{"id":15078,"date":"2022-05-01T18:39:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T01:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/?p=15078"},"modified":"2022-05-01T18:39:16","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T01:39:16","slug":"crazy-or-totally-fucking-nuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/crazy-or-totally-fucking-nuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazy or Totally Fucking Nuts?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/pat-b.gif?ssl=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15080\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/pat-b.gif?resize=500%2C275&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A <strong>Pat Benatar<\/strong> song came on the car radio the other day and I was instantly reminded of a blog post I wrote years ago about <a href=\"https:\/\/godammit.com\/the-dont-have-children-movement\/\">antinatalism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Antinatalism is the belief that it&#8217;s morally wrong to have children. Why is it wrong? Because &#8220;life is harm&#8221; and because the unborn is unable to give consent.<\/p>\n<p>On the face of it, this argument is just nuts. I mean, it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/talonsphilosophy.wordpress.com\/2013\/11\/17\/conscious-and-unconscious-knowledge-epistemology-emily\/\">unconscious knowledge<\/a> that this is nuts. By unconscious knowledge, I mean instinctual knowledge. We may also find it self-evident that a person who believes that &#8220;life is harm&#8221; is a deeply unhappy person.<\/p>\n<p>But in trying to refresh my memory on the lunacy of antinatalism, I came across an <a href=\"https:\/\/epochemagazine.org\/30\/on-antinatalism-and-depression\/\">essay<\/a> that tries to refute the idea that antinatalism is a philosophy borne of depression. Yeah, well, some depressed people may see things more realistically than an incurable optimist, but it&#8217;s inherent in the illness to see the world in distorted ways that only therapy or meds can modify. (The most well-known proponent of antinatalism is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/persons-of-interest\/the-case-for-not-being-born\">guy<\/a> who insists on strict privacy about his private life so that we can&#8217;t extrapolate anything from his history or psychological make-up. Hint: He is miserable.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, Pat Benatar caused me to go back and read the post from 2008, and just as I recall, the comments are hilarious. Comment threads like these have kept me writing here for a million years, and while they don&#8217;t occur very often, they are pure joy. I hope you will go read that post and then laugh your heads off at the comments.<\/p>\n<p>And I hope you will be moved to comment here, so we can laugh some more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Pat Benatar song came on the car radio the other day and I was instantly reminded of a blog post I wrote years ago about antinatalism. Antinatalism is the belief that it&#8217;s morally wrong to have children. Why is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/godammit.com\/crazy-or-totally-fucking-nuts\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9,7,6],"tags":[307,475,420,66,984],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/pat-b.gif?fit=500%2C275&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t44M-3Vc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15078"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15082,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15078\/revisions\/15082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}