Comparing Hiroshima and Antinatalism

Many years ago, the US government dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The ethics of this is controversial with some saying it is murder of many innocent lives. Others claim that the dropping of the bomb forced the Japanese government to surrender thereby stopping the war early and preventing more lives from being killed.

Regardless of whether the dropping of the atom bomb is justified or not, there are interesting similarities and differences to antinatalism.

When a human (or life in general) is born, it causes suffering to others. To life is to cause suffering. We only need to look at eg meat eating. When a human eats meat, it imposes suffering on an animal. However, there is more. When a human drives a car, it causes pollution, which causes global warming and therefore imposes suffering on future generations. Not only does life cause suffering but life can experience suffering. More life means more suffering.

Similar to the logic of stopping the Japanese government from continuing the war and therefore causing more suffering, antinatalism stops life from existing therefore preventing more humans from being born and causing more suffering.

There are important differences between Hiroshima and antinatalism. Antinatalism is painless. When you do not procreate, your child does not suffer because it never exists. It is impossible to suffer if you don't exist. However, when an atom bomb is dropped on people, there is suffering. Those at the centre of the blast may be incinerated instantly and their pain may not be great, but the radioactivity causes illness and deformities even in babies. There are many pictures of Japanese babies being born deformed in the aftermath of Hiroshima.

To justify Hiroshima is to justify murder as a preventative tool to end suffering whereas antinatalism achieves the same outcome but is painless.

Furthmore, the Japanese people and the Japanese government are separate entities. To punish the Japanese people for the actions of the Japanese government is ethically analogous to raping a serial killer's daughter and threatening to kill her if the serial killer does not stop murdering others. The daughter and serial killer are two different individuals even though they belong to the same family and threat of harm on one influences the behaviour of another. If Hiroshima is ethically justified then it logically follows that rape and death threats of a child is justified if it influences another person to not cause more suffering.

As mentioned before, antinatalism has the same positive outcome but none of the negative effects. If the serial killer is never born, he cannot murder others