroy the earth.
00:27:34.220And it's titled beta philosophers of verse Sigma effilis.
00:27:38.200And the first comment there is, but what about consent, you know, in silly letters, right?
00:27:42.960And under that, it says, says people who impose suffering and death on every future generation without consent.
00:27:48.200Like this, this is genuinely the stuff they think.
00:27:50.760The next comment here, which I think is really interesting because it shows just how disgusting these people are as human beings is.
00:27:57.740So they see, you know, Chad guy was a beard and everything like that being the good guy in a meme.
00:28:01.820And they say, the idea of this meme is good, but the execution is disgusting.
00:28:06.840Memes teach that this dude with the beard on the right is always the reference asshole, racist, sexist, homophobe, and so on.
00:28:14.040Putting the ideas of effilism into the mouths of assholes is wrong.
00:28:17.100Oh, they are so extreme that they see the guy that like everyone considers the good guy in these memes, the based guy in these memes.
00:28:26.460And they're like, they just associate it with evil because they're living this like childish pursuit of the most infantile perspective of what good is and what evil is.
00:28:38.640Yes, golly. Well, yeah. All right. So if this is the growing war, I guess the answer does come back to what we've been discussing in so, so, so, so many posts, which is just, all right, then we have to opt out of this.
00:28:52.940Just opt out. Educate our kids separately. Build separate economies. Get out. Protect yourself while you can.
00:29:01.520And, and, and eventually, you know, if these people do become a threat, if they do get access to AI and stuff like that, they can do what they want to do, which is Venus or destroy the planet.
00:29:10.620We need to really keep in mind that there is a growing movement out there that wants to end all human life.
00:29:16.060You know, that song where he's talking about the Soviets and he's like, you know, if they love their children too, they're, they're not going to end the world.
00:29:26.700Anyway, if they love their children too, we'll be fine.
00:29:31.520The problem is that these people don't have children and no, they don't love them.
00:29:46.160And they really do want to kill you all. And they could end up in nuclear silos. They could end up in positions of power.
00:29:52.020And we need to keep in mind just how dangerous the forces arrayed against us really are.
00:29:57.480And we need to, as judiciously remove them from any position that they could use to destroy all life and remove consent from other individuals as quickly as possible.
00:30:08.440Because, you know, while we try to be as pluralistic as possible, we need to understand that they want to remove consent from everyone.
00:30:14.720Everyone. They are the, I think the truest and purest form of evil in the world today.
00:30:20.780And it feels really good that there are enemies because I know I'm on the right side.
00:30:24.500It's like you get to a Holocaust camp and you're like, oh, these guys are clearly the fucking bad guys.
00:30:28.340You get to an FLS subreddit. You're like, oh, wow.
00:30:31.240You could not more clearly signal that you're evil, but they are growing and they're growing faster than us.
00:30:36.700Yeah. Yeah. Gird your loins, ladies and gentlemen.
00:30:39.920And Malcolm, glad that I'm marching into the future with you.
00:30:51.820And I really appreciate that because I would not be able to take the aggressive moves that I am taking as an individual if you were not protecting us.
00:30:58.800No, we won't escape the darkness unless you aggressively march us toward the light.