When arguing for a Right to die, AN & Efilism, (&Promortalism), I came to this apparent contradiction:

How can I understand that it's not true when someone claims another person's life is better than it is, yet at the same time I claim someone's life is worse than they think it is?

How can I judge that someone has optimism bias and therefore their judgment about life (all lives of others) is wrong?

Basically I'm saying: "When someone perceives their own life as bad, your claims that it isn't that bad are wrong, bc the perception of one's own life is subjective. Yet I, in spite of just saying it's subjective, I also claim your life is not as good as you claim it is."

Like it's only subjective when it's positive, but objective when it's negative. How come? It feel like contradicting.

R/efilism has over 10k subs now and growing. Plus the whole YouTube space gathering thousands more. And yet all you guys do here is sit and repeat "life is shit". This is why I don't consider myself efilist: because you keep talking about solutions but haven't come together to actually make anything. I'm extremely promortalist and agreee with efilism but I don't follow it as strongly nor care as much anymore because nothing has actually been done. You do have the numbers to make your ideals something big. What are you all waiting on?

What are your views on this philosophy?

I used to feel safe and enjoy being around people, but after being horrifically abused & scapegoated by narcissistic & codependent parents I lost all faith in humanity. Now I just want to see this awful world burn to the ground asap, I think 2020, 2022 was a great start, but it’s still too slow and painful. The elites and their cronies are enjoying themselves while most people are just barely getting by, and this is in first world countries, while poorer places people suffer even more but have dozens of kids per family. I used to enjoy horror movies but no anymore after realizing I’m living in one! Those who never went through horrific things in life like endless violence, emotional abuse, abject poverty, isolation, disability, unimaginable pain & suffering don’t care about anyone but themselves, they don’t understand and never will until something horrific happens to them. So nothing will change and the only realistic solution is to bring an end to everything, and the most likely paths right now are: nuclear war, AI, climate change or another pandemic. The first two being closest on the horizon and fastest, and least suffering overall compared to everything else?

I've read about the concept of the big red button and how it's deemed the moral choice to press it.

Efilists believe that existence is inherently harmful due to unavoidable suffering. This claim extends beyond individual perspectives, suggesting a universial moral truth rather than a subjective viewpoint. This is a huge problem for me.

You might view suffering as objectively bad, but the experience and evaluation of suffering varies greatly. I can't agree with the idea of universial harm as an absolute moral truth. I think moral truth's are subjective and therefore efilism doesn't deal in facts.

Living is already shitty enough, but as an efilist and being aware this place was designed to be bad and obly bad is torture. Coping is starting to fail because I can't enjoy anything, nothing makes fucking sense any more, and the fact that suffering is all there is and ever will be makes literally sitting at home hell. My life is not as bad as others in say a 3rd world country, but being efilist and having the time to realize I should be dead is painful. I always have a tight, constant feeling, in my chest. It sucks.......

There are certain ideas, that will cause a reaction of fury and anger in many people. Ideas that formed the core of societal programming.

For example, if I tell someone that I think the earth is flat, giving justifications in a kind way. What will the responce be? Or when I question evolution, say that talmudic bankers bought out the world?

Its the exact same thing with antinatalim/efilism. The reaction will be anger and even violence for just mentioning that topic. There are ideas that have been deemed taboo by the collective mass.

I am not talking about whether someone agries or disagrees, gives an argument pro or contra. But about the psychotic triggered reaction.

Life is not same for everyone. Life is suffering, I saw yesterday a 5 or 6 year old child trying to sell some stuffs in the street it's so hurt to see those things, I showed a little kindness to him and that child started walking with me as I assume nobody showed him kindness I saw tears in his eyes... imagine how there's so many child are like him and so many people living in utter shit, in a hellhole they never wanted... it's just happened everyday.

And on the other people are busy entertaining themselves, don't they acknowledge the reality of our world? Have you ever seen that life is so different and asymmetrical. A beautiful life should be equal for everyone. Nobody should live like that child, no child should. I don't how to say but thinking how many people are suffering just to exist is heartbreaking.

I believe that the definitions should be solid enough, but it is perfectly possible for it to contain inaccuracies and mistakes. Feel free to criticize the definitions I propose!

Extinctionism: suffering-focused sentientist philosophy and ideology that defends that the ultimate act of extinction is a reliable way or the best option for preventing suffering. Extinctionists argue that the absence of living beings is a guaranteed absence of suffering, and thus it's worth it to achieve this scenario for all biological entities that suffer.

Extinctionism is broad, as complements can vary between extinctionists. Some, known as active extinctionists, claim that humans are capable and should attempt to look for a way to cause a safe and ethically-induced extinction; whilst others, called passive or neutral extinctionists, believe that we don't have that control, but still believing that extinction is the best realistic scenario for sentient beings. Extinctionists are not necessarily efilists.

Efilism: philosophical movement initiated on the internet in the early 2010s by Gary Mosher, usually known by his pseudonym and nickname "Inmendham". Efilism is mainly characterized by the condemnation of sentient suffering and the subversion or rejection of the value of life. Etymologically, "efil" from "efilism" is "life" backwards, meaning that life on Earth is in an opposite path in relation to actual goodness, and indicating that life is a fundamental error. Efilists tend to embrace darwinism and existential nihilism, highlighting how life for humans and animals is harmful, dangerous, riddled with misery and meaningless.

Gary's original framework of efilism consisted in an extension of antinatalism, keeping antinatalism as an essentially necessary condition for efilism. Different thinkers have questioned this relation, asking if or stating that, in order for one to be a true efilist, they also have to strictly be an antinatalist. Arguably all efilists are at least passive extinctionists.

I'm not trying to prove efilism wrong, just sharing my personal intuition, I welcome the downvotes and criticisms.

Why won't I push the button? Because I don't "feel" right doing it, that's it, the TLDR version.

The long version?

1. This universe has no moral guide, no cosmic code of conduct and no objective law for behavior.

2. Everything is deterministic, including life. Nothing can escape it.

3. Deterministic causality enabled life, evolution, natural selection and eventually enough brain cells to conceptualize subjective mind dependent things, such as purpose, morality and "feelings".

4. BUT, life is "naturally" diverse, varied and mutates a lot, meaning it is unlikely for us to develop the same feelings for the same facts, even individuals have strong disagreements about the same things, let alone the entire "species."

5. So who is "right" and who is "wrong" about anything that isn't cold hard facts like physics? Nobody. The concept of right/wrong does not even make sense when applied to subjective intuitions (instinct + feelings). If you feel that something is right for you, then it's right for you, there is no other way to go about it.

6. All non factual guides for behaviors (ought) are developed from our intuitions, including Efilism. There are no "factual" guides for behaviors, IS cannot become Ought, a logical barrier of reality.

7. This means, all of morality, ethics, purpose, and whatever behavioral "ideal" humans could come up with, are all subjective to mind dependent human intuitions. Since intuitions are diverse, varied, nuanced and context dependent, this means we will never have a universal "ideal" that everyone can agree with.

8. Thus.......without TRUE right and TRUE wrong, people can intuitively argue for whatever ideal they want, but nobody will emerge as the ultimate victor. Unless you consider majority consensus as a standard for the "best" ideal to follow.

9. No amount of logic, reason and rationality can change this fact about reality, that we are just deterministic platforms for diverging and intuitively subjective ideals. Yes people naturally want to avoid harm, but what facts dictate we must go extinct to avoid harm? Is extinction a deeply hidden desire of all humans? How do you prove this?

10. MY personal intuition, is to not push the red button, something deep inside deters me. It doesn't mean you have to follow my intuition, you can push the red button if that's your intuition.

FIN.

No insults please, let's discuss with civility. hehe

I worked as a psych nurse & have a history of “hit & misses” myself in context of bipolar & a shit ton of childhood trauma. During my time as a psych nurse I worked in an eating disorder unit and we had a 17 yo patient that was on an involuntary hold. They were in our ward for around 6 months and fought the entire time, this kid did not want to live. The entire nursing team were so burnt out by the end because of the psychiatrists drive to break them into accepting treatment only for them to flip the switch & throw them in the ‘too hard’ basket. It got to the point that we had 5+ male nurses restraining them, despite this kid being barely 5ft & weighing around 35kg the strength they had was unmatched. We would force a tube through their nose & force feed them to keep their body alive. I remember one of my colleagues compared this to r*pe like forcing something into someone’s body they don’t consent to. I feel by the end of their admission they knew they had to gain enough weight just to gtfo. We essentially did nothing for them other than inflict further trauma. Like many patients we discharged they rapidly lost the weight & were back on the waiting list. This kid was extremely intelligent, like genius level..probably one the smartest people I’ve encountered. They had suffered so much trauma in their short time and I feel they knew that this was going to carry through their entire life. When they found out they were being readmitted they took their life. We were taught in psych to accept that if someone has made a decision, they are going to do it as long as we can prevent it from happening under our care to avoid investigations, paper work etc. The priority in psych is “keep them safe” but that only applies to ‘under our care’, after discharge its out of our hands. I’ve seen patients assaulted by ‘nurses’, I’m talking being punched multiple times in the head when they’re already restrained while upper management are in the room then falsifying documentation. My time in psych was a real peep behind the curtain of how corrupt & dark the system is. It breaks not only the patients but clinicians that enter the career with good intentions.

Although approaches to mental health treatment have become less barbaric since the asylum days, the reality is that the foundations of treatment haven’t changed. Forced admission, unwanted medication, electroconvulsive treatment, physical & chemical restraint still very much exist, it’s just now we have trauma informed care posters & give patients the illusion that they have autonomy. Why? To say we tried? The reality is that psych is containment so society doesn’t have to deal with the inconvenience.

I left the field because the cognitive dissonance started fking me up on a deep level. I pushed myself through university which destroyed not only my mental health but my social life, finances and creativity because I was sold a lie that nursing was an honourable choice & looking back I feel I chose to be a nurse to fill my own void & the deep desire to feel needed & appreciated. This experience combined with consistent abusive relationships throughout my personal life has absolutely broken my spirit. Despite ticking all the boxes & getting 2 degrees, I now live back at my family home, on welfare with absolutely no motivation to return to the job or participate in society. Ironically I no longer have the same energy to attempt, I now just live in a state of ‘waiting at the bus stop’

Weird post to make but thought it could be interesting given there aren't many people like me. I used to be a big advocate for antinatalism/efilism for multiple years, but have pivoted away from it recently.

I would still agree with Benatar's asymmetry that it would be better never to have been, in theory. I also don't plan on reproducing personally based on this.

However, I've come to realise that the majority of people will never believe in these views, and holding them increases the chances of misanthropy for a good number of people - leading to increased suffering.

For me at least, holding these views decreased my ability to focus on more realistic ways of reducing suffering in the world. I became less caring of people's problems. The thinking being "oh these problems can just be solved by not reproducing". I became spiteful of the world and less helpful to those around me.

Sure, my potential children will not exist and therefore not suffer from worldly problems, but other people still do reproduce, and will continue to do so. I need to do what I can to help these beings, not just hold them in contempt for reproducing.

TLDR - For better or worse, these views will never succeed in convincing the majority of humans. I'm beginning to think we should focus on more realistic, widely accepted ways of reducing suffering.

I've just taken a gander at this sub and it seems to me that Effilism is a "glass half empty" sort of philosophy. With the idea that joy is a temporary interruption of otherwise constant suffering, as opposed to suffering being an interruption of joy. What is appealing about effilism, does it bring fulfillment? Or is it more a responsibility to prevent the suffering of future generations by preventing them from existing?

I found about efilism a year ago and since I'm a strong efilist. As I belong from a 3rd world country and I have seen worst form of life condition and unnecessary trouble that has no meaning. Everyday is challenging. I wonder what its like to be truly happy but guess we are bound to this stupid loop... everyday I wish if there were no life there would be no suffering at all, no pain, no starving, no riots, violence, no war, nothing... Just beautiful peace. I even don't know how I'm keeping myself sane everyday seeing worst of worst.

suffering is ultimately created by the mind which are thoughts what if set a step back and just observe this suffering it would not make us happy but it would make us peaceful

what are your views?

Just look at my profile to see a post I made on suicide watch that got deleted for, probably, wrong think. Say anything outside the pro-life lifescript and you will be silenced; this has happened to me multiple times. This is a huge barrier to normalizing assisted suicide -- how can we do that if we can't even discuss suicide from a nuanced point of view? How can we reduce suffering if we can't even speak about it? Let me know what you think about this topic.