You may like to read about the contenders for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. I was quite taken with both The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification and Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan until I ran into Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. This one is by David Benatar, and it argues...
... that one suffers "quite serious harms" by coming into existence that "could not have befallen one had one not come into existence".It set me thinking, more so than the Stray Shopping Carts and Tattooed Mountain Women titles did.
First off, since death may be construed as a serious harm, you can see David Benatar's point. He probably didn't need a whole book to establish that coming into existence is overall harmful to the person who does: it's obvious that death is worse than five days at the Adelaide Oval, a lovely bunch of grapes and a great night out at the movies - put together, in the immortal words of Lina Lamont. Hang on a mo, though. No, not Geronimo, hang on a mo. The serious harms that 'could not have befallen one had one not come into existence' could not have befallen one because there wouldn't have been a 'one' - or at least not that one (you, me, Lina, Geronimo) - for them to befall. So one wouldn't have been all-round better off not existing, because not existing one would have been a none. It's not you, to put it differently, who would have been doing better. So maybe the real question is whether an existing you - or one - will settle for a certain number of harms, including death, for the put-togethers of life. A lot of people seem to think so.
Not, however, in David Benatar's book. According to this 'it would be better if humanity became extinct'. Just the thing to read when you're feeling glum.