I continue to be moved by no one on Youtube quite so much as these two.
Leftist Youtube is so constantly one-note, "everything is fucked, we're all gonna die," that it's nice to see someone consistently make an argument for hope in spite of it.
This one however cut me to the quick, as someone who in fact has in the past made the exact argument that Benetar makes in his case for anti-natalism: that it's selfish to bear children into a world where they are guaranteed suffering.
Neil however makes quite an exhaustive argument that this is essentially tautological, but moreover, in breaking down Benetar's argument part by part, it struck me even before he said it: it's just the fucking depression talking.
Benetar argues that, essentially, joy is fleeting and impermanent, but suffering is eternal, and at the moment the video lays out this quote, I actually screamed at my monitor.
That's just depression. That's what that is. It's glorifying the fatalism of the depressed as a moral good, presenting a warped pessimism as reason for literal extinction ... and of course with a healthy undercurrent of good old fascism.
Neil makes an excellent point in that all of these kinds of fatalism, whether it's about suffering or evil or climate change, are just convenient arguments for inaction, for the status quo. Everything's fucked, so why try to make things at all, and furthermore, you're stupid for believing in such naive nonsense as "hope". It's just I Hate Mondays all over again.
Small wonder so many of us are depressed when this is the worldview we've been bombarded with constantly for nearly my whole adult life, and serves as the platform for the dominant economic and political system of the West. Just turn on your favorite streaming service and it's one show after another about how people are basically evil, selfish, and cruel, and trying to do the right thing is the behavior of the doomed and the inept.
We are not immune to propaganda, fatalism is a tool of the patriarchy, and go get some fucking therapy.