Andra Sage (1:51)

We call this the communication gap, the.

Podcast Host (1:53)

Space between wanting connection and starting the conversation.

Andra Sage (1:56)

But here's the good news. It doesn't have to be this way. Ask one better question or share something.

Podcast Host (2:01)

Honest and watch the connection grow.

Andra Sage (2:03)

Find more in hinges 2025 Gen Z.

Mia Wong (2:06)

Date Report, now live at Hinge Cool Zone Media.

Andra Sage (2:15)

Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andra Sage, also known as Andrew Zum, and I'm joined once again by.

Mia Wong (2:27)

That'S your cue, Mia Wong. Girl, who was really, really the first time was like, I am not gonna miss my cue this time. And then this time I was like, oh, I'm waiting for the queue. And then it was like shit, that's the cue. And then it took my brain like several seconds to be like, oh no.

Mia Wong (2:47)

It would be very funny if the editors just edited out the pause so everyone has no idea what I'm talking about.

Andra Sage (2:53)

That's, that would be hilarious. Actually for those unaware, that was like a 10 second pause before Mia came in.

Mia Wong (3:02)

No, really, truly, this is, this is Mia on like three hours of sleep brain. I was like, oh yeah right. The cue is going to come and then it things going great for be a Wong, the other person who's on this show. You know who I am statistically if you're listening to this show.

Andra Sage (3:21)

Woo, of course. I mean speaking of seconds, by the way, in those 10 seconds that you were waiting for your cue that had already passed.

Andra Sage (3:34)

Hundreds of people were born. You know, every second somewhere someone is being born. Like other animals. Humans have this tendency to multiply. But should they? That is the question of the day. You see, last episode I was on, we spoke about the worries surrounding population. You know, whether we had too many people or too few people. But the question of making people or not making them has been the subject of a few ideological clashes. There's a whole movement of thinkers who argue that bringing new life into the world is a big mistake. These are the antinatalists, but on the other side you have those who say that having children is good and essential. That's the pronatalist camp. So in this episode we'll be getting into that tug of war philosophically and weighing the issues with both. Because I'm not going to make it a secret. I'm not a fan of either of them. I don't know. How do you feel about.

Mia Wong (4:35)

Yeah, this is the one, the one good Stalin quote. They're both worse.

Andra Sage (4:42)

So we have to pick among those two. Let's start with the anti natalists. And what's the kind of gut reaction or impression you get from those, those folks?

Mia Wong (4:53)

I don't know. I think there's a combination of stuff that's largely harmless and sometimes is funny. Like you get protests of people holding up signs that are like, I didn't ask to be born or I didn't consent to be born. It's like, sure. But then there's also people just doing mass shootings about it. So it's great. It's, it's a good time. It's a very normal time for politics.

Andra Sage (5:15)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean when I think of them, I tend to think cringe and Reddit, but they actually have a philosophy outside of Reddit forums. So according to the Internet encyclopedia Philosophy, antinatalism is the view that it is either always or usually morally impermissible to procreate. Now, most of us grew up with the idea that life is inherently valuable, right? But antinatalists disagree. They see life as a burden rather than a gift. Very edgy, very Reddit, but you know, it's something that is been around since before the Internet. While not himself an antinatalist, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who lived in the 19th century, is taught by some antinatalists as a contributor to their philosophical foundations. In his descriptions of life as constant striving, frustration and pain. In the 20th century, the Romanian writer Emil Choron argued that non existence is the ultimate form of peace. His philosophical pessimism regarded individual life and human history as a whole as a record of error, illusion and futility. And most famously, South African philosopher David Benatar laid out one of the main antinatalist arguments in his book Better Never to have Been the Harm of Coming Into Existence, a banger title. Though now you can find theoretical contributions to antinatalist thought in Buddhism's idea that life is suffering, or in certain interpretations of it, rather, or in certain Gnostic traditions that saw the material world itself as a kind of cosmic mistake. Now, there are a lot of reasons that antinatalists put forward for their stance. There are philanthropic and misanthropic arguments for antinatalism. You know, the philanthropic ones focus on harm to the individual who is brought into existence, while the misanthropic arguments tend to focus on the harm that new people cause to the world. So there's the consent argument that Mia would have mentioned. You know, basically a child cannot consent to being born, so by creating them, you're forcing them into a life they didn't ask for, a life that will inevitably include suffering. Another argument is in that sort of negative utilitarianism camp, it's the idea that our moral priority should be reducing suffering, not increasing happiness. In fact, they don't see the potential or actuality of pleasure as an offset to suffering at all. Under their view, even a single unit of suffering is unacceptable. And since every new life will include suffering, not creating life is the surest way to reduce it. David Bennetter had the famous asymmetry argument, which is that the presence of pain is bad, the presence of pleasure is good, but the absence of pain is always good, even if no one appreciates that good and the absence of pleasure isn't bad unless there's someone missing out. So put simply, according to the argument, by not having a child, you avoid guaranteed suffering without depriving any person of joy because that person doesn't exist. So that equation is probably one of the main pillars, I'd say, of the antinatalists as a movement.

Mia Wong (8:46)

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Podcast Host (10:14)

You know the shade is always shadiest right here. Season six of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Gisele Bryan and Robyn Dixon is here dropping every Monday as two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac. We're giving you all the laughs, drama and and reality news you can handle. And you know, we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday I was going through a walk in my neighborhood. Out of the blue, I see this huge sign next to somebody's house. Okay, the sign says, my neighbor is a Karen.

Mia Wong (10:56)

No way.

Podcast Host (10:58)

I died laughing. I'm like, I have to know you are lying. Humongous, y'.

Andra Sage (11:06)

All.

Podcast Host (11:06)

They had some time on their hands. Listen to Reasonably Shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Andra Sage (11:18)

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Andra Sage (11:52)

You know, you might be thinking to yourself, oh, but I'm glad to be alive. No, you're not.

Andra Sage (12:00)

According to Benetter and the antinatalists, you're deluded to think so. The Internet encyclopedia of philosophy calls it the deluded gladness argument. Basically, your positive view of your own life is unreliable. Benata argues that we have cognitive biases like optimism and selective memory and so on, which distort how viciously we assess our own suffering. So many good life reports. Even if you think you have a good life or a decent life, you're deceiving yourself. According to him, do you think people are deceiving themselves when they say that they enjoy their lives?

Mia Wong (12:37)

You know.

Mia Wong (12:39)

This entire line of argument is just making me feel like you need to do less philosophy and like go outside and live. Like just like.

Andra Sage (12:50)

Yeah, I mean, I get the whole thing about, you know, all mental biased towards optimism and that kind of thing, but that doesn't invalidate the joy of people appreciating their life.

Mia Wong (13:01)

Yeah, it's like this. This sounds like the exact script you get in your head when you're really depressed. It's like, okay, like, have you considered getting your depression managed and getting help for it instead of like doing philosophy about it?

Andra Sage (13:19)

I feel like Eeyore would be an antinatalist.

Mia Wong (13:22)

Oh, Eeyore, Yeah.

Andra Sage (13:24)

Like nothing matters.

Mia Wong (13:26)

Well, and it's also frustrating because it's like the most compelling version of this argument is about like this world right now is absolutely dogshit. And I can't justify bringing someone into it, but that's like too grounded. And so all these people are like, no, no, no, no, no. Actually here's like this philosophy that proves that that life bad. And it's like, ugh.

Andra Sage (13:52)

I mean, there are antinatalist arguments that do get into that. More grounded.

Mia Wong (13:56)

Oh yeah, definitely.

Andra Sage (13:57)

Thing you know that they have one argument about multiplying suffering. Right? Because every child you bring into the world isn't just one person. You know, they have the potential to have children themselves and grandchildren and so on. Multiplying the chances of pain, disease, loss, suffering down the generation.

Mia Wong (14:14)

It's like this is like long termism shit. It's just like instead of like actually analyzing the world, we're going to build unbelievably complicated and completely meaningless, like abstract models of it and try to base our things off of that.

Andra Sage (14:31)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's utterly ridiculous. Now I understand, you know, our track record isn't the best. You know, there are plagues and slavery and genocide, environmental destruction. And some of them say, well, that's the best thing. The best thing we could do is to voluntarily go extinct. You know, to step off the stage of the earth. And that connects with the general misanthropy and I think the misanthropic argument that humans are some kind of blight on the world. Yeah. And there are antinatalists who take it a step further as well. And they're not just antinatalists for humans, they are universal antinatalists. Oh, Jesus Christ. They believe that not just human births are problematic, but existence itself. Sentient beings across the board, human or animal, are better off never being brought into life at all.

Mia Wong (15:17)

Really, truly, at this point, brother, this is a you problem. Like, you just don't like existing. Like, we can, we can work on that. But like, this is not a philosophical thing. Like, you're just depressed. Like, come on, what are we doing here?

Andra Sage (15:32)

Yeah, I mean, antinationalism is making some very heavy claims and they're obviously going to be counterarguments because people are not going to roll over with the kind of assertions that it makes. The most intuitive answer I would give is that yes, life involves suffering, but it also includes pleasure and joy and creativity and achievement. And for most people, those positives outweigh the negatives. And if you are a radical, you recognize that some of the negatives of life are not inevitable. The famines, the wars, the suffering, the poverty is not inevitable. It's a product of economic and political systems that we have the power to change. And yes, there will always be suffering. There may always be some diseases, there will always be death. Right. But that doesn't mean that existence is worse than non existence. I'm glad to exist, Mia. I feel like you're probably glad to exist. I'm glad you exist.

Mia Wong (16:30)

Yeah, most of the time. Like, this is a distinct improvement for positions I have been in. But like, yeah, it's nice. Yeah, it's, you know, like even. Even in the middle of like hell world. It's nice.

Andra Sage (16:45)

Yeah. And yeah, the Biases may skew our perspective, but the fact that we overwhelmingly choose life itself is a reason to not throw it out. You know, once people are given the choice, do you want to live right now or die? Most people want to say they're going to live, you know.

Mia Wong (17:03)

Yeah.

Andra Sage (17:04)

And yes, we don't consent to being born, but there are other things that we don't consent to that we still benefit from. You know, infants don't consent to being vaccinated, but it's something that benefits them. You know, we educate infants, we restrain them from danger, we don't ask their permission necessarily to do these things, but it's just for their well being, for their benefit. And I don't think while consent is an important factor in the way that we engage with others, I don't think consent is the only factor for a framework of determining what is moral and immoral. You know, you can't use consent to determine whether it's moral or not to exist. I don't feel like those two pieces mesh together very well.

Mia Wong (17:50)

Yeah, well. And also I think like there are so many other things that we didn't consent. Like, for example, you know, like this is another thing we're talking is like we never consented to die. On a less metaphysical level, I don't know, like, I didn't consent to like to live under this state.

Andra Sage (18:05)

Yeah.

Mia Wong (18:06)

Where you know, they're like doing helicopter raids on apartment buildings and like dragging naked children screaming away from their parents in the middle of the night. Like, you know that. And that's a thing that you can actually actively do something about that you didn't consent to, that is actively harming you and everyone else around you versus like being born and making that. The thing that you're doing is like, okay, like we didn't get that to live under capitalism. We didn't, we didn't consent to colonialism. Like we didn't get that to any of this shit. And that's something you could, you know, make not happen versus you being born, which there is nothing you can do to change the fact that you were born. And it's like, oh, well, I'll focus on the next generation children. Yeah, you want, you want it, you want to focus on like reducing the amount of suffering the next generation will create in the world. Have you considered like climate change?

Andra Sage (18:55)

Yeah. Yeah. I also think that on a broader level. Right. I think it's good to be question some of the intuitions that we may have, you know, even if they're our deepest moral intuitions. I think it's good to maybe consider them or to be thoughtful about them. But also, as the instant encyclopedia of philosophy argues, if a theory implies that the creation of all human life is a moral mistake, that conclusion itself might be reason to doubt the theory. This is something called the repugnant conclusion. Objection. You know what I mean? Because it's repugnant. It's intuitively repugnant to most people to hear that existence is a mistake. Nobody should be alive.

Mia Wong (19:43)

Yeah, I was like, what? No, like, absolutely not. Like, get your shit worked out.

Andra Sage (19:49)

Exactly.

Mia Wong (19:50)

The train of logic here. Not great.

Andra Sage (19:52)

Like you were saying. Yeah. There's a lot of things in this, in the world that suck right now that cause suffering. And there are. There's a lot of present joy is alongside that present suffering. But there's also the value to be had in that potential joy. You know, the potential possibilities have value if potential suffering has value. Potential joys should also have value. The potential of creating a better world. Each new child bring in the potential for greater love, for incredible arts and crafts, for scientific breakthroughs, for reshaping the world in a positive direction. You know, the potential for the unique goods that each individual life can bring, I believe justifies the risk of suffering because a world without those future goods would be worse than a world with them.

Mia Wong (20:46)

Yeah.

Andra Sage (20:47)

And yes, humanity can cause harm, but we are also capable of extraordinary good. We can change, we can reduce suffering over time. New generations are going to be part of that solution. I will say though, to antinatalists credit, one of the points of the Internet encyclopedia of Philosophy points out is that the debate about antinatalism is theoretical. You know, this is stuffy philosophers sitting around exchanging notes and writing books. Right. Most of its advocates are not actually putting forward policies that are restricting people's ability to create life. But the same cannot be said for the other side of the coin, the pro natalists.

Mia Wong (21:31)

Yep.

Andra Sage (21:42)

So in broad terms, pronatalism, or just natalism, is the belief that reproduction is a societal good or even that society needs more children. Now this movement is getting louder and louder these days. It's shaping policy debates in the us, in Europe, in Asia and beyond. Because as I mentioned in the previous episode, fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. Countries like South Korea, Italy, Japan and the US are seeing fewer births than needed to sustain their current population. So you're going to be seeing pronatalism in various forms, showing up in politics and even in tech circles, especially in those weird tech circles. Now, pronatalism is a broad umbrella. You Know, you can have the mild position of supporting families with policies, and most people are not opposed to that. But you also have this strong pronatalist stance, which is actually urging or incentivizing or mandating, both for cultural, economic or ideological reasons. Pronatalism was motivated by a few different reasons. There's the economic anxiety of a shrinking population, meaning fewer workers, more retirees and strained pension systems. There's the nationalistic argument of worries about cultural continuity, which tend to teeter into the reactionary directions. And the pronatalism today is very much political. As a result, in the US Republicans have been leaning into it, framing the low birth rates as a national crisis. And in Europe, you have countries like Hungary under Viktor Orban, which have made pronatalism a signature policy to vary in effectiveness. The religious motivations of pronatalism are also pretty interesting. You know, you have the being fruitful and multiply directive in the Bible, which some take as far as the Quiverful movement, which is a whole thing about having children by like the dozen or more.

Mia Wong (23:37)

Yeah.

Andra Sage (23:38)

Then you have the tech and elite circles pushing pronatalism because it connects with the ideas of human progress. One of the pronatalists who most famously practices what he preaches mostly for worse, is Elon Musk.

Mia Wong (23:52)

Yep.

Andra Sage (23:54)

Right. He's, he's a big Nazi about it, for one, because of his whole worry about white fertility rates. But he also thinks that low birth rates as a whole are a bigger threat than climate change. So, I mean, it seems like he's single handedly trying to fix that with his seed spreading. Yeah, his assembly line of children with, you know, the accompanying product barcodes for names. And I just feel bad for them, honestly, to have that as a father.

Mia Wong (24:24)

No, it sucks. Yeah, it's not great, it's not good.

Andra Sage (24:29)

And so he and his billionaire buddies are of the belief that civilization will collapse if we don't make more babies. Silicon Valley circles are funding pronatalist think tanks and embryo optimisation projects. A lot of policies are also coming out of the pronatalist camp. Unlike the antinatalists, historically, countries like the Soviet Union handed out medals like mother heroin for women with large families. And the Russia of today has revived similar awards recently alongside, like I mentioned in the previous episode, banning antinatalist propaganda. Now some countries are offering tax incentives for births and even proposing baby bonuses of thousands of dollars paid for each birth. Thousands of dollars per birth is kind of a split in the face because that's not even going to Last the first couple months of a child being born. Let's be real, children are extremely expensive.

Mia Wong (25:23)

Yeah, yeah.

Andra Sage (25:25)

Pronatalists also tend to push things like expanded family benefits, child allowances, or housing subsidies for parents. These, I would say, are the more liberal minded or progressive minded pronatalists, as much as you can be a progressive and a pronatalist, because they're actually considering the ways that they can make actually bearing children and raising children a bit easier for the people who have to do it. That sort of support also includes things like expanding IVF access, subsidizing fertility treatments, you know, improving embryo screening, that sort of thing. Places like Scandinavia also have generous leave policies, which are often cited as a model of soft pronatalism because it makes it easier for people to balance work and childrearing. But you don't tend to hear these policies coming out of the much louder pronatalist conservative camp. What you get from them and from their pronatalism tends to be restrictions on women, restrictions on abortion and bodily autonomy, policies that conflict with the goals of reproductive justice and gender equality, sometimes putting women's health at risk. And also, conservatives push lots of narrative with their pronatalism. Large families, sensive al rise. They frame childbearing as a civic duty. You know, the appeal to legacy and culture and identity. When you get into that white supremacist camp and you also get the whole eugenics of it. You know, the tech elite pronatalist wing.

Mia Wong (26:54)

Yep.

Andra Sage (26:54)

They're pushing for things like gene editing, embryo selection, the sort of stuff that Musk is talking about with his racial replacement anxieties. In any case, the effectiveness of even the few positive policies has been pretty mixed. Countries have tried pumping billions into subsidies, and often fertility rates have barely budged. Deep structural issues like the cost of living, cultural norms around gender, career paths, health concerns, all these often outweigh the incentives of a couple thousand dollars or extended paternity leave. You know, if people don't want to have babies, they're not gonna have babies. If they're not confident in the ability to have children, raise an environment that they feel is best for them, they're not going to have children. You know, people more than ever have that choice. And unfortunately, a lot of the pronatalist policies don't care about making childbearing easier, you know, easing the path to make that choice. They just want to pressure people to have children.

Mia Wong (28:01)

Yep.

Andra Sage (28:03)

You know, it loops right back to misogyny, a reaction against women's freedom, pushing them back into the kitchen, pushing them back into that subservient position in society. So after looking at both sides, right, you have the antinatalists and the pronatalists. Don't create life to avoid suffering. Or you must create life to preserve society. I guess you could call me a centrist. The antinatalists repulse me, and the pro natalists equally repulse me. You know, I'm wary of anyone claiming that you must have children or you must not have children. I'm wary of a world where these kinds of choices are coerced by others. You know, as an anarchist, I'm a firm believer in autonomy, in personal freedom and the ability to decide one's own life. That's what matters to me. You know, I don't intend to have children myself. I do like children a lot. I was once a child myself, and I look forward to being an uncle, a godfather and all that. But that's my choice, you know, Let your choice be your choice and my choice be my choice. Make choices freely. Resist the pressure from either camp and keep your agency intact. That's all I have to say on it. Honestly. Yeah.

Mia Wong (29:13)

I mean, honestly, that covers the stuff I was gonna say.

Andra Sage (29:15)

So, yeah, I mean, with that, we've. Beacon Rapid.

Mia Wong (29:20)

Yeah.

Andra Sage (29:21)

All power to all the people this has been. It Could Happen Here. Peace.

Mia Wong (29:29)

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can now find sources for. It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

Podcast Host (29:47)

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.