The refusal to think through to its logical conclusion the thought that, had the natural constants been different or had world history taken a slightly different course, one’s own self, or humanity, or living creatures in their entirety might never have begun to exist, without this having had any significance for anyone.
Friends, spouses or parents who find themselves confronted with the (indeed easily conceivable) Never Having Been of some person close to them tend to say something like: “Then we would have missed you very much!”. But they overlook, in saying this, the fact that someone must have been actually known to us in order for us to be able to “miss” them (an exception here is formed by the type of the “Redeemer”).
“Recalcitrance vis-à-vis not-being” is a bastion composed of attitudes of defence and of metaphors which is aimed at shielding us from the insight into the fact that we once were not, and that no one suffers any harm, nor indeed any good, if we cause the existence of no one to begin.
