To ask if you think coming into existence is a good thing for every human

[Pavementworrier]

We all live through pain at some point. Hopefully also joy (although I'd say that's a fairly modern possibility for ordinary folk). When you make a child exist is it always a good thing, regardless of the balance of ups and downs? Are you grateful just to be here for this experience no matter how it goes?

(Inspired by a conversation on another thread)

But those things were completely normal. As someone said, you don't miss what you've never had.
Serfdom was hard, but it didn't remove the human capacity for joy, there is plenty of evidence of strong human cooenctiln, families living together for generations forming strong bonds, close knit communities, many annual celebrations and festivities.
All peoples, in all circumstances, have times of joy.

I was born with no eyes and with multiple joint deformities. Have had a pretty amazing life though. Lovely childhood with adoring parents, did very well academically at school and got a first class degree from a top university and now do a rewarding job, own my own home, have a good social life etc. Most importantly, I'm very happily married with a perfect baby.
My life is sweet, just because you lack the imagination to fathom that life with severe disabilities might be worth living, even rich and fulfilling, doesn't make it true.

As for why people had kids in bad times/situations in the past, well, people generally like to have sex, and I guess a bit of sheep's intestine wasn't always a reliable method of contraception 👍

So much unhappiness is caused by comparison. If EVERYONE uses a chamberpot, has no heating bar an open fire, can only eat fish on Fridays, has no money and lives in one room, then they will find their joy from other things. They wouldn't be sitting around green with jealousy because them at Number Nine have an indoor toilet (these were regarded with deep suspicion at first and thought of as being dirty - evacuating your bowels in the house?!) because they didn't know anyone with an indoor toilet.

Joy is found in the small things. I don't have much ready cash but I still love walking out into the middle of a field and looking up at the sky.

It's an interesting question- but honestly, I think human beings are a range from those who are broadly able to be happy despite their hardships, or generally miserable regardless of their luck.

I think slaves can find slavery intolerably despite never having known anything else.

Did bronze age miners know joy as they scrambled around in the dark rock? I really doubt it.

There is a reason nobody smiles in early photography

Of course they knew joy! That doesn't suggest that there lives weren't marked with hardship and pain, but joy was present as well. As it has been in every human society that has ever existed.

I think that's your world view. I don't feel jealousy I just don't want to live in grim stench. I don't give a toss what anyone else is doing (unless they stink in my vicinity I suppose).

Often the people that have the least are the happiest and most generous! I traveled to India when I was young and some of the poorest people were very hospitable.

And it's not because everyone in Victorian Britain was sad all the time!

I remember talking to a good friend a few years ago. Talking about climate crisis and how that has changed how I look to the future with such uncertainty and how difficult it is all to bear. I was utterly shocked that she said (and very matter of factly), ‘well, of course, I wish I had never been born, but…’

I was speechless and then I sort of ignored it as she had gone on to talk about the future and climate and existential crisis. But it was completely shocking. To wish you had never been born… now I knew people felt that way SOMETIMES, through depression or crisis perhaps. But to talk about it off hand as if this were a perfectly normal state of affairs. It knocked me sideways.

I was struggling hugely, still do, with the idea that we - humanity- are (seemingly at increasing speed and with an ever increasing plethora of ways to do it) doing our damnedest to wipe ourselves out and take most everything else with us when we go. But I describe it more as mourning for what is and what may not be. And that sorrow comes because I find the world incredible, beautiful and wonderous. I feel so lucky to be here and see the majesty and wonder of nature, the small and incredible kindnesses people can show and the brilliant and masterful things we can achieve.

To find life so awful that you would have rather missed out on it all I find desperately sad. We can never know what may happen and so it’s the journey that really matters.

Come now. Your unending negativity and refusal to consider any other opinion was slightly grating but now you’re just being silly.

People didn’t smile because of long exposures. Far easier to just hold your normal expression that a rictus grin for ages.

And that reason is because early photography was done on silver plates which takes minutes to sit immobile while a camera captures enough light to produce an image... That was the predominant reason why people in them look stiff and maintain neutral facial expressions.
Not to mention that early photographic portraits were done for rich people who didn't have to work in a field and, often, had servants to heat up water for their hot baths. So perfectly joyous by your standards.

I agree! If you’ve never had it, you don’t miss it. I think birth control probably made a lot of women happier.

My Dad was born in the 1920s, 7th of 9 kids. No NHS, no welfare benefits. His Dad died an agonising death from an industrial disease when his kids were young. Several older brothers didnt come back from WW2.
Mother was an alcoholic.
I dont think there was much joy in his early years tbh

That is incredibly sad. My Grandmother was the eldest of 8 and had to look after her siblings from age13 when her mother had to go back to work to make ends meet.

I don’t see the point of bringing people into the world if there was nothing positive to look forward to but we aren’t in that situation . Yet .

Not necessarily but I do think we all exist for a reason, we aren’t just random blips. If you watch the series Fringe, I think the world is ordered a little like this. I don’t think there’s alternative universes and doppelgängers but I do believe if we try to fuck with the order of ‘destiny’, it can mess up other people’s lives. That sounds so woo but if anyone has seen it you’ll get it. I also picture life a bit like Dr Seuss’s Oh the Places You’ll Go. Life’s mapped out for us with set paths and our freedom of choice is which path to take.

Anyway that aside. The world would be better if some people weren’t born, i.e paedophiles, rapists and serial killers. People who cause deliberate harm to others with zero care.

I have felt joy and still do. Still wish I’d never been born.

He very rarely talked about his childhood. He did say though that the first time he was ever properly fed was when he was called up for National service x

This thread really brings home how lacking some people are in imagination.

The idea that the comparative material hardship of the past meant that humans didn't experience the same joy and happiness as we do is wild.

Wealth doesn't necessarily make much difference - I have noticed that the most well off people I know tend to be the most miserable. Wealth can often isolate people for various reasons for a start.

Poverty also depends a lot about circumstances. I have visited very poor rural villages in Southern Africa and India. There seemed to be a huge amount of happiness. But city poverty is often a very different thing in the same places. I could probably cope with rural village poverty and find things to enjoy, but absolutley not with e.g. a life working on the rubbish tips or as a forced prostitute.

I had a really horrendous childhood and there have been a lot of knock on effects of that on my adult life.

I do find joy, where I can. I'm actually quite an optimist. I've had some lovely moments in life. But ultimately, the vast majority of it was a bloody hard slog. With a lot of trauma and pain. I'm still here, in my 50s, but absolutely knackered emotionally. On balance I would have preferred not to exist. I've just had to make the best of it.

Yes, rural poverty does seem easier somehow and people are more content. I stayed in a Bedouin tent with an Arab family and they had hardly anything but were so friendly and hospitable. Their children were delightful and very well behaved too.