“Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth . . . The human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself.”E.O. Wilson
NYT October 30, 1993
Q: What good is a healthy biosphere if
there are no humans around to enjoy it?
The same good it was before we furless beach apes came along.
A human-centered world view only values other species by what they can do for us, or for “our children's children.” We're collectively so centered on our own species that nothing matters except in relation to ourselves.
It's like our ancient view of the universe with Earth at the center:
it took a long time for people to accept that our planet is just one
of many orbiting a star, which is also just one of many in a galaxy,
which is also just one of many in the universe.
An Earth-centered world view sees Homo sapiens as one of tens of
millions of species in Earth's biosphere. We are exceptional in many
ways, and so are the other life forms we share this rare and
wonderful place with.
By envisioning Earth's entire biosphere, acknowledging the intrinsic
value of every life form, our voluntary extinction begins to make
sense.
Because we've all arrived at our present awareness by different routes and at our own speeds, this simplified, seven-step diagram might not fit anyone exactly. However, this progression of awareness pattern seems to have emerged. Maybe a two-dimensional chart will provide a little direction and help us track the progress of ourselves and others.
We all begin at birth, but our path of progressive awareness doesn't begin until we grow beyond pre-awareness.
Shock is the first step in our journey of progressive awareness. There's no returning to the blissful ignorance of pre-awareness once we receive our first shock of reality. Shock doesn't last for long -- it can't. People won't live long in a state of shock. For almost all of us, denial is our first reaction to shock.
Denial is a sanctuary from shock. This is a good time to stop and figure things out -- to get emotionally and intellectually ready to continue the journey. Unfortunately, most people never leave denial. If you seem to be doing well with the way things are, what's the problem? Living in denial robs us of peace of mind. Our conscience knows the nagging truth, and the anger keeps leaking in. When we stop denying reality, we are forced into the next phase -- anger. It looks ugly and unprofitable.
Hopeful anger is a powerful, driving force which can keep us working hard for years. Unfortunately, it is also hard on our personalities. People have sacrificed their Selves in the battle to preserve Earth's ecosystems, often becoming cynical and giving up hope. Then they move to the hopeless anger phase.
Phase four is home to the cynical and the misanthropic. The good aspect of this phase is that it allows many to consider human extinction for the first time. The bad aspect is that this option is usually considered without love. Famines and epidemics don't seem so bad from this perspective. Anger is actually left over from denial. It means we haven't fully accepted the situation yet. When we do, anger dies.
More depressing than hopeless anger is acceptance without hope. Without anger to keep us going, unrealistic hopelessness can be a short-cut back to denial or even to suicide. People in this phase might not be so hard to take if they would just shut up about it. If they were angry, at least there would be some excitement to their dirges. Though often necessary, this phase should be as short as possible. It's hard to break loose from a lengthy depression. Perhaps just realizing that there is hope... allowing ourselves to see the signs of hope, which are all around us, will break the spell and allow us to move on to the hopeful acceptance phase.
Yes, there is still hope, and it will raise us out of the depths of depression. We can easily go too far, however. If our acceptance elevates into the clouds of mindless hopefulness, we will have lost some of our hard-learned awareness. Unrealistic hopefulness is socially graceful and more pleasant than some of the previous phases, but it too can be a short-cut back to denial. We must take the final progressive step.
With a VHEMT perspective we move forward in a dynamic balance of optimism and pessimism, aware that our reality is both hopeful and hopeless. Once we accept that humans are hopeless as a species, there is renewed hope for the survival of the planet as a life form. Although there will be times when we fall back to an earlier phase, a VHEMT Volunteer is less likely to swing to and fro from yin to yang like a yo-yo. With a balanced awareness, our efforts to preserve life on Earth will meet with more success, no matter what those efforts may be.
An additional note from Les:
Reading Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of death in On Death and Dying, I was amazed that it was so close to the typical path of awareness in dealing with our "death" as a species. At the time, I didn't realize that Dr. Ross' stages correspond more closely than my sketch shows. "Bargaining" is a stage just before acceptance. Deals with God are attempted at this point. I didn't think it applied to VHEMT.
Over the years, I've shared with other Volunteers some of the many letters I've received asking if there's some way out of our extinction: go into space, learn to live in harmony, invent a technological fix -- something.
They had achieved an understanding of what's been done to the biosphere, and were done being angry about it, but weren't quite ready to accept that we must disappear. Then someone pointed out that this is the bargaining stage, and it rang true.
Just as people who know they are dying sometimes do, we could live the rest of our lives in the bargaining stage -- hoping for a miracle to restore ecosystems and stop extinctions.
It's up to each of us to grow beyond these earlier stages. No one can do it for us. A hopeful hopelessness awaits our increased awareness.
SUMMARY: Extinction of the human race will not solve all Earth's problems unless a shift in priorities also occurs. To preserve what's left of Gaia, we must change from human-centered activities to Earth-centered activities.
Sounds like paradise, doesn't it? Gaia completely cured of pox humanus. Without us meddlesome humans, all other species would get their fair chance at survival.
Naturally, it's not that simple, but just for fun, let's envision an impossible dream: all human sperm suddenly and permanently loses viability - no impregnated human egg begins meiosis to form a zygote - none transforms from embryo into the sacred fetus, is carried to term and sentenced to life. Zero conceptions, wanted nor un.
A wonderful fantasy. Phones in crisis pregnancy centers would fall mysteriously silent. Sperm banks would go bankrupt after fraudulently milking the infertile. Adoption agencies would fruitlessly increase baby bounties, and charge an arm and a leg for whoever's in stock, damaged or not. Needless panic would be hilarious. Like people frantically searching for their oars after the boat has beached.
Benefits would begin immediately for both biosphere and humanity. Resources wasted on redundant breeding could be redirected to existing members of the human family in need. Loving care and nurturing now expended raising superfluous heirs could be given over to stopping the killing and beginning the healing. A sweet dream.
However, an alternative birthless future is also possible. One where people see no need to preserve Earth's biosphere since none of our kind will be around to enjoy cartoons of it. Nature's destruction could just as easily continue unabated as we pass into extinction. It doesn't take billions of humans to destroy massive ecosystems, as shown by the exploits of empires from ancient times through the present.
No, human extinction alone won't stop destruction of Earth's biosphere. Our collective consciousness must evolve from homocentric to ecocentric: to where Earth has first priority. Then, finally, our efforts will shift from desperate, often futile, damage control to a hopeful restoration of natural balance in Earth's ecosystems.
“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly”
Woody Allen
I can justify the existence of the human race in spite of all the
obvious evidence.
Yes. I'd push the
button.
I'm vehement about preserving life and returning Earth to a natural paradise.
For amusement only.
There is no button, there never will be a button, and even if there were, pushing it would go against the voluntary ethic of VHEMT. This is simply a philosophical exercise to help clarify values.
Everyone and every living thing on this planet will benefit from an improved human population density. The promise of abundant living will once again be more than wishful thinking.
Shortages of resources are caused by longages of consumers, so the fewer we number, the greater our material wealth could be. Social justice demands a more equal opportunity to exploit Earth's resources. A dubious goal, more easily achieved when there are fewer people to redistribute resources to.
Children will be more respected and better cared for as there are fewer of them. The appalling numbers of children dying today could be reduced to an ugly page in the history books.
Housing will become plentiful without building more houses. A sustainable civilization will be possible when we stop taking more than is being regenerated by Nature.
Naturally, Nature stands to gain even more in the long run by a phase-out of the human race. As fewer people inhabit an area, less damage is done to wildlife's habitat. Restoration will be possible when cities shrink and green spaces are expanded. Eventually, extinctions will become less common as habitat is restored and preserved for wildlife.
The sooner we stop increasing the demands we make on Earth's biosphere, the greater the diversity of species of plants and animals we will leave, and the healthier Gaia will be.
All of us can join in the fun of imagining for ourselves what our world will be like when our numbers are shrinking instead of growing. What would it be like to be among the last people on Earth?
A few of us living today might see the day our density peaks, but none of us will be around to see fewer than six billion again. We can dream.
Further descriptions of a shrinking population are given with the above imaginary human extinction button: fast or slow possibilities.
Homo sapiens is a newcomer to the web of life on Earth. Life progressed for thousands of millions of years before anything resembling our kind came along.
However, life on Earth will never be the same, even if we were to disappear tomorrow. The rate of extinctions today rivals that of the days of the dinosaurs' demise. The sooner we go extinct, the greater the biological diversity we'll leave behind to carry on.
At this point, preserving most larger mammals is not likely, especially the carnivores. We might be able to turn things around in time to stop extinctions at the level of small mammals, reptiles, and fish.
We might fail to avoid the massive die-off which follows population booms such as the one we are part of today. In that case, life forms on the level of insects could still exist, and in a hundred million years, the activities of Homo sapiens in the last 10,000 years would become insignificant.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman 2007.
Site provides images of human habitat reclaimed by the natural world over time, map of places described in the book, and podcasts of intervews with the author. Based on best selling non-fiction book which eloquently describes what would happen if all humans suddenly disappeared.
Scientific American video of New York city over time after humans have disappeared.
Chernobyl (Chornobyl),
Earth’s worst nuclear power plant disaster so far, provides a
glimpse of what might happen to ecosystems when humans leave. You can
take a fascinating first-person tour of Chernobyl, courtesy of
Elena, the "Kid of Speed".
Chernobyl in National Geographic
Chernobyl in the UK's Independent
Chornobyl history Ukrainians in Canada
Wildlife in Korea's Demilitarized Zone thrives without humans.
"Imagine Earth without people" by Bob Holmes in New Scientist October 12, 2006
"Earth Without People"
"What would happen to our planet if the mighty hand of humanity simply disappeared?"
by Alan Weisman.in Discover Magazine. February 6, 2005. Expanded into a non-fiction book -- see above.
Our extinction is not just possible, it's inevitable: billions of species have come and gone already.
But, will enough of us reach the level of awareness needed to voluntarily reverse our present course toward involuntary extinction?
We can only hope, and try to bring it about.
The alternative doesn't look fun.
Success will be humanity's crowning achievement.
Some say, "Overpopulation is more a symptom than a cause of our fundamental problems."
So, this means that Earth has too many people on it because of our problems rather than Earth having problems because there are too many people on it.
It's like:
"Gee, Dear, there's sure a lot of noise and pollution in the
air."
"Yeah, I wish we could breathe."
"Huh? Oh, we can still breed. C'mon, coff, coff, let's make more of
us."
Or maybe you can imagine:
"I'm outta work, homeless, and got a bad disease... makes me feel
like creating an heir to share all this with."
Our biggest problem, destruction of Earth's biosphere, is undoubtedly a symptom rather than a cause of excessive human breeding.
But to be fair, it's true that some of our problems promote higher birth rates -- especially mental problems like mindless conformity and massive denial.
In addition, problems like high mortality rates, a lack of care for the elderly, low status for women and their subsequent loss of reproductive freedom, all significantly contribute to high birth rates. In return, an excess of humans makes each of those problems worse. In some ways, over-population is both a symptom and a cause: a self-perpetuating, malicious cycle.
In contrast, voluntary human extinction is a positively motivated, beneficial cycle of solutions and benefits for all. Besides being a "symptom" of a heightened awareness, The Movement is "causing" a higher awareness.
Whether our problems are symptoms or causes, they'll be more
easily solved when there are fewer of us.
Q: Would we be better off if we had never been born?
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence 2006 by David Benatar, University of Cape Town professor, expresses anti-natalist philosophy based on inevitable harm which befalls each of us. "Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct. Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population." Editorial review.
Gut ist der Schlaf,
der Tod ist besser - freilich
Das beste wäre, nie geboren sein.
Sleep is good.
Death is better,
but the best is to have never been born.
~Heinrich Heine 1797-1856
1835-1836 poem Morphine
Q: Are religions to blame for human overpopulation?
All major religions include warnings against irresponsible breeding. Churches, perhaps in hopes of increasing their flock sizes, ignore those passages and emphasize natalist aspects of their dogma.
God is often quoted as telling us to "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Genesis 1:28 KJV.
When we are told to "replenish the Earth," the first people had only just been created, so "replenish" probably refers to other life forms. God is instructing us to reforest, re-establish wildlife habitat, enable wildlife to flourish, and replenish Earth with His blessed creatures.
Having "dominion" includes the responsibility to preserve and care for "every living thing which moveth on the Earth." Bringing about a creature's extinction most certainly violates this divine directive.
Humans are not the only creatures blessed by God. In Genesis 1:22, God blesses the other lives He has created and instructs them also to "be fruitful and multiply."
We can't assume that instructions given before our fall from grace and banishment from the Garden of Eden apply afterward. In Genesis 3:16, God told Eve, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children . . ."
For Christians, this curse has been lifted by Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, and no longer applies. Now, where contraception is available, we needn't bring forth children in sorrow.
There are limits to our fruitful multiplying:
"Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, 'til there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the Earth!" Isaiah 5:8 KJV
We seem to be exceeding God's admonishment.
God also advises us to care for the children who already exist instead of giving birth to more:
"Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth in singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord." Isaiah 54:1 KJV
If the second coming of Jesus is to be soon, then this is not the time to bring another person into the world. Jesus speaks of these last days:
"For behold, the days are coming, in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts which never gave suck.'" Luke 23:29 RSV
As this website proves, those days Jesus foretold of have come to pass. It is cruel to bring forth children who "will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.'" Luke 23:30.
The apostle Paul compares our earthly existence to that of a house:
"...if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God... whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord." II Corinthians 5:1-6 KJV.
Thus, extinction of the human race on Earth doesn't mean an end to humanity. Extinction is in accordance with God's plan for us.
Jesus Christ lived His life as a lesson to us all, and begat
naught. Let us follow His example and concentrate on the spiritual
journey to God, rather than on human endeavors such as producing more
humans.
We have been fruitful and multiplied, now it is time to mature and nurture.
My religion forbids contraceptives.
Pope Paul VI didn't draw directly from scriptures in 1968 when he issued Humanae Vitae. Loosely translated from Latin, it means, "It's a no-no to put pee-pee in muff-muff, except to make bee-bee."
This encyclical made the use of contraception cause for excommunication, eternal damnation, and so on, but it's just another Papal Bull, an edict from a Diet of Worms, or Mufti's fatwa type thing. The Bible doesn't outlaw contraception or abortion, the Pope does, and Papal infallibility means never saying you were wrong -- nor that any Pope was ever wrong.
We are wholely in need of a See change
Note: Above graphic digitally restored from an original poster, with "1968 Cabinet type shop" as the only identifying label. It is presented here as a historical documentation of the times, and is not intended to be disrespectful of Pope Paul VI's Italian accent. When Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture in President Nixon's cabinet at the time, commented, "You no playa da game, you no makea da rules," it's possible he intended to be disrespectful of Pope Paul VI's accent.
"Therefore thus saith the Lord God; 'Because ye multiplied
more than the nations that are round about you... Behold, I, even I,
am against thee, and will execute judgements in the midst of thee in
the sight of the nations.'" Ezekiel 5:7-8 KJV
Thus, we have free will to breed or not to breed, and are to be responsible, not to simply rely on divine contraception. One emphasized judgement to be executed in cases of excessive breeding is famine, leading to cannibalism. Verily, this judgement has been visited upon numerous peoples who failed to heed the word of the Lord their God.
From The Chronicles of Tao: "The two Taoists reminded Fi-Hung that the critical thing in life was to die a spiritual death, to merge with the void. In order to do so, one had to be free of the cycle of reincarnation. This meant absolutely no Earthly ties.
"The important point was that having children automatically tied one to the cycle of reincarnation. How could it be otherwise? By passing on one's metaphysical and physical genetics, one perpetuated one's Earthly karma.
"This was why the sages had no biological children."
A Buddhist view
11th
Link: BIRTH (jati)
This link is represented by the very explicit image of a woman giving
birth to a child.
Birth means the appearance of the five aggregates (material form,
feeling, perception, formation and consciousness)in the mother's
womb.
Birth, as one might expect, is shown as a mother in the process of
childbirth, a painful business and a reminder of how dukkha cannot be
avoided in any life. Whatever the future life is to be, if we are not
able to bring the wheel to a stop in this life, certainly that future
will arise conditioned by the kamma made in this life. But it is no
use thinking that since there are going to be future births, one may
as well put off Dhamma practice until then,for it is not sure what
those future births will be like. And when they come around, they are
just the present moment as well. So no use waiting!
Venerable Nagarjuna shows that it is better to extricate oneself:
Q: If the human race is phased out, how will we reincarnate here?
Our situation is so precarious that we can't assume that there will be an earthly biosphere to reincarnate in for our next life. It's time to make rapid advancement in this life, rather than slacking off because we think we'll have another chance at the wheel of life.
Excerpt:
"I, as a Wiccan and as a human being, have a responsibility to this
planet. This includes putting aside any desires I might have that are
dangerous to the Earth who nourishes me. As fun as it might be to
drive around in a car instead of walking, or eat meat, or leave the
lights in my house on all night, I don't do these things, because of
the toll they take. And I would expect that most other Wiccans would
feel the same -- some marginal sacrifice is necessary by all of us,
or things will get bad, quick.
"But one area that most Pagans I know simply ignore in their personal
quests for environmental amelioration is that of overpopulation, a
phenomenon which does exist, despite what the Pollyanna types will
tell you. Or, they lament about it but do nothing themselves.
"What can be done? Well, it's obvious.
"Stop. Having. Babies."
Q: Earth's sun will burn out in a few billion years anyway, so
what difference does it make?
We will die at the end of our short lives, but it still matters what happens to us in the meantime.
Earth appears to be half way through its lifespan at around 5,000,000,000 years. Considering that we have only been Homo sapiens for between 100 and 200 thousand years, and rarely live 100 years, this may as well be eternity.
