Benatar is a proponent of what has been termed the anti-natalist position. In a 2006 book titled Better Never to have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence he writes that

While good people go to great lengths to save their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.

The disappearance of sentient life on this planet would be of no consequence to anyone or anything according to Benatar, and in that context he joins earlier existentialist writers such as Sartre and Camus when he believes the universe is indifferent to our fate; it is without meaning, and other than that “we are subject to blind and purposeless natural forces”.

But when at least Nietzsche would find some purpose in suffering (and hence life) when he wrote “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” Benatar does not believe that human suffering and the struggle to survive are capable of providing meaning to existence.

While one might want to argue about all the good things in life providing value to it, he would claim that they can never offset the badness of all terrible tragedies that might happen during one’s lifetime, including one’s death. I guess he has a point when you think of all the natural disasters that have happened – and are likely happen again – be they earthquakes, floods, famine, and what have you.  Or man-made tragedies, such as the 9/11 terror attack, the holocaust or the slaughter of millions of people  in the various wars. What kinds of positive experiences might one put on the other scale to suggest that all this will balance out in the end?

This is not to say that on an individual basis someone might not be able to look back at one’s life and conclude that it has by and large been a very positive experience – but I’m assuming that Benatar has appraised the human condition from a species perspective, and from there concluded that it – life – just isn’t worth it when it is all added up. So why bother; sentient life is just a waste of time, causing much unneeded pain and suffering

I have some sympathy for the view that planet earth would be better off without the likes of us,  given our longstanding and well established record of harming ourselves and the  environment.  And no doubt there is something to say for discontinuing the amount of pain and suffering we have inflicted onto our fellow creatures in the animal kingdom through our thoughtless practices of whatever nature – such as the asinine practice of trophy hunting certain animal species into extinction, to give just one example.

And so the question remains if the continuation of sentient life – and in particular human life – is a value added experience of sorts, and the point being that – regardless of incredible misery, pain and suffering being regular features of human existence – life is worth the effort of sustaining it.

Clearly, professor  Benatar thinks not, but I have already argued that it is, since just because we appear to be unable to determine the meaning or purpose of life today  beyond the immediacies of survival doesn’t mean it has no meaning or purpose in a larger context. (I suspect this question is too large for us today).

Today I am revisiting the views held by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Idea (1818), and his rejection of naïve realism, or what has been called scientific materialism, that the things we observe in the world are what they appear to be, absolutely, and forever, and not in anyway all or part a function of human perception and experience in the sense that they can be modified based by the very act of perceiving or experiencing them

Thus,  scientific materialism would reject the distinction between how things are independently from human observation versus how they are perceived by our perceptual and conceptual processes.  At the same time,  a scientific materialist would have to accept the the distinction between subject and object, i.e., the distinction between the observer and the thing being observed.

But if we  have no other means of accessing the world other than perceiving or experiencing,  is it in fact a meaningful exercise to even refer to it as a matter of some significance? To all intents and purposes, if we never refer to it again, what would be lost in our discussions about the nature of the world?

To deal with this alleged problem the German philosopher Immanuel Kant  (1724-1804)  introduced the “thing-in-itself”, or “ding ansich” in German – to suggest that the true nature of  the world is fundamentally unknowable as we can only grasp the nature of things indirectly through perceiving them as objects in relation to ourselves – how we have experienced them.  I believe Prof. Kant may have gone too far, in the sense that is is contradictory to say that something is fundamentally unknowable as to make such an assertion implies some knowledge about  it. Existence is not an attribute that can be asserted independently of the qualities through which it is instantiated.   In other words, the distinction serves no useful purpose, when at most the existence of the “ding ansich” might be implied as an essential element in a theory of perception. And maybe that is all what Kant had in mind.

Moving on,  it is one thing to experience the world through one’s senses – it is another thing to experience it logically, e.g., to experience such things as cause and effect, time, space and the various ways in which objects relate to us and each other. If these relationships are permanent features of the physical universe, it wouldn’t matter in what form you encountered them in your experiences, your conclusions about them would be same. But in the end, it would be less important what the world looks like versus what can be abstracted from it simply from interacting with it. And this would lead me to say that the nature of the world is about function (a method that relates an objective to its instantiation) –  and not form (the manifestation of matter and energy), the latter being  incidental to the process, and a means to an end in terms of being the medium that allows the function to be enabled or expressed.

This is an important view for me and consistent with my argument that we should perhaps be less preoccupied with the makeup of the material  universe, by poking into the furthest and oldest region of the universe, looking for clues of sorts and so on. Instead, we should look look more closely at what the logical or functional nature of the various cosmic events appear to be about,  such as the manifestation of a directional and seemingly intrinsic teleological process leading to ever higher degrees of material complexity and organization and where this particular process would seem to want to take us to.

And so the question should be: What has been accomplished to date by the process of material evolution?  As such, the cosmos appears to be a  work in progress, and that is at least some concrete information we have about the nature of the world as we have encountered it.

So what would be the grounds for such assumption when I seem to say that the basis for it is  outside life’s experiential realm?   To get a sense of what I’m hinting at is a little bit like what the character Morpheus says to Thomas A. Anderson, AKA “Neo” and the protagonist in the excellent 1999 Sci-Fi movie Matrix: You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. 

Now I realize that this might be an understatement for some, but here I’m not talking about all the really bad things that are happening in the world today (and have more or less always happened in the world of yesterday) and an astonishing human tragedy by any other name given all the calamities, war, religious strife, murder and mayhem and what have you, but the fact that regardless of the nature of the event – good or bad –  it remains a mystery why any of it actually needs to take place, i.e., what in the world  is playing itself out here?

In short, I am saying that life, living, doesn’t add up … at least not for me, and while that might just be my problem, I think not.  I suggest we are seeing only part of the script here.

This has to do with the fact that you cannot make sense of something existing for its own sake. I know, some will say something equally nonsensical, like “it is what it is”,   but trying to make sense of apparent nonsense is one of my interests, especially when there appears to be so much of it, such as a whole universe of it.

So when I say that it doesn’t add up, I mean to say that I have never come across the reason as to why we are here, on this planet, in this universe, or the reasons why life is the way it is to the extent that we are challenged by it on a daily basis.

Sure, science will give you a hand full of reasons as to why the world is the way it is, but these are descriptive accounts that assume the world as a given without any further justification for it being there in the first place. When it comes to life, similarly – and discounting religious nonsense of any kind – the answer to the question “why are we here” is lacking also.

And so, in whatever way you look at it, the world – life – appears to be more of a solution in search of a problem, i.e., we don’t have the whole story. And  unless there is something more going on than what meets the eye, i.e., what we must confront on a daily basis, the world and everything that can be found in it appears to make no sense at all. At least not for the present …

While a precise definition of ‘life’ continues to be up for debate, I’m going with the statement that something is alive when it demonstrates at least some innate capacity to interact with its environment in a manner that goes beyond mere cause and effect as a function of the laws of physics. The ability to replicate – as essential it is to the continuation of life today would not be essential to the definition; the earliest living molecules may have been generated continuously for  thousands of years in the earliest stages of Earth’s biosphere before the capacity for self-replication came about.  My main point here is to discuss the emergence of animate matter – life – from what appeared to be inanimate matter, leaving us with the question as to what precise process was responsible for this.

Given a basic living system of sorts – e.g., a simple amoeba, a single cell organism – and subtract from it all the known material elements we can discern within it, so that nothing will be left over, we will not come across the property  – at least not one that has been detected – that would account for the amoeba being alive.  Other than the conclusion that we  must have missed something in the analysis,  the suggestion has been made that – in addition to the presence of critical material elements – identified as the building blocks of life – the appearance of life as an emergent property is strictly a function of how its material constituents are organized and able to interact with each other. A state of organizational integrity capable of expressing itself as a living organism, but we have no clue as to what the critical organizational element consist of or how it gets implemented.

Rejecting heavenly intervention (I know, a necessary assumption for some, but I am only interested in rational, non self-serving explanations) the questions remains how a given combination of material compounds is able to  assume a life-exhibiting configuration and continue to persist as such.  The conclusion must be that matter must have an innate capacity to be organized in this manner, leading to yet another mystery: how does this capacity -or at least the potential for it – reside in matter?  In a sense it is similar to the  innate potential for atoms to combine with other atoms into molecules of the various elements,  as described by the laws of physics. Seemingly,  biology extends these laws into the next level of higher organizational complexity, allowing life to appear.

At which point is the potential for life already present in matter?  The conclusion seems to be that this potential is found within the most elementary forms of matter, and that as matter evolves into ever more complex patterns of organizational persistence the capacity for life exhibiting behaviour increases in the case of compounds we have come to associate with being essential to the expression of life within matter.

Finally, the conclusion seems inescapable that the potential for life resides within even the most elementary particle in the world. If this is true, the cosmos as a whole should be looked at as a living organism even in its most elementary innate or inanimate form, potentially capable of expressing itself into the myriad of life-forms that we are already familiar with, and that would include our own.

The first point I would like to make is that it is unimaginable to me that we see the meaning of the event of ourselves as something over and above the event of the cosmos.  As such, the cosmos is intrinsic to our being, and vice versa – we cannot be separated.

It follows too that – while it may have taken the world some time to bring us on to the scene – we have always been here, in principle, from the very start, as a potential event that was eventually realized as an expression in physical matter.

Secondly, the incidence of our physical existence is not a function of when, where or how, but of why we are here. I know this notion flies in the face of those who believe that everything that exists beyond the most elementary particle of matter is strictly a function of the random action of such particles, with no rhyme or reason in mind – other than of course the seemingly innate ability of matter to organize themselves into progressively more organized structures which – in its most complex formation – are able to exhibit life, prescience and consciousness as new properties not seen before. This is of course a bit of a problem for the random motion folks who’s fear of metaphysics – the “why?” beyond the mere matter of cause and effect  – must be a product of random thoughts as opposed some kind of structured logical thinking.

I think that the reason why we are here is the same reason as to why the world is here – or, for that matter – why there is anything here at all. Well, at least it means we have only one why to worry about …

It is easy to be intimidated by the sheer scope of the physical universe, it age and its size, but as incomprehensible as that may be  – it would be wrong to attach a significance to that beyond the fact that it simply is what it is. Its true meaning will be completely independent from and over and above its physical attributes, in the sense that it will be larger than the sum of its parts.

This makes our experience of the physical aspects of our existence less relevant, and that beyond the point of being able to survive them, we can  – to a certain degree – take them for granted, i.e., we wouldn’t be what, how and where we are without them.

Thus, what we will conclude about ourselves is not going to be strictly a function of our physical interaction with the world, but what we discover about ourselves as we interact with our environment and, more importantly, with each other, i.e.,  what we mean to each other, how we treat each other, or are able to work together towards common goals, and how we arrive at such goals. And – ultimately – from what we want from life in terms of accomplishments during the short time that we are here as members of the human species, as well as what our history will show us about ourselves as a species.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

If you are catching the flavour of what the Bard has on his mind here, and are intrigued by it, you might well be interested in a train of thought that has often been referred to as “existentialism”.

Now the term “existentialism” is a bit of a catch-all to describe a variety of philosophical views popular during the 19^th and early 20^th century that can be said to have some commonality through the notion that it is the individual who – in the face of a seemingly cold and uncaring universe – must define the meaning of existence for themselves, as no one else can do it for them.

This might or might not involve a reference to a deity of sorts – for which the former was definitely the case for Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) – often referred to as the original Existentialist – as well as for later thinkers such as the theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965).

More typically, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), as a devout atheist in 1945 described existentialism as “the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism”.  Not calling himself an atheist but an “unbeliever”, Albert Camus (1913-1960) rejected the existentialist label, but is usually included in the roundup of existentialist authors, as are Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Franz Kafka (1883-1924) who are really in a category all by themselves, and some of my very favourite writers.

The kind of thinking I clearly identify with existentialism is best expressed by Camus’s view that man’s freedom – and the opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the acknowledgement and acceptance of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free.” Truly free to define the meaning of our own individual universe – but do we have courage and will to do this?

I like to think of existentialism as the attempt to re-define yourself in an increasingly absurd world as defined for you by the traditions of science, philosophy and religion; you cannot help but feel alien to it. Others cannot tell you who or what you are, or what your existence should mean to you. Only you can determine what you can be for yourself, as opposed to what others want you to be.

For this you must look at yourself not through the eyes of others, but from yourself, from the inside out – from within the acute reality of your own cognitive and spiritual existence. But this is no easy task – it means assuming responsibility for all your actions as you attempt to recreate yourself from the subjective contents of your stream of consciousness. It will require courage – the courage to re-invent oneself without being plugged into a god, a scientific assumption or the beliefs of society at large for confirmation that you are doing the right thing.

That this process might cause you anguish  and despair was a frequent topic for existentialist writers when they held that “… value of life – living –  is nothing more than the meaning we give it.”  (J.P Sartre).

For a more complete and erudite roundup of the existentialist movement I recommend Walter Kaufmann’s excellent 1956 anthology Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre.