Abjection: The Scariest Existential Philosophy Theory You've Never Heard Of

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0:16 There was a moment in time when you were nothing more than a zygote.

0:20 You're in existence, [music] but as a mere cell, determinably you,

0:24 but spherical, smooth, a gel-like droplet with no other distinct features.

0:29 Out of that, somehow, hints of your arms, legs, torso, and head began to grow.

0:36 Slowly, at first, then quickly.

0:38 There was a moment in time when you were nothing more than a fetus.

0:42 A soft, supple, and helpless arrangement of gelatin-like flesh contained

0:46 within and dependent on the body of your biological mother.

0:49 You were alive but not independent.

0:52 Formed but far from complete.

0:54 As your body pushed and molded into a defined state,

0:57 details and functions emerged.

0:59 And soon you entered the world, a suddenly independent thing,

1:03 no longer constrained inside a biological womb.

1:06 Now you were and still are constrained inside the womb of human existence.

1:12 That is the nature of your body and the world.

1:15 Now you must breathe, bleed, sweat, eat, defecate, decay, die.

1:20 If the thought of any of that, the grotesque

1:22 morbid nature of the body and existence, unsettles you,

1:26 you are experiencing an intimation of a dark

1:28 and unsettling concept in philosophy known as the object.

1:34 Objection.

1:35 In 1980, Bulgarian French philosopher, literary critic,

1:39 and psychoanalyst Julia Cava published an essay titled Powers of Horror.

1:44 In it, she explores and defines a comprehensive overview

1:47 of the psychological and philosophical concept known as objection.

1:52 Plainly, objection is the visceral, uncanny,

1:54 and disconcerting experience of becoming aware

1:57 of the mechanisms of one's selfhood and corporeality.

2:00 More specifically, it is the realization

2:03 or interfacing with what is typically beyond

2:05 the boundaries of what we consciously deem

2:06 acceptable and bearable about ourselves and existence.

2:10 It reveals a threat posed by what we

2:12 cannot cleanly exclude from ourselves but wish we could.

2:16 Fundamentally, we define and understand

2:18 ourselves by establishing borders between

2:20 who or what we are and aren't both physically and abstractly.

2:24 For example, on a physical level, we define ourselves by what's in and perhaps

2:28 on our body and not what is beyond [music] it.

2:31 Our border here is the edge of our body.

2:34 But of course, we also define ourselves in abstract

2:37 and conceptual ways like through the character traits,

2:39 [music] preferences, values, and other things we associate with and express.

2:44 Everything we conceptually reject, loathe, or find appalling and wrong is beyond

2:48 this abstract and psychological border and not us.

2:51 We maintain our sense of self through

2:53 the maintenance and order of these boundaries,

2:54 [music] preserving them by keeping everything

2:56 that we deem unacceptable or unappealing out.

2:59 According to Cava, however,

3:01 along with many other psychoanalytic and phenomenological

3:03 thinkers like Sigman Freud and George Patai,

3:06 our conscious mind works to repress and deny many

3:09 qualities that are part of who or what we are.

3:12 We work to ignore, deny, overcome, or repress things associated with our flawed,

3:17 fragile, caporeal, and mortal condition.

3:20 We avoid talk of illness and death.

3:22 We fill our days with frivolous distractions.

3:24 We hide our vulnerabilities and fears.

3:25 [music] We measure ourselves in terms of usefulness.

3:28 And we paint over the terror and madness of so much of what we are and do.

3:32 But in moments when we see, for example, a corpse or our blood,

3:36 vomit or something rotting, we can be reminded of the truth,

3:40 the grotesque nature of our being.

3:43 In these moments of elucidation, according to Cava, our clean,

3:47 orderly sense of self is suddenly damaged and destabilized.

3:50 We experience a loss of distinction between ourselves and the world,

3:53 between subject and object.

3:55 We see the borders dissolve and we become momentarily caught

3:58 in a limbo between our sense of self and other.

4:01 Christa writes, "Objection is above all

4:04 ambiguity [music] because while releasing a hold,

4:06 it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it.

4:09 On the contrary, objection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.

4:14 Our flesh, blood, vomit, feces and skeleton.

4:17 All of this is us, central to us.

4:20 [music] Objection reminds us of this.

4:22 The clean boundaries of normaly and pleasantness are thin figments.

4:26 And so too is our sense of self and stability.

4:30 Ultimately, whether we accept it or not, we are also what we reject.

4:35 Missanthropy.

4:37 The concept of the object both brings up questions about what we really are

4:41 and leads [music] us to answers that often make us feel repugnant or gross.

4:44 And if we continue further into the limbo

4:46 realm of what we often are but repress,

4:48 deny, and repel, we also find unsettling [music] vices and flaws.

4:53 Our wretchedness, selfishness, greed, hypocrisy, and ignorance.

4:57 Those who have been to this realm can often find themselves

5:00 with some variation of the cynical

5:01 philosophical view [music] known as misanthropy.

5:04 A general dislike or disdain for the human species as a whole.

5:09 With this view, the flaws and vices of humankind,

5:12 moral, intellectual, and aesthetic, [music] eclipse everything else about us.

5:16 All human beings are irredeemably faulty and fickle,

5:19 and society only serves to reinforce,

5:20 [music] organize, and demonstrate our flaws at scale.

5:24 This view has been explicitly [music] referenced or generally

5:26 embodied in the works of many prominent philosophers throughout history.

5:30 17th century English philosopher Thomas

5:32 Hobbes argued that humans are fundamentally

5:34 self-interested and without the imposition

5:37 of an absolute sovereign like a monarch,

5:39 our condition reliably leads to violence [music] and social breakdown.

5:43 He writes, "So that in the nature

5:45 of man we find three principal causes of quarrel.

5:48 First competition, secondly dissidence, thirdly glory.

5:53 The first maketh men invade for gain,

5:55 the second for safety, and the third for reputation,

5:58 the first use violence to make themselves masters of other men's persons,

6:02 wives, children, and cattle.

6:04 The second to defend them, the third for trifles.

6:08 On the opposite end of the misanthropic spectrum,

6:11 17th century Genevan philosopher Jeanjac Rouso

6:14 argued that humans are inherently good,

6:16 but society is a corruptive agent that causes us to become vain,

6:20 competitive, prideful, and ultimately loathome.

6:22 Though Rouso and Hobbes disagree on how

6:24 and when humanity enters the misanthropic [music] lens,

6:27 they both ultimately arrive at a similarly cynical view of humanity.

6:31 Other philosophers like Dioynes the cynic, Arthur Schopenhau,

6:35 and Emil Chiron implicitly expressed

6:37 misanthropic [music] views through philosophies

6:39 that embraced resignation from humanity or an aestheticism of the self.

6:43 Others have expressed a kind of misanthropy through their creative work.

6:46 Writers like Jonathan Swift, Charles Bakowski,

6:49 and Fernando Pasoa all engaged with the humanity

6:52 they rejected through their creative work.

6:54 Ultimately, whether one fully agrees with the view or not,

6:57 we don't need to look too hard or too

6:59 far to at least understand some [music] version of it.

7:02 Humanity is pervaded by vain celebrity culture,

7:05 corrupt political movements, vicious power dynamics,

7:07 everyday selfishness and cruelty,

7:09 the organization and amplification of rage and hatred,

7:12 the immensity of injustice and inequality,

7:15 of famine and war, [music] of desire and futility.

7:19 We seem to so needlessly continue an absurd

7:21 persistent destruction of ourselves and the world.

7:25 Whether that's our fault or the underpinning of nature's [music] is hard to say.

7:30 Antiatalism.

7:32 Perhaps one of the darkest seeming philosophies that misanthropy

7:34 can lead to is what is known as antiatalism.

7:38 The philosophical position that assigns a negative value to human birth.

7:42 Though antiatalism is arguably the logical next step after missanthropy,

7:46 it has very different foundations and implications.

7:48 What separates antiatalism from misanthropic views

7:51 is that it is an ethical position.

7:53 This is also what separates it from individuals who

7:55 choose not to have children simply out of personal preference.

7:58 For the antiatalist, the problem with reproduction is moral.

8:02 It relates to the management and prevention of suffering.

8:06 South African philosopher David Benitar is widely regarded

8:09 as the leading thinker associated with this philosophy.

8:12 In his book, Better Never to Have been, published in 2006,

8:16 he comprehensively formalizes what have become some

8:18 of the most prominent arguments for the philosophy.

8:21 Benitar ultimately argues that human or sentient

8:23 existence is on balance more negative than positive.

8:27 The often intense and regular experiences of pain and [music]

8:30 discomfort eclipse the fleeting and frequent experiences of pleasure and joy.

8:35 Furthermore, Benitar argues that things are actually

8:37 much worse than we are even aware

8:38 of, especially if we reject the notion that existence has a net negative value.

8:43 Benitar claims we delude ourselves into believing

8:45 that our experience of existence is better than it is.

8:48 Partly due to an evolutionary optimism bias known as the Polyiana principle.

8:53 Research does in fact suggest that pleasant experiences tend to be

8:56 remembered more readily and are often

8:57 weighted more heavily than unpleasant ones,

9:00 particularly at the subconscious level.

9:02 Though it should be noted that at the conscious momentto moment level,

9:05 people often fixate on the negative even though

9:07 they evaluate their whole lives as more positive.

9:10 Regardless of any biases,

9:12 if we consider how often we are in some form of discomfort or pain in life,

9:15 it likely does appear to overtake how often

9:17 we are in states of definitive joy or pleasure.

9:20 Even in the best cases, [music] individuals who are wealthy,

9:23 have good family and friends, do work they find meaningful and so on.

9:26 [music] They too will experience

9:28 intense regular unrequitted purposeless suffering.

9:31 No one escapes the pain of hot and cold, hunger and urine,

9:35 anxiety and boredom, the aches of a body that fills and empties,

9:38 cramps and breaks, grows and decays, the loss of all that one loves,

9:43 the disqu of the uncertainty above and beneath all things.

9:48 With this, Benitar concludes that it is better to never be

9:51 and it is morally wrong to bring sentient beings into existence.

9:55 A common and reasonable counter-argument here is

9:57 that even if less frequent or less intense,

10:00 the experience and remembrance of joy, pleasure, love,

10:03 meaning, and wonder can make our existence worth it.

10:06 These qualities do enough work to justify the pain and [music] suffering.

10:10 And so, by not bringing humans into existence,

10:12 such joys, pleasures, wonders, and meanings are missed out on.

10:16 For Benitar, however, it is not all worth it.

10:19 In what is known as his asymmetry argument, he attempts to refute this rebuttal

10:23 by showcasing the asymmetry of pleasure and pain.

10:26 His argument is divided into the following four claims.

10:29 The presence of pleasure is good.

10:31 The presence of pain is bad.

10:33 The absence of pain is good.

10:34 And the absence of pleasure is neutral.

10:37 Neither good nor bad so long as there is no individual being deprived of it.

10:41 With this, Benitar concludes that the presence

10:43 of pleasure cannot compensate for the presence of pain

10:46 in the moral evaluation of birth because the absence

10:49 of pain is good even when no one exists.

10:51 Whereas the absence of pleasure is not [music] bad so

10:54 long as there is no one being deprived of it.

10:56 This might sound bizarre, wrong,

10:58 or counterintuitive at first, [music] and that's fair.

11:00 Perhaps it is.

11:02 But Benitar defends it with several compelling thought experiments.

11:05 For example, consider the planet Mars.

11:08 Right now, no one exists there.

11:10 [music] Strictly in the moral sense, is that bad?

11:12 Is it morally wrong that there are no

11:14 sentient beings on [music] Mars experiencing joy or pleasure?

11:17 Arguably, no.

11:18 It seems to be neutral.

11:20 Alternatively, however, what if there were a civilization

11:23 of sentient beings experiencing constant pain and suffering?

11:27 That would seem to [music] be quite bad.

11:29 There lies the asymmetry for Benitar.

11:31 He writes, "Whereas at least when we think of them,

11:34 we rightly are sad for inhabitants of a foreign

11:36 land whose lives are characterized by suffering,

11:38 when we hear that some island is unpopulated,

11:41 we are not similarly sad [music] for the happy people who,

11:43 had they existed, would have populated this island.

11:46 Similarly, nobody really mourns for those who do not exist on Mars,

11:50 feeling sorry for potential such beings that they cannot [music] enjoy life.

11:53 Yet, if we knew that there were sentient life on Mars,

11:56 but that Martians were suffering, we would regret this [music] for them.

12:00 The fact that we would regret the suffering within their life

12:02 is sufficient to support the asymmetry that I am defending.

12:05 [music] The point is that we regret suffering but not

12:08 the absent pleasures of those who could have existed.

12:11 Of course, on the contrary, one could argue that it is some amount bad

12:15 that an island or planet is [music] desolate without any sentient experience.

12:19 If we took it to the extreme and removed all life from every island,

12:23 continent, [music] planet, and place in the cosmos,

12:25 leaving an unending space devoid of any life,

12:28 consciousness, awareness, joy, meaning, love, or possibility that does arguably

12:33 elicit a terrible [music] sense of regret.

12:36 There are also other legitimate, well-reasoned arguments against antiatalism.

12:39 [music] From a normative, metaethical standpoint,

12:42 why is it moral to prioritize the elimination of suffering,

12:45 even if it's asymmetrically [music] experienced in relation to pleasure?

12:49 Why should it be a prioritization

12:50 to eliminate suffering's predominance over all else?

12:53 Is this not a preferential subjective claim?

12:56 Can we truly say that the absence [music]

12:57 of pain is morally better than the absence of pleasure?

13:00 What objective truth is that rooted in?

13:02 Is this stance not like all stances located

13:05 in the bogggy grounds of assumptions [music] and intuitions?

13:09 Beyond Benitar, there are also many other philosophers and thinkers [music]

13:12 who have shared similar antiatalist

13:14 sentiments from pessimist philosophers like Schopenhau,

13:17 Chiron and Peter Vessel Zapa to writers like Thomas Legatti and Samuel Beckett.

13:22 However, [music] an important thing to consider

13:23 and keep in mind with these individuals

13:25 and their ideas here including Benitars is

13:28 that they are not expressing purely misanthropic views.

13:30 [music] They are not promoting a destructive idea for the sake of destruction.

13:35 It is not inherently a disdain for humanity, but a pity and compassion.

13:40 Schopenhau writes, "If children were brought into the world

13:42 by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist?

13:46 Would not a man rather have so much sympathy

13:48 with the coming generation as to spare at the burden of existence?

13:52 Or at any rate, not take it upon himself to impose

13:55 that burden upon it in cold blood?" For most of these individuals,

13:59 this philosophy is not a matter of destroying the human race.

14:02 It is a matter of liberating it.

14:04 However, the problem here is this.

14:06 [music] Let's say antiatalism could and were to be accepted as the morally

14:10 and objectively right view and humanity somehow phased itself out of existence.

14:14 There is absolutely no reason to believe that life would not continue in other

14:18 forms and continue to evolve into other

14:20 forms including intelligent and sentient life.

14:24 What then?

14:25 Suffering in new potentially worse forms.

14:27 [music] Humanity cannot extinguish the fire it was forged

14:30 out of by letting itself be burned up in it.

14:32 [music] Existence is suffering.

14:35 Every being is combustible in its flames [music] as it spreads,

14:38 burns, clears, and replenishes reality.

14:41 Humanity is just the only current species that is self

14:43 agrandizing enough to think that with the [music] extinction of itself,

14:47 all would be made well in the world.

14:49 Then nature would be purged of nature.

14:52 [music] Surely, human life is unique,

14:54 and thus human life is uniquely treacherous.

14:57 We see and feel everything acutely.

14:59 [music] And so the fire that is existence inflicts us greatly.

15:04 But it also fuels us greatly.

15:05 [music] Its combustion fuels us to come up

15:07 with ideas and philosophies not to destroy but to relieve,

15:11 to improve, to transcend.

15:13 [music] Even if that means considering the idea of voluntary extinction.

15:18 Regardless of whether one agrees with the arguments laid forth by antiatalism,

15:22 regardless of whether one sees humanity as gross, contemptable, beautiful,

15:25 allinsspiring, or all the above,

15:28 one cannot deny how remarkable it is that [music]

15:30 a species can create and consider such ideas.

15:32 That it can see and pity its and others pain,

15:35 and it can work to reduce such pain,

15:37 defining new moralities and striving toward better realities.

15:42 Though perhaps if we could return to that zygote

15:44 we once were and could decide whether our legs,

15:46 arms, torso, and head came out, we might decide against it.

15:49 Of course, we cannot do this.

15:51 We cannot [music] and do not choose to be here.

15:54 Nothing does.

15:55 But we are here both individually and collectively.

15:59 We feel we are separate from all that contains us.

16:02 Like we can deny our existence [music] and its nature,

16:04 but we are still formless in the womb of reality,

16:07 constrained by and dependent on it.

16:09 Our borders are not real.

16:11 [music] They are imagined.

16:13 We cannot reason our way out of the order and chaos of nature.

16:16 We cannot escape or revise it.

16:18 Not through continuation, not through extinguishment.

16:22 Life will always strive, and striving will always be painful and grotesque.

16:26 Humanity cannot stop that, but it can participate in it.

16:30 And it can strive [music] to strive for good reasons,

16:33 to love itself in all its flaws,

16:35 and to see the meaning and rationality of the absurdity.

16:46 One of humanity's most profound qualities is its

16:49 ability not only to endure the difficulties of existence,

16:51 but to create and share [music] reasons for and out of this endurance.

16:55 Remarkable ideas, insights,

16:56 and expressions have accumulated in the libraries of history, [music] in books,

17:00 research, and media that help us better

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