Jewish Princeton Professor Peter Singer: "Life is too painful. Let's all sterilize ourselves, make ourselves the last generation on earth."

Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), University of Melbourne. He specialises in applied ethics, approaching ethical issues from a secular preference utilitarian perspective.

Singer's parents were Viennese Jews who escaped the German annexation of Austria and fled to Australia in 1938. They settled in Melbourne, where Singer was born.

Should This Be the Last Generation?

June 6, 2010, 5:15 pm

By PETER SINGER

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.

All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem?

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself.

Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could.

Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?


http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/should-this-be-the-last-generation/?hp (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/should-this-be-the-last-generation/?hp)

It's a good idea for Jews, and a lot of Jews are in effect doing that. The Jewish birthrate overall is low.

Let the Kikes and Illuminutties go extinct. They are vermin without any value!T.J.B.

I met an old lady from small-town Georgia who had a kike obstetrician back in the 60's. The kike doctor told her that her son would be born with some sorts of horrible birth defects, it was incontrovertible, and she should have an abortion for her own good as well as the child's.

The mother, distraught, wisely sought a second opinion, which disputed the kike's. The child was born, and has led an extraordinarily productive life.

So when a kike "intellectual" in a kike propaganda sheet starts kvetching about sterilization, see to it he's ahead of you in line.

has a good idea for some jews and other people :D

has a good idea for some jews and other people :D
The problem is the beastly nature. Here is something I find very interesting. I had suggested a long time, (even wrote on the subject) ago that those who call themselves jews are different from normal people, including overly psychotic and possibly the idea or beginning of psychopath genes. I also have read where Neanderthal was linked to the gene for cystic Fibrosis from the mitochondria DNA that they tried to link us all to some ape in Africa. Now read this and draw your own conclusions. Read the whole story at the site url. Russ
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According to Bradley, the Neanderthal heritage of modern- day Jewish people explains much about their ongoing problems with not only the native people of Palestine but with other people on the planet. He writes:

This unfortunate combination of high aggression combined with a tendency toward emotional instability and hysteria when they feel nervous or threatened . . . which is all the time when they are not in absolute control. And they are arrogant, but uneasy, even then. An ethnic symptom of this emotional instability is the Jewish tendency toward hypochondria. Even they cannot (yet) control death. This unfortunate combination of high aggression combined with a tendency toward hysteria and emotional instability has proved to be a dangerous and tragic situation over the course of Western history. Their aggression encourages continual Jewish attempts to control societies, while the emotional instability makes it difficult for most Jews to distinguish reasonably between justified social criticism by their non- Jewish neighbors and attacks.

Insensitive even to objective concerns about inordinate Jewish influence in societies, and reacting with hysterical aggression to any such supposed “attack” on their behavior and pleas from non-Jews to limit it, Jews have
always provoked violence against themselves. And then they, with much emotional satisfaction, feel victimized and attribute the situation to innate “anti-Semitism” among their neighbors. Read the whole story by going to the url below.
http://www.barnesreview.org/html/may2010lead_129.html

Jewish Princeton Professor Peter Singer: "Life is too painful. Let's all sterilize ourselves, make ourselves the last generation on earth."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar says the same thing. He's a professor jew in South Africa. He wrote the book "Better Never To Have Been", in which he argues that coming into existence is a serious harm, and as a consequence, it is always morally wrong to create more sentient beings.

Great idea itz.

This world just never understood the kike and
all of itz efforts at tikkun olam have never quite worked..
oy vey, just do whats kosher and deny the planet any further blessings of jew. :D

"The truth," he said, "is, indeed, as you once wrote: one can only understand the Jew when one knows what his ultimate goal is.
And that goal is, beyond world domination, the annihilation of the world.
He must wear down all the rest of mankind, he persuades himself,
in order to prepare a paradise on earth.
He has made himself believe that only he is capable of this great task, and, considering his ideas of paradise, that is certainly so.
But one sees, if only in the means which he employs, that he is secretly driven to something else. While he pretends to himself to be elevating mankind, he torments men to despair, to madness, to ruin. If a halt is not ordered, he will destroy all men. His nature compels him to that goal, even though he dimly realizes that he must thereby destroy himself. There is no other way for him; he must act thus.
This realization of the unconditional dependence of his own existence upon that of his victims appears to me to be the main cause for his hatred.
To be obliged to try and annihilate us with all his might, but at the same time to suspect that that must lead inevitably to his own ruin, therein it lies.
If you will: the tragedy of Lucifer."