If you could have chosen, would you rather not have been born?

I thought the question in the title – or variations on it – would be unusual but it’s not. A lot of people ask the same question. My answer, obviously deeply personal, would be that I would rather not have been born. In general, I’ve not enjoyed life. Because of that I would rather that I hadn’t been brought into existence. This would have been no loss to me because if you don’t exist you can’t lose anything.

But to many people, my life looks really good. I live very comfortably. I’ve got money, a nice house and a nice car. I’m warm, I am fed, and I’m secure. I have a nice cat companion and I got one or two good friends although I could do with extending the network.

But I never fitted in that well with the mainstream of life. I disagree with it too much. That’s the problem. I don’t like what I see a lot of the time. Notwithstanding there are a lot of really great things in the world and many millions of great people. There’s just too much that is wrong and idiotic, cruel, stupid and there’s far too much animal cruelty.

Animal advocate

That’s one of the problems I and many others have. If you are an animal advocate, as I am, you just see too much animal cruelty. You see too much animal abuse. This sticks in the mind. If you see an animal abuse image – and I avoid them these days – you might have difficulty removing it from your memory.

These animal abuse images poison your brain. Perhaps I shouldn’t be working on an animal welfare website. The site just reminds me of the bad things but of course it also reminds me of the good things in humankind’s relationship with animals both wild and domestic.

But it is hard to deny that there’s far too much going on which is simply crazy at the moment. To me, a geriatric, the world is becoming worse. Things are deteriorating. Global warming is a major factor. It isn’t just me who is upset by these developments, many young people are too. That’s why too many are depressed and self-harming.

Veneer of normality

In one forum online a user speaks of a friend who told them that if she had been given the chance she would rather not have been born. And this woman has what might be regarded as a good life. That’s another point: when you look at people living apparently good lives you don’t know what is going on inside their head. For them it might not be a good life. They have the trappings of a good life. They have the money to buy a good life. But money and trappings don’t actually create a good life. They might but they might not. There is no automatic connection.

Ultimately, it’s what goes on inside your head that counts. How you feel about yourself and your place in the world. How you feel about the world and society. Morality or lack of it is an issue. Integrity. Criminality of which there is too much in the UK.

In the UK, there have been a couple of mystifying deaths of middle-aged women. Both of them died in a river. They simply disappeared one day with little trace of them except some personal items scattered not far from the river or next to the river and they disappeared. Their bodies were eventually found in the river where they had died. In each instance their acquaintances and friends said that they appeared to be okay. One of them apparently had signs of stress through drinking but the other had no signs of being troubled. But it appears that she wasn’t murdered. In which case it is suicide. People put on a veneer of normality. What goes on inside our head is not matched by our veneer of normality.

People are desperate to present an image that they are okay at worst and very good at best. We say, “I am fine”, when asked how we are. But that very noncommittal answer can hide a plethora of unhappiness.

Quora

And on the Quora.com website, there are many people asking the same question that I’ve asked in the title. It’s a regular discussion point which surprises me. But perhaps it doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure that there are many people who think the same way as me but don’t talk about it. In writing about it in this article I am stepping out of line; inviting criticism. I’m opening up but I don’t care. We need to speak openly about things which concern us.

Parent f*** you up

It’s an interesting thought that the decision as to whether you exist is not yours, but your parents. And the reason why they have children is often the ‘wrong reason’. They might just think that they want some kids to make their life more interesting. The decision is entirely self-centred. Often, they are not thinking about how the human they bring into the world will survive and thrive or be miserable and have a bad life. They don’t know but they don’t think about it. It’s often all about them and what they want. They should ask what their child might want if they asked.

And, not enough parents engage in good parenting. So many parents do a terrible job. They mess up the minds of their kids. They give them a horrible start in life. This shows a great carelessness in deciding whether to have children or not and thereafter how you parent them. It’s shocking how bad parenting can be even by educated people who know how important it is. It can make the difference between a reasonably happy and good life for their child or a miserable life with a shortened lifespan.

It isn’t just that parents often mess up the minds of their kids, sometimes parents know they have some genetically inherited defect which they also know they are going to pass on to their kids. They also I know that this defect has caused them great problems in their life but they still carry on and have a child. This is wrong. Also see ‘defects’ below.

Wider issues

There are bigger issues stemming from the question. If you want to be altruistic and think of the world in general, you could argue that nobody should be borne for the indeterminate future in order to arrest the relentless rise in human population which is squeezing out wildlife and putting pressure on world resources. It’s contributing to global warming which is causing extreme climatic conditions such as horrendous rainfall in the UK since July of last year.

Global warming means more rainfall in the UK and we’ve suffered record levels with associated flooding. Not being born will help to stop this drift into destroying the planet.

David Benatar

There is a philosopher called David Benatar. He is an anti-natalist. He believes that nobody should be born ever again. He is described by The New Yorker as the world’s most pessimistic philosopher. He believes that life is so bad and so painful and difficult that people should stop having kids for the simple reason it would be the compassionate thing to do i.e. to stop suffering in children.

It needs to be challenging

Perhaps the problem is that life should not be easy. It was never meant to be easy. It is nature which governs life and nature was always a challenge. But the human being needs to be challenged. They need to go through difficult and good times in equal measure. Without bad times you can’t enjoy the good times because you need a standard against which to measure the good experiences in life.

Expectation management

Perhaps a big problem is expectation management. When people are young they expect life to be good. Perhaps we are told by our parents that life will be good. But there’s no automatic reason why it should be. Life isn’t really good. It’s not meant to be good. It’s meant to be difficult. It’s meant to be problematic and troublesome. That’s what nature dictates. And humans are a product of nature make no mistake about it.

Born with ‘defects

But sometimes we are born with defects, let’s put it that way, which make life particularly challenging. These can be defects which you can never remove from your personality or your physiology. You have to work around them or do the best you can with them in your life. That’s pure potluck. A lot of people are born with negative attributes into a difficult social environment which in combination makes life almost intolerable for them. Perhaps these individuals would agree with me that they would rather not have been born.

What has this got to do with cats?!

This article is not directly connected with domestic and wild cats. But it is indirectly. Humans create the world in which our domestic cats live. What we do affects them profoundly. We can help make a cat content or make them miserable. Our lives impact their lives profoundly. How we feel can affect how they feel. Humans are the movers and shakers in the cat world. We can always do better.