WE ARE BESET BY SUFFERING ON ALL SIDES
Chapter I: I Will Avenge My Predecessor!
Our story begins, like so many stories, in a tavern; there, a bard sits; he recites a poem to the patrons, a poem of suffering and succession; a poem about the legendary Seven Heroes, who once banished a great evil, only to return decades later consumed by the very same evil they once banished; a poem about kingdoms crumbling to dust, then rising once more only to crumble again; of kings and queens falling at the feet of demons, only for their children to take up arms to avenge their gruesome deaths. This is a poem beset by suffering on all sides.
The poem is titled Life—er, Romancing SaGa 2.
Romancing SaGa 2 was created by famed computer game director Akitoshi Kawazu, developed and released by Square for the Super Famicom in 1993, then later remastered and ported to nearly all eighth generation consoles—including the Nintendo Switch, which is how I played the game. I could spend the rest of this essay telling you all about the historical details of the game, how this is technically the fifth title in a long series—the SaGa series (capital G very important)—and how it improves upon the previous titles in nearly every way. I could tell you all about how it manages to be one of the most unique Japanese role-playing games ever created while also retaining that signature SaGa obtuseness coupled with difficulty so macabre that it will make you wish that your mother and father had never met. I could also reword the Wikipedia article in an attempt to impress you by pretending that I am just really really well-informed about the games I like. But I’m not going to be doing much of that (this time). Instead, I’m going to give you some vague background and a seemingly random gameplay fact: the vague background being that, in Romancing SaGa 2, you play the role of an emperor of a kingdom, tasked with vanquishing the now-evil Seven Heroes, all to bring peace to the realm; and the seemingly random gameplay fact is that none of the characters—including the emperor—can recover life points; once their LP reaches zero, no phoenix down or revival potion can bring them back to life—they’re gone for good.
From the moment each character shows their big pixelated heads, they are on a timer, slowly but surely dying from every sword slashed across their chests, every firestorm cast upon them, and every fang ripped through their flesh by some twisted chimera-like creature that has three heads and a scorpion tail and a crooked pair of goat legs and useless little dinosaur arms, all while using psychokinesis to just kinda float there, taunting your party menacingly during the standard turn-based combat so commonly found within these Japanese role-playing games of old. In these battles, our heroes wait patiently to perform their actions between bouts of getting horribly maimed by demonic entities holding the still-screaming heads of other demonic entities; having their eyes squeezed out by the moist tentacles of a man-octopus hybrid; having their organs sucked out proboscis-style by a corrupted butterfly seraph; and, of course, having their blood sizzled by thunderbolts conjured by the Phantasmal Witch Queen of the (once) Seven Heroes, Rocbouquet; and plenty of other grotesqueries that are just too numerous to list here.
Being unable to recover LP comes with its own benefits, namely sweet release from the high-fantasy mortal coil our heroes find themselves born into; and what a coil it is: there’s no humor here, no joy—only constant mayhem, backstabbing, and violence. The only things that non-playable characters have to talk about are how they watched their spouse get slowly devoured by a floating ball of maggots, or how their children were kidnapped by hobgoblins and then made to row oars on massive land boats, of which the only purpose is to destroy the very land they sail upon. Antlions sinkhole into villages at night and eat people who are sleeping unawares in their beds—on a regular basis—and this is one of the better deaths one could hope for in this terrible world.
And that’s just what the in-game characters have to contend with. For the player, Romancing SaGa 2 is its own series of little heart attacks, which is especially dangerous for me, having been diagnosed with a genetic arrhythmia at age twelve. In fact, the whole Romancing SaGa 2 experience is like an EKG monitor run through several layers of computer-game abstraction—up and down with each heart-wrenching turn. The first abstraction layer is Kenji Ito’s near myth-status musical score, each composition its own self-contained epic poem, complete with heroic basslines, cascading drum fills, and heart-fluttering horns that swoop and soar in time with the action. This causes the line to go up. The second abstraction layer is the scenery and backdrops, all of which look as if they were pulled straight from RPG Maker’s stock asset library. This makes the line go down. The third abstraction layer is Kazuko Shibuya’s gorgeous sprites that pop color right off the screen, which themselves are near one-to-one 16-bit recreations of Tomomi Kobayashi’s summertime watercolors, of which every character has this huge smile on their face regardless of the terrible circumstances they find themselves in. This makes the line go up again. And the fourth abstraction layer is the gameplay itself, which is just absolutely brutal with monsters that one-hit-kill without warning and boss battles won only after the eighth attempt when the boss finally decided not to use its devastating area-of-effect attack two turns in a row, which always wipes your party regardless of how much time spent leveling characters. And this causes the EKG to flatline.
And a party wipe is really interesting in Romancing SaGa 2 because, as we covered before, characters cannot recover LP—so, when their LP reaches zero, they die for good. You would then expect the game to fade to black and throw some sort of huge-font GAME OVER screen, whereby you would reload a previous save game and start over from an earlier point—as is the case with most games of this ilk—but no; instead, you are prompted to pick a new heir to the throne, and after the new heir is chosen, they burst onto the scene with great enthusiasm, proclaiming:
“I shall avenge my predecessor!”
The next heir does a quick action pose before assembling a new band of unfortunate heroes and then saunters off to avenge their fallen predecessor; maybe this time they will actually manage to defeat the Seven Deadly Ex-Heroes, finally bringing peace to the world. But it’s more likely that they, too, will end up impaled on Dantarg’s massive javelin, then tossed to the wolves for their flesh to be torn apart and eaten like all those before them. But not to worry, because there are more than enough heirs to go around—literally an endless supply of fresh bodies to be thrown at the great spiked wall of evil, with the hope being that one day one of these fleshy heirs will finally bring the wall crumbling down, restoring the kingdom and bringing everlasting peace.
This presents a number of difficult questions, such as: Is it ethical to continue birthing new heirs into a world beset by suffering on all sides? Is this nigh-endless and possibly futile pursuit of peace truly justified regardless of the all suffering experienced along the way? This idea being that, once the Seven Heroes are defeated, the inhabitants of this world will no longer have to worry about random antlion attacks and hobgoblins stealing their children—but is that assured? Assuming this world is even remotely similar to our own, even if the Seven Heroes are defeated—and this quote-unquote peace is attained—surely there will still be some suffering left over: people will still lie and cheat and steal, hatred and discrimination will persist, disease will continue to spread, people will still find reasons to kill each other, and, at the very least, someone will surely stub their toe on the lip of a raised pathway then proceed to bounce around doing the expletive dance.
So, the real questions become: Is life worth living in the brutal world of Romancing SaGa 2? Does the pleasure of this world outweigh the pain?
I know what you’re thinking, “yo—this is literally just a computer game, what the fuck are you talking about?”
But the problem is…
Chapter II: …This Is Not Just a Computer Game—This Is Real Life
While life on Earth is obviously not the same as the world of Romancing SaGa 2, it does check all the important suffer boxes and more, including: excruciating pain, loss of life, status effects like poison and paralysis and confusion and Ebola and COVID-19, emotional grief, the nine-to-five grind of doing something you hate simply to continue existing, the passing of time and all the decay that comes along with that, et cetera. There may not be demons trying to cut your limbs off and steal your soul to power an evil death machine, but there are humans who have certainly done something similar, and, of course, all the non-human animals who would eat your flesh and muscles and organs at the first opportunity simply because they’re hungry—our very biological needs necessitate suffering, perpetuating the pain of the life around us. Someone or something is always being eaten by someone or something else. Truly, we are beset by suffering on all sides. And let’s be real here: our world is actually much worse than Romancing SaGa 2’s, because at least you can turn Romancing SaGa 2 off without having an existential panic attack.
Earth’s collective ecosystem is built upon pain and suffering. Take the neighborhood cat, for example, that cute ball of black-and-white fuzz that nuzzles your leg when you happen to cross paths; maybe you’ve even given the cat a name, perhaps that name is “Oreo.” During the day, Oreo spends most of his time relaxing in the shade of parked cars and wandering from home to home, expecting someone to feed him. But when he gets really hungry, he ventures out into the suburban wilds to hunt for fresh meat; he stalks a mouse in the underbrush, grabs the mouse by the tail, bats the mouse around for fun, gnaws on the rodent’s spindly legs before sinking his sharp fangs into the rodent’s underbelly, slurps up blood and gut juice before taking a big bite out of the mouse’s side while the mouse is still writhing about in agony. Oreo feasts around the mouse’s nervous system, leaving the head intact, allowing the mouse’s brain to process those final terrible moments of life. Oreo then smacks the mouse’s lifeless head around like a hockey puck before yawning, licking blood-stained chops, and wandering back to the shade of a parked car. This is all between mating seasons, during which Oreo effectively rapes female cats using his barbed penis, evolutionarily adapted to hook into the female cat’s internals, causing extreme pain. And it’s not just cats: the entire animal kingdom is predicated on suffering, as if some evil god designed the whole thing to be as awful as possible—and humans are part of this kingdom of suffering, albeit at the top. The circle of life begets cruelty simply by being a circle instead of a straight line or, better yet, nothing at all—but here we are, so we might as well try to make the best of it, right?
There is an argument to be made that the existence of pleasure justifies the potential for pain, but this assumes that both pleasure and pain exist in equal measure and that they are of equal existential value, which is certainly not the case when we compare the mouse’s experience of being eaten to the cat’s experience of eating the mouse: to the mouse, this is the worst—and final—day of its life, and to the cat it’s just another meal as the neighborhood's apex predator; it might even be a bit mundane for the cat, having brought about little hurricanes of life-ending suffering upon many a small rodent before. The cat may even find the act of relaxing in the shade more pleasurable than the act of eating the mouse—but neither is more substantial than the mouse having its organs ripped out while still breathing. One thing is certain: the mouse went through absolute hell while the cat just got another quick meal. Pleasure is nice and all, but it is never as good as we are expecting; whereas pain is often far worse than we can ever imagine.
Don’t let the fancy cars and giant metal obelisks fool you—humans have it worse than other animals when it comes to suffering, although not always from a physical perspective. It’s true that if you’re reading this, it’s likely from the comfort of wherever you happen to call home; a home that has its own running water, electricity, and some form of air conditioning, be that a unit or a good-ol’-fashioned fan. You might even have a freezer full of meat wrapped in polyvinyl chloride on foamy trays, that meat being from those now-expired animals who suffered terribly at a factory farm before making their way to your freezer—some might then say, “hey, at least I’m not in a factory farm, right?” But the thing about other animals is that they don’t have the higher awareness to fully grasp the horror of being in a factory farm. Mother cows have been known to bellow cries when their children are taken from them, but this is an edge case of awareness that most animals don’t possess; humans, however, possess this awareness in spades. As humans, we are fully aware of the cosmic horror going on all around us, and because of this, we have the added burden of being able to internalize the horror, letting it fester in our minds, forcing us to ask “why” over and over in the fetal position in the corner of a dark room. Non-human animals get over stuff pretty quickly, and only some have been known to hold grudges; humans, however—oh boy—we never get over anything, ever. I am still thinking about some of the weird shit that happened to me in grade school. Now try to imagine, instead of “weird shit that happened in grade school,” that your family was killed in front of you. Try to imagine internalizing that, what it would do to your mind, the mental anguish. That’s the rub: the psychic suffering.
As humans, we may be real smart or whatever, but this intelligence is also a pain magnifier; a curse that allows us to analyze our own suffering; a curse that allows us to ponder questions that are hard to fathom—questions that are so antithetical to life that they are often dismissed outright without any consideration whatsoever. Questions that the Seven Ex-Heroes of Romancing SaGa 2 answered for themselves, and their answers resulted in them becoming the villains of the game. That’s right—we will be tackling JRPG-villain questions with the remainder of this essay, such as:
“Considering the profound suffering in the world, is life even worth living?”
“Ought we eradicate all life to prevent further suffering?”
“Is it ethically justified to create new life given the potential for suffering?”
Many a JRPG villain has asked these questions and come to conclusions that led them to enact plans that would have resulted in the eradication of all life in their respective digital realms—some even think they can eradicate life and “start over” as ruler of a better world where suffering no longer exists. But the more logical villains nearly always come to the conclusion that the only world where suffering does not exist is a world in which there is no life at all. The heroes of these JRPGs would then attempt to thwart these quote-unquote misguided villains, forcing them to see the errors of their ways, insisting that life is indeed full of suffering but still worth living because “that’s what makes us human!” or whatever; and in the event that the villain fails to see reason, they are simply killed outright by the heroes.
Hopefully, by the end of this essay, I won’t have to be killed by JRPG heroes myself.
Chapter III: Obligatory Disclaimer
As supposedly sentient beings in this world, we are beset by suffering on all sides; and this begs several difficult questions, all of which I aim to cover with the remainder of this essay. However, I must stress: I do not claim to have the answers to any of these questions, and I would go as far as to say that anyone who claims to have the answers should be immediately dismissed as a fraud, as these are questions without concrete answers. I am not just typing this to subtly bolster my own case for philosophical legitimacy, either: I assure you, I am not an authority on philosophical matters such as those we will be covering; please believe me when I say this.
To further reinforce the fact that I am not trying to convince you that I am a philosophical authority, I present the following evidence: The majority of my philosophical knowledge comes from Wikipedia articles; I do not know my times tables; I have no formal education in philosophy; I have to do the ABCs song to figure out the alphabetical order of words; I dropped out of high school at age eighteen after being held back several grades because I was more focused on sex, drugs, computer games, science fiction, and rock ‘n’ roll than schoolwork; I mix up left and right, having to do the L-hand thing to remember, often; I earned a Certificate of High School Equivalency by passing a General Educational Development (GED) test, but only at the insistence of my mother, who pushed me to do it; I count syllables with claps; I can’t point to most countries on a map; I went to a community college for half a year before dropping out because my obsession with playing the online multiplayer role-playing game Final Fantasy XI caused me to lose sight of reality; and I have worked meaningless call center and software jobs to fund my lifestyle and provide for my family ever since.
What I’m trying to say is: I am not an authority on philosophical matters—I’m not an authority on much of anything, really. I am semi-well-read, but only in the genres of postmodern fiction, science fiction, and fantasy; I cannot recite the transcendental philosophies of Kant or the nihilistic principles of Nietzsche off the top of my head, and I have attempted to read literature by both philosophers but got bored even trying. So, again, I am not an authority on philosophical matters: I am merely someone who likes to think about what I perceive as problems of existence, using my own deductions. These “problems of existence” arise naturally for me, and I am greatly bothered by them (and this line of reasoning likely explains all of my non-fiction output). Also, I find it annoying when people quote other philosophers in discussions with me, partly out of jealousy that those people know more stuff than I do, but mostly because I value coming to my own conclusions instead of parroting the ideas of others; and in this way, I like to think that I am untainted by the previous thought-work of other philosophers, which makes me a tabula rasa of sorts—a blank slate, but certainly not an authority on philosophical matters. Therefore, the conclusions I come to in this essay—if I come to any conclusions at all—are mine alone, based on my own opinions and deductions, however flawed they might be. And, above all else, all my conclusions should be taken with massive salt piles.
The reason I include this section is that I don’t want anyone to read this essay and then conclude that their life and the lives of their children are merely factory farms for the mass production of human suffering, which could potentially result in a murder-suicide with this essay cited as the reason. In fact, this entire essay is likely just an attempt to come to grips with my own cognitive dissonance around the fact that I, as a parent of two children, have brought life into this world and that this life may very well be full of suffering, and that—maybe—I am partly responsible for that suffering; and that makes me feel real bad indeed.
But I will not pull my punches with this essay. I will go wherever my twisted mind takes me (as I’m sure you’ve already deduced from that overly descriptive account of Oreo the cat), and you can come along for the ride if you want—that’s fine, just be warned that this might get very very dark very very quickly.
And, ultimately, you should come to your own conclusions—not mine.
Chapter IV: Answering the JRPG-Villain Questions
IV.I: Is Life Worth Living? Should I Kill Myself? Should We Eradicate All Life?
Most of us were born into this world screaming, as if we already knew what was in store for us from the very beginning. One of the most common childbirth jokes is “that baby really didn’t want to come out!” and this joke is quite telling indeed; if all comedy comes from a place of truth, this has to be truth of the highest order—because, if we knew what we were getting into, who the hell would want to come out?
The cutting of the umbilical cord is a ritual that signifies the beginning of true suffering; from that moment we are cold, hungry, and lost. No longer can we simply float carelessly in amniotic fluid collecting antibodies, effortlessly absorbing nutrients and oxygen from the lifeline so easily severed from our tiny bodies. The brain doesn’t retain memories from our time in the womb, and that’s probably by design—so that we are unable to conceive how good we truly had it. And depending on the country of your birth, your skin color, your family’s monthly income, whether or not your mom was a drug addict, genetic conditions, and a number of other variables—I don’t have to tell you that your immediate life after birth could get really really bad really really quick, because we are truly beset by suffering on all sides. (You’re probably grimacing every time I use the essay title in the body of the text by this point; but hey, whatever, I think the title’s cool and, most importantly—it’s true. Here’s a heads-up that I’m probably going to keep doing it, maybe even in the next sentence.) And some of us are beset by suffering on all sides more so than others.
This brings us to one of this essay’s pivotal questions: Is life worth living? My immediate answer to this is going to come off as a cop-out: whether life is worth living is a matter of personal preference. The more interesting question is what flows from that personal preference: if I feel that life is not worth living, should I then kill myself? And that’s when things get complicated.
We are all involuntarily forced into this world. There is no heads-up, no consent form, no Boss Baby-type situation in which we decide beforehand who our family is going to be from the cumulus factory on high. Instead, people are biologically driven to have sex, and now you and I exist whether we like it or not. And, if we value freedom and personal autonomy, it seems fair that we should then allow someone to commit suicide if they so choose, because it is their own life to take, and if they feel that their personal suffering is too great, then they should be able to end that suffering; considering this, it seems intuitively cruel not to allow someone to take their own life—and many communities agree, as Kevorkianism is legal in many countries.
But what many countries don’t agree on is exactly how much suffering one must endure to justify the taking of one's own life. To be allowed to kill oneself, does one need to be limbless, writhing, cancer-ridden, squirting blood from all their pores; or do they need to be depressed, anxious, and miserable; what if they’re simply bored with life, finding no significant joy in living? These are interesting questions but, ultimately, the reasoning is arbitrary. We know that everyone experiences suffering differently, and the masochist is the perfect example of this; a masochist enjoys what others would consider “physical suffering,” they enjoy “physical suffering” so much that it can no longer be called “suffering” for them at all; “suffering,” for the masochist, becomes pleasure; subjective. But surely even the masochist has their own form of suffering—sickness, a family member’s death, et cetera—which only goes to show that, regardless of fluctuating definitions and semantics, there is some essence of pain that exists from person to person, and this pain must be considered at the personal subjective level. Yet it remains true that suffering, regardless of personal meaning and magnitude, is something we all strive to avoid and is considered bad in all cases—in fact, most ethical philosophies strive to minimize all forms of suffering, with the theoretical ideal ethical system eliminating suffering altogether.
People will often cite some nebulous concept of “meaning” as a reason to live. These esoteric meanings drive us to continue persisting in a world full of suffering and could be anything from “I want to write the greatest novel ever” to “I want to spread the word of Jesus Christ to every country on the planet” or, in the case of a JRPG villain, “I want to eradicate all life to prevent further suffering.” These “meanings of life” are different, but they share some similarities; they are all typically goals that promise some long-term or permanent state of satisfaction but rarely, if ever, deliver on that promise. This is not to say that this esoteric concept of meaning is ineffective, per se—I cling to many notions of meaning in my own life—only that these meanings are not objective, and there is no single meaning one could point to that applies to every person on Earth. Considering this, it becomes hard to prescribe meaning to someone who feels their life is meaningless, as the search for meaning is often a personal journey. And, as meaning is different from person to person, it follows that no specific meaning has intrinsic value to anyone other than the one who holds that meaning to be valuable. Religion has been effective in prescribing meaning to those without meaning, but this only works if the person is receptive to the mythos and benefits of that religion. I won’t cover the truth-value of each individual religion because, in my view, the presence of multiple religions undermines the truth-value of each religion; however, whether or not a religion is true is not necessarily important if the religion is providing meaning to large groups of people; in fact, a pastor may see this as a righteous consequence that saves lives, even if the religion’s promises turn out to be bunk—but is it truly righteous to convince people to continue living in a world beset by suffering on all sides? The concept of an “afterlife” alleviates this question somewhat, but how do you know which religion’s afterlife is true, if any? Do you then follow all religions?
While it may seem like I’m arguing in favor of suicide—and I am, for the most part—it’s far more complicated than what has been laid out thus far. Hypothetically, if one was living on their own, completely divorced from society and with no ties to anyone else, and this hypothetical person wanted to kill themselves, I would be totally in favor of that; but this is not the case for most people. Most people have ingrained themselves into social units that include other people who depend on them for some level of personal happiness—a parent that takes care of their children or a child that takes care of their elderly parents are both examples of this—and this instantly complicates the suffering-suicide equation, because in these cases, suicide has a ripple effect that harms those who depended upon the person who committed suicide: the child is now in foster care, bouncing between abusive homes; the elderly parent has no one to count their meds in the morning, feed them, or make sure they get to the bathroom without falling down the stairs. In many cases of suicide, the person committing suicide has introduced more suffering into the world simply by committing suicide; and this is a tragedy not only for those impacted by the suicidal ripples but also on a philosophical level, as it seems that, even when trying to escape this world, we create great suffering in our wake. Truly, we are beset by suffering on all sides, and we cannot escape it without creating even more suffering.
Yes, it is true that we did not choose to be born and that we ought to have bodily autonomy—which includes the right to kill ourselves—but we must consider those around us. They say, “life sucks, then you die,” and while I agree with this sentiment almost entirely, one of the benefits of having higher cognition is that we can work together to limit the suffering of those around us—and, although we didn’t choose to be here, we are here whether we like it or not, so we might as well try to make the best of it for ourselves and the people around us; otherwise, we are simply multiplying the suffering in this already insufferable world.
So, allow me to summarize:
Is life worth living? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. But ultimately, this depends on the personal feelings of the person answering the question. With sufficient meaning in one's life, they may feel their life is worth living, and, as such, their life would indeed be worth living at that point. I have no objection to this line of reasoning, provided said peron’s personal reason for living does not involve amplifying the suffering of those around them.
Should I kill myself? Probably not. But, personally, if I were isolated, with no ties to others, and were truly suffering without meaning in my life, or if my suffering were so great that I was merely a burden to those around me, then I would not be opposed to killing myself if—and only if—I wanted to. However, if the answer to the following question, “Will one person be harmed if I die today?” is yes, then I owe it to those people to stay alive for as long as possible, so as not to amplify the suffering of those around me. And it just so happens that I have two children, so I will be staying alive for them for the time being.
Should we eradicate all life? Life is suffering, and—in my view—there is no true meaning or grand plan a la the rapture. It is also true that, without life, there is no experience of life and therefore no suffering, so considering that we are truly beset by suffering on all sides (I’m going to keep doing it), I would not be opposed to the eradication of all life if the following conditions were met: 1) the eradication method is instant and physically harmless (i.e., an all-powerful being snaps everyone out of existence simultaneously) and 2) the eradication method is guaranteed to wipe out all life without any margin for error or sensation of suffering. Considering that both of these conditions (currently) can’t be met—and, likely, can never be met—I am not in favor of eradicating all life at this time. However, in theory, I am not opposed to this as a method to prevent future suffering in every respect.
It follows then, that, if I were given the option to instantly snap everyone out of existence, I might just do it, and that makes me far more similar to a JRPG villain than a JRPG hero.
Maybe the heroes will have to kill me, after all?
IV.II: The Great Gamble
We’ve made it to the final and most important question: Is it ethically justified to create new life given the potential for suffering? Or: should we just stop having children?
As suffering is an intrinsic aspect of all life, the question of whether we should actively pursue making more life is, in a way, far more important than any other question we have tackled thus far; and this is because, if we are creating more life, we are creating more suffering. Creating life entails responsibility to that life, meaning: we are responsible for the suffering of that new life.
The most common argument in favor of creating new life is that since pleasure exists, and pleasure is good, then it is good to create new life so that they may experience that good pleasure. This is an extension of the “pleasure outweighs the pain” concept. This argument hinges on the idea that if we don’t create life, we are depriving potential life of pleasure, which seems problematic on its face, as the logical conclusion would be that we should make new life at every possible opportunity. I have dubbed this argument “The Great Gift,” because it exudes a high level of hubris, as if we are little gods bestowing a great gift—the gift of pleasure—upon our subjects.
Let’s break down The Great Gift and see if it makes sense logically. In the case of existence, we can experience both pleasure—which is good—and suffering—which is bad—and we’ve already covered that both of these are—in terms of magnitude—entirely subjective to the person experiencing them. If we don’t exist, we experience neither pleasure nor suffering; the former of which some would argue is bad, because if we don’t exist then we are missing out on the pleasure we could be experiencing, but it seems more logical that this is neutral instead, as we would not exist to know that we are missing out on pleasure at all; and the same goes for suffering, some may argue that not experiencing suffering is a good thing, but, like the pleasure example, it’s logically more of a neutral thing, as, again, we would not exist to know that we have avoided suffering to begin with. In fact, there would be no “we” at all. It follows then that “existing” has both good and bad aspects, whereas “not existing” is an absence of both good and bad entirely, a totally neutral non-experience. One could then conclude that existing is a gamble in and of itself, in which we are gambling that our personal pleasure will outweigh our overall suffering. The Great Gift then becomes The Great Gamble.
It could be argued that The Great Gamble is made every day when we choose to take risks that have a high potential for personal payoff, like the thrill of rock-climbing, a dangerous endeavor that provides some with a great sense of satisfaction; or using most of your savings to start a business, knowing there is a high risk of failure. These types of gambles, however, are entirely justified and entirely different from The Great Gamble because they are made by individuals who know and consent to the risks. When we create new life, however, that new life is not giving consent—we are deciding for them. In fact, in any other situation, this type of consentless gamble would be seen as highly unethical. Imagine pushing a person into a lion’s den with the justification that the person may make friends with the lions; or forcing a person to take untested drugs with the justification that it may cure their rare illness; or stealing someone’s money and investing it into a weird start-up company with the justification that they will make millions of dollars; each example is highly unethical because the consent of the person is missing. Why, then, would we say it’s OK to make this type of gamble for our children?
When a person chooses to have a child, they are gambling with that child’s life. They are gambling that the child will be born healthy with their wits about them; that the child will not be abused by their own caregivers; that the child will not be hit by a car, left permanently crippled, or unable to speak; that the child will not be mauled by a bear during what was supposed to be just a fun camping trip with grandpa; that the child will not be molested by a camp counselor at the Citadel’s military summer camp; that the child will not contract an illness that results in a slow, painful death; that the child’s pet cat isn’t shot by redneck survivalist neighbors who are very serious about the arbitrary line that makes up “our property.” Some of these example may be close to home.
It could be argued that we are on shaky ground here; as, when we choose to have children, we are not gambling with someone that currently exists, but rather with potential children who do not yet exist; some nebulous idea of a life is being gambled. However, I have a hard time caring about this distinction—as hard as it may be to wrap my head around—as the child will certainly exist one day, and they will certainly experience some sort of suffering. One could also argue that we don’t normally care about a child’s consent anyway—school, shots, bedtime, the list goes on—but time waits for no one, and that child will one day be a full-grown adult that has not consented to existing. You could then argue that, as an adult, they could just kill themselves, effectively nullifying their non-consent by unaliving themselves, but by then they have already suffered non-consensual suffering at their parents' hands simply by being born, and one should not have to suffer to nullify their own non-consent. We could even grant that the child may have a wonderful life nearly devoid of suffering, and that, consequentially, we are in the “ethical clear” because the pleasure has outweighed the pain for the life we created—but even the stubbing of a single toe undermines our “ethical clear,” because we put that child in harm’s way, however minor that harm ended up being. It follows, then, that perhaps the kindest thing we can do for our future children is not have them at all.
To put it bluntly: Every time we choose to create life, we are putting someone in harm’s way without their consent—and because of this, I see no ethical justification for creating new life.
Chapter V: Conclusion
Birth is the prologue to death; the Grim Reaper’s job is easy as Hell; every cell can be a cancer cell; we all become predecessors eventually; life is like a box of poisoned chocolates, it kills you; every cradle is a grave; life is like a black hole, it sucks and also spaghettifies you; death is hardcoded into our DNA; God is a death fetishist; we are all cows in the factory farm called LIFE. Et cetera. Et cetera.
It may seem odd that this essay was written by someone with two children, but I believe it gives me a unique perspective over the tripp-pants-wearing Hot Topic teenager who would normally write something this dark and edgy. (If Hot Topic is even a thing anymore; admittedly, I am out of touch with what is cool among the modern-day alternative youth scene.) Anyway, I love my children. I don’t want any harm to come to them. This is not a unique sentiment, as I imagine most parents don’t want to see their children harmed either. And, in a poor post-hoc attempt to excuse my having kids despite coming to the conclusion that we probably shouldn’t have kids, I wasn’t thinking much about the ethical implications of having children back when I decided to have them—I didn’t think it through much at all, really. I was barely even writing at that point—kinda just vegged out on computer games and television. I had some money from working the same job for over 10 years, so I wasn’t financially strapped, and as such, I didn’t see it as irresponsible to have children at the time. And my partner wanted children, which was another driving factor—so we went for it.
Why people have children is a complicated subject—one that would likely take its own essay to fully explore—but I generally don’t think it’s because of “The Great Gift”; people are not that kind. The drive to have children—outside of the basic biological urge—comes from that same place of “meaning” we covered earlier. People see children as giving meaning to their lives, and they’re right; having children bestows great meaning, and this meaning ties you to the material world by staving off that ever-present sense of pointlessness in life. But using children as fodder to give oneself meaning is, by definition, selfish.
I admit that I have some of the same fantasies that I imagine most parents have in regard to why they had children, such as the desire for a little-me running around that is as cool—perhaps even cooler—than myself; a Me 2.0 who is better than me in every way: a little conceptual avenger, avenging all my could-have-beens and should-have-beens, giving my life meaning, slaying all my demons. And when my LP reaches zero, I would hope that my children will pick up my old sword, hold it to the heavens, and proclaim…
“I will avenge my predecessor!”
I also admit that this is incredibly selfish of me.
But some self-aware-woe-is-me proclamation is not the conclusion of this essay.
Some might say that, given the conclusions reached in the previous chapters, having children is a mistake, and it would then follow that my having children was a mistake as well; and I don’t disagree with this conclusion. But, while this is true, it’s not important. People make mistakes all the time; this is nothing new; people are making mistakes every second of the day. What is important is the Here and Now, which is that my children exist and—last I checked—they want to continue existing, and I am responsible for that existence, and as such, I am responsible for their well-being more than anything else in this entire world; because, not only did I bring them into existence, but I enabled their suffering. Every nick, cut, and bruise; every frown, tear, and sigh; every scream; every hospital visit; every late night in which they are groaning in bed, sick, and I am there stroking their hair, giving them Gatorade and crackers; every time a kid at school says they have a big belly and they come home asking, “Am I ugly?”—everything. I am responsible.
I was afraid that writing this essay would lead me down a spiral of misery, concluding that life is truly meaningless for everyone—including my kids—thus ending with the murder of my entire family. But really, what it has elucidated for me is that I am doubly responsible for the well-being of my children; that, since my children are here, and since I had a hand in bringing them here against their will, I am obligated to minimize their suffering at all costs while respecting their personal will to live. My children are their own people, and they have the right to come to their own conclusions about their lives; and as the person responsible for bringing them into this world, I have to respect that while ensuring my children experience the least amount of suffering possible. This is a personal responsibility all parents ought to bear.
And while I may be more similar to a JRPG villain than a hero, the smiles on my children’s faces are still the most important thing in the world to me. One might get all logical and ask, “But do their smiles outweigh their pain?” But that’s for them to decide—not you or me.
While they’re figuring it out for themselves, I will be the best JRPG-villain parent that I can possibly be—anything less would only bring more suffering into the world.