💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › julian-langer-liberation-natalism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:24:25. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Liberation Natalism
Author: Julian Langer
Date: 24/4/2021
Language: en
Topics: Natalism, antinatalism, liberation, ontological anarchism
Source: https://nightforestpoetry.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/night-forest-poetry-issue-3.pdf

Julian Langer

Liberation Natalism

While I have already written less detailed critical opposition to

anti-natalist philosophy; I intend to present here a broader critique of

the philosophies that are located within this cartography of thought,

after which I will affirm a position against the ideology. My approach

to this is one of defiance and rebellion, against those who would assert

themselves as a moral authority on the matter of whether it is bad to be

born and/or bad to pro-create.

From the outset, I acknowledge that there are individuals for which the

idea of being a parent is terrible. To impose parenthood, out of an

embrace of (pro)natalism, would not fit the energy of rebellion this

analysis is fuel by. For the sake of ensuring that this does not become

co-opted by any authoritarian projects, consider this to be a work of

anarchist-natalism, natalist-anarchy, anarcho-natalism,

liberation-natalism, emancipatory-birth-advocacy and so on – as an

effort to resist repression and liberate desire.

Another point that is worth acknowledging here, before I go on, is that

there individuals who have undergone certain experiences that have left

them feeling like it would have been better not to have been born. These

individuals have these feelings, but do not attempt to put moral

pressure on other individuals not to reproduce, and do not have any

desire to coerce any other individual into not having children. This

meditation/analysis/argument is not written with any disregard for these

individual’s feelings and is not an attempt to encourage them to do

something they have no personal desire to do.

Before considering more recent arguments and advocates for

anti-natalism, I am going to explore some older religious traditions

that are relevant. This is not to attempt historical tracing, but to

suggest the type of (poor) ideological-soil from which anti-natalism has

grown from.

The first religious tradition to be considered here is Marcionism, an

early Christian sect, very similar to many of the Gnostic traditions. It

takes its name from that of the individual whose teachings they

followed, Marcion of Sinope. Marcion is reported to have been a follower

of Paul the apostle, and was denounced as a heretic by the early church

fathers, for his beliefs on Christ and God. Marcion taught that the

Christian God is not the God of the Hebrew bible, which he saw as evil

and should be rejected, as it has (according to Marcion) nothing to do

with Christ. Following this, Marcion preached a form of dualism, where

the world the Hebrew God created, full of suffering and death, should be

rejected, in favour of the Christian God. Jesus, according to

Marcionism, didn’thave a body and was an entirely spiritual being. So,

to embrace God, Marcionism rejects this world, and child birth with it,

in search of salvation.

Similar to the Marcionite Christians, the Gnostic Christian followers of

Mani believed in an intensely dualistic onto-theological world-view. For

Manichaeism, the world is split between 2 fundamental realms of Light

and Dark, i.e. good vs bad. With this, humanity was said, by them, to be

captured by the Dark realm, with ManichaeistChristianity being a route

to salvation. The followers of Mani advocated avoiding procreation, out

of a desire to not trap more Light in the realm of Dark.

The last Christian tradition that I will mention here are the Encratites

Gnostic sect, whose disregard for procreation stems from their belief

that women and sex are the work of Satan, so should be rejected – not an

entirely dualisticposition like the Marcionite and Manichean, but still

a salvationist-type reasoning, as their opposition to sex, which negates

procreation, was out of an effort to save their souls. This

soteriological theme is not limited to Christian theology though. Both

Buddhism and Hinduism have a salvationist ontotheological structure to

them, with enlightenment, nirvana and moksha being routes out of the

cycle of birth and death, called samsara – Schopenhauer’s links to

anti-natalism coming from his embrace of Eastern spiritual ideas, though

it is questionable if he is an anti-natalist. I personally ceased my

Buddhist practice after my experiences as a cancer patient ignited a

fire of life desire, with the idea of life (birth-death) renunciation

being revolting – the catalyst for much of my thinking since. I am not

going into further detail on religious anti-natalist-type arguments

here, as it does not seem necessary to do so.

Demarcating a differentiation in the focus of this analysis, from

religious arguments that are both similar to and likely the soil from

which anti-natalist philosophy has grown from, to the ideology itself,

questions come to me. Why would these people come to the position that

they must be saved from existence/life/Being? What feeling does this

grow from? Two thoughts immediately strike me when considering these

questions. The first of these is how much this line of reasoning fits

what is known in anti-civilisation thought as ideology-of-victimisation

– where someone adopts the identity of someone who has had something

morally wrong done to them, and so must be saved from it. The second

thought is that this reminds me of the existentialist concepts of bad

faith and ressentiment, as an attempt to deny freedom and the

self-deception of a position of weakness before an imagined cause of

frustration – an evil authority is assumed to deny responsibility.

The salvation line of reasoning within religious anti-natalism is

continued within the philosophical tendency, noticeably in the essay The

Last Messiah by Peter Wessel Zapffe. His argument is primarily that, as

Man-kind has (apparently) over-developed its consciousness through

evolutionary processes, Man-kind is intellectually capable of

recognising the world as insufficient and unsatisfactory. This argument

is embraced by Ligotti, in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,

which is more ideologically anti-natalist than Zapffe’s essay (though

Zapffe was an advocate for anti-natalist ideology). The immediate and

painfully obvious issue with this argument is one that anyone with even

a secondary school understanding of evolutionary processes can identify.

Evolution isn’t a development from lower to higher forms; it is not

changing in a developmentally teleological fashion, which humanity has

over-reached. The journey from dinosaur to chicken was neither

progressive nor regressive development, but biological-becoming out of

will-to-life. The idea that humanity is over-evolved fits an

Abrahamic-theological world-view, which humanity sits on top of the

great chain of being as ontologically superior creatures – an entirely

fallacious and frankly ridiculous idea.

Anti-natalism is largely founded upon negation and the negative. Julio

Cabrera’s negative ethics, which argues that procreation is a form of

manipulation, rests upon the idea of opposition to affirmative ethics.

The negative utilitarian perspective – which is extremely Buddhistic –

relies on the claim that the nonexperience of suffering is better than

the experience of happiness. These rest upon the claim that not-Being is

morally superior to Being. This is, like the Marcionite and Manichean

positions, a highly dualistic form of argument. Dualism falls apart as a

position though, when you bring up the issue of interaction – how do

truly separate-planes of existence interact? But there is another issue

for me. How can you really build an ideology on the negative, the less

than zero, on what is less than nothing? To build upon less than nothing

seems like an even more pointless endeavour than the guy in Jesus’s

story, who built his house upon the sands. As such, my suspicion is you

cannot. If you cannot then perhaps what is happening within

anti-natalism is actually a half-arsedaffirmation of the actual, as a

disgruntled affirmation of Being. It seems strange to me though, to only

go half of the way – if you’regoing to affirm Being in any sense, why

not affirm the experience of suffering as something egoistically

valuable in an individuals personal-empowerment, or procreation as

life/Being. Even if a human individual does not procreate sexually other

human individuals and participate in vaginal or caesarean birth, when

they die they/their-body will decompose and become new life, giving

birth to new Being through affirmative creativity. The attempt at

negation is rendered pointless. The matter that would have been the

children they birthed has only given birth to other beings. In the

academic field of logic there is a concept where the negative is seen as

failure – the anti-natalist negation seems to fit this concept here.

Not-Being seems to be a realm of phantasms and spooks, which

anti-natalism attempts to build upon.

While Benatar’s anti-natalist hedonism is in many ways similar to

negativeutilitarianism, it is not the same argument. One of the

foundational axioms of Benatar’s argument, which is similar, is that

pain is bad and that the absence of pain is good. This totally overlooks

the desirable qualities of pain. Psychologically, painful experiences

can feel good – this is often embraced in sexual masochism. Also a life

experience that was totally devoid of pain would seem totally

insufficient – doesn’t the desirability of painful art, such as horror

films, tedious but brilliant books and paintings that are beautiful and

depressing, suggest that we really desire painful experience? It seems

to me that we value pain as a means of reminding us that we are alive,

as an affirmation of Being.

I mention here Emil Cioran, his The Trouble With Being Born and the

anti-natalist philosophy he presents, only to have included it here, due

to its popularity among many nihilist-anarchists. In truth, I find it

thoroughly devoid of insight and a work of indulgent

psychological-weakness, appealing for pity from an ideological position

of victimisation. The only aphorism of real note, in my opinion, within

the text is when Cioranpoints out that it is already too late to kill

yourself. A criticism might be that I am missing some sort of nuance to

Cioran’sposition of neither life nor death being preferable, but

whenever I look at the text I’mstruck immediately with a sense of

revulsion towards the piteous content and my desire for authenticity is

greater than my interest in tolerating what simple comes across as

drivel to me.

Cioran’s ideology of indulgent-victimisation, ressentiment and bad

faith, is reminiscent of Seana Shiffrin’s argument that the unborn

cannot consent to being born. This runs along the moral principle that

the only things that ought to be experienced by an individual are those

they agree to. From this argument, the rain is evil, as no one gave rain

their consent to fall on them. We must also consider earthquakes to be

evil, as the tectonic plates didn’t gain the consent of those they have

shaken. Bird song too is evil, as we did not grant them our permission

to force us to hear them! It seems to me that the consent argument

positions the unborn as a psychic-authority to determine what potential

parents might do. I do not take this argument very seriously. Like

Cioran, it embraces a position of weakness that I simply find to be

revolting.

My response to the anti-natalist advocates of ideological-victimisation

is basically; yes, we are condemned to existence – now deal with yours!

There are those who advocate anti-natalism from environmental and

animalorientedconcerns, which are very different from religious and

philosophical justifications for the argument. Both positions generally

come down to the availability of resources and the cruel use of animals

within the anthropologicalmachine Reality of civilisation. Of all the

arguments for anti-natalism, these are those that I am most sympathetic

towards and have the most respect for. My disagreements with this

variant of anti-natalist thought I write here with an appreciation for

the values that they come from and a feeling of empathy for those

advocating it. The first of these disagreements is that this overlooks

that, as much as a human body is a body, it is also an environment and a

world to many living beings, who live lives that are ontologically

valuable, from a perspective that is willing to recognise them. As

environmentalists, we value the potentiality for forests found in soils

and rains, so why not value the potentiality within a mother’s egg and a

father’s sperm? There is also potential within human procreation for

individuals to grow into de-humanised animals, who actively deconstruct

and destroy the anthropological-machine Reality that inflicts cruelty

upon animals (both human and non-human) – who raising, protecting and

caring for seems like an excellent activity for those individuals who

feel revolted by what this culture has built. Really, this line of

anti-natalist thought embraces a position of human-exceptionalism, under

the lens of a misanthropic-ecological ideology.

Finally, there are those anti-natalists who come from a position of

classprejudice and ability supremacism. Individuals from this variant of

the ideology are typically those found on reddit and other web-forums,

who make the claim that it is immoral for individuals with certain

health conditions or who live in financial poverty to reproduce. The

shallowness and vulgarity of these arguments warrant little-to-no

response or consideration, as they are barely even thoughts. I only

mention it here to have not left any anti-natalist-type arguments out of

consideration. While far less thoughtful than any of the other arguments

already mentioned, this is likely to be the motivation for any potential

anti-natalist political program, along side other positions flirting

with eugenictype thoughts (or just straight up advocacy).

On Anarcho-Natalism

So far, I have focused on attempting to deconstruct and destroy

anti-natalism, in as many of the various forms it takes, as I am aware

of (though there likely are arguments I have neglected to reflect). Some

of the flavour of what I am playfully calling

anarcho-natalism/liberation-natalism will no doubt have permeated

through sections already, but I will dedicate the rest of this piece to

exploring the topography of this idea in more depth, with a personal

reflection at the end. As with surveying any space, it is impossible to

see all of it all at once, some areas will likely be explored in less

detail (possibly missed), and the exploration of the space is only as it

is encountered here, today, as I (and you) find it.

To reiterate a point I made earlier – like how there are anarchist

advocates of capitalism and anarchist advocates of communism who imagine

that the other wishes to enforce a life experience on them that they do

not desire, there may well be individuals who would read this in bad

faith and make the claim that what is being advocated here is some kind

of stateless enforcement of procreation. To anyone reading this who is

suspicious of such a sub-textual or subliminal intention within the

content, I am stating here that this is not at all what I am advocating.

While I am putting forward what could generally be considered a

“pro-life” position, I am entirely opposed to the idea of anyone being

coerced into parenthood, either hypothetically or in actually-occurring

situations (such as those experienced by many women across the world),

as someone who is

pro-choice/freedom/self-liberation/individual-empowerment – there is no

opposition to access to contraception or abortion here.

A friend commented on an earlier draft of this that they feel that

natalism needs no advocacy, as life simply happens, and that we are

already saturated in anarcho-hyphenations. As much as I see the points

they raise, I still feel a desire to put forward an argument for the

radical potential for natalism. The moralideological structure of

anti-natalism is ultimately restrictive and so lends itself to

authoritarian thinking – as the authorisers of acceptable behaviours.

And regarding (yet) another anarcho-concept being introduced here; my

anarchistrebellion is inclined toward guerrilla-ontological actions of

creating new destructive incendiary concepts and the acceleration of the

deterritorialistion of the Reality we live in – so I’m more inclined

towards supersaturating, to the point of forming phase changes that

crystallise into new forms of perception.

Imagine for a moment this – due to the pressures of ecological collapse

and depleted resources, as well as a cultural embrace of anti-natalist

philosophy and theology, an ideologically misanthropic totalitarian

world government is formed, similar to Maoists and Nazis in many ways,

which seeks to enforce a global nobirth policy. You are fertile, you

have not had a vasectomy or been sterilisedand you wish to become a

parent. You do not share the perspective of the society at large

philosophically and have different religious feelings (possibly

atheistic).

Are you going to conform to social and political pressures not to live

as you want to, or are you going to find a space for yourself to live as

you wish, an autonomous zone, and be a parent as you desire? Of course,

this is just an imagined future. But I would hope that, under the

circumstances, you would rebel!

The ground from which anarcho-natalism grows from is one of rebellion.

Rejectful of the moral appeals to conformity within anti-natalist

advocacy, anarcho-natalism has the energetic quality of

individualist-amoralism, which refuses to bend to social pressures. Like

nudists, queers and egoists, this natalist embraces their desires and

refuses repression.

The anarchist natalist has come to appreciate the praxis of parenthood,

as they know that there is no one right way to live, for any of us, but

are choosing parenthood for themselves. My experience of talking about

their being-parents with radical-dads and anarcho-mummies is entirely of

their feeling that there is no right way to live, to parent and so on,

but that it is what they want to do and that they wouldn’t do anything

else. These parents also have a desire to encourage their children to

deconstruct authoritarianism, to live a life that rebels against the

system and to be beautifully creative (in their destructive passions) –

while also appreciating that the children they guide have their own

adventures to explore, inclinations, minds and desires. This is what

liberation natalism seeks to bring – the opportunity for a generation

raised with the energy of rebellion, liberation and primal anarchy. Not

to oblige or force anyone into parenthood, but to embrace the desires of

individuals to parent and parent as they wish.

Rather than being reasons to not procreate, anarcho-natalism is prepared

to stake the claim that living through a mass extinction event and the

systemic collapse of global-civilisation makes this space we live in one

where new-life is more desirable. Yes, there will be struggle. Yes,

there will be suffering. Life has always involved suffering and struggle

though, and will always. However, now holds far greater potential for

resurgency, through struggle and suffering, and for the joys of wild

adventures and creative liberation.

There are anarchists for whom anti-natalist praxis, that is personal as

opposed to moral, fits their desires and preferences, which this is not

a challenge of. If you do not want to be a parent, don’t. If you

resonate more with the arguments in the French zine The Future Is A

Scam, as an anarchist anti-natalist whose rebellion is more inclined to

refuse feelings of societal pressure to adopt parenthood,

anarcho-natalism is not your praxis and that is likely to not be

contended by anyone who finds resonance with liberation natalism.

Liberation natalism is resistant against the push for non-creation and

the effort, whether pressured socially or through legislation and

police, to coerce loneparents, couples and polyamorous families out of

procreating, by proponents of anti-natalism who would seek to deny

anyone their desire to become-parent. It is also the act of taking a

chance, in the way that life is always taking a chance – especially in

the context of rebellion – in the potential for new desirable

experiences.

This comes from a similar feeling of defiance towards the rhetoric of

eugenics, in particular with regards to the Zapffe-Ligotti type

arguments, where human-type consciousness is not considered a desirable

evolutionary trait, so should be erased from the gene pool, and those

who are prejudicial towards those living in poverty or deemed less-able

– this is not to say that either Zapffe or Ligotti are advocates of

eugenics, but is a comment on how their arguments would fit the rhetoric

of eugenics advocates of fixing “evolutionary mistakes”. Anti-natalist

dogma, taken into the realms of biopolitics, would suggest a type of

political programming even uglier than efforts in ethnic-cleansing – of

course, this is an imagined potential future, but it warrants

consideration. Liberation natalists would immediately resist any current

or future effort in enforced sterilisation, or vasectomies.

Rather than a moral-act, it is an egoistic activity, embracing freedom

through procreation, as it comes from the selfish desire to embrace your

individual willto-life/power, the desire to love and care for someone

you have been part of the process of creating, and out of the refusal to

sacrifice your-desires by notprocreating for some Cause. Rather than

perpetuating narratives of repression and life-renunciation,

liberation-natalism occurs when procreation is an embrace of the desires

of the individuals involved. There are, without question, things people

who become parents go without, when choosing to care for a child, but

this is an embrace of their freedom, as the decide to care for the child

and give up what is less desirable to them than caring for the child. To

argue that they are forced to give up certain activities is bad faith,

as by there being alternatives for them to choose from, they are

choosing to not-do them.

In many ways, what anarcho-natalism is resistant towards is

authoritarianpaternalistmorality of anti-natalists who would claim to

know what is best for not-yet-born individuals. In this sense, the

liberation natalist rebellion is equally one of child/youth liberation

against the oppressive/repressive uber-Parent (who knows best). Like a

bullying grandparent, who belittles their child’s efforts in parenting,

anti-natalists assume a position of knowing what is best for the child,

before the child is even born or conceived, so attempt to take control

of their fate.

To the anti-natalists, there is a problem – life/existence. So there is

a solution – perhaps even a final solution(?). Those who believe in

problems to be solved typically adhere to the logic of the solution is

the right way, so people should follow the right way. If people aren’t

doing what they “should” do, society will usually turn to state

apparatus to enforce correct behaviour. If anti-natalist morality were

to follow this trajectory, the ideas presented here are intended as a

spanner in the works, and are intended to encourage individuals to do as

they wish.

Liberation-natalism, anarcho-natalism, rejects the idea that life is a

problem to be solved! Rather, it is an experience to be embraced and a

world to explore and an adventure! This could be considered

procreative-rebellion as well.

Personal Reflections

While, as I write this, I am not yet a parent, becoming-parent is a

personal desire of mine, which is also intensely shared by my partner.

I was born with a type of brain tumour that forms in the womb and is

thought to be the result of genetics. The tumour went unfound until I

was 19. I could resent my parents for bringing me into the world,

condemned to be a cancer patient or die young before it could be found,

through an agonising death, but I am grateful for all I have gained from

the experience – and if I died from it, I had many experiences that were

wonderful and valuable. Also, I could decide not to reproduce, to not

risk that same genetic trait being passed on to any child I could

father, but I would not, because I know that any life is going to have

suffering through it and still be worth it, really.

There is the potential for my losing my fertility before I am ready

personally and as a couple, to procreate, as an after-effect of the

radiation therapy to my pineal gland and how it might eventually affect

my pituitary gland. If this is the case, I may very well become a

supporter of anarcho-natalism, who is unable to procreate. There is

likely a degree to which I feel inclined to resist people being coerced

out of biological-parenthood, given the possibility of my losing my

chance biologically.

I write this reflection here for the most part to refute any claim that

I have not considered this personally, or with sincere and sober

reflection, but only academically or as a political concept.

Of course, my individual subjectivity will have impacted my

interpretations of anti-natalist arguments and, particularly in the case

of Cioran, my feelings of sympathy when reading them. Rather than

attempting to deny this through reducing my thoughts to appear more

objective, I have done my best to not depersonalise this.

It is also entirely possible that the claim could be made that I am in

denial of my own bad faith on the matter, in how I have considered

anti-natalism and how it lends itself to authoritarian thinking, as a

restrictive moral-ideology. When I consider this introspectively, my

feeling is that this is not bad faith, as I do not feel like

anti-natalism holds any restrictive-authority over me individually now,

but a pessimism towards the tendency of over-socialised individuals to

seek out fascistic-type structures to enforce what they feel is the

right way – the wish for oppression. A more optimistic reading of

anti-natalism might question this and criticise me here, but given how

anti-life the machinery of fascistic regimes are, from concentration

camps, mass shootings and gas chambers, through to the authoritarian

structures of societal daily life and totalitarian agriculture, I would

be dishonest if I denied how intensely anti-natalism appears to lend

itself to this form of ideology.

For me, being an anarchist means a commitment to the liberation of life

and flows of desire, while destroying mediums of repression. I have

tried my best to reflect that throughout this piece on

liberation-natalism!