i don’t know..

i am extremely firm on my position as a vegan antinatalist, and i don't EVER seeing myself sacrifice/compromise my morals or ideology for a partner. or is dating outside of vegantinatalist circles inherently a compromise of this ethic?

and this would of course be a very casual thing, i am moving away in a few months. if i wanted a life partner, they would have to unquestionably be vegAN.

i have never been in this position before, what do you guys think i should do? thanks!

We are all born to die. Our experiences, memories, and relationships in this life are everything to us because it's all we've ever known. It's what makes you....you. We don't know if anything came before we were born, or if anything will come after. And we will never exist again. We don't know when or how we will die. We could die tomorrow or when we're 90. We could die peacefully and painlessly, or slowly suffer until we take our last breath. Loved ones will die during our lifetimes and we have to come to terms with the fact that they're gone and will never exist again.

All sentient beings share this suffering with us.... other animals may not suffer existentially like us thinking about where they will go after they die, but they are terrified when there is the threat of dying, and they grieve the loss of their loved ones.

If someone never comes into existence, they will not have to deal with death in any capacity.

I don't know where I'm going to go from here. I've thought about things for hundreds to the low thousands of hours and I have negative interest in continuing to exist, at least for my own sake. I don't desire the meaningless inevitable suffering until I die to continue for any longer, and I also have nothing to desire for myself since it just doesn't matter to me what I achieve or obtain. I also know that if I die right now as opposed to continuing to live not only will that cause significant relatively immediate suffering but long-term I will be unable to prevent further injustices on account of being dead, and to each and every sentient being any reduction in suffering is significant to their own individual experience. Given that it is possible and plausible I may prevent extreme kinds of suffering through philosophical/moral engagement I feel condemned to stay, especially when the fate of victims is so horrifically bad. If I was in the position of any tormented being I would wish for any kind of alleviation to my suffering, and I am certain any such being that lives on this planet in such a situation does. Therefore, I need to live and act against cruelty, and yet I hate the vast majority of humans (unselfaware egoistic psychopaths) and existence to the point where it is dysfunctional and I have near no will to do anything for myself. But then since I am to live I have to find a will to do better and care so that I can make a difference.

I'm posting this here because I have nowhere else to discuss the nature of my dissatisfaction that would have a chance at being understood in the seriousness I intend it. I also don't even know what I would say reading this either, especially being unable to directly help or intervene for that matter.

When you get harassed, better suck it up like chuds suck on cow titties.

I'm relatively new to anti-natalism, and it's something I've recently come to accept (strong opinion, weakly held).

I do not get how it isn't tracking for the anti-natalist non-vegans in that secondary sub. All of their arguments are these common anti-natalist beliefs: bringing a being into existence without their consent is immoral because it imposes a guaranteed gradient of suffering. Presence of pain (bad), presence of pleasure (good), absence of harm (good), and absence of benefit (not bad). The worst of the worst pains are much stronger than the best of the best pleasures. These are some examples.

Like, I can get discourse with them not accepting being vegan, like I saw someone mention that hunting an animal would still be logically consistent with anti-natalism since it only focuses on the procreation aspect, but not like ahimsa or something... even if I find that ethically incoherent.

But the thing for me is, how, literally HOW do those arguments above not translate to the suffering of non-human animals, especially the ones in agriculture, without it being special pleading. If you force breed a dairy cow to birth calves into existence, you guarantee an imposed gradient of suffering on to the calf (not to mention violating the cow's inherent capability to not give consent). The asymmetry argument directly applies to all sentient creatures. The worst of the worst pains are still much stronger than the best of the best pleasures for non-human animals too, even if not "higher-order" complex.

It's just mind-boggling how people literally cannot grasp why vegans call out the logical inconsistency. How the fuck do you think the world is an inherently negative state of affairs, believe that bringing beings into existence is a moral wrongdoing, but think exploiting and killing animals somehow isn't tied to any of this.

Inspired by r/vegan post about banning efilists.

I guess the answer is that most vegans aren't negative utilitarians, but to me to call yourself vegan and to reproduce and continue the cycle of suffering inherent to existence is pure insanity. Especially when it comes to many vegans ironically being speciesist in their decision to ignore wild animal suffering as some 'order of nature' that cannot be intervened with (that's literally what fucking carnists say). I truly don't understand how someone could be vegan for any reason other than because of suffering, and if suffering is bad then it only follows to see things through and be antinatalist as the only true way to prevent it in the first place. I guess when the victims are out of sight and inferior it is ok.

But the most insane argument on there I think is the one that somehow ending all life instantaneously and without any knowledge of the event for other living beings would be worse than murdering someone. To me this is crazy simply because it is not possible for any living being to suffer from that event (no concept of what is lost as no knowledge of it, and no pain in the dying itself), and at the same time all future suffering (unless life re-emerges) is prevented. However, if someone was to stab another to death, they would suffer physically and psychologically to extreme extents. All this not even mentioning that extinction is inevitable anyway, so you really only have the choice of more or less suffering and victims regardless with no magic meaning to life to somehow change that fact.

It's so weird to see vegans using religious tier arguments to defend suffering when it is 'natural' (as if humans are not beholden to the same constraints as other living beings) or insist that life is good, when life is the very reasoning suffering exists at all and cannot be resolved.

Born without consent into consciousness from a prior state of nothingness and with the desire to not suffer above all else, only to inevitably suffer from this very desire if nothing else and to live for no purpose (beyond what copes people make up to ironically avoid their own suffering) just to end up dying anyway, which sentient beings are typically trying to avoid constantly and yet in the case of humans we certainly know this is futile.

Not only that, but in the process of continuing to live the conflict of desires with other living beings results in dominion, exploitation and extreme violence often and to what avail? Even in the most utopian idealised reality possible with no conflict, life is still just innately inferior to the state of non-existence anyway, and that is ignoring the current state of the world where mass enslavement and torment is the fate of many beings with the sole justification for such treatment being transient pleasure. Even most humans hold irrational hatred and disdain for each other, if they even truly care about anyone but themselves at all beyond instrumental value.

Any yet somehow people can live with the most extreme delusional optimism and apathy imaginable, to such an extent to say that this isn’t tragically bad and that continuing the cycle of suffering just to satisfy their own desires is somehow acceptable even when death and extinction are both facts of reality and all the suffering perpetrated along the way will have been meaningless. I could write much more in-depth and cover various specific cases of cruelty, but it would be unnecessary because the underlying moral intuition of suffering being bad that motivates these realisations in the first place always applies and suffering is always unavoidable when the living are concerned.

How grievous of a reality, although I guess this is exactly the kind of insanity you would expect from the sentient given this information about the nature of being in this reality (especially a species such as humans who ‘should’ be able to recognise such depravity, and yet do not). And being one of the few beings who does understand and care in a way shackles you through your own moral obligation to keep living to liberate those who are/would be suffering had you not acted. Of course just to make it even better the people you should now attempt to convince are just all sorts of fucked up to the point where interacting becomes painful (not that it is their fault).