As with any philosophy, the definition of antinatalism will vary depending on who you ask, but what all subscribers to this philosophy have in common is an opposition to procreation. Though the general idea of anti-procreation has been with humanity since antiquity, it’s only fairly recently begun to take full shape. Even the term ‘antinatalism’ itself was not used as a philosophical term for the first time until 2006, and still to this day is not recognised in most official dictionaries. Whilst Wikipedia defines antinatalism as, ‘a philosophical position and social movement that assigns a negative value to birth’, it doesn’t take long to realise that a great many details are hotly debated. Below, we have attempted to put together a brief overview of the different forms of anti-procreative thought. We hope you find it useful.
An Overview of Anti-procreative Thought
Antinatalism (or anti-natalism) can act as both an umbrella term for all anti-procreation, as well as being its own school of thought. The general idea of being against birth has been with humanity in some form or another for all of recorded history. Historically, it has almost exclusively been a critique of human existence, and as such against human procreation; this, however, changed after the publication of David Benatar’s seminal antinatalist work ‘Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence’ in which Benatar – arguably for the first time – assigned a more sentiocentric view to the idea. Antinatalism, in general, argues that creating life is unethical because of the existence of suffering and that the best outcome is extinction.
EFILism (EFIL is ‘life’ spelt backwards) is a strictly sentiocentric form of Antinatalism, first coined by the Youtube-based philosopher Inmendham in late 2010. Though it’s certainly true that human beings not only cause, but feel a great deal of suffering, EFILism is the belief that the real problems here on planet earth are DNA, nature & sentience. That all life, both human and animal, are the products of unintelligent design, at the cost of immense, unacceptable & unnecessary suffering. While humanity should indeed stop procreating and go extinct, it also has a responsibility, as the only species with any hope of doing so, to prevent the further suffering of the rest of sentient life, by finding means of breaking their cycle of sentience first before we are gone. www.efilism.com
VHEMT (or Voluntary Human Extinction Movement) is an environmentalist brand of anti-procreative ethics that wants to see humans go extinct in order to allow the Earth’s biosphere to rejuvenate to its pre-human condition. VHEMT supporters put specific focus on the return of the environment back to non-human animals.
Childfree is a term that denotes a person who voluntarily chooses not to have children. This choice, which is the most subscribed to of the four schools of thought, can be made a myriad of reasons, including, but not limited to: their financial situation, a lack of desire, career aspirations, personal health/wellbeing, and more. Childfree people may or may not support or campaign for others to be childfree.
The position of Childfree (or childfree by choice) is not to be confused with those who are childless (or childfree not by choice). Childfree people do not want children. Childless people want children but cannot have them for various reasons.
More soon!
