Have you read "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" by Thomas Ligotti? That's where I first ran into the antinatalist/efilist philosophy. (David Benatar has an approving quote on the back cover, and Ligotti quotes Benatar within the book.)
I would argue that Ligotti tries to fuse nihilism and notions of morality, but I'm not sure he's successful. I also view it as a very abusive book, in that Ligotti is trying to undermine the reader's sense of reality and replace it with his own views.
Since you published a great article in a magazine that counts as a WP:reliable source (2 years ahead of the MSM), you've helped to establish the WP:notability of Efilism, and you included a lot of great information for me to cite that isn't covered by the MSM. I will finish and submit the draft as soon as I can, but it could take a while for it to get through the article creation review process.
I finished reading your latest piece on Pirate Wires yesterday, and I updated my Wikipedia draft to cite it accordingly. It was a great read. I will also read and cite the email correspondence with Dr. Benatar when it comes out. These sources will improve my future chances at getting the draft accepted, but they probably won't be enough.
I will need some time to process this story, but I would like to point out a bitter irony about it at first blush.
Bartkus is being branded "anti-pro-life," which is being presented as consistent with his desire to bomb an IVF clinic.
However, I have been recently wondering why the Pro-Life community proper isn't vocally opposed to IVF clinics.
These clinics are basically factories of embryos, the vast majority of which are presumptively doomed to unceremonious disposal. If "Life Begins at Conception," as the Pro-Lifers proclaim, then why aren't they the ones bombing IVF clinics, or staging armed "liberations" of all the sacred fertilized zygotes just yearning to grow out of their test tubes?
The fact that Pro-Life activists are not crying out against IVF clinics suggests to me that they are hypocrites, and that their ethics aren't driven by respect for existing life, but instead by pronatal maximalism. I suspect, but can't confirm, that most Pro-Lifers proper support IVF practices wholeheartedly. (I can't confirm because I don't know any such people IRL.)
According to this: https://www.prolifedallas.org/Issues-FamilyPlanning-InVitro the Catholic Church is officially against IVF, but for reasons where the embryo culling is deemphasized. Search results for "pro-life + IVF" now are terribly "noisy" because of this Palm Springs bombing story.
To the author: since the -Natal debate appears to be your beat, are you aware of any widespread Pro-Life opposition to IVF? This Bartkus narrative seems to be a preemptive inversion of what a rational extension of Pro-Life-ism would lead to.....
The paradoxes contained in the nihilist anti-life positions are apparent after cursory examination, yet the amount of arrogance, ignorance and narcissism required to hold such beliefs mark out such individuals as unstable and needing mental help, or are simply actively malicious and really should take the first plunge out of reality, if they were actually intellectually honest with themselves and their supposed views.
I am not certain of the source, but I wager this kind of mentality seems to be generated by our distinctly anti-natalist civilisation, where existence of children has been gradually removed as a central value for most people, and only barebones pleasure calculations remain.
Well, if you want a rational argument, here's one - survival is an innate directive of all living organisms. If you advocate for destruction of life, by necessity it requires self-destruction as well. A desire to kill yourself is distinctly abnormal, and thus requires psychological and possibly pharmacological help.
That's just so much additional psychologization, presuming the truth of your position.
It's a combination of the ad hominem and begging-the-question fallacies.
But, as for your premise that "survival is an innate directive of all living organisms," not only is that not rational, but it is fully accounted for by philosophical pessimism going back to Schopenhauer. The Will to Live is merciless, and uses living beings as its hapless meat-puppets. This is exactly what the various stripes of life-protesters are up against.
Taking the argument at face value: are you protesting your own existence, or existence in general? If the former, why are you still around? If the latter, why are you still around? Pessimistic position is inherently flawed on acccount of subjective personal bias, assumption that your hypothesis holds universally for all living beings, and provides you with undeserved claim to decide for other beings as to what is optimal for them. It also reveals cowardice in executing the position to its logical end.
Pathological approach to basic biological functions is not rational, but indicates personal desires and negative attitude to life, which, through staking a claim to universal truth is both narcissistic and at the same time absurd, when combined with the absolute powerlessness of the anti-life proponent to realise their philosophy.
Even in a sphere where he has absolute control, his own life, he refuses to eliminate himself as soon as he arrives at the position, revealing inconsistency and hypocrisy. It can be assumed then that the position rests on a veiled desire to inflict pain on the rest of existence, while dressing that claim up in supposed worry for "pain" that existence brings.
Bringing in Schopenhauer is just further dressing up the point that really has nothing valid about it.
Its not a fallacy, when the other interlocutor has no arguments as a response. Subjective abstraction is all we have here. Ad hominem to you too, good sir.
Between 2014 and 2017, I was hanging out with some Earth First folk. There was an FB presence (now gone), and I noticed many Kaczynski fans, Efilists, Antinatalists, David Benatar, Emil Cioran fans, and Eco-extremists crossing over. The EF people moved on because I think they were uncomfortable with the direction the conversations had started to take. Since I don't hate people, I moved on to more community-oriented organizing for permaculture. It's sad to see that the negative, violence-advocating culture persisted and morphed into something so toxic.
"There’s, I think, a completely separate but equally important article to be written about the sex negativity of Zoomers. It comes in many packages. Fetishistic internet phenomena like play-acting conservatism (“trads”) and mukbangs and hauls; the growing popularity of radical feminism and misandry among young women, as evidenced by his friend; femcels/incels, the manosphere… I’m particularly interested in the explosion of a particularly misanthropic brand of radical feminism. I think it’s wrong to call these women femcels, though they use the term. Femcels are women who perceive themselves as below/unworthy of sexual objectification or experience de-sexualization, not women who voluntarily opt out of dating"
Weren't you the one who wrote the article on the coming wave of sex-negativity that went viral? You could always update--"this is where we are after four years".
"Both also had borderline personality "disorder"." This disorder is marked by a strong fear of abandonment as well as other symptoms such as intense emotions and impulsivity.
Just reading about these philosophies in your excellent article is chilling and negating.
I'm sorry if this comes off as spam, but it is more efficient to give you the link than to retype it here--
TL;DR this piece might give you some insight into how people can think their way into these ideas, and then think their way back out again, rather than by doing something that is such a rupture with nature.
These are generally people who have been shown very little of the good side of life, so it's hard to conceptualize any rhyme or reason to it. I found a reason to live while I was staying in Palm Springs during the pandemic, after being the victim of a heinous crime and almost dying a couple of times, so this event is particularly, bitterly poignant to me.
I think people get into these ideas when they have suffered almost enough to break them. Once you break completely, you either die or get better.
I am not against antinatalism, tbh. I sympathize with the worldview even if I don't agree with it. Thank you for sharing your piece, will check it out.
Thank you! It is... well, it's a very left-brained idea, well-meaning, but I can also see how it could lead to this kind of horror when it crosses over into efilism.
The absolute worst thing about the internet is that it facilitates the dissemination of really stupid ideas by anyone with a smartphone and no self control.
I'm an anti-natalist who was also a white nationalist for many years. I have written a long essay called An Indictment of Life which you might like to read.
Wow. Some serious work here. I feel like I just put my head into the upside down in Stranger Things. We live now in a time where we can craft our very own reality and live solitary lives, unchallenged by our philosophy’s unredeeming amorality.
Have you read "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" by Thomas Ligotti? That's where I first ran into the antinatalist/efilist philosophy. (David Benatar has an approving quote on the back cover, and Ligotti quotes Benatar within the book.)
I would argue that Ligotti tries to fuse nihilism and notions of morality, but I'm not sure he's successful. I also view it as a very abusive book, in that Ligotti is trying to undermine the reader's sense of reality and replace it with his own views.
Yes! I mention him in my earlier post
I want to thank you for the Efilism article that you wrote and published in Herd Magazine in 2023. I am currently working on a Wikipedia draft for Efilism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zero_Contradictions/Efilism).
Since you published a great article in a magazine that counts as a WP:reliable source (2 years ahead of the MSM), you've helped to establish the WP:notability of Efilism, and you included a lot of great information for me to cite that isn't covered by the MSM. I will finish and submit the draft as soon as I can, but it could take a while for it to get through the article creation review process.
I have another piece coming out in an even larger publication. I'm extremely excited about it. You should make a wikipedia page for me hehe.
Unfortunately, my Efilism Wikipedia draft was rejected twice a few days ago for "not being notable enough" :( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Zero_Contradictions/Efilism&oldid=1294014923
I finished reading your latest piece on Pirate Wires yesterday, and I updated my Wikipedia draft to cite it accordingly. It was a great read. I will also read and cite the email correspondence with Dr. Benatar when it comes out. These sources will improve my future chances at getting the draft accepted, but they probably won't be enough.
Until then, I am hosting a fork of my Wikipedia draft on my website under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Hopefully, it will be indexed by search engines soon. https://zerocontradictions.net/misc/efilism-wikipedia-ZC-fork-2025-june.pdf
I will need some time to process this story, but I would like to point out a bitter irony about it at first blush.
Bartkus is being branded "anti-pro-life," which is being presented as consistent with his desire to bomb an IVF clinic.
However, I have been recently wondering why the Pro-Life community proper isn't vocally opposed to IVF clinics.
These clinics are basically factories of embryos, the vast majority of which are presumptively doomed to unceremonious disposal. If "Life Begins at Conception," as the Pro-Lifers proclaim, then why aren't they the ones bombing IVF clinics, or staging armed "liberations" of all the sacred fertilized zygotes just yearning to grow out of their test tubes?
The fact that Pro-Life activists are not crying out against IVF clinics suggests to me that they are hypocrites, and that their ethics aren't driven by respect for existing life, but instead by pronatal maximalism. I suspect, but can't confirm, that most Pro-Lifers proper support IVF practices wholeheartedly. (I can't confirm because I don't know any such people IRL.)
According to this: https://www.prolifedallas.org/Issues-FamilyPlanning-InVitro the Catholic Church is officially against IVF, but for reasons where the embryo culling is deemphasized. Search results for "pro-life + IVF" now are terribly "noisy" because of this Palm Springs bombing story.
To the author: since the -Natal debate appears to be your beat, are you aware of any widespread Pro-Life opposition to IVF? This Bartkus narrative seems to be a preemptive inversion of what a rational extension of Pro-Life-ism would lead to.....
The paradoxes contained in the nihilist anti-life positions are apparent after cursory examination, yet the amount of arrogance, ignorance and narcissism required to hold such beliefs mark out such individuals as unstable and needing mental help, or are simply actively malicious and really should take the first plunge out of reality, if they were actually intellectually honest with themselves and their supposed views.
I am not certain of the source, but I wager this kind of mentality seems to be generated by our distinctly anti-natalist civilisation, where existence of children has been gradually removed as a central value for most people, and only barebones pleasure calculations remain.
"such beliefs mark out such individuals as unstable and needing mental help..."
In other words, you have no rational arguments against them.
Got it.
Well, if you want a rational argument, here's one - survival is an innate directive of all living organisms. If you advocate for destruction of life, by necessity it requires self-destruction as well. A desire to kill yourself is distinctly abnormal, and thus requires psychological and possibly pharmacological help.
That's just so much additional psychologization, presuming the truth of your position.
It's a combination of the ad hominem and begging-the-question fallacies.
But, as for your premise that "survival is an innate directive of all living organisms," not only is that not rational, but it is fully accounted for by philosophical pessimism going back to Schopenhauer. The Will to Live is merciless, and uses living beings as its hapless meat-puppets. This is exactly what the various stripes of life-protesters are up against.
Taking the argument at face value: are you protesting your own existence, or existence in general? If the former, why are you still around? If the latter, why are you still around? Pessimistic position is inherently flawed on acccount of subjective personal bias, assumption that your hypothesis holds universally for all living beings, and provides you with undeserved claim to decide for other beings as to what is optimal for them. It also reveals cowardice in executing the position to its logical end.
Pathological approach to basic biological functions is not rational, but indicates personal desires and negative attitude to life, which, through staking a claim to universal truth is both narcissistic and at the same time absurd, when combined with the absolute powerlessness of the anti-life proponent to realise their philosophy.
Even in a sphere where he has absolute control, his own life, he refuses to eliminate himself as soon as he arrives at the position, revealing inconsistency and hypocrisy. It can be assumed then that the position rests on a veiled desire to inflict pain on the rest of existence, while dressing that claim up in supposed worry for "pain" that existence brings.
Bringing in Schopenhauer is just further dressing up the point that really has nothing valid about it.
"Tu quoque" fallacy, over and over.
You're not too good at this.
Its not a fallacy, when the other interlocutor has no arguments as a response. Subjective abstraction is all we have here. Ad hominem to you too, good sir.
Thank you for this. Your reporting covers so much more than the headlines.
Between 2014 and 2017, I was hanging out with some Earth First folk. There was an FB presence (now gone), and I noticed many Kaczynski fans, Efilists, Antinatalists, David Benatar, Emil Cioran fans, and Eco-extremists crossing over. The EF people moved on because I think they were uncomfortable with the direction the conversations had started to take. Since I don't hate people, I moved on to more community-oriented organizing for permaculture. It's sad to see that the negative, violence-advocating culture persisted and morphed into something so toxic.
the phrase “suicide landing page” is so dark
"There’s, I think, a completely separate but equally important article to be written about the sex negativity of Zoomers. It comes in many packages. Fetishistic internet phenomena like play-acting conservatism (“trads”) and mukbangs and hauls; the growing popularity of radical feminism and misandry among young women, as evidenced by his friend; femcels/incels, the manosphere… I’m particularly interested in the explosion of a particularly misanthropic brand of radical feminism. I think it’s wrong to call these women femcels, though they use the term. Femcels are women who perceive themselves as below/unworthy of sexual objectification or experience de-sexualization, not women who voluntarily opt out of dating"
Weren't you the one who wrote the article on the coming wave of sex-negativity that went viral? You could always update--"this is where we are after four years".
https://default.blog/p/72-the-coming-wave-of-sex-negativity
"Both also had borderline personality "disorder"." This disorder is marked by a strong fear of abandonment as well as other symptoms such as intense emotions and impulsivity.
Just reading about these philosophies in your excellent article is chilling and negating.
Good point!
I'm sorry if this comes off as spam, but it is more efficient to give you the link than to retype it here--
TL;DR this piece might give you some insight into how people can think their way into these ideas, and then think their way back out again, rather than by doing something that is such a rupture with nature.
These are generally people who have been shown very little of the good side of life, so it's hard to conceptualize any rhyme or reason to it. I found a reason to live while I was staying in Palm Springs during the pandemic, after being the victim of a heinous crime and almost dying a couple of times, so this event is particularly, bitterly poignant to me.
I think people get into these ideas when they have suffered almost enough to break them. Once you break completely, you either die or get better.
Anyway: https://nuisanceonlinedistributor.substack.com/p/why-im-no-longer-an-antinatalist?r=71nc
I am not against antinatalism, tbh. I sympathize with the worldview even if I don't agree with it. Thank you for sharing your piece, will check it out.
Thank you! It is... well, it's a very left-brained idea, well-meaning, but I can also see how it could lead to this kind of horror when it crosses over into efilism.
The absolute worst thing about the internet is that it facilitates the dissemination of really stupid ideas by anyone with a smartphone and no self control.
I'm an anti-natalist who was also a white nationalist for many years. I have written a long essay called An Indictment of Life which you might like to read.
Post it here?
Just click on my profile and you will find it. I only have two essays on here. More will come eventually.
I guess the name 'Autisticus Spasticus' is accurate.
I am free to be as self-deprecating about my condition as I please.
Thanks for this. I learned so much from your post. I live near Palm Springs and this makes the event way more interesting to talk about with people.
Thank you for reading
As the old saying goes "only sith deal in absolutes".
Wow. Some serious work here. I feel like I just put my head into the upside down in Stranger Things. We live now in a time where we can craft our very own reality and live solitary lives, unchallenged by our philosophy’s unredeeming amorality.
Very interesting article, Katherine. I felt my horizons were broadened today.
Thank you!