First, check out these people.
I think the group is silly for a number of reasons: first, it's easy to join a group like this when you know that the ultimate objective, even if it were possible, is hundreds if not thousands of years off. All you're really doing is electing to not have offspring, which is a pretty good idea and which a number of people choose without actually wanting to let the species become extinct. Second, it comes off as a selfless act when it's actually sort of cruel. Being the forerunners of the group, they don't have to worry about what living conditions would be like for people as the human race dwindles. Governments die out, civilization in general dies out, animal populations increase. What is life like for these last remnants of the human species? Do they have electricity, medicine? Will they be farmers? Will they be able to protect themselves and their food from predators? How much suffering will these last traces of people have to endure because of this silly dream their comfortable ancestors concocted?
What sort of societies are they going to have? Will they be able to maintain some semblance of order as their numbers decrease? What do you do with criminals? What do you do about the inevitable insurrections, the occasional hotshot who will pop up here and there and let them know in no uncertain terms that he thinks they're out of their minds? I know they say they will never enforce their ideals on anyone, that any person involved in the movement would be so strictly on a voluntary basis. But how exactly does that happen, I mean when human population reaches lower and lower levels worldwide? At some point, even if they were to succeed for a good while, they will be forced either to give up or defend their ideal against opposition, and maybe not only of the verbal kind. The smaller the population gets, the easier it will be for various factions to rise up and take their little dream away from them. And those factions will always exist. And they'll be stronger, because the will to survive is stronger than the will to run like lemmings off the cliff of good conscience. I'm not saying they will be superior, or better people, just stronger. And I don't admire strength in and of itself, or a cut-throat mentality, or sheer brute self-interest, like that of a wild animal. I'm just throwing out possible concerns, concerns for people who are only distant and vague abstractions at these cozy little voluntary-extinction meet-ups.
But it won't work anyway, which they know, because it flies in the face of that which they pretend to love more than anything: Nature. All the good will and altruistic dreams in the world won't change how nature works. Even all the widespread indoctrination and brainwashing that would be necessary to make their vision succeed won't amount to a pile of compost against the brute fact that living things are ingrained with the will to survive and propogate. Not only that, surviving happens to be something which humans have excelled at since they made their appearance millions of years ago. And very often the way they've done it has been ugly and bloody and violent. You'll get no argument from me on that. One thing I know is this: I'm not a tough guy. Put my ass in a cave somewhere and I'm bear-meat. But that doesn't stop me from acknowledging facts. And it doesn't stop me from becoming as indignant as hell at the suggestion that I should agree to letting the human race die out. I'm a human, and it's my natural right to want my species to survive, no matter how fucked up they are, and no matter how much they fuck things up. More than that, I'm not responsible for every nasty thing any human ever did or will do. I'm not going to feel ashamed of myself for being a human being. I despise the idea of Original Sin in every single one of its nasty little guises.
The environmentalist extremists remind me of religious extremists, and I sometimes can't decide which group is more dangerous or just more downright silly. Your religious loonies think we're all born in sin and can't do a damn thing right of our own accord, and the only answer is a total surrender to God, to whom we must apologize and confess our unworthiness before we can get His help and guidance; and the religious loonies are committed to visiting their shame and hostility towards humanity on everyone else, by making us all live one day according to a set of tribal laws suited for nomadic sheep herders, a moral code all tied up in bizarre rituals and superstitious claptrap.
The environmentalist loonies think humanity is a mistake also, an aberration that does nothing good of its own accord, but merely infects and destroys everything in its path, like an alien parasite that just dropped out of the clouds onto the planet, guns blazing, steamrollers rolling, smokestacks billowing. The only answer is a total surrender to Nature, to whom we must kneel and confess our unworthiness as a species. But instead of Nature saving a few: her own ecologically-conscious, humanity-hating "elect", She won't settle for anything but wholesale extinction. And these fruitcakes get just as excited over the idea of a world without people as religious loonies do when they ecstatically contemplate a Heaven without sin.
I know I'm exaggerating, and by religious loonies I am refering to a small percentage of people of faith, the greater majority of whom are loving and decent people with excellent values. I'm refering to the kind of nutball who advocates public stonings, who wants to execute homosexuals and blasphemers, or the less extreme nutball who doesn't say he advocates those things but waxes all doe-eyed and romantic over the idea of people burning in Hellfire for all of eternity. I don't believe that it's in anyone's interest to be polite to such views anymore. I think we have a President here in the U.S. who is far more to the loony side than he is to the average decent person-of-faith side, and we have people who believe that atheism is actually a negation of everything the U.S. is supposed to stand for, who want to rewrite history and change laws so that atheists are not treated as full-blown American citizens. I believe that some people are pushing to make it so atheists can't give testimony in court. I might seem like I'm getting off course, but all this scary garbage comes from the same thing: a fashionable, deeply-ingrained contempt for humanity itself. Read some apologetics, particularly any from the Reformed Theology school. It's people-hating at it's most revolting.
What I think we need to do is remind ourselves constantly of all the good that we've done. Take a look around where you're sitting. I'm sure everyone appreciates their creature comforts. We all like that our silly race managed to figure out how to make a house, how to make it cool or warm; I'm sure we all like clean running water, electricity, medicine, language; not to mention legal and moral systems which let us live in relative safety, because big Joe over there and his buddies can't get away with knocking us over the head and raping our wives and eating all our food. Well, at least not most of the time, though shit can always happen.
I like civilization, and I'm glad I was born in the technological age. But that doesn't mean I'm not conscientious or that I necessarily don't care about what happens to the Andalusian Hoppy Frog or the Great Nubian Black Beetle. And it doesn't mean that I don't feel terrible for poor and starving children around the world, to whom I am more than happy to occasionally send money, when I am able. I say when I'm able, because according to Arizona State, I am officially poor. My total wages for last year still put me at about three thousand dollars below the poverty level as a single wage earner in a family of four. And now things are considerably worse because I recently lost my job of seven years and am currently working in a shithole until I can find another job in my "field", which is so mundane I don't even want to mention it. I was happy to give money for the Tsunami relief fund in my area, because I realize how good I have it compared to millions around the world. I care about the environment, as well as the many non-human species that dwell therein. It just so happens that I care more for human beings than I do for alligators and frogs. And one of the reasons I care more for humans is because of their capacity to care for alligators and frogs. Show me one Bolivian Zebra-striped Marmoset who gives a damn about the plight of the Burmese Flying Purplegilled Moosefish.
We've progressed so rapidly over the last half-century that we got ahead of ourselves, and I have no doubt that we're screwing some things up that ought not to be messed with. But I also know that some really bright people are on the case, working hard at finding solutions to all of these environmental and ecological problems. Conservation seems to be ligitimately at the forefront of our public concerns as a race, and maybe some good things will start happening to turn things around a bit. Or maybe not. But I'm not heading for the cliff any time soon.
I think the group is silly for a number of reasons: first, it's easy to join a group like this when you know that the ultimate objective, even if it were possible, is hundreds if not thousands of years off. All you're really doing is electing to not have offspring, which is a pretty good idea and which a number of people choose without actually wanting to let the species become extinct. Second, it comes off as a selfless act when it's actually sort of cruel. Being the forerunners of the group, they don't have to worry about what living conditions would be like for people as the human race dwindles. Governments die out, civilization in general dies out, animal populations increase. What is life like for these last remnants of the human species? Do they have electricity, medicine? Will they be farmers? Will they be able to protect themselves and their food from predators? How much suffering will these last traces of people have to endure because of this silly dream their comfortable ancestors concocted?
What sort of societies are they going to have? Will they be able to maintain some semblance of order as their numbers decrease? What do you do with criminals? What do you do about the inevitable insurrections, the occasional hotshot who will pop up here and there and let them know in no uncertain terms that he thinks they're out of their minds? I know they say they will never enforce their ideals on anyone, that any person involved in the movement would be so strictly on a voluntary basis. But how exactly does that happen, I mean when human population reaches lower and lower levels worldwide? At some point, even if they were to succeed for a good while, they will be forced either to give up or defend their ideal against opposition, and maybe not only of the verbal kind. The smaller the population gets, the easier it will be for various factions to rise up and take their little dream away from them. And those factions will always exist. And they'll be stronger, because the will to survive is stronger than the will to run like lemmings off the cliff of good conscience. I'm not saying they will be superior, or better people, just stronger. And I don't admire strength in and of itself, or a cut-throat mentality, or sheer brute self-interest, like that of a wild animal. I'm just throwing out possible concerns, concerns for people who are only distant and vague abstractions at these cozy little voluntary-extinction meet-ups.
But it won't work anyway, which they know, because it flies in the face of that which they pretend to love more than anything: Nature. All the good will and altruistic dreams in the world won't change how nature works. Even all the widespread indoctrination and brainwashing that would be necessary to make their vision succeed won't amount to a pile of compost against the brute fact that living things are ingrained with the will to survive and propogate. Not only that, surviving happens to be something which humans have excelled at since they made their appearance millions of years ago. And very often the way they've done it has been ugly and bloody and violent. You'll get no argument from me on that. One thing I know is this: I'm not a tough guy. Put my ass in a cave somewhere and I'm bear-meat. But that doesn't stop me from acknowledging facts. And it doesn't stop me from becoming as indignant as hell at the suggestion that I should agree to letting the human race die out. I'm a human, and it's my natural right to want my species to survive, no matter how fucked up they are, and no matter how much they fuck things up. More than that, I'm not responsible for every nasty thing any human ever did or will do. I'm not going to feel ashamed of myself for being a human being. I despise the idea of Original Sin in every single one of its nasty little guises.
The environmentalist extremists remind me of religious extremists, and I sometimes can't decide which group is more dangerous or just more downright silly. Your religious loonies think we're all born in sin and can't do a damn thing right of our own accord, and the only answer is a total surrender to God, to whom we must apologize and confess our unworthiness before we can get His help and guidance; and the religious loonies are committed to visiting their shame and hostility towards humanity on everyone else, by making us all live one day according to a set of tribal laws suited for nomadic sheep herders, a moral code all tied up in bizarre rituals and superstitious claptrap.
The environmentalist loonies think humanity is a mistake also, an aberration that does nothing good of its own accord, but merely infects and destroys everything in its path, like an alien parasite that just dropped out of the clouds onto the planet, guns blazing, steamrollers rolling, smokestacks billowing. The only answer is a total surrender to Nature, to whom we must kneel and confess our unworthiness as a species. But instead of Nature saving a few: her own ecologically-conscious, humanity-hating "elect", She won't settle for anything but wholesale extinction. And these fruitcakes get just as excited over the idea of a world without people as religious loonies do when they ecstatically contemplate a Heaven without sin.
I know I'm exaggerating, and by religious loonies I am refering to a small percentage of people of faith, the greater majority of whom are loving and decent people with excellent values. I'm refering to the kind of nutball who advocates public stonings, who wants to execute homosexuals and blasphemers, or the less extreme nutball who doesn't say he advocates those things but waxes all doe-eyed and romantic over the idea of people burning in Hellfire for all of eternity. I don't believe that it's in anyone's interest to be polite to such views anymore. I think we have a President here in the U.S. who is far more to the loony side than he is to the average decent person-of-faith side, and we have people who believe that atheism is actually a negation of everything the U.S. is supposed to stand for, who want to rewrite history and change laws so that atheists are not treated as full-blown American citizens. I believe that some people are pushing to make it so atheists can't give testimony in court. I might seem like I'm getting off course, but all this scary garbage comes from the same thing: a fashionable, deeply-ingrained contempt for humanity itself. Read some apologetics, particularly any from the Reformed Theology school. It's people-hating at it's most revolting.
What I think we need to do is remind ourselves constantly of all the good that we've done. Take a look around where you're sitting. I'm sure everyone appreciates their creature comforts. We all like that our silly race managed to figure out how to make a house, how to make it cool or warm; I'm sure we all like clean running water, electricity, medicine, language; not to mention legal and moral systems which let us live in relative safety, because big Joe over there and his buddies can't get away with knocking us over the head and raping our wives and eating all our food. Well, at least not most of the time, though shit can always happen.
I like civilization, and I'm glad I was born in the technological age. But that doesn't mean I'm not conscientious or that I necessarily don't care about what happens to the Andalusian Hoppy Frog or the Great Nubian Black Beetle. And it doesn't mean that I don't feel terrible for poor and starving children around the world, to whom I am more than happy to occasionally send money, when I am able. I say when I'm able, because according to Arizona State, I am officially poor. My total wages for last year still put me at about three thousand dollars below the poverty level as a single wage earner in a family of four. And now things are considerably worse because I recently lost my job of seven years and am currently working in a shithole until I can find another job in my "field", which is so mundane I don't even want to mention it. I was happy to give money for the Tsunami relief fund in my area, because I realize how good I have it compared to millions around the world. I care about the environment, as well as the many non-human species that dwell therein. It just so happens that I care more for human beings than I do for alligators and frogs. And one of the reasons I care more for humans is because of their capacity to care for alligators and frogs. Show me one Bolivian Zebra-striped Marmoset who gives a damn about the plight of the Burmese Flying Purplegilled Moosefish.
We've progressed so rapidly over the last half-century that we got ahead of ourselves, and I have no doubt that we're screwing some things up that ought not to be messed with. But I also know that some really bright people are on the case, working hard at finding solutions to all of these environmental and ecological problems. Conservation seems to be ligitimately at the forefront of our public concerns as a race, and maybe some good things will start happening to turn things around a bit. Or maybe not. But I'm not heading for the cliff any time soon.
