@Cirrus Light  
I have to agree with you, that the world and what might come in the future is worth seeing, the world goes through rough patches sure but they eventually fade for one reason or another, nothing will ever remain constant, chaos theory is both a scary and wondrous concept that will spur life along new paths and experiences for the human race.
 
However, on the flip side, if the earth does continue to grow in population so exponentially the world won’t be able to sustain the new generations, at least in terms of quality of life. Fewer births might be a good thing in the long run till we can start spreading to the stars otherwise we’ll kill ourselves off not to mention all the other life on the planet even before that if overpopulation continues to grow so rampantly. The Great Plague was a horrible event in history but it also helped curb the rapid growth of overpopulation and reduced the consumption of major resources for newer generations, it was basically like the earths immune system kicking in.  
Fewer births for a certain period of time could ultimately be the best thing for the human race as a whole till technology advances to the point of what happened from 1900-2000 did and raised the standards of living to a sustainable level. As reprehensible as it sounds we’re due for another great plague or instead of it getting to that point regulate the birth rates to quell the population size. I’m not saying do what China does just that people not wanting or even refusing to have children isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the world is complicated like that.

Wow… yup, comment battle.

@PonyPonyPonyP0ny  
I mean, heck.
 
1900 saw us using horse as our main mode of transport. No refrigerators, maybe very expensive telegrams might be available in your town, no air conditioning, electrical power was still uncommon, you’d probably get water from an outdoor pump well (so hi-tech!), and your bathroom was an outhouse (flush toilets existed, but were mainly for the wealthy).
 
The next century saw common plumbing, air conditioning, common electricity, radio and much later now we’re at common freaking internet, personal computers, Civil Rights, the freaking Space Shuttle and International Space Station, and now there’s some rather successful companies trying to make freaking space travel common for people, and we’ve got hard and good work on freaking general AI and neural nets. Star Trek: The Next Generation called this crap “Positronic brains” and thought it’d be a marvel in 2500.
 
But I’m getting ahead of myself - just picture in your head that old Kansas farm without running water, electricity (nevermind air conditioning, a refrigerator, phone, lights, TV, or microwave) and compare that to the freaking International Space Station and early robots and the internet. That’s what you’d get to see living to 100 from 1900.
 
It completely blows 1800 to 1900 out of the water. And 1800 to 1900 even really blew 1700 to 1800 out of the water. So each century it just gets exponentially more amazing.
 
And now we’re tinkering with General AI, neural nets/deep learning, interplanetary travel, and my personal passion - physics is even poking at some faster-than-light concepts (probably somewhat akin to radio theorized in electromagnetic theories in late 1800’s), and private companies are racing national agencies for Mars and even beyond, we have project Starshot and ion engines , and robotics is to where making Sweetiebot is an engineering pet project, and I ask you; are you not excited to see what comes of this next century?
 
How can you deny someone else even greater wonders?
 
And even if human civilization wipes itself out, there are still existential wonders and emotional bonds and meaning and beauty that make life more than worthwhile.
 
We just get unimaginable blessings on top of it. Please appreciate it, because the less people appreciate it, the less stable it is, and I’d like to see it secure its future by spreading to the stars before it gets so unstable it falls apart, if it ever must on Earth.

@PonyPonyPonyP0ny  
“…the horrendous position that existence…” “That thinking is how you end up…” “It’s disgusting in how it completely fails…”
 
Yep, you should absolutely debate ideas, not people.
 
But if the idea guises itself as intellectual that really makes it no better to me. It’s asserting that existence itself isn’t some kind of mind-blowing ultimate good, and as someone who is continually just blown away at how the universe has somehow come to know itself and existentially thrilled, I find that an utterly reprehensible and repugnant philosophy that life isn’t worth living and you shouldn’t let others live. That it’s not a good thing that the human race continues.
 
As I suggested before, that idea should take a note from its own suggestion and just stop spreading. It would quickly discover why that’s such a horrific idea.
 
And let me add, you’re not giving birth to people in impoverished foreign countries. You’re giving birth to someone in the pinnacle of human civilization and the dawn of an age of unimaginable wonder as we tamper with revolutionary technologies and ideas like general AI, mental upload/neural interface with machines and colonization of distant worlds.
 
I just can’t stress enough, how absolutely magnificent life is. Perhaps a few years studying astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, with some sprinkling of neurology and biology and seeing the universe as it is and you’ll start to understand just how absolutely mind-bogglingly miraculous intelligent life is. It is literally the only thing in the entire unimaginable vastness of the known universe that endows it with any meaning.
 
You just have to see the immeasurable blessings and wonders that surround us, and you’d start to know why that idea is so atrocious. The idea is projecting depressed, fatalistic suicide ideation onto others and that’s just reprehensible.
 
Who the hell thinks life is so much suffering it’s not worthwhile for having any meaning? That’s a tiny, tiny minority of human beings who need to have therapy and/or take prescribed antidepressants until they no longer think that. Most people do not think that way. Banking on the fact that your child would come to regret being born or somehow people are the matter with the world and refusing to do what would actually teach you just how worthwhile life could be is just absolutely disgusting.
 
It just takes some really simple economics to understand that more people solves problems, not creates them. A civilization with 300 million can do more than 10x what a civilization of 30 million can do, and that means more per person.
 
Life is damn well worth living. It’s literally the most wondrous and existentially thrilling thing you’ve ever experienced. If you’d just take a minute to grasp just how far we’ve come as a species and what we’ve accomplished over what time, you’ll begin to see. Futurism is where it’s at, and we need our next generations of people raised to love and love learning to make that future happen. If you can’t believe in the present, perhaps you can at least believe in the future. And the kinds of amazing things my future children will see - my God, how can you deny anyone the opportunity to see that?
 
Colonizing Mars, possibly even robotic superintelligence, but probably at least some generalized AI, possibly interstellar flight, almost certainly the first asteroid mining and space colonies of some kind. Possibly even freaking immortality and a cure to aging with genetic breakthroughs. In not too long we’ll learn what it’s like to have to ask if sapient robots (even robot ponies! Hah) deserve human rights, an what it’s like to directly neurally interface with computers. Don’t you want to know what that’s like? What it’s like to walk on Mars or have an AI pony friend best buddy/servant who just wants to make you happy?
 
Untold discoveries that await us, perhaps even AI-assisted or computer modeled breakthroughs in psychology that will help depressed people on a personal level. With the insane breakthroughs we’re making in the ability to solve problems, I honestly almost expect depression to be cured in my lifetime! As for life experiences, though, hell, even pony fandom as an example of coming to love fictional characters. Now imagine you feel that way about a real person and get to spend the rest of your life with them.
 
And life is just so horrible that it’s not right to let anyone new experience all of that?
 
If you shove your face in the mud of course you’re gonna see the dirt. But if we’re going to get anywhere we’ve got to stop thinking of our place in the dirt and start wondering about our place among the stars, and being a part of the great superorganism that is the human race. It’s been a wild ride. Someone born in 1700 and lived a century would see a lot of great changes, but those would pale in comparison to someone born in 1800 and lived to see industrialization, and those are a joke compared to what you’d see born in 1900 to see the space race, airline industry, computers and internet.
 
From 1700-1800, you had American colonies, independence, and democracy.  
1800-1900, Industrialization, railroads, canals and such.  
1900-2000, from horse and buggy to the first cars, radio, widespread plumbing and electrical power, both world wars, yes, but then nuclear power, widespread aviation, science fiction, air conditioning, TV, the space age, computers, Civil Rights, early robotics, and the internet.
 
From freaking horse and buggies being the most common mode of travel to the internet. The previous century saw nothing like that. So you just have to wonder…
 
God knows what the next century has in store.
 
It’s worthwhile even if just to see that, never mind the possibility of personal joy in a mate, family, etc.

Motherhood isn’t restricted to having children of your own, and in many cases, some mothers can’t have their own babies.
 
Crystalis has a good point, even if only for the most part, and even if it’s only from personal experience, because most people don’t actually decide to have children - rather, they simply have them, whether they wanted them or not. This almost always allows the failure to account for a quality upbringing of a child, which is a very expensive and difficult thing to do, when done right. Don’t get me started on when it is done wrong, which is, sadly enough, far more prevalent in the world than could be morally acceptable; but it continues, and at alarming rates, because ignorance causes suffering.
 
More than 50% of the world live in poverty and conditions in which you cannot ensure a good life for anyone. That is over 3 billion people, deficit to how many are having children, the number of which I don’t know but is still hundreds of millions of people. Most people simply aren’t prepared, and a human being has to pay for this. How is that right?
 
This cannot be called generosity. It’s logically flawed. Read up about Kant’s practical imperative.
 
I should stress, however, that many of those who identify as antinatalists do not represent what it truly means. It’s an intellectual moral stance championed by the likes of David Benatar, Zapffe that states that bringing someone into existence cannot be good for them, both morally and logically. It can only cause a net deficit of bad for them.
 
Take that as you may. I take no stance on the matter but I’d much rather adopt than have my own kids. If not having kids is the most selfish thing you can do, adopting is the least.
 
Cirrus, don’t attack the person, attack the argument.

Whoo boy, this place is making me feel depressed. (Guess that’s a good enough sign for me to click unsubscribe and leave.)

@GargantuanBass  
Very sad. If you at least want to see things differently, I wish you success in so doing.

@Deserter
 
Sure thing. No need to be so uppity about it though.

@GargantuanBass  
“temporary relief from inevitable suffering.”  
I rolled my eyes so fast it’s a wonder I didn’t give myself strabismus.
 
Of course you’re gonna view life as being shit if you treat all the good moments like that, I mean, for fuck’s sake, I know life isn’t peaches and cream all the time, but it’s not brimstone and hellfire either.
 
But I know anything I say won’t register because you have the concept of “life sucks” embedded into your brain, so let’s agree to disagree.

@Cirrus Light
 
That’s a huge slippery slope you’re giving there. No one is saying there’s no positive aspects about life. The main principle is that those positives can not outweigh the negatives and that said positives are only temporary relief from inevitable suffering.
 
Regardless, I’m well aware it doesn’t make sense for everyone. Humans have an innate drive to stay alive after all, and that’s okay. More power to the fortunate that genuinely enjoy their lives. I apply this view only to myself and am not suggesting it be forced onto others. For me it’s just a long-winded explanation on why I don’t want to have children and “carry on the family name”.

@Deserter
 
I’m not vegan.

@Background Pony #0EC8  
Eh, five minutes. I’ve written longer.

@Cirrus Light  
Seems like someone was successfully baited to write tl;dr post and waste their time.

@GargantuanBass  
Yeah, that sounds just about as atrocious, and presupposes the horrendous position that existence is a burden that’s not worthwhile, and some sort of curse instead of a blessing. That thinking is how you end up killing millions of people as a mercy to their existence. It’s disgusting in how it completely fails to recognize any net blessing, meaning, worthwhileness or even sanctity to life, since the ultimate conclusion of its application would in fact be the complete genocide of the human race as a whole.
 
I hope at some point you at least find existence a preferable alternative to suicide.
 
In the future, you should probably treat the idea the same way as the idea wants to treat humans, and just never mention it to anyone so that eventually the idea dies out.
 
Of course, if you argue that the idea should survive, then you’re arguing that its existence is worthwhile, and its existence can only exist so long as humans do to perpetuate it, therefore you’re indirectly arguing that it is fundamentally flawed as an idea.
 
And if you argue it should be around only as long as humans are, then humans have a purpose which is to embrace that idea, therefore there is some meaning to their existence. Such an argument also implicitly states that the only reason humans should exist is to stop existing.
 

 
So in other words, go help out at a soup kitchen or something genuinely to benefit others. Learn to like something or someone and you’ll start to find some meaning in life.

@GargantuanBass  
Figures a vegan would come up with something like that.

@Cirrus Light
 
Antinatalism is refraining from having children (and in some cases, going vegan) to spare them the burden of existence. It has nothing to do with the currently living.

@Background Pony #0EC8  
Probably. I think the caption could have been better myself. I was also speaking more generally since I’ve seen this kind of stuff happen other places too (even super innocent things like cute pictures or videos of kittens).

@mjangelvortex  
I think if it used indicative mood instead of imperative mood, there would be less comments like that,

@Beau Skunky  
Leave it to the internet to add in nilhilism and cynicism at the mention of love and positivity.

I find the image kinda cute, and touching.  
Then I saw the comments… lol

@GargantuanBass  
Isn’t that called genocide?

@Crystalis
 
Antinatalists unite

@Shred_Hexstring  
Can reptiles really appreciate that gift?
 
@Background Pony #2EE7  
Dads are lovely too though. :D

The most wondrous miracle in the universe is that it somehow has come to be aware of its own existence.
 
To the existentially nihilistic it must be an even greater miracle to believe that the dream that is reality has somehow created dreamers.
 
Not merely mechanical actions of physics that carry out, but beings that perceive and feel them in an existential way that defies understanding, and carry strange transcendent worlds within them of imagination and potential, and perception and distinction of past, present, and future.
 
My god, reality. The more you understand it and study it, the more realize what an impossible miracle it is.
 

 
What an honor to introduce another little miracle in to experience all its wonder, good and evil, glory and inglory, impossibility and inevitability - to have these concepts at all.

@PonyPon  
Yes.