{"id":14359,"date":"2023-01-30T05:29:11","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T13:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14359"},"modified":"2023-02-02T05:30:33","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T13:30:33","slug":"issue-of-the-week-population-environment-war-hunger-disease-human-rights-personal-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14359","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: Population, Environment, War, Hunger, Disease, Human Rights, Personal Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Notes from the\u00a0<\/em><\/span>Apocalypse<\/i>, The\u00a0Atlantic Magazine,\u00a0Apocalypse Nowish<\/em>, Harper’s Magazine<\/span><\/p>\n

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As we come to the end of the first month of 2023, we are posting the cover story from the January\/February edition of The Atlantic Magazine<\/a>, bookended by the cover story from last month of 2022 in the December edition of Harper’s Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The subject is the\u00a0Apocalypse.<\/p>\n

In a general sense, collectively they present three perspectives:<\/p>\n

Fight against the odds to create a better future for humanity and all life.<\/p>\n

Wish for the end of humanity entirely, which by definition would erase any record of it ever existing, as soon as possible, for the sake of the rest of creation on earth and in the universe.<\/p>\n

Work for the end of humanity in human physical form and create the continuity of it’s knowledge and best aspects through in effect creation of the transfer of these characteristics to AI which would theoretically exponentially amplify the positive and save and enhance the rest of creation on earth and in the universe.<\/p>\n

The end of 2022 and start of 2023, brought to you by two of the finest magazines in existance with storied histories. Both focussed on the end of humanity and\/or all life. Any day now.<\/p>\n

We don’t agree with a number of things presented in these articles. However, we agree with much of the fundamental analysis of why Apocalypse appears imminent.<\/p>\n

And of course we come down on the side of fighting to make all life, including human, survive and thrive.<\/p>\n

We were tempted to do a somewhat massive annotation because we agree and disagree with so much of what is written in these articles.<\/p>\n

However, our positions are clear from years of work and postings.<\/p>\n

And the value of experiencing these articles by themselves is enormous.<\/p>\n

So, here they are:<\/p>\n

THE PEOPLE CHEERING FOR HUMANITY\u2019S END<\/p>\n

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A disparate group of thinkers says we should welcome our demise.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic Magazine, January\/February 2023<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Painting by Reynier Llanes. “The Poet,” 2021 (oil on canvas, 47 x 36 inches).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\u201cMan is an<\/span> invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this declaration in The Order of Things<\/i> <\/a>(1966), the French philosopher Michel Foucault heralded a new way of thinking that would transform the humanities and social sciences. Foucault\u2019s central idea was that the ways we understand ourselves as human beings aren\u2019t timeless or natural, no matter how much we take them for granted. Rather, the modern concept of \u201cman\u201d was invented in the 18th century, with the emergence of new modes of thinking about biology, society, and language, and eventually it will be replaced in turn.<\/p>\n

As Foucault writes in the book\u2019s famous last sentence, one day \u201cman would be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.\u201d The image is eerie, but he claimed to find it \u201ca source of profound relief,\u201d because it implies that human ideas and institutions aren\u2019t fixed. They can be endlessly reconfigured, maybe even for the better. This was the liberating promise of postmodernism: The face in the sand is swept away, but someone will always come along to draw a new picture in a different style.<\/p>\n

But the image of humanity can be redrawn only if there are human beings to do it. Even the most radical 20th-century thinkers stop short at the prospect of the actual extinction of Homo sapiens<\/i><\/a>, which would mean the end of all our projects, values, and meanings. Humanity may be destined to disappear someday, but almost everyone would agree that the day should be postponed as long as possible, just as most individuals generally try to delay the inevitable end of their own life.<\/p>\n

In recent years, however, a disparate group of thinkers has begun to challenge this core assumption. From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity\u2019s reign on Earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. The revolt against humanity is still new enough to appear outlandish, but it has already spread beyond the fringes of the intellectual world, and in the coming years and decades it has the potential to transform politics and society in profound ways.<\/p>\n

This view finds support among very different kinds of people: engineers and philosophers, political activists and would-be hermits, novelists and paleontologists. Not only do they not see themselves as a single movement, but in many cases they want nothing to do with one another. Indeed, the turn against human primacy is being driven by two ways of thinking that appear to be opposites.<\/p>\n

The first is Anthropocene anti-humanism, inspired by revulsion at humanity\u2019s destruction of the natural environment. The notion that we are out of tune with nature isn\u2019t new; it has been a staple of social critique since the Industrial Revolution. More than half a century ago, Rachel Carson\u2019s<\/a> Silent Spring<\/i><\/a>, an expos\u00e9 on the dangers of DDT, helped inspire modern environmentalism with its warning about following \u201cthe impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature.\u201d But environmentalism is a meliorist movement<\/a>, aimed at ensuring the long-term well-being of humanity, along with other forms of life. Carson didn\u2019t challenge the right of humans to use pesticides; she simply argued that \u201cthe methods employed must be such that they do not destroy us along with the insects.\u201d<\/p>\n