Would you sue your parents for giving you birth?
Raphael Samuel, a 27-year-old resident of Mumbai, India recently made news when he announced that he wanted to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent. The startling nature of his agenda, combined with a comically oversized fake beard and sunglasses to hide his face, made many people ask: for real? Apparently Samuel is for real. If anything, a little too much, perhaps.
Samuel argues that life is full of suffering, and he didn’t ask to be born. The sources of suffering he lists in various interviews? Schooling, looking for work, having to work, standing in line, and so on. He is not in the midst of any major tragedy. There’s nothing wrong with his life but he doesn’t want to be in it. Samuel’s complaint is like a version of an Australian drinking song. “Why was he born so beautiful? Why was he born at all? Because he had no say in it. No say in it at all."
To members of the public who have suggested, with varying degrees of tact, that “nothing in his life would become him as his leaving it", he asks, why should he be put in the position of having to contemplate suicide at all? A ruder version of that same Australian song goes, “Why was he born so beautiful? Why was he born at all? He is no f**king use to anyone. He is no f**king use at all." Which is the reaction some folks have had to Samuel’s proposition. But Samuel maintains his air of reasonable and irresistible logic. People have children for their pleasure but children then have to bear a life presumably full of woe.
Turns out that the philosophical theory that parents are immoral to bring children into the world, as Samuel argues, is a Thing. A Thing with a name. Anti-natalism has been studied and evangelized even by a few professional thinkers, who have arrived at many reasons not to have children, via philosophy, economics, evolutionary biology, despair over the destructive nature of human beings who are wrecking the earth. They take apart all the commonly cited reasons to have children and arrive at: no need, okay?
Samuel, is not playing out the simple for and against propositions of viral opinion pieces. His game is deeper.
One of his graphic says: “You gave your parents meaning. They gave their parents meaning. Meaning doesn’t exist." This, he explains, is the Ponzi scheme of meaning. Now, I don’t know what Samuel is feeling right now but I have rarely felt so giggly as when reading comments on Samuel’s page. A woman tells him, “Hi, sir. What you really need is Jesus." Samuel replies, “Even he didn’t have children."
In another graphic, he says, “I want to tell all Indian kids that they don’t owe their parents anything."
In a video, he expands on this and says there is no need to respect your parents unless you want to.
In a time where everyone takes the biographical details of their lives seriously and with extreme piety, even when they are lying about it, like the novelist and now famed liar Dan Mallory, Samuel is like an ice-cream sundae of delights. If he does become fervent and self-serious, all that will go. And then we will have the true test of Samuel: As a nihilist, does he want to be useful? As a nihilist, will dropping traffic on his Facebook page depress him? Or will he add it to the laundry list of suffering he lays at the feet of his parents for their highly unoriginal sin?
In the grand and bearded tableau of Raphael Samuel, a key player is the figure of the parents he intends to sue. His mother, Kavita Karnad Samuel, has done a slay queen type response and said, “I must admire my son’s temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers." She has also said, mirroring Samuel’s air of good-natured reason, “And if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault."
Samuel, who has said in multiple places that he has an excellent relationship with his parents, described his mother’s initial response to his planned lawsuit thus (he hasn’t found a lawyer yet and I haven’t seen any quotes from his father): “She said that’s fine, but don’t expect me to go easy on you. I will destroy you in court." Clearly, she is not one to say: “Bas yahi din dekhne ke liye paida kiya tha (do you think I gave birth to you so that I could live to see your antics today)?"
Anti-natalists trying to logically solve and convince people that they shouldn’t have children sometimes find themselves confronted with this problem of logic. How can you ask a child whether they want to be born? The other big problem they face is that people have no logic for having children, they just do!
In a time where everyone takes the biographical details of their lives seriously and with extreme piety, even when they are lying about it, like the novelist and now famed liar Dan Mallory, Samuel is like an ice-cream sundae of delights. If he does become fervent and self-serious, all that will go. And then we will have the true test of Samuel: As a nihilist, does he want to be useful? As a nihilist, will dropping traffic on his Facebook page depress him? Or will he add it to the laundry list of suffering he lays at the feet of his parents for their highly unoriginal sin?
In the grand and bearded tableau of Raphael Samuel, a key player is the figure of the parents he intends to sue. His mother, Kavita Karnad Samuel, has done a slay queen type response and said, “I must admire my son’s temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers." She has also said, mirroring Samuel’s air of good-natured reason, “And if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault."
Samuel, who has said in multiple places that he has an excellent relationship with his parents, described his mother’s initial response to his planned lawsuit thus (he hasn’t found a lawyer yet and I haven’t seen any quotes from his father): “She said that’s fine, but don’t expect me to go easy on you. I will destroy you in court." Clearly, she is not one to say: “Bas yahi din dekhne ke liye paida kiya tha (do you think I gave birth to you so that I could live to see your antics today)?"
Anti-natalists trying to logically solve and convince people that they shouldn’t have children sometimes find themselves confronted with this problem of logic. How can you ask a child whether they want to be born? The other big problem they face is that people have no logic for having children, they just do!
