| | How would Objectivism object the following scenario? (which I'll title -- to make it easier to refer to)
Title:
"You Exist Because We Once Stupidly Believed In Self-Sacrifice"
(feel free to invent some shorter and better title)
Scenario:
A man and woman marry. At the time of their marriage, and for several years thereafter, they accepted the false premise that some sort of "duty" required having at least one child -- although they also recognized rationally, even then, that having and rearing a child[ren] would be against their own rational self-interests. They did not at all want to have children or to rear children, but they made sure to have one -- and they made sure to rear that child as competently as they knew how: purely "out of self-sacrifice and out of duty" (as they would have put it at the time) to obey peer pressure or to obey some religious creed or to obey anything else that (they knew full well at the time) they could not rationally justify obeying. They absolutely do not love the child at all; they have it purely out of a belief that "it's their duty" (e.g., perhaps they have it even though their doctor informs them that having a child will permanently impair the woman's help) and similarly care for it and educate it -- giving it the very best care and education they know how to provide -- purely out of a loveless "sense of duty." (E.g., left to themselves, this man and woman wouldn't have cared a bit whether their child grew up informed or ignorant. But -- purely out of a loveless, altruistic "sense of duty" -- they take great pains to seek out the only school for miles around which actually teaches competently.)
Some years later (the child is still dependent on them), this man and woman finally come to realize that
/a/ self-sacrifice/doing things out of irrational "duties" and altruism/etc. are evil, not good as they had mistakenly assumed, and that
/b/ rational beings' rational self-interests ultimately cannot conflict: the self-interest of Rational Being #1 cannot possibly compel or justify the self-sacrifice of Rational Being #2.
Realizing this, and knowing already that their child exists only because they wrongly, altruistically chose to violate their own rational self-interest, they recognize that it was not in their own self-interest for a child of theirs to ever exist. Since they are committed to telling the truth -- no longer out of altruism and "duty," as back in their old less-rational days, but now out of a recognition that dishonesty is irrational -- one day, when their child asks "Why did you decide to have a child?" they answer the question honestly: "You exist because, years ago, we had you 'out of a sense of duty' which we now know that we should never have done."
The child then asks: "Then my existence -- and your having cared for me all these years -- was, and is, in violation of your rational self-interest?"
/a/
Should the parents reply "Yes"? Why, or why not? If not -- how should they reply?
/b/
Assume that the parents do in fact answer "Yes," and that the child thinks this over: "Hmmm ... if my very existence was and is against your ultimate self-interest as rational beings, and if the self-interests of rational beings cannot ultimately conflict, then -- since I am a rational being -- my very existence must be against my *own* self-interest!"
------- Is that reasoning correct? Why, or why not?
------- If that reasoning is correct, what action would the child be justified in taking (either during childhood, or when grown), on the basis of such reasoning?
In other words, how is one's life affected (and/or how should one's life be affected) by knowing for a fact that one would not even have existed without some anti-rational (and therefore wrong) decision-making?
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