The Argument of "Better Not to Have Been"

You don't have a cynical view of the "animal rights" people. They care more about animals than people. Here is my proof...

Here is a bit from a NY Times opinion piece by Peter Singer, the philosopher who is the main spokesman for "animal rights". He is selling the idea that people shouldn't reproduce because it is "cruel" to have babies.

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.

...

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!

In short, he is laying down a persuasive argument for people to die out. What he doesn't tell you is that he wants to free up the space for his beloved animals and all their "rights". The guy is a monster. He would rather kill humans than lab rats!

If you think I misunderstood his piece, he has written a follow-up piece to "clarify" the positions he put forward in the earlier piece:

But “Last Generation?” isn’t a piece about overpopulation or environmental destruction, and it makes no assumptions about whether developed countries can cut down on consumption. It just isn’t about that question at all. It asks a deeper question, one not dependent on the environmental constraints on our planet, nor on the number of people now on Earth. Even if there were only 1 million humans on this planet, all living at the level of an average citizen of, say, Switzerland, we could still ask whether it would be a good thing to have children in order to continue the species.

Sure... Peter Singer claims to be pro-human and claims to be "misunderstood". He makes this statement:

This brings me to the second common misunderstanding found in the comments. I was surprised by how many readers assumed that my answer to the title question of my essay was “Yes.” Perhaps they stopped reading before they got to the last paragraph, in which I say that I think that life is, for most people, worth living, and that a world with people in it is better than one without any sentient beings in it.

But the fact of the matter is that he values animals over humans and has a dim view of "human rights". For all his effusive claims to "love humans" he keeps coming back to this point:

These issues do matter. Even if relatively few people engage in ethical thinking before deciding whether to reproduce, the decisions are important for those who do. And since public policies affect the birthrate, we ought to be giving some thought to whether it is, other things being equal, good for there to be fewer people. Of course, in our present environmental crisis other things are not equal, but the underlying question of the value of bringing human beings into the world should still play a role in decisions that affect the size of future generations.

From Wikipedia, here is some text about Singer's book Animal Liberation:

Published in 1975, Animal Liberation has been cited as a formative influence on leaders of the modern animal liberation movement. The central argument of the book is an expansion of the utilitarian idea that 'the greatest good of the greatest number' is the only measure of good or ethical behaviour. Singer argues that there is no reason not to apply this to other animals. He introduced and popularized the term "speciesism", which was originally coined by Richard D. Ryder, to describe the practice of privileging humans over other animals.

My response to this line of thinking is that if it merely a utilitarian calculation in which no species is privileged, then all higher forms of life would be "voted off the planet" because the domains of Archaea and Eubacteria outnumber the Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia by thousands to one. And they outnumber the Animalia by billions to one. And they outnumber humans by billions of billions of billions to one. So we get voted off the planet under Peter Singer's "ethics".

Personally I don't think I have to defer to insects. I respect them. But they have no rights that supersede mine. And anything simpler than insects doesn't even register in my "ethical" calculations.