Better Never to Have Been by David Benatar-BOOK REVIEW 

ANTINATALISM: Because non existence never hurt anyone.

Benatar's arguments are bulletproof. Those who dare to question it will have a pretty hard time and will resort to religion or whatnot. Thanks David!

Yea life really isn’t worth shit. The whole experience is just mostly negative. Would never want to return to this shit hole ever again.

I would never come back here.

Life for the majority of people is 10% Pain, 90% Suffering so therefore life is not worth beginning. It's amazing how so many people accept this ratio or will just deny it.

That's crazy how I've thought like this for years, but I honestly thought I was alone. I have to now read this book. I've always thought that if I stumbled across a genie and he asked me if I had one wish what would I wish for? I'd say that I wish my parents never existed. That way I or my siblings and parents would've never suffered. If I had the option to choose existing or not existing after experiencing life I'd choose not existing in a heartbeat. As great as life can be it just doesn't seem to be worth it to me. Religions don't help with the concept of life. They use consequences for not blindly following the rules of their God. For example: What would be the point of signing up to the military and fighting a war without being given the reason until the war has finally ended. Only then you'll know the reason for the war you fought/ only then you'll know the meaning to the life you lived. It makes no sense. That lack of answers we're left to live with as humans is frustrating.

I'm 44 now I knew about this when I was 12.

If you create a life, you are sentencing them to death

His philosophy is pretty bulletproof. I've never heard an argument against him that was in any way cogent.

strangely enough, as if life isn't hard enough, the book is $70! So i'm grateful to you for your in depth objective review. I believe i have always had the anti-natalism notion in my head, even as a child. I'm almost 40 now and blessed that out of all the mistakes that i've made in my life, having children wasn't one of them.

Excellent review. David Benatar's book "Better Never to Have been: The Harm of Coming into Existence" is absolute truth and cannot be refuted by any person with intelligence and compassion.

Excellent review James. It's a difficult but important book and the fundamental arguments are very difficult to refute,

If humans would be really clever, they would stop have kids so no one would be in so much pain again.

Great review, clearly explained. :)

Hi James. Thank you for the review. I have not read the book and will probably not. I've heard a lot of Benatar on RU-vid and in my 40 years I have never heard somebody speak as clearly and logically as Benatar. Debating him would be an intellectual suicide. If you read the poem "Dinosauria, We" by Bukowski, it will in a way give more meaning to Benatar's arguments. Simple yet beautiful. It's hard to be objective about any subject because humans are programmed to pass the genes and thereby biased in our mission to breed. To be objective in such subject as coming into existence, demands a whole another level of mental strength. Just let me give you an example: There are more or less 5 000 000 000 people who believe the story of Abraham. This has existed for about 3000 years. Passed from generation to generation. Most likely an adventure made up by intellectuals to gain control of the less intelligent (My opinion) So take a look at religious people today. Many of them so dedicated and so convinced this story who violate the pilars of most of our science is true. Some are willing to blow themselves with a bomb in the name of God. Through 3000 years of passing a story to their offspring an adventure managed to anchor in such way and it is nearly impossible to turn these people into rational human beings. They will die religious. Now imagine what power it takes to stop 800 million years of evolution. Me and you are just a ride for the genes in a 800 000 000 years old chain which is programmed to duplicate and then die. Dawkins' "The selfish gene" is great reading. We have evolved for millions of years and since the genes made this far, being able to stand up against them and use logic and not being the carrier of the genes and question it all is the most counterintuitive yet logical state a human can achieve. I sincerely do believe that Benatar is correct because his arguments are as logical as reality itself. Cheers from Norway

Antinatalism is something I find abhorrent but at the same time it’s logical and seemingly bullet proof. I can’t seem to find a well structured argument against Benetar. I can no longer look at my friends and neighbours who have children without intense feelings of anxiety. Nonetheless, despising people who do have children seems like it would create more suffering

Thank you for making this

You would like Zappfe and Mainlander.....sounds like the Lacanian “Real” ....and we’re constantly chasing desire never to obtain it ....

Thank you sir! Thanks for lucid summary !

Good review of a great book, which changed my life. I'm now an antinatalist and vegan. Also I'm convinced the designer of the book cover took it from a still of Walter White standing at the top of his basement steps from an early episode of Breaking Bad...

David Benatar gave people the language to express the experience they are undergoing

Nice content,currently I am writing my own book on anti-natalism,pain and the will to live

Interesting analysis. Thanks.

The everlasting preservation of an intrinsically ideal default state versus the catastrophic termination of same.

6 reasons why people have children: #1 They have no meaning in life. #2 They have no purpose in life ( number 1 & 2 are co-dependent traits that is used by narcists) #3 They're bored/ they have something to do #4 They wanna see a mini me to flatter their own narcistic primive blown up ego. #5 They use their children to help them out on their older age or use them for the organs #6 They think their child(ren) are going to do something great, like curing cancer. Also, how do you know that they don't get a mentally, emotional & physical disability? What about a disease or a 9-5 job until your 80's, war, rape, murder etc.? Are people still so foolish?

Thanks for uploading this video

man, how great you are? Your words are very wise Thanks for this review

Thank you for the very good review! I learned a lot about antinatalism during the last week or so, and I must admit that it is kind of interesting to follow Banater’s thoughts. However, I think the concept is a bit one-dimensional, because human consciousness is presented as something coming out of nowhere into our so called reality. It seems that Banater sees the material world as fundamental and consciousness as a byproduct of human brain activity, whereas I would claim that consciousness is fundamental and the so called real world is a kind of virtual reality, in which consciousness can experience itself. I think that the value of human life is the experience of duality. If there was only pleasure and no pain, one could not experience pleasure, because it would become a neutral experience. We need pain to value pleasure. And the ultimate goal would be to play the game of duality while going beyond and seeing that they’re only two sides of one coin and that one is not better or worse than the other. Also it seems to me that there is no clear distinction in Banater’s work between pain and suffering. In my view, pain is something that one experiences from some outer influence, while suffering is self-inflicted by thinking about things that happened or might happen. Pain, of course, is inevitable, but you can train yourself not to suffer, if you are really dedicated to it.

Great perspective. I'm not sure I'd call it a 'review', per se, but very useful.

Thank you for the review sir

Having kids or a kid is extremely selfish. Who the fuck does someone think they have the right to pop out a new life. Just look around and realize this world really isn’t a great place.

Thank you for your video. This is not a science book, but a philosophy book. Science is reliable knowledge. Philosophy is not. It is the precursor often to reliable knowledge. David Benatar writes the way he does because these are matters on which with respect to all and with respect to the community of analytic philosophers in particular, the arguing is going to be as precise, hard to refute, accurate, rigorous, thorough and close-knit as possible. Have you read Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy and History of Western Philosophy please? Thank you.

I wish I wasn't born.

Don’t worry. 100 billion years down the road the sun will expand and devour this planet and that will be the end of all this. If only that could happen within the next few minutes.

Life in many ways is a curse....

Very good video!

Thanks for the excellent review! As someone who is new to this argument, I am still in the process of making up my mind about it and am not sure I fully understand it. I see an apparent inconsistency in the asymmetry argument - Benatar assigns a positive value to the prevention of suffering by not being born, but a neutral value to the non-existent person's missing out on pleasure. As you pointed out, he explains this by stating that a non- existent person is not being consciously deprived of these pleasures, and so its 'not bad'. But can't I similarly argue that a non-existent person is similarly unaware of the benefits of avoiding suffering, and so it should be categorized as 'not good' ?

So... After providing this wonderfully succinct review, what are your views on the dilemma of existence vs non-existence? I sense that you are quite optimistic, and enjoy existence regardless of humanity’s suffering.

Hello James. Thank you for your informative book review. Could you please let me who "Thomas Lucati", to whom you referred, is?

I never forget the bad parts. I remember them FIRST. I do remember the good parts and they were bad in that they didn't last. I don't have a Pollyanna principle. Procreation is absolutely immoral.

It had seemed to me that there was an asymmetry within Benatar's asymmetry, so to speak. He says that failing to create new people is not bad because non-existent people will never be deprived of the paltry amount of good in the world, but if we accept that, then it also means that non-existent people are not spared the overwhelming negativity of life. We have not saved anyone, as there is nobody to be a beneficiary of our ethical choice not to procreate. For instance, if I decide not to stab a stranger, then that person has (unknowingly) benefitted from my choice to refrain from action. I can point them out specifically as the person who has benefitted from my ethical decision, because they already exist. But if I choose not to procreate, who has benefitted from my inaction? Nobody has. Alas, the problem as I see it is that, while non-existent pleasure for non-existent people is “not bad”, following the same logic, non-existent suffering for non-existent people is “not good.” Benatar argues correctly that life is bad, but the notion that a dichotomy exists, that life is bad and therefore the vacuum of space is somehow an abstract good by comparison, is hard to sustain. Default neutrality, as represented by the vacuum of space, devoid of any sentient experience, cannot be equated to an abstract good, even in comparison to the overwhelming badness of life. This is because neutrality, by its very definition, is the absence of good (or bad) qualities. I'm not saying that life is good. On the contrary, it is overwhelmingly negative, at least when compared to the anthropocentric paradise of our imagination. What I am saying is that life is a “something” and non-existence is a “nothing.” Some people might point out that “something vs nothing” is the greatest contrast one can imagine, but that still doesn't solve the dilemma. Non-existence and existence may be the ultimate contrast, but one has (admittedly mostly negative) qualities while the other is incapable of being evaluated. In this sense, the two are incomparable. Life may be bad, but what's the alternative? I'm afraid this coin is one-sided. Life is the only game in town. I had thought for some time that this was the major flaw in his otherwise perfect thesis, but my view evolved as the years passed, and I may have succeeded in rescuing Benatar from my initial assessment, but first I shall elaborate on the former in more detail. Benatar draws on an abstract argument and an experiential argument simultaneously in his primary asymmetry. He takes an abstract stance on the issue of the vacuum of space being neutral (and from this neutrality he implicitly extrapolates a good, which is impossible), but then he takes an experiential stance (“nobody is deprived”) on the absence of pleasure in non-existence. This violates an important logical rule. To make use of both abstract and experiential arguments and not apply them consistently is intellectually dishonest. If you are going to take an abstract stance on one scenario (or non-scenario, as that is what non-existence is), then you are obliged to take an abstract stance for the other. And if you are going to take an experiential stance, you must stick to that stance for both the scenario (existence) and the non-scenario. Otherwise it is cherry picking, applying certain rules when it suits your argument and disregarding them when it's inconvenient. In response, Benatar has claimed that he is talking about “states of affairs” rather than actual persons, but that seems like a semantic diversion. It's still a blatant double standard to apply an experiential mode of argumentation for one scenario (“people who aren't born aren't deprived of pleasure”) and an abstract, non-experiential mode for the other scenario (“the absence of suffering is good even if there's nobody to appreciate it”). I suppose he could say that, if it really is a double standard, then we are not justified in our practice of mercy killing when it comes to deformed fetuses or euthanasia for people who wish to end their lives, since the deformed fetus and the suffering person won't benefit either. A repugnant conclusion, but yes, it seems the only people that benefit from this suffering being avoided are ourselves, as we do not have to witness it and feel guilty for allowing it. As such, the motivations for aborting/euthanising cannot be considered philanthropic, but rather self-centered. We benefit at the thought of preventing the start/continuation of suffering, but that's as far as it goes. To bring the deformed child into the world would be evil, but to abort it would not be anything to the child. To allow the suffering person to go on living would be cruel, but to end their life would not be anything to the person. But if we negate those options on such grounds, we would then be left in the uncomfortable position of allowing the deformed fetus to be born, of allowing the suffering person to go on living against their will, which would of course be experientially bad for them. Surely our position, to abort/euthanise, _must_ therefore be good in a default sense, but this feels like a somewhat vague and unsatisfying conclusion. I may have thought of a solution to this paradox, however. Benatar says the absence of suffering is good even if there's nobody there to appreciate it. My original retort was that, if one is going to say that something is good in an abstract (that is, non-experiential) sense, then in order to be consistent, one would have to concede that a lack of happiness in the universe would also constitute an abstract negative. My solution is to circumvent the aforementioned stalemate by considering his other asymmetry, that pain and suffering are more intense and enduring than pleasure and happiness. The anti-natalist could therefore concede that, while the total absence of pleasure in the universe would constitute an abstract bad, one should place higher status on the abstract good of a universe completely devoid of suffering, since suffering is the more intense of the two states. This is also bolstered by the fact that pleasure is merely a palliative against the default negativity (tedium, as opposed to contentment) of existence, and therefore only has value for those who _already_ exist. I'm glad I was finally able to resolve this issue in Benatar's favour, although I feel there may still be a debate to be had about aggregate pleasure weighed against aggregate suffering. Having addressed that, there are still a few other inconsistencies with his philosophy. For instance, I noticed he has a habit of saying “you can't have a child for that child's sake”, but it seems equally true that you cannot _not_ have a child for that child's sake. “Non-existent people cannot offer consent to being born” is true, but they also cannot _withhold_ consent. I suppose he could say that people don't technically withhold consent to being robbed and murdered either, so maybe it's silly for me to bring that up. I should point out, though, that while nobody laments all the non-existent people who could be experiencing pleasure, it is also the case that nobody celebrates all the non-existent people who are not experiencing suffering. Benatar also says that life is an imposition, but an imposition on whom? A potential person doesn't exist, being completely hypothetical. In saying that life is imposed on the unborn, he is implying that a person and their life are two separate things, which we know they are not. Unless he believes in souls, but I know he is not a fool. Anyone myopic enough to believe in souls wouldn't be drawn to this debate in the first place.

Great review man, an interesting topic and a personal favourite topic too. Are you an antinatalist yourself?

Clearly true

“When a new person is born he will go on to experience more pain and suffering than joy” - by which method do you quantify suffering and joy?

Life to be enjoyed they say. No life is to be mourned.

If your struggling with mental health issues then i can well imagine a person experiencing more suffering than pleasure but this is not the case for someone with good mental health. If you've never had good mental health then I guess thats something hard to imagine.

Pollyanna principle. If you can't remember something, did it ever happen?

There are so many semantic problems when discussing this matter, even in that quote at the end: "... to prevent suffering of their children... is to not bring those children into existence". That sentence literally makes no sense. To "prevent suffering of somebody" implies the continuous existence of somebody that can be helped. To me, that sentence is as problematic as saying "By not building the house, we solved the problem of it being constructed on bad foundation". Also, I found the tree example very strange, if you cited it correctly. The dynamics of desire and its fulfillment are different, depending on the individual case. If you starve for days and than finally eat something, the joy of the fulfillment will certainly not balance out the suffering of hunger. If you are hungry because you didn't eat since breakfast and have a great, satisfying dinner, it could very well. If seeing the tree painted red after taking the pill leads to some kind of orgasm-like state and the desire was not more than a mild inconvenience, it could be well worth it. Also, e.g., when people lose their libido, they usually see it as a problem.

شكرا لك تلخيص رائع وبسيط للكتاب

I think antinatalism sometimes feels abhorrent (for obvious evolutionary reasons) but is also intuitive at the same time. We tend to think of it as denying young healthy innocent children in a field or something on a summer's day but the reality is being a child is just a part of their entire life. They will then have to suffer ageing and if they don't they will have likely died in some kind of tragic way during youth. I think some lives are better to start than others and the quality of some lives is excellent but personally I would rather not have existed, I've not enjoyed the experience at all and as we get older our bodies are breaking down so it's only going to get worse in that aspect. Aside from the corporeal form subject to disease and unbearable suffering just the way the world is with unaffordable housing and rent, increased competition for jobs and partners, the pain from relationships, bullying...I don't know just personally I would not want to bring a new being into the struggle especially since I have no money, they would face the same bad issues I am like will I end up being homeless soon. It might be worth reviewing his other book the human predicament by the way, good video, thanks

Keep going

If you were never born, then instead of it being your conscious experience right now, it'd instead be one of the consciousnesses that are occuring right now (via some other brain).

How did you like the Human Predicament?

another reason i dpnt believe in procreation because i am a misanthrope i hate hymanity

I saw in a comment you said even tho you, knowing you've epxerience more pain than pleasure still choose to exist. Is that not the ultimate counter argument to antinatalism? If someone is born and truly rather not exist, it is in their hands really. The choice is still theirs

I would have ratcheted stayed in a nothingness endless black void then came into this world as a human being. I’m tired of this shit.

If the human race died out it doesn’t mean that bad things would stop happening to animals for example. Another species would take over and start the same discussion would repeat. What if we changed the understanding of what is suffering and pleasure.

For the most part this life is made for giga chad & giga stacy, for the rest of us its suffering, but in the end we all die..

people have children for selfish reasons

Maybe life is respite from a black hole of horrors and suffering, from which we are plucked when we’re born, and returned to at death.

Child in the background 10.32?

I'm an efilist, cheers

It's so obvious

Out of curiosity are you an anti-natalist, efilist and or Negetive utilitarian of sorts?

Sounds like he’s just explaining why living life as a hedonist doesn’t work

why do I feel bad for him??

Rathered*

It's a philosophy book not a science book ;)

IS THAT A CHILD I HEAR IN THE BACKGROUND?!

Antinatalism is a good excuse when explaining to your girlfriend why you don’t want children or when explaining to someone why you hate your parents. However every rational person knows that life is the greatest blessing and gift. When a building is on fire why is everyone running away from it rather than into it? Why not prohibit pregnancy and mandate abortions? Why not reward murders and punish doctors?

awful book. ok review

to me his philosophy is pathetic and stupid.