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Voluntary extinction

Understanding a philosophical minority
infrarad

A group in my classroom sounded a little too heated to be talking about voting theory. I came over and intervened. (All variables below, other than “I”, refer to student names.)

“I’m not working with Y,” X said.

“How come?” I asked.

“He wants us all to die.”

I asked her to unpack that a bit. Turns out that Y is in favor of voluntary human extinction. I gather that there are affectations in his clothing that mean I’m supposed to pick that up on sight, but I’m too old and too nerdy to pick up communiques by fashion.

Voluntary human extinction. This is not something I got any advice on in the diversity workshops.

I wanted very much to press him on this point, but no matter how much I try and destroy my own authority in the classroom, no one wants to be pressed by his professor on personal values. I wanted to stop class, tell everyone to go home, invite him out for coffee, and listen for a few hours. I wanted to get the real story on the extinction movement, find out what they think about what the press says, get their own name for themselves, something.

I did none of this, of course. I put X in a new group, the rest of the group were happy to keep working with Y, and we were back on topic in a minute or two.

At least, the class was. I was still thinking about Y. The popular depiction is obviously wrong or this kid wouldn’t be in a classroom (a physical classroom no less!). But, what is the motivation? What’s the philosophical underpinning? And, I beg pardon but, is he serious, or is it just that punx not dead?

We need to understand the extinction movement. No, more than that, we need to superstruct the extinction movement. I have one data point telling me they're not all hedonistic griefers. Maybe despite our differences we can at least tidy this place up together. Get our affairs in order, tie up loose ends, before we commit one way or another to staying, or going.

Oct 08


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  • Raven2019
    Oct 08
    I can relate to him. I try to imagine sometimes how Virginia looked before we came here. How it could look if we all vanished. If wee become extinct, I for one won\\\'t be sitting around feeling bad about it - I\\\'ll be extinct right along with the rest of us. There was a great old book called _After Man_ which visited the world 50,000 years after humans went extinct. For the first time, I realized that all of this is a HUMAN problem, not a planet problem. Life will go on without us. It doesn\\\'t stop me from trying to keep us going. My commitment is that we survive and thrive. But it makes it more like a game to win rather than something that has to happen. Don\\\'t know if this makes any sense to you. But I sure understand the Extinctionists.
  • Hector Valentine
    Oct 08
    Was After Man sort of a naturalist guide to animal life? I think I had that book when I was little! I was obsessed with it. It might still be in my mom\\\'s attic. Infrarad, the best description I\\\'ve heard of the voluntary extinction movement compared it to the old \\\"Make a Wish\\\" foundation, which made a wish come true for terminally ill children. The idea is to live life fully while you\\\'re here. Pretty zen! But I think it takes a lot of discipline to live life fully, to satisfy desires without shaming yourself. I have never felt that my life was so full as when I was doing everything I could for someone else.
  • R Smalley
    Oct 09
    Extinction seems a little extreme. How about we show a little restraint and stop breeding as much. I know China gave it a go and their policies brought their own problems, but that doesn\\\'t mean the premise was wrong. All human kind needs to accept that they don\\\'t have a right to procreate but they do have a responsibility to the world they live in - to find a balance between continuing the race and not destroying everything else in the process. I don\\\'t have all the answers but I stand by my words - I am childfree.
  • TMLutas
    Oct 09
    Ugh! It\\\'s sad to see somebody swallow the propaganda of humanity as some sort of disease that needs to be eradicated. Fortunately, it\\\'s a self-limiting problem.
  • Ruud Dirven
    Oct 10
    You\\\'d be surprised how many people agree with this movement - and how quickly the agreement evaporates once their antidepressants kick in.
  • infrarad
    Oct 11
    @Ruud: That's interesting. The sense of hopelessness accompanying depression is an emotion, a chemical state; people who are already feeling this way are likely to rationalize their feelings by way of the GEAS report.
  • Kludge
    Oct 15
    More than 99% of species that have ever existed on Earth have gone extinct. Most before a single homo sapien sapien had come screaming into the light.
  • Wolffy
    Oct 16
    In my community, women have come together voluntarily to the Mother's temple and pledged to leave behind only one child. It's not that we want to reduce the population of our community, but the only way we can continue to accept newbies is to reduce our own spawning. Realising it was fruitless to determine with any certainty how many children men are having, we women decided to take matters into our own hands. After all, the upbringing usually falls to us anyway. Our pledge doesn't mean that all of us will have one or no children. An infertile woman, for example, can give away her right to leave a child behind to another woman who may have already had a child. And if a child dies before the age of majority, his or her mother is then free to take on another child. What we are seeing is that this pledging system knits women together in a communal sharing of bringing up children. It greatly eases the daycare problem, as the women who really like having children often take care of another child or two as well. People who love having children may also adopt to their heart's content--or the bank account's limits. All in all, it is the least painful way to reduce the human population on the planet and it helps people retain a hopeful attitude while rebuilding community.
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