Better Never to Have Been by David Benatar: Book Review
David Benatar’s thought-provoking book. Published in 2006.
Benatar argues that it is always a serious harm to come into existence. I went into this book with a critical eye and came away convinced.
An eye-opening concept is how our self-assessments on the quality of our lives are grossly skewed and unreliable. There are three psychological factors that contribute to the distortion of our judgements:
Pollyannaism, being the tendency toward optimism
Adaptation and habituation
Comparison with the well-being of others
From an evolutionary perspective, these factors mitigate against suicide and are in favor of reproduction. Selective recall also warps our judgements of how well our lives have gone thus far. Therefore, our projections and expectations about the future are biased as well.
Self-assessments of happiness and life satisfaction do vary considerably between different countries, but everywhere there is a tendency toward optimism. It is simply mass deception about how great things are.
On the Quality of Life
In assessing the quality of a life, many take up the desire-fulfillment view. Life doesn’t seem so bad when we’re getting what we want, right? One can be mistaken right now about whether one’s desires have been fulfilled, which leads to an overestimation of how good life is. Where one’s desires are fulfilled, this fulfillment is often fleeting. Cue the treadmill of desires. “Attaining that for which one strives brings a transient satisfaction, which soon yields to some new desire. Were this striving to end, it would bring about boredom, another dissatisfaction. Striving is an unavoidable part of life that we cease only when we cease living.” I am reminded here of Buddhist embodiment.
Anti-Natalism
The anti-natalist view that Benatar holds is captivating. I’ll start by saying that since all who presently exist suffer harm, procreation always causes harm. One never has a child for the child’s sake, because making potential people actual is not in their interest. Progeny seems to provide parents with some form of immortality through passing down their values, ideas, and genes. We may be sure that we’ll bring our children to grow up and experience the world in the same way we do, that we can give them a ‘good life’. But we’ve seen how that judgement is skewed. Just because I have endorsed and adapted to how bad my life is, is no justification for procreation.
Benatar writes, “beings are brought into existence on the mistaken assumption that the fetus will be glad to have been born, and if this assumption turns out to be wrong, it will suffer a lifetime. Whereas assuming one will not be glad to be born, and that presumption is mistaken, no one is harmed.”
Pessimism vs. Optimism
However gloomy the ideas may seem, it is best to depend on evidence when deciding whether to hold a pessimistic or optimistic view. “The optimist usually has an indifference to or inappropriate denial of suffering, whether it be one’s own or others.” There is no reason not to try to make our lives less bad, but there is also no reason to deceive ourselves by thinking that we’ve been benefited by coming into existence.
A community has accumulated of those who feel they are not alone after reading Benatar.