A Future Worth Entering

There are many reasons not to have children. Simply not wanting them is enough.
But there is a framing I struggle with: that choosing not to have children is an
act of mercy, sparing those hypothetical children from suffering in the world
we are creating.

I reject that framing because it turns pessimism into moral virtue by inventing
a beneficiary. A hypothetical child is not waiting in nonexistence, relieved
to have been “spared”. There is nobody there to benefit. Unless the life that
child would have lived was likely to be worse than no life at all, non-creation
is not rescue. It prevents every joy, relationship, achievement and experience
just as completely as it prevents suffering.

Treating today’s threats and worries as proof of a bleak future simply assumes a
negative conclusion that is not a given. I am glad to live this life. The idea
that my parents could have decided that the Cold War and the possibility of
nuclear annihilation were reasons not to have me saddens me greatly.

One must not get moral credit for “saving” someone whose existence one
prevented, particularly after simply presuming on their behalf that their life
would not have been worth living.

“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”

— Rabindranath Tagore

Children on a playground.