User:Zero Contradictions/Efilism

Beliefs

Efilism is atheist, moral realist, altruistic, and pro-evolution, as opposed to creationism.^[10]: 170 In On the Edge (2017), Canadian philosopher and biologist T. K. Van Allen wrote that efilism is the logical conclusion of egalitarianism.^[14]: 183 Van Allen has praised efilism for its willingness to challenge assumptions that most people would never question, namely for asking whether life is worth living, its realism about the nature of life, and its moral consistency in applying altruism to all sentient beings.^[10]: 176 Van Allen has said "Efilism raises profound philosophical questions about the meaning, purpose and value of life."^[10]: 176 Journalist Katherine Dee has written that efilism raises philosophical and ethical questions about suffering, consciousness, and moral responsibility that are worth answering.^[3]

Van Allen describes efilism as being based on three premises: 1. negative hedonism, 2. altruism, and 3. sentient beings experience more pain than pleasure, on average.^[10]: 170 Van Allen believes that at least one of these premises must be rejected in order to reject efilism.^[10]: 171 He rejects all three premises, as he rejects altruism, believes that pain and pleasure balance out in the long run,^{[10]: 215–216} and is not a hedonist.^[10]: 202 Van Allen argues that efilism is irrational for failing to adequately question these core assumptions.^{[10]: 170–176}

Efilism, antinatalism, and promortalism should not be confused with nihilism.^[15] Nihilists believe that life is meaningless, whereas efilists and promortalists simply do not value life.^[15] Efilism is distinct from nihilism because efilists believe that they have a mission to accomplish.^[15] A moral nihilist would believe that there are no moral obligations, whereas efilists believe they have a moral obligation as negative utilitarians to minimize suffering^[15] (which could entail killing themselves and/or others, from their promortalist point-of-view^[16]) and to permanently destroy all life.^[12] According to Van Allen, "You might arrive at the philosophical position that life is meaningless, but you won't act as if life is meaningless. The brain that generates philosophical skepticism also generates the will to live."^[10]: 334 Since nihilism is thus compatible with any set of actions, it is possible to be both a nihilist and an efilist.^[14]: 207

Antinatalism

Antinatalism or anti-natalism is the philosophical value judgment that procreation is unethical or unjustifiable. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from making children.^[17][18][19] Some antinatalists consider coming into existence to always be a serious harm. Both antinatalists and efilists believe that antinatalism should apply to all sentient creatures, not just humans, arguing that coming into existence is a serious harm for sentient beings in general.^{[20]: 2–3, 163 [21][22]} Efilists have criticized antinatalists for being too "anthropocentric", even though almost all antinatalists generally believe that antinatalism should apply to animals too.^{[2]: 23 [1]} Efilists often promote veganism.^[23]

Japanese philosopher Masahiro Morioka has proposed a taxonomy that divides "antiprocreative" (at times called antinatalist) thought into four major branches: the childfree movement, the voluntary human extinction movement (VHEMT), efilism, and antinatalism in general.^[9][24] Efilist activist Amanda Sukenick proposes a different taxonomy for antiprocreative thought of Benatarian antinatalism, efilism, promortalism, and antinatalism proper.^[3] In both taxonomies, only the latter one is philosophical antinatalism per se, meeting the definition of philosophical antinatalism and having no other features on top of that, whereas the first three items can only be deemed antinatalistic in the sense that they oppose the alleged duty to procreate.^[9][24]

Promortalism

Promortalism or pro-mortalism is the philosophical value judgment that death is always better than life.^{[12][6]: 5 [25]} A common motivation for pro-mortalism is to prevent the perceived future suffering of oneself and/or other sentient beings.^[26] Promortalism positively values death, whereas antinatalism negatively values birth, so both value judgments are distinct from each other.^[27][28] Antinatalism is generally supportive of abortion rights and is anti-pro-life, while pro-mortalism and efilism are plainly anti-life.^[8] Pro-mortalism is among the core values of efilism, and is strongly related to negative utilitarianism.^[29][30]

Antinatalists and promortalists generally agree that if one accepts that life is suffering and no other premises are assumed, then antinatalism (ceasing the propagation of life) and promortalism (ending life) are both implied.^[12][25] As an analogy, if one believes that smoking causes harm, then not only should people not start smoking, but they should also stop if they already smoke.^[25][12]

Similarly, Jiwoon Hwang argued that the hedonistic interpretation of Benatar's asymmetry argument of harms and benefits entails promortalism. Hwang argues that the absence of pleasure is not bad in the following cases: for the one who never exists, for the one who exists, and for the one who ceased to exist. This is consistent with Benatar's statement that the presence of pleasure for the existing person is not an advantage over the absence of pleasure for the never existing and vice versa.^[31]

However, emeritius professor David Benatar of the University of Cape Town has argued that if one accepts antinatalism, many arguments and premises besides antinatalism would be necessary in order for antinatalism to imply promortalism.^[1][32] Hence, antinatalism does not imply pro-mortalism by itself.^[20] It is possible to simultaneously support antinatalism and oppose promortalism.^[32] For example, an antinatalist who is also a rights theorist would support antinatalism while opposing murder on the basis that people have a right not to be killed or murdered.^[1] An antinatalist could also oppose promortalism by believing that it is worse for anyone to die earlier than they need to, or simply because it is troubling to kill people.^[32] An antinatalist can believe that while life is not worth starting, life can be worth continuing.^[33] Many promortalists also oppose violence and coercion.^[16] For example, the promortalist Jiwoon Hwang asserted:

"My pro-mortalism does not imply that it is obligatory or even permissible to kill other people without their consent, even painlessly and with good intent. There may be many reasons for this, such as autonomy and right to life."^[31]

Hwang later died by suicide.^[12] The antinatalist and promortalist communities sympathized with his choice while mourning his death as a loss.^[12] Promortalists have also cited autonomy and end-of-life dignity as reasons for avoiding death.^[16] Some journalists have expressed concern that promortalist values may be increasing in the modern world, amid rising loneliness, suicides, the youth mental health crisis, inceldom, and doomerism.^[12][16][34]

The red button thought experiment

Ninian Smart conceived the benevolent world-exploder (BWE) thought experiment in a 1958 article for the purposes of coining the term "negative utilitarianism" and arguing against it. He stated that negative utilitarianism would entail that a ruler who is able to instantly and painlessly destroy the human race, "a benevolent world-exploder", would have a duty to do so.^[35] This is the most famous argument against negative utilitarianism,^[36] and it is directed against sufficiently strong versions of negative utilitarianism.^[37] Many authors have endorsed this argument,^[38] and some have presented counterarguments against it.

The red button thought experiment that is proposed by efilists^{[6]: 36 [3]} is similar to the benevolent world-exploder,^[2]: 23 but there are multiple key differences. Smart's BWE explicitly assumes that a benevolent attempt to destroy the human race must be completely painless and instantaneous, whereas the red button thought experiment is not necessarily instantaneous nor painless.^[1] Efilists are more concerned with making life extinct as thoroughly and as quickly as possible.^[4] The red button also applies to all life, while the BWE only applies to human life.^[6]: 33 As conceived by Inmendham, the main version of the red button thought experiment proposes that the Earth should be destroyed using nuclear bombs.^{[2]: 2, 9, 23, 24}

Efilists are primarily concerned with eradicating sentient life, since sentient life has the potential to suffer. Regardless of whichever method for global destruction is chosen, it is important to Efilists that nonsentient life, such as plants and bacteria, also be destroyed. Efilists want to destroy nonsentient life, since it could theoretically evolve into sentient life and re-ignite the core moral dilemma of their worldview. Any proposal to destroy the Earth that they may favor would have to be guaranteed to destroy all life, lest the proposal ultimately be futile.^[39]

Efilists believe that humanity should end all suffering for all species^[40] by any means necessary.^[1][12] Efilists would be willing to press the red button even if it inflicts tremendous amounts of pain on all life, on the belief that the total pain inflicted would be less than the future suffering that is prevented by pressing the button.^[1] Efilists believe it would be evil to not press the button.^[2]: 23

Smart proposed the BWE as an attempted reductio ad absurdum argument against negative utilitarianism, while efilists propose the the red button experiment to emphasize their commitments to consequentialism and global extinction.^[1] When Dr. David Benatar was asked in an interview if he would press the red button, he said that he would refuse to press it.^[41] In a 2017 debate against Sam Harris, Benatar also opposed a similar global extinction scenario where nobody suffers pain from dying on the grounds that people who already exist have an interest in not ceasing to exist.^[42] Inmendham is infuriated that Benatar does not support global extinction.^[2]: 9

Inmendham

Gary Mosher (born 1959),^[5] better known as "Inmendham" or "inMendham",^[2] created "Efilism" and coined his philosophy on 2 September 2011.^{[6]: 28 [3]} Inmendham has lived in Mendham Township, New Jersey for most of his life. His screen name "Inmendham" is a reference to how he lived "in Mendham".^[3][5] Inmendham has been ranting online and making an estimated 15,000 videos and monologues to promote his efilist philosophy since 2007.^[3][4] In an interview, Inmendham said "I envision an efilist future as a graceful decline in human population and then the last few, of the last generation, gracefully disinfect the planet".^[3]

Inmendham has been criticized for misogyny, classism, animal cruelty,^[4] homophobia, Holocaust denial,^[43] and inciting violence.^{[2]: 3–21 [5]} Inmendham once proclaimed "You want to make something go extinct? You have to kill the generation."^[5] In another video, Inmendham exclaimed "I have absolutely no ethical problem personally with every fucking poor person who has a kid being shot in the fucking head."^[3] Inmendham has been described as "a particularly vile lowest-common-denominator sophist on our rapidly unhinged internet."^[5] Inmendham perceives his goals to be so different from antinatalists that he does not consider himself to be an antinatalist.^[2]: 7

Amanda Sukenick

Amanda Sukenick (born 1982 or 1983), a filmmaker and artist from Chicago,^[44] is one of the most significant activists in the antinatalist movement, and she identifies as both an antinatalist and an efilist.^[12][45] Sukenick believes that all sentient life, including humans and animals, should go extinct.^[45] Sukenick has said "If it were possible to unplug the universe so there was nothing — and no possibility of suffering — that would be my idea of a great time."^[45] On another occassion, Sukenick answered that her idea of a perfect world would be "A barren universe. A place where no sentient beings can be harmed".^[44] Sukenick regards that the decision of parents to have kids as naive and arrogant.^[44] Sukenick supports ending suffering via global extinction by any means necessary.^[12] However, she also emphasizes discernment between philosophy and actions: "there needs to be real separation made between overarching, horrific philosophical conclusions, and real-world prescriptive actions — they don’t have to, and should not in many cases, follow one another."^[3]

Sukenick has stated that one of the main goals of efilist movement is to "Efilize Antinatalism from within".^[2]: 1 Regarding her relationship to efilism, Sukenick has said "This is my life. This is my chosen path in this existence that I have put 10 years of blood, sweat and tears into this thing. Not to be dramatic, but it is true. I've dedicated my life to this, and I want to dedicate whatever is left of my life to it."^[2]: 2

Sukenick has also stated:

"I do believe that Efilism is the superior version of this philosophy. My entire reason for trying to build the big tent of Antinatalism is to make Efilism more heard. That is my entire goal, I'm sorry, I know most of you disagree with that but that is my reason for doing everything that I do. Projects like the podcast and everything, yeah, I want to talk to more Antinatalists and like-minded people because I want to insert more of this idea into the conversation and that's kind of been my entire goal."^[2]: 2

Sukenick once said she has had to "talk people down from just going out and killing random people or hunting animals in some disgusting violent manner".^{[12][2]: 1, 13} Sukenick and other efilists have formed an organization known as 'Antinatalism International', which is actually run by efilists, despite its name and branding.^[2]: 1 Even though the organization claims to condemn violence, members like Sukenick and Inmendham have made multiple statements condoning violence in the past.^[2]: 1–2

In 2024, Sukenick co-authored an academic paper about antinatalism with Finnish philosopher Matti Häyry.^[6][3]

2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 was allegedly influenced by efilism,^{[3][10]: 7–8} although he did not identify as an efilist. Lanza identified as an antinatalist, and suggested "eulavism" (derived from "value" spelled backwards) as a term for describing his philosophy.^{[46]: 10 [10]: 7–8} On his YouTube channel, Lanza once said "I've always had an immense hatred for culture. I consider culture to be delusional values which humans mindlessly coerce onto each other, spreading it no differently than any other disease."^[34]

Unlike efilists, Lanza believed that morality is a cultural delusion, and he did not value altruism.^[10] He criticized efilists for their belief in moral realism and moral universalism.^[10] Lanza did not share the negative utilitarian values of Efilists either, at least not in the same way as they do.^{[46]: 10,84} Even if all suffering were abolished, Lanza would still reject life because life causes the existence of value:

"It's my value which leads me to hating value. [sigh] And another thing about the Efilists is that a lot of them seem to think, that it's possible for there to be... it's possible for there to be an instance under which it would be a good idea to propagate life, that if suffering were abolished tomorrow, that it would be okay to bring new lives into the world or to live your current life. But I don't really focus on suffering, at least not directly, I focus on really, value itself, that's the problem. Even if there were Paradise tomorrow, and there were no suffering forever in the future, I would still be advocating this position because I... you can sum me up in one sentence: I have a vendetta against value. So instead of an Efilist I'm more of a...eulavist. I only oppose life because life is the source of value and it's value that I really hate. Well I guess that just says it all: I have a vendetta against value. And I guess that's a good place to finish my video, I mean I basically support the Efilists because I do hate life and value, but um... it's just that I have several problems with them, and also the same applies to Gary. There are a lot of things I disagree with him about but listening to his rants are kind of my idea of pornography. It's just fun to listen to."^[46]: 10

Van Allen believes that eulavism influenced Lanza's decision to commit mass murder.^[10] However, Van Allen also believes Lanza had other motives for the shooting as well, since he believes that the philosophy described by Lanza alone does not imply murder.^[10] Van Allen and a report from the Office of the Child Advocate in Connecticut have suggested that Lanza's mother's intention to sell the house^[47] aggravated Lanza to kill himself, since selling the house would have required evicting Lanza from his bedroom.^[47][10][48]

Lanza expressed antinatalist views and disgust at the idea of childbirth on his channel: "I think that you should say 'I'm so sorry for your loss' whenever you hear that someone is pregnant."^[34] The website of Guy Edward Bartkus, the culprit of the 2025 Palm Springs fertility clinic bombing, included a link to the transcripts of Lanza's videos and audio recordings, posted to his YouTube channel "Cultural Philistine",^[34][49][50] which Lanza recorded a year before he shot 28 people to death, including his mother and himself.^[10]

2025 Palm Springs fertility clinic bombing

On May 17, 2025, a car bombing occurred at a reproductive center in Palm Springs, California, which injured four people and left one person dead, later confirmed to be the perpetrator.^[51][52] The attack was carried out by Guy Edward Bartkus, who was motivated by efilism and pro-mortalism.^[4][11] Before the attack, Bartkus registered a website that expressed hatred of religion, life, and pro-lifers.^[11] The website included a 30-minute audio recording explaining Bartkus's motivations for the bombing.^[11][5] Bartkus's father confirmed that the audio file included on the website sounds like his son.^[5] In the recording, Bartkus said "Basically I'm anti-life. And IVF is like kind of the epitome of pro-life ideology".^[49] He also said "This life on earth game is really nasty... As Inmendham, Gary, would say, there is no carrot, only the whip."^[5]

The website contained a manifesto with answers to potential questions about why he did the bombing, "Life can only continue as long as people hold the delusional belief that it is not a zero sum game causing senseless torture, and messes it can never, or only partially, clean up. I think we need a war against pro-lifers." The manifesto also includes a quote that anthropomorphizes DNA, "It is clear at this point that these people aren't only stupid, they simply do not care about the harm they are perpetuating by being willing agents for a DNA molecule."^[50]

The site also included links to efilist YouTube channels and communities,^[53] including to transcripts of videos from Adam Lanza's YouTube channel.^[34][49][54] Efilism has been linked to at least one real-world act of violence before the bombing occured.^[5]

On 21 May 2025, Reddit banned its r/efilism subreddit, a community which had over 10,000 members, for violating its rules against inciting violence. Bartkus had directly mentioned several Reddit communities, including r/efilism, in his writings.^[55][7][56] Prior to the r/efilism subreddit ban, many efilists had also been banned from Discord, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and other social media platforms for their violent rhetoric.^[2]: 1

Inmendham posted a video a day after the Palm Springs bombing, where he denounced the attack and called it a "dumbass act of violence".^[8][57] In the same video, Inmendham complained that the bombing could undermine the efilism movement.^[5] Inmendham also forewarned in the video "The end game will require some unpleasant activity. That's just a fact. You can't get around it".^[5] In a request to comment by the Long Beach Post, Inmendham responded by email "All causes have bad advocates. I do not encourage or incite any social violence."^[5] Inmendham and Sukenick have been criticized for making inconsistent statements and denying responsibility for violence committed by efilists.^{[5][2]: 14 [3]} Inmendham's history of violent rhetoric has caused him to be questioned by the police.^[2]: 5 The FBI declined to confirm or deny whether Inmendham is currently under investigation.^[5]