ANTINATALISM – Interview with Theophile de Giraud – ENGLISH SUBTITLES

 Thomas: Théophile de Giraud, good evening! To introduce you in a couple of words,

you are a Belgian writer and philosopher and an antinatalist. Theo: Yes.

Thomas : So what is antinatalism as a philosophy?

Theo: Well, it's a philosophical doctrine that says it's preferable not to come into the world

and that's against procreation, thus against the prevailing natalism

And the basis of the argument is that life is ultimately made up of a lot of suffering

and little joy, really. That there is a priori more suffering in life than there is pleasure or joy,

therefore antinatalists consider that life is not worth living,

which however doesn't drive them to suicide, we're alive, we might as well continue our lives

But to bring new people into the world is in any case negative

as they didn’t ask for anything and have everything to lose

because the worst is included in birth itself

Those who went through Auschwitz obviously didn't know they'd go through Auschwitz,

however the possibility of going through Auschwitz is included in coming into the world

thus to bring someone into the world is to expose them to all imaginable misfortunes and tortures

So antinatalists believe that based on the principle of non-violence and absolute respect for others

antinatalism being ultimately the peak of ethics, leads to the absolute refusal to cause harm to anyone,

and thus to refuse to bring them into the world because life will inevitably contain harm

Thomas: So I was wondering, when and how did you come to the idea of becoming an antinatalist

or at least how did you come up with this idea, this hatred of procreation?

Theo: Well, that goes back to my early childhood, actually there's no triggering moment

but I know that since nursery school I asked myself what the hell I was doing there, we had to do stupid exercises,

I remember a paper piercing exercise that I never understood and I explained to the teacher

that it would be easier to cut the paper fortune teller using scissors

I expected the entire class to back me up a bit and say "Yes, what Gérald says makes sense" - that's my real first name -

but not at all, the teacher didn't actually respond to my objections

She said that the goal of paper piercing was to do paper piercing exercises

So I thought to myself I was born into the wrong society,

where we are under a pure hard authoritarianism, so there's already that

And then, that's a detail, but mainly it's gradually discovering - I was born in 1968 that's amidst the Cold War,

and so with every newsbreak when you’re 4, 5 or 6 years old, you start to realize that there is a risk of nuclear war at all times

One starts to realize that there is animal abuse,

there was a little magazine for primary schools named Tremplin, it's free

And there was a report on the massacre of baby seals on the ice floe

There were photos of these completely white baby seals,

beaten to death with baseball bats by hunters, by those butchers

There was the issue of overpopulation,

which was at the time talked about regularly, it's now a taboo subject,

but in the 70's it was very common to bring up the problems of overpopulation on a global scale so there's that.

You progressively discovers on TV the existence of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the Vietnam war

The history that one learns in school only shows that history is nothing but a perpetual bloodbath

So all of this progressively made me quite a pessimist,

quite realistic about life, especially about human society

And then at age 15, I had some depression

At age 19 I made a serious suicide attempt in Ireland

And then I stayed there for a few years to write some poetry

about things that are not of much interest

I went through psychoanalysis at age 27, here in Louvain-La-Neuve, by the way

And there, as a part of that Jungian psychoanalysis,

there were dreams that indicated that my destiny was to fight the antinatalist battle

Let’s see and think, I suffer, I am depressed, I am not well ...

I could commit suicide to end this suffering,

another option is for me to stay alive and fight a battle for people to become more aware

of the stakes that are raised by bringing a child into the world.

At first so that they ponder on the matter, so that they don't act as if the answer was obvious

and instead ask themselves : "Do we have a right to bring a child into the world? And if yes, under what conditions?"

Those are two questions that are never brought up

Procreation is something that goes without saying and that is valued, over-valued

So I thought to myself: Oh well, death will come to me some day, thank God, so the suffering will end

From here on, let's use life to serve a cause that will allow to raise people's awareness,

to encourage them to think about whether having children is legitimate or not.

Thomas : Very good. So in 2000 you published your first work, "De l'impertinence de procréer"

Theo: Yes

Thomas: And then in 2006 "L'art de guillotiner les procréateurs: Manifeste anti-nataliste"

Theo: That’s right.

Thomas : Which is very well written, but also quite cutting and subversive,

and so I was wondering how your readers received this work,

did you get criticisms from people around you or...?

Theo: Most of the time, it's well-received, actually a lot of people thank me because

I don't invent anything in this book, there's nothing really original

What makes this book original is that it's a rigorous demonstration, I organize all the arguments

We all have discussions sometimes about whether having children is good or not

But I bring some order into the argument, it's an argument that's constructed, coherent,

And a lot of people congratulated me, thanked me for this book because I said it all and clearly

what they sometimes thought deep down and let's say less clearly

So I organized a bit the general antinatalist argument that can be found in other books,

but sometimes in a way that's more aphoristic, I'm thinking of Cioran, Roland Jaccard

There has already been plenty of antinatalist thinkers, I mean at least a few.

a few dozens let's say but there hasn't been a structured book that

presented it rigorously, that deconstructed rigorously the arguments from natalists

and that presented rigorously to what point life was seemingly always painful in and of itself.

Thomas : So we mentionned reactions of your readers, but what about the reaction of your family? I was wondering about that.

Theo: Well you're going to be surprised, but my family...

I'm thinking about my parents here, has received my project rather well

Firstly because they knew that it in the context of psychoanalysis, of therapy for me,

and because I'm an only child, so my parents weren't eagerly natalists

And then they themselves have realized as time went on that life was tedious,

so in the end my parents were rather open to all of this

Of course they argumented all the time by saying "I didn't ask to be born either"

When you're a teenager, you starts to philosophize like that,

"Fuck school, I didn't ask to be born, I didn't ask to come into the world."

And then the response was always "But we weren't asked if we wanted to be born either"

I pointed out to them that they were right, but they signed the contract for someone else by having a child

We didn't ask to come into the world,

at this point we don't owe anything in any way, we didn't sign any contract,

but when we have a child, we obviously sign the contract of life,

we say "we vote for it"

And that's what can sometimes start to cause problems

But to come back to your question, my family, well, I kind of cut ties with them,

because I didn't choose my family

those are people that were imposed on me at birth, who mean well,

but we share no affinity, my friends are my real family

That's my spiritual family, the family in my heart, the one I have chosen

So these friends, so here we're talking about my real family

Well let’s get back first to my biological family

they didn't receive it well nor badly,

simply because with some of them I had cut the ties when I was 20-22,

so they don't even really know what I do to be honest

But when it comes to my real family, i.e. my friends

Even though 90% of my friends have children,

we have always been able to talk about it,

I respect them completely as parents because I know they are kind parents

who took time to think about their decision and who will- who do everything

so that their child or their children, sometimes they have multiple,

do well in their life with access to existence and happiness

so we are in mutual respect

I respect them as parents, and they, parents, respect me as an antinatalist

So they understand where I'm coming from,

they know it's not at all something like

I'm not anti-parents, to be clear, I'm antinatalist

I fight against an ideology, I don't fight against people,

Not at all. I respect.

I'd prefer a thousand times more someone who is a good parent

compared to a guy with no kids but who regularly causes misery and absolute carnage around him

for example a person with narcissistic personality disorder with no kids won't interest me at all

meanwhile someone who has kids, who takes proper care of them,

who has good values, I would clearly prefer them in any case.

So I’ll say it again, I am an antinatalist, meaning I fight against the natalist ideology

that we all live with since we come into the world

Thomas : Do you have friends who share the same beliefs as you? Even your partner, maybe?

Theo: My current partner, yes absolutely,

Séverine is totally on the same wave-length

She had, maybe before her thirtees, sometimes a vague desire to have children

some idea that she could have them one day

And since her thirtees, she completely understood that it wasn't for her

So we understand each other wonderfully in that aspect

she doesn't have any desire to have children, even adoption

because there, from a rather egoistic and hedonistic standpoint

we tell ourselves that adoption is always there as a solution for people

who want to avoid the issues that stem from bringing children into the world, for the child's sake

but who want at all cost to satisfy their need for parenthood,

for that I believe adoption is a great solution

but for example with my partner, we don't even want that

because, as Michel Onfray would say, we have better things to do

in the sense that we prefer to have more free time, some freedom,

if we hang out in the weekend, on Sunday we can wake up at 3PM

there's no baby that's been crying in the next room since 6am so that we give them their nursing bottle

So from this hedonistic point of view, I think it's also good not to have children

It's good not to have children for the child,

it's good not to have children for the environment,

and it's good to not have children for ourselves,

because then you have a life that has more freedom, less burdens

that is more joyful and more festive life compared to people who engage in parenthood.

Thomas : Speaking of, as you mentioned the environment,

in your book you talk about "overpollupopulation"

Theo: Yes

Thomas: So is procreating really a danger for the planet?

Theo: At this time more than ever, in any case there are too many of us since at least 50 years

since the experts, the scientists estimate that

the planet could support one billion people living with our western lifestyle

one billion

There's already many more of us who live the western lifestyle

emerging countries want to, rightfully so, enjoy the same comfort

with central heating, running water, a fridge, a microwave, a television, a computer

I don't blame emerging countries at all for ... having that desire for comfort

The idea that « the poor have to stay poor », as the economic degrowthists say, that shocks me a bit

This speech saying « Yes, you're happy, you’re poor stay poor, all is well, your ecological footprint is sustainable »

Okay but come on, they're not really happy, we have a desire for comfort, it's in our genes

We're primates, we're apes, we want warmth,

we want to live under a roof to hide from bad weather

we want to have a car rather than go by public transport

because it's easier and gives us more freedom

So yes, every child that is born today, especially in our countries,

because we have an ecological footprint

that would need about 3-4 planets if everyone had our lifestyle,

it's really just speeding up even more the ecological carnage that's underway

It's to speed up the sixth mass extinction that is happening

because of the proliferation of the human race

And when I talk about overpolupopulation, that's a concept of a word

to avoid this phenomenon that we observe all the time,

it can be in the media, it can be anywhere,

people talk at times about overpopulation, thus about the problematic human demography,

And then, in another report at newsbreak,

we will talk about athmospheric pollution, about deforestation,

as if pollution was one issue

and as if overpopulation, or the demographic issue, was another topic.

No! In fact, all the destructions of ecosystems that we are witnessing

are due to the presence of the human population in excessive numbers

Once there are too many people in any given territory,

no matter the lifestyle of those people,

so the economic degrowthists who believe that we need to deprive ourselves entirely

and live in a happy modesty, because that's the solution, that's false!

Because if we were a hundred billion hunter-gatherers, if we lived like 20 000 years ago,

but if there was a hundred billion hunter-gatherers, the planet couldn't bear it,

because hunter-gatherers need a territory of 100 squared kilometers

We know that some populations

were able to destroy their environment simply due to their numbers

It's the number that's problematic, it's not the lifestyle,

the degrowthists want to make us believe that it's our lifestyle that's the problem,

it's the exact opposite!

Even with animals,

there have been unintentional experiences that were done then measured by biologists,

if you simply introduce deers on an island, for example

We can't say that those cervids are animals who have an enormous ecological footprint

We can a priori say that they live in a happy modesty, well, compared to us

But if we put deers on an island without predators

the population...

First, the fauna will suffer immensely

thus the insect population will diminish

and thus the bird population will diminish as well

so deers in high numbers, who will reproduce without predators,

will proliferate on the island and destroy the ecosystem of an island

despite the fact that their lifestyle is completely sustainable

according to the economic degrowthists writers.

So actually it's never the lifestyle that's the problem,

it's always the number of people who practice this lifestyle.

That's the problem.

If there were a hundred million human beings, we could almost all have a helicopter

I exaggerate a bit, but I mean we could all have two Jeeps,

the planet will only see it like a mosquito bite

we wouldn't destroy any other animal species

but the simple fact that there's 7 billion of us, that's way too many.

Even populations who still live in an extremely modest way,

in poverty, dare I say, destroy animal populations

simply by being invasive, by intruding in the territory of lions, of elephants, I'm thinking of Africa here,

it’s also true in Asia.

And thus the simple the fact that there are too many people on a given territory

is detrimental to the biodiversity of other animal species

Thomas: Okay, so basically, a good ecologist shouldn't reproduce?

Theo: A true ecologist doesn't have children.

I would even say that an ecologist that reproduces now is an ecologist with questionable motives.

Thomas: There's a topical event, I don't know if you have seen it,

but in recent news there is an 27-year-old Indian man who has sued his parents.

Theo: Yes!

Thomas: Recently, so I don't know what you think about it.

What do you think about that?

Theo: It's amazing, I forgot his name... Samuel Raphael, I believe.

Samuel Raphael or Raphael Samuel. Thomas: Oui.

Theo: if my memory is correct.

Theo: I find it amazing, it's something I talk about in Manifeste Antinataliste,

there's a chapter called "The right to sue one's parents"

and he had this same idea.

It shows clearly that antinatalism is a very philosophical approach to these existential problems

because whether it's Benatar, Cabrera, Karim Akerma, myself, or others

we all reach the same conclusions in the end.

Independently, we don't know each other at all,

one lives in Germany, one lives in South Africa, one who lives in Brasil etc.

and without ever talking to each other, we all reach the same conclusions

with the same arguments and the same logic that leads to the same conclusions

and I really like what Raphael Samuel did a lot,

moreover he did it a bit in collusion with his parents who are both lawyers

and who probably could have helped in the legal area

to formulate it in a way that could be received by some court

But I find it very interesting, because it's true that we didn't ask to come into the world,

but the minimum should be to be able to sue, at least symbolically, our parents

and say "I didn't agree to a contract, now YOU support me for the rest of my life

I shouldn't have to be subjected to the drudgery of studying,

or the drudgery of putting 8 hours into working a salary job in order to ear my living.

I never signed any contract,

so the minimum for you, parents, you have chosen to bring me into the world,

I really dislike all the chores that come with being alive

so you will support me for the rest of your life.

That's it. That's the, let's say, minimal sanction that is coherent with the choice to bring children into the world.

So what Raphael Samuel did is amazing because several of us have said this on Facebook

in the English-speaking antinatalist groups

Thanks to him, the word "antinatalisme", in english antinatalism, has travelled around the world

This suit he symbolically made against his parents

has been discussed in dozens of languages at a global scale.

They talked about it even in Indonesia, in India, in Japan, in Greece, in Romania

So it travelled around the world,

so the word antinatalism has become a commonplace word, let's say,

thanks to this action that had a remarkable mediatic success.

Thomas: Could society implement measures to limit births? Or at least bring awareness to future parents?

Theo: That to me clearly seems easy to do to me, yes.

It's clear that, well, we live with an a priori natalist mindset.

it's this mindset that it's obviously a very good thing to reproduce and that everyone will reproduce

Women who don't want children, childfree women, are constantly subjected to some social pressure

"Why don't you have children?" "You will regret it later" etc.

So we live in a deeply natalist society,

not only on a religious level, but also on a secular and materialist level

because we simply need new consumers for industrial groups

there's a need for a population of working age to finance the pensions etc.

So the politicians are natalists, the industrialists are natalists,

the religious people are natalists, everyone is natalist.

And our teachers, as soon as in elementary schools, are natalists.

We know the end of all stories for children,

"They got married and lived happily ever after and had lots of children"

It's systematic in a lot of stories for children and it's also true for a lot of movies

Even American cinematography is natalist etc.

So to get back to your question

How to countrebalance this prevailing natalism?

That would be by giving back to education what I think is it's primary function

that is, not only to transfer information and knowledge to children

but most of all to teach them to think for themselves and develop critical thinking.

For me, good education is mainly this, it's not content, but a methodology.

And I think that if we ...

For example, one of my friends, Philippe who is a teacher at ITN, started this debate with his students

in sixth or fifth grade (16-18 yo), I don't remember

so there, "Is it good to have children? Yes? No? Why?" etc.

It was a very heated debate, they nearly tore each other apart

because of how emotional and passionate it was, fatally

this is inevitably a subject that doesn't leave anyone indifferent

but it went very well in the end,

and at the end of the year, they went to thank him,

my friend Philippe being an excellent teacher

And they went to thank him, saying "That debate about procreation we had was cool"

"it was a great idea on your part, it was was heated though, Sir"

"but it will stay with us for the rest of our lives, it made us think!"

So you see, we can really imagine that it could be a part

of the mandatory school program of the Ministry of Education

that for 1 hour, 2, 3, 4 hours of the time of secondary studies there would be this debate

"Look, do you want children? Yes, why? Who will bring arguments?" There.

Many will say "But it's obvious, its natural, otherwise humanity will disappear"

"And so what, humanity will disappear, is that serious?" We'd have to push the reasoning.

So there's a lot of things to do that don't cost anything

and that still develop the children's critical thinking

they could apply this critical thinking to other subjects other than procreation

but I believe that it should almost be a duty of humanism to

to question this desire to have children that we all have more or less

or, in any case, that society would like us all to have.

It's a duty of humanism because by claiming all the time that there's nothing more beautiful than life,

that it's a wonderful gift that we receive from our parents

that implies the child is indebted to their parents,

it means that parents can be borderline abusive without feeling too guilty because

they have given the most beautiful gift we can think of, the miracle of life

So that's something very twisted that almost, I wouldn't say supports, but maybe facilitates...

It puts a little bit of oil in the cogs of child abuse.

I think that if we encouraged people, teenagers, to think about the legitimacy of having children

on "OK, I want to have children despite all of it"

But it's also to ask oneself: "Am I ready to have children?"

"Am I mature enough to have children?"

"Do we have enough maturity at age 20 to have understood the key aspects to life's stakes?"

or simply "Do we have the answers to existence?"

"Do we already have a job?" "Have we already made our path in life a bit?"

"Do we have a somewhat reliable future?"

So I believe that if people thought about it more, first they would have less children,

they would dare to fulfill their desire for a childfree life without having to justify themselves

And as we think about it, I believe many would say "It's true that at the end of the day

they might be fooling us with this tale about how having children is the most beautiful thing in life,

it can be a burden, we know the phenomenon of parental burnout that affects 1 parent out of 5 in Belgium

Parental burnout is not fun to go through, you need to continue to work,

you need to take proper care of your child, despite the fact that you can’t take it anymore.

Those are things that we could tell students of

secondary schools, to people aged 15, 16, 17, 18

before they desperately throw themselves into this mythology of procreation

They could regret it themselves later, for themselves, not only for the child.

So I believe there is plenty of little things to do very easily, for free

by using already existing structures, starting with schools

by asking the question on whether or not it's good to have children.

If yes, why ? And if not, why ?

And I believe that with that alone, the world would change enormously.

When we see that nowadays, even though we are in a completely natalist society

when we don't have any antinatalist debates

we are in a society that's clearly and openly natalist

and despite that we can observe in the West, but it's also true Japan, the USA, Russia

When we let women decide for themselves, on their own, they have less than 2 children on average.

They have 1.3, 1.1, 1.6, 1.8 children per woman which is below the replacement level which is 2.1

In developed countries there are very small infant mortality rates,

so it's necessary for every woman to have at least 2.1 children to keep the population at a stable level.

Once women have less, have 1.8 or 1.6 children, we have a declining population.

Women do this naturally even though we live in a natalist society.

So we'd need... I'll take Italy as an example, which is a very natalist society,

which is still very chauvinistic, with natalist measures from the fascist Italian government

But despite that, Italy up to the recent years was the European country

where women had the least children, even though there's a cult of the mama etc.

Even though the Vatican is there,

Catholicism is there, altered Catholicism, thus natalist,

and Italian women, just a few years ago, had 1.1 children per woman!

So the polititians are panicking because there's nobody to finance pensions anymore

The age pyramid turns upside down and that causes panic.

which also explains why society is natalistic.

But what's amazing is that independently on the modules of critical thinking

we could implement for teenagers in schools

In a natalist society, if we let women be, if they have access, somewhat for free

- it's not completely the case, it should be -

almost free access to contraception and the right to abort

then, the women make a choice, without it being organized, that is actually denatalist

If we leave women the choice on a global scale, if all women on a global scale had

the unconditional right to abortions and the unconditional right to birth control

the world population would decline because all women, without being organized,

choose to have 1.1, 1.5 children on average

so the population would actually decrease slowly, but surely.

And there would never be 11 billion of us in 2100 as it's predicted

So there's plenty of solutions, it's really simple.

The problem is natalism, it's the natalist dogmas,

but the solutions to reverse the tendencies are at hand's reach.

Now it all comes to politicians taking on the issue,

that they accept to think about this matter which isn’t light nor trivial.

Thomas: Okay, so you think that people don't think much before having children

that they do it in a way that's a little mechanical or animalistic.

Theo: I wouldn't even say animalistic, instead I would say it’s socially conditioned.

It's a very strong social conditioning, in which we bathe since we’re kids

as we play very early with little teddy bears and little dolls etc.

And we're really programmed to become parents ourselves

For example, you asked me when I became an antinatalist, there isn't a precise date

But at age 10 in a conversation over a family meal

I don't remember who anymore, my uncle or my aunt, asked me the classic questions

"And you, how many children do you want when you're older?"

I was 10.

And I answered "I won't get married and I won't have children, I'll never have children, I won't have children."

My entire family laughed, of course, "Sure, he's only 10, he will change his mind"

Now I'm 50 and they don't laugh at all anymore because on top of that I became an antinatalist militant

and I don't have children anyway, so they understood that it was serious

But you see, we're really deep in the social conditioning, so it was self-evident to them

so it was self-evident to them when they asked me this question

even though my family isn't at all stupid or uneducated,

they're middle class or a little below average

but these are people who went to school, who are literate, kind, intelligent, who are cultured

And even in this kind family, this question was seen as obvious

"And you, when you're older, how many children will you want?"

The question should have been "Do you want children?"

But no, we live with this foregone conclusion

So it's actually not even a reaction to an animal need,

of course DNA is there, but we shouldn't believe either that animals want to reproduce.

Animals have a sexual desire, we have a sexual instinct,

but they're not at all aware of the consequences of mating

They mate because there's the rut, because there's testoterone

because there's estrogens for the females

and they reproduce, I wanna say, that's really mechanical, it's the DNA

that turns us all into zombies, into robots to serve the DNA molecule

that is passed on through us, but there isn't really an animal conditioning for reproduction itself.

There is a conditioning for copulation, but not really for reproduction.

On the other hand we humans in our societies, not only we have obviously sexual desires,

but on top of that we're conditioned socially, politically, religiously

for a natalist purpose, for a natalist perspective

The idea is that everyone will have children, it's seen as obvious,

but it's also a Darwinian heritage.

I'll analyse the situation a bit

it's obvious that humanity, man being the weakest of all animals, like Aristotles said,

humanity couldn't have survived if it hadn't been outrageously natalist.

I think that's a part of what caused the extinction of Neanderthals.

When we analyse the distribution of households of Neanderthals

We can see that there were 100 km between two households for example, and when...

when Cro-Magnons, we, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Cro-Magnon people

show up in Europe about 40 thousand years ago, we see households closer and closer to each other,

there's only 10 km between households, And we really see, it's my hypothesis,

there's been a lot of hypotheses about why it was the Neanderthals, who have been there for 400 000 years,

completely adapted to their environment,

who lived through glaciations, interglacial periods, warmings, coolings

they've been through everything, they were 100 000 % adapted to their environment,

they had remarkable technology and intelligence

And suddenly when we, Cro-Magnons, show up

For example in the Spy cave close to where I live, we first have nearderthal layers then cro-magnon layers,

So I'd say it's probably because of Cro-Magnon who then started his die-hard, maniacal breeding

you can for example look at all the paleolithic statues that belong to the Cro-Magnon,

the steatopygous statues, the representations of vulvas on the cave paintings

There's really an idea of extreme natalism that's a kind of a memetic Darwinian selection

The Neanderthal wasn't probably too natalist, had the intelligence to avoid conflicts

by putting distance between households, between habitats,

which helped avoid conflicts about resources

meanwhile with us Cro-Magnon, there's this idea of "We reproduce as much as we can!".

This inevitably leads to perpetual wars that we can see today all the time

but it also allowed us to become the superior predator, the super-predator that we are today

We have taken over all ecological niches thanks to this extreme natalism

that's maybe a sort of a mutation, here I'm getting lost in suppositions,

I'm not a biologist, but we can imagine that there is a mutation somewhere in a gene

which caused a subconscious over-validation of birth

All these mother goddesses in mythology etc.

Even in Christianity, we have already talked about it a bit, has been altered.

Evangelical Christianity and the Christianity of Christ is antinatalist.

Saint Augustin himself even hoped that we all stopped reproducing

because New Jerusalem would then fill up faster

which would make the end of the world come sooner.

So Saint Augustin hoped that everyone became like Christ,

that everyone became eunuchs to attain the Kingdom of Heaven

because the end of the world would come faster and New Jerusalem would fill up faster.

This is Saint Augustin saying that!

And what do we see today?

Throughout the Middle Age, it stays pessimistic, Christianity is of course pessimistic

but we see that natalism develops more and more

Why? Because Christianity became a state religion under Emperor Constantine

and you can't be a state religion in the Roman empire while being antinatalist

An empire needs soldiers, craftsmen, slaves, workers

thus a need for women who perpetuate society, for more women who act as laying hens, to say it bluntly

so it was unthinkable that Christianity would become the state religion

without hugely conceding on Evangelical antinatalism.

Thomas : So according to you Christianity would be antinatalist, then?

Theo: Yes, absolutely. I just wrote a short book about this,

I'll probably publish it at the end of this year.

Kierkegaard realized this, I mean it’s really not a scoop, but it shocks me

as I told you I followed a fully traditional catholic education,

so I attended a Catholic primary school, a Catholic secondary school,

I did my first communion, my second communion, my confirmation, I did bible study

I went to Mass every Sunday and every Saturday, depending on soccer schedule

so I know very well what is said in church, what the priests say in church

I remember specifically the episode about Marriage at Cana

which is one of the rare episodes that the priests use in a natalist way

because Christ is present at a wedding, marriage, a wedding feast

and somehow this mere presence of Christ, who is a little bit on the sidelines, just talking with his disciples

who doesn't even participate actively in this event

but this mere presence is supposedly supporting marriage, and therefore procreation,

when really, what the Marriage at Cana tells us is that

he was indeed there, that he was invited to come with his disciples

and then at some point there's no more wine.

People drank too much too quickly, there's no more wine for the guests

and Christ's mother, Mary, comes up to him and says

"Good Lord, there's no more wine."

And how does Christ receive her?

We need to keep in mind that we're in Judaism, Christ is a Jew,

Judaism is wide-spread, Christianity is a Jewish sect, so it's still Judaism

And in Judaism, the slightest lack of respect towards one's parents

is punishable by death according to Tora, according to Jewish law.

So Christ responds to his mother "Oh Woman, what has this to do with me?"

"Who are you to ask me about this, my time has not come yet, this doesn't concern me, and who are you to talk to me this way?"

"What are we?"

"Do we have any bond?"

In terms of today's slang, it would be "Fuck, get lost, bitch, you're pissing me off"

See, that's how we would say it in Molenbeek or Sambreville. (laughters)

It's that violent in context.

And there are comments in the Jerusalem Bible, they're dumbfounded because indeed,

it's a way to respond to one's mother that totally contradicts basic principles of respect in Judaism

filial piety, that respect that a child owes to their parents

It's a monstrosity

But that's not all there is in the Gospel

There's also a moment when he recruits his apostles, his disciples

Christ comes up to, I don't know anymore which, disciple and says:

"Come with me, come spread the good word with me"

And the disciple responds "Yes, Lord, I'll follow you, but let me bury my father first"

And he says "Leave the dead bury the dead, follow me!" And they go spread the Gospel

Again, this is a total betrayal of filial piety because in Judaism, respect for their dead is a matter of course

One does not leave their father like that without a tomb, without any sort of a funeral

So that's once again a rupture

He's a runaway, at age 12 he's in the Temple in Jerusalem

and they say he was already very intelligent, it's an incarnation of God himself after all, so he’s pretty sharp.

And he has discussions with the doctors of the law in the Temple in Jerusalem at age 12

He lectures them, he knew Judaism better than the rabbi at the time. And he philosophizes like that for days and days

And then one day the caravan that came from I don't know which village, Bethlehem maybe, where Christ's parents lived

The caravan leaves to Bethlehem and the next day Christ's parents, a little distracted, realize that Jesus is gone

"My God, where is he?"

And they go back, they suspect that he stayed in Jerusalem

So he stays in the Temple without telling his parents, the caravan left, he doesn't care,

he stays there to philisophize and theologize with the doctors of the law

The parents, being very distracted, like people still are on the highway today, realize one day later "My God, where's the kid?"

They go back and they find him still philosophizing in the Temple in Jerusalem

And Christ's mother says, Joseph and Mary both say,

"Kid, what are you doing here, you scared us"

And actually he doesn't care at all. Because he says that his place is here, in the Temple

So you see, there is a lack of filial piety and I could give you more examples,

But there are several examples of lack of filial piety from the part of Christ towards his parents

He's not at all an obedient submissive child, “thank you, mom, thank you, dad”

Not at all, he actually even thinks that his biological family isn't his biological family, he doesn't care at all

His true family, he says it by the way in the New Testament, my true family, my sister, my brother, my mother, are my disciples here

It's the crowd that gathered, there's my true family, you see?

Thomas: And Jesus didn't have children either

Theo: And he didn't have children, exactly! We should also say that Christ was born to a virgin,

so it's a magical birth, it's a theological, metaphysical birth, Joseph had nothing to do with it

It's archangel Gabriel, it's the spirit of God who was incarnated in the womb of virgin Mary

And even after giving birth, according to one of the later dogmas, even having given birth, she stayed a virgin,

so you see it's this magical birth, it's not at all a typical biological birth, it's not a typical fertilization, it's not a typical birth

And Christ himself will stay childless even though in Judaism, again,

Judaism is a natalist religion like almost all religions except Christianity and Buddhism

And Christ will miss out on this duty as a Jew, he won't reproduce

He will refuse, there is no child from Christ. And even better, Christ will at some point say

There are eunuchs who became that way by nature, there are eunuchs who became that way by the hand of man

And there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs in order to attain the Kingdom of Heavens

So the salvation in the end comes via the refusal to reproduce

You see, in the Evangelical Christianity and even in Paul’s Christianity

Paul says clearly that the best is chastity, virginity

and that it's better to get married than to burn, it's a concession that Paul makes

But Paul understood very well the Christian message, which is to put an end to the species,

to stop the production of sinners, we are all sinners due to the original sin

We will stop the original sin not only thanks to the sacrifice of Christ, but also thanks to the willingness to stop,

I should say the willingness to stop reproducing, to no longer perpetuate original sin

And this for example, Kierkegaard understood it very well in the 19th century

He wrote texts about this, against the Danish protestant church of the time

Unfortunately the poor man died in the middle of his ideological battle, we could say

He died in the front line, he collapsed on the street (as he was about to publish writings)

All the Danish churches, all the politicians, all the Danish establishments of the time were against him

Because the Danish pastors of course wanted to get married, to start a family, to continue to go the the mess,

to continue to preach altered Christianity where riches are welcomed, power is welcomed, you get the idea

Kierkegaard denounces all this and he especially denounces the natalist side of the Danish protestant churches of that time

And it's universal because the orthodox are also natalists, the catholics are natalists

But Kierkegaard pointed out that Christianity of Christ is completely antinatalist

And so I wrote this book partly to complete Kierkegaard's work, to use, structure the arguments that he didn't use in his life

Because actually all of this is in his journal and in short texts published in a little magazine named "L'instant" (The Moment) in Danish

And in the end all of this was silenced, even in university. I took philosophy classes for example

They will tell you about Kierkegaard as a founder, a pioneer of existentialism etc.

But they will never tell you about Kirkegaard the antinatalist who lead this crusade

that he was extremely passionate about against the protestant church of that time

to denounce the fact that they had betrayed Christ's message by becoming natalists

You see, this is a very little known fact about Kierkegaard and I wanted to shed some light on it

and clarify all that extremely antinatalist connotation of canonical gospels

Thomas: Would you go as far as to say that a good Christian should be an antinatalist?

Theo: Of course

A good Christian... I mean that’s the whole idea, the concept of imitation of Christ that survived the entire Middle Ages

Imitation of Christ is to want to live like Christ, walk in Christ's footsteps

It's to conform oneself to Christ's life, to Christ's values, it's to live like Christ as much as possible

In love, forgiveness, kindness, but also in the aspect of being childless

Christ never once-

There isn’t any passage in the Gospel where Christ advocates for a big family

On the contrary

So it's sure that a true Christian doesn't reproduce

Thomas: Let's leave a bit the theological subject

If you had to convince a friend who planned to have a child, what would you like to tell them?

Theo: Oh, well, you know, to convince someone who wants to have a child that it's better not to have children...

I've already tried, it's impossible

(laughters) It doesn't work, it’s too deeply rooted

I believe in education and deconstruction of social natalist dogmas

However, well...

22 years ago precisely, in 1997

I was in Louvain-La-Neuve, as I explained

And I led the first antinatalist campaign, so I had pamphlets that I gave out on the street,

that I put under the windshields of cars in the underground parking lots

My friend helped me to do a poster campaign with antinatalist quotes from Chateaubriand

I cited a quote from Chateaubriand that said

"After the misfortune of birth, I don't know of a bigger one than to give birth to someone"

It's roughly this, but it was something along these lines

And we did a campaign with hundreds of posters on all the walls of Louvain-La-Neuve

We covered posters that announced evening parties, all we could imagine, we put up hundreds of posters

And as it happens, the friend who has become a father since then, Giles,

he however understood completely where I'm coming from and understood just how much it

was necessary to ask oneself the question whether having children is good or not

And my biggest debate, my oldest debate, on this topic, with a female friend,

We were four at a table in Rabelais in La Grand-Place (town square) in Louvain-La-Neuve

There was Tania, Renaud, Catherine, I believe there were four of us

And Tania, who was convinced she wanted children, who was aware of my

campaign, distribution of pamphlets, the antinatalist poster campaign etc.

We started to philosophize while drinking and laughing etc.

We stayed for hours, we stayed at least 3-4 hours on this topic

And Tania admitted defeat at the end, the two other friends jumped in as well, the four of us discussed,

we all argued, counter-argued, the pros, the cons about the idea of having children or not

And Tania at the end of this conversation told me this

And it's excellent

“You're right, but it won't change anything, I want to have children too badly

But you're right in theory, philosophically you're right, but I'll have children anyway, I can't help myself”

This is remarkable actually, it's remarkable because it's honest on her part

See? And it's also characteristic of every discussion you'll have with a person who's motivated (to have children)

I'm thinking of one of my ex-partners who has just given birth

and that I have, believe me, supported on her journey to find a good father for her child

She even had problems with fertility etc., she was completely supported simply as a person that I love

Not only as an ex-partner, but as a friend who will always be in my heart

And Julie has heard me philosophize about antinatalism for dozens of hours

She knew my book, she knew my thoughts, she even helped me to organize

denatalist happenings in Paris and the Non-parents Day in Paris and Bruxelles

So Julie was completely in my world, she supported me completely in my battle

She knows all my arguments, she knows how valid and solid they are

And still, see, we broke up, partly because the desire to have children showed up,

her biological clock was ticking, she was going to be 40, so it's now or never

And Julie has succumbed to the desire to have children that is a little her own,

also a little from family, a little from society

That's a bit of a mix of mythology and authentic desire

And there's also a concrete, sincere aspect of sharing something, to pass on values

There's also a very nice feeling, but that tells you

when someone has a desire to have children engraved in themselves besides the social discourse,

it's very difficult to make them change their mind

On the other hand what is possible to do is to limit the damage

Because as I told you earlier, when you let women choose naturally,

without even thinking about the question for a long time, nor reading any philosophy books,

naturally they want to experience one maternity or two

So, see, on average there's one woman who has 1 child and another woman who has 2 children

And in total it makes 1.5 children per woman

So women in the end are not at all convinced, at all, by the idea of a big family

We always seem to hear it's women who want kids, it's false

It's the phallocrats

It's the phallocrats who want a lot of kids, it's the men, it's the religious people, it's the politicians

It's the phallocrats like Putin who supports producing children,

I talked about Italy, I don’t know what other government-

Right, China backtracks on its one child policy, now they reward fertility

But actually it's a double phenomenon, let's say

On one hand you can never convince someone who really wants to have a child, to become a father or a mother, to not have any

But on the other hand, sticking to antinatalist discourse, you will favorize

the fact that these people will stop at 1 child rather than 2 or 3 or 4

So in the end the battle isn't useless

But I really believe...

Maybe it would be interesting to see the day when antinatalism will be taught

like any other philosophy at least in philosophy classes

but maybe why not in certain classes in university or as soon as in high school

It would be interesting to see just how far

I believe that there are grey areas, such as people like Tania, that I mentioned,

who are totally convinced that yes, having children, I can't help myself, it's my life

She now has 3, if not 4, you see

While saying "Yes, the antinatalist philosophy is right, but I can't help myself"

You have that, then you have childfree women, that's another extreme

Where “Even if you pressure me, I don't want children and I won't have them”, they don't have them and rightfully so

And then there are people who are a little in a grey area

“I want to have a child”, but if you question their desire

Is it your desire or is it the desire of your family, or is it the desire

of your religion, is it the desire of the society, the politicians etc.?

People who are in a state of natalist semi-conviction can easily tip over towards antinatalism

Saying “Yes, it's true on second thought, what's this idea about

burdening myself with a child and to impose an existence onto a child?”

Thomas: So often when one reveals their antinatalist views, I feel like people always respond with

"But life is worth living" or

"If you don't like your life, kill yourself"

Theo: That's the typical one. (x2)

Thomas: What do you respond to people who say that?

Theo: That's, oh how much we've heard that one

It's terrible, in all the comments on social media

It's a hundred times "If you don't like your life, well shit, just kill yourself!"

There was even an asshole on RTL, a program on a set, I was in the audience

I got to make a few appearances

And the host basically told me this

"But if you're not content with your life, don't listen to others, and take a decision"

You see, that just means "Kill yourself"

I told him "Yes, of course, you want me to kill myself tonight"

But I don't want to leave the field to natalists

If I kill myself, then I just do what they wanted me to do, fuck them

So I will certainly not let go of the field

I'm an old football player, a defender on top of that, an offensive back

And I'm telling you, I won't give up on a match until it's won no matter what

And if we lose, we lose. We'll lose holding our head held high

So to get back to that

These comments are really obnoxious because these people on one hand incite suicide, that's illegal

It's crappy on a human level

Because even if you suffer a lot, we are all programmed by DNA to be afraid of death

Not only of the suffering, but of the unknown

There's a narcissist side, we're all very narcissistically attached to our own being

both psychologically and especially biologically

So to tell someone "Kill yourself"

People who say that-

I had a serious suicide attempt at 19, I jumped off a cliff in Ireland, I survived

I can tell you that when you're completely healthy, strong, 19, fit and all

and you have no illness, no valid reason to kill yourself other than philosophical

Just “I don't want this existence, to work, study, I don't want this shitty existence

that I see in front of me” which is actually a completely standard existence

Well, I'd say people from third world countries would like to live our so-called shitty existence

But despite that, this existence was still shitty from my standpoint

It was too much effort for too little reward, so at 19 I took the philosophical decision to kill myself

But I can tell you that to jump off a cliff, it takes really

work involving conditioning and when you're really on the edge of the cliff

you think your self “Well, let's go!” it’s ...

Well, I survived, I climbed back up, I went to the hospital etc.,

I had a risk of after-effects, it was all okay in the end

But I can say that afterwards...

I did it only one time in my life

You see, it's very hard to end one's life

Even a lethal injection, if you don't have any serious mental or physical illness or pain

It's really very hard to make this decision to stop being

Spinoza said it, we all want to persevere in being, you see

It's something that's really inscribed in the DNA of all living creatures

Even a plant will manage to survive drought or to communicate with other plants

to warn them about a presence of a predator

So I believe it's true for all animals

We think that lobsters don't suffer when we throw them into boiling water, that they don't care about whether they live or not

Scientific studies showed that the lobster suffered, wanted to escape from the boiling pot in which we drop it

Switzerland notably insisted on banning this practice and rightfully so

So it's easy to say "Kill yourself"

One can be very dissatisfied with their life, be really depressed, suffer

But it needs to be immense suffering to say "I'm going to kill myself"

We will prefer to suffer than to die, it's literally written in our genetic code

We're unfortunately robots, we don't have that much free will

Dying, that's not like flicking a switch, it's a decision that takes tremendous internal courage

because it goes completely against the reason why our brain exists

Our brain doesn't exist so that we think, philosophize, so that we play chess or whatever

Our brain is an organ that's necessary for adaptation to reality

The brain developed itself, it was an adaptive advantage

So the brain doesn't have any programmed steps to say "Brain, stop functioning, stop existing, end your life"

Not at all, the brain itself is a product of evolution and it serves life, our survival, of the perpetuation of life

So it's very easy to say "Kill yourself if you're not happy"

First of all it's totally horrible from the ethical point of view

If I was dealing with suicidal friend

Even if I know that being dead is better than being alive

I still know that I would do everything to stop him from committing suicide

Now, I would respect his decision if he won't have any other choice

or if he didn't want to change his mind after deep pondering

But as the suicidal and depressed that I was, I would never encourage anyone to commit suicide

I believe...

My vision of life is, we're all in it already, every day that passes brings us closer to the final liberation

We're all going to die de facto one day. “Phew, the nightmare isn't eternal”

And in the meantime let's enjoy the life we can still enjoy and, mainly, let's try to make something useful with our life

Let's lead progressive battles in the favor of women's rights,

against homophobia, against animal abuse, in the favor of animal rights etc.

There's a lot of great battles to fight

There's also a lot of adventures to live during our existence

So I don't think we need to let ourselves succumb to depression or suicidal desires

We can give our life a meaning and make sure that our life in the end would have been worth living

because we've made something out of it that was worth living

Even if on paper no life is worth living no matter how it goes, it's absurd

But we can transcend this, I believe, by activism in favor of

charity, kindness and consideration to humans and other creatures

Thomas : What are your projects around antinatalism?

Because we see you less for the moment on social media, on Youtube

You have decided to write a new book, I believe. You told me about it a moment ago

About Christianity, is that right?

Yes, but that's a book that I'm just finalizing. It should be published in French this year,

I'm finalizing the English version at this moment, it will be published no doubt next year in English

If I find an editor, otherwise I'll do auto-edition in English, whatever

So there's this project

There's a project I have with antinatalist quotes that I work on since 2012,

where I compile hundreds and hundreds of antinatalist quotes of all times, all countries

The goal is to show that antinatalism isn't a philosophy of visionaries,

mystics, some nutty psychopaths like they want us to believe, it's actually an anthropological invariant

We can find antinatalist thoughts, aphorisms, phrases, passages in all cultures, in all centuries, in all countries

To all intents and purposes it's a truly global phenomenon, an anthropological invariant

You'll find it in Africa, in Japan, in China, in European literature or others, you'll find it in philosophies

This idea that it would have been better not to be born and that the best thing after we're born,

as Sophocles said, is to die as soon as possible, is an anthropological invariant

Human beings have always suffered so much, everywhere, that at all times, everywhere in the world

across all time periods there were authors saying “Stop.”

Stop to procreation

So I'm trying to create this compilation that will cover all letters of the alphabet,

that should eventually add up to about a thousand of antinatalist quotes

in order to show that it's present everywhere, always, all the time and that antinatalism is quite widespread

What you said is true, in our personal life we know about a hundred people

Often you don't know directly in your circles anyone who's an antinatalist other than yourself

Thomas: Yes, it's true

Theo: There aren’t that many, maybe 1 in a 1000 people who are really consciously and voluntarily antinatalists

But actually even natalists could have thoughts about how life is rough sometimes

There are women for example who fall into postpartum depression

Boris Cyrulnik explains this in one of his books

I don't know anymore how much, it's 10 or 20% of women who, when they see their baby in the hospital, think

"Poor little one, you don't know what's coming"

"Oh, the poor child, he doesn't know what's coming"

A lot of women realize that the baby is there, when it's not an imaginary baby anymore, it's now a real baby

and they see the baby's entire future life like this, like Aragon said

“Poor poor little children, if you only knew what awaits you in the future”

So I want to say it's an idea that isn't a freaky philosophy of psychopaths, nutjobs or depressed people

It's something that actually, and there it's an anthropological invariant, antinatalism is in each of us

I think that most people think about suicide some day in their life

and a lot of people, even parents, tell themselves

"Did I do the right thing by having children?"

"If I had known, I wouldn't have brought you into the world"

Those are also phrases that we hear in the mainstream

Anyway, that's a project, I also have as a project to elaborate on antinatalism in all spiritualities, mythologies and religions

I have a lot of notes about that written over the last 20 years. Will I have the time? I don't know

It's an enormous endeavour, but in the mythologies, you have also a lot of mythemes,

of mythological passages that are clearly antinatalist

And something more recent, because I thought that the mythologies would be a lot of work

But something more recent, a more recent and simpler project is something that I call in English "Science-based antinatalism"

So to use the latest scientific findings to show how much life itself is rough

For example we know that out of the 4 or 5 basic emotions, 3 quarters are negative

In dreams it's 80% negative emotions

So not only you say at the end of your day "Phew, finally I go to bed"

But if you dream, you'll on top of that have 80% negative emotions, sadness, fear, anger, in your dreams for only 20% of positive emotions

So you see, there's a way to scientifically establish that life in itself is hard

It's always already painful in and of itself contrary to what they try to make us believe,

that birth is fabulous, life is miraculous, it's a fabulous gift

No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

It's really poison, it's an obstacle course, we're much more sensitive to pain than to joy

There is a clear difference between a toothache or being tortured by a nazi and an orgasm, there's no comparison

We take the greatest possible joy, orgasm, and we take the worst possible torture

We can't even imagine. The worst possible torture, you die

So I think that's something I'd like to work on maybe one day. It would be a short book

I'd base it on scientific knowledge, such as 80% negative emotions in dreams

Out of the 4-5 basic emotions, 3 quarters are also negative

I'll have to do something with that

Your idea that life is fabulous, amazing, hooray! No, actually, look at the science

I'm thinking also of an experiment, well, I couldn't conduct it, but it would be interesting to see

how AI would treat hormonal signals, specifically those emitted by the body, if we had bio-sensors

Watches have all these functions for those who do sports, who count their steps, burned calories etc., their heartbeat

But we could today with the miniaturization of micro-sensors have sensors in the skin,

why not even in the brain, to study stress hormone levels, you see, hormones of discontent in some way

and see all the reactions in the brain

Such as "I've had enough, for fuck’s sake there's a traffic jam",

all those little "fuck, shit, damnit" that we say all the time

You inevitably produce electric signals in the brain

but there's also production of negative hormones of stress, anxiety, anger

So it would be interesting to show that even the body itself, the biology of our body itself

emits negative signals that are not at all in favor of natalism,

of the mythology, of seeing life through pink-colored glasses

Thomas: To finish up, if you had any advice to give to an antinatalist

who would like to accompany you in the activist endeavor

(Theo laughs) Someone who's a beginner in the antinatalist activism

Theo: One single advice, one single phrase:

Stay strong!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8liwbACUec