Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart – Professor Todd May thinks that when you consider the pain we inflict on animals through climate change, any reasonable assessment suggests humans should not be allowed to continue.
Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?
Our species possesses inherent value, but we are devastating the earth and causing unimaginable animal suffering.
By Todd May
Mr. May is a professor of philosophy at Clemson University.Dec. 17, 2018
…
There are stirrings of discussion these days in philosophical circles about the prospect of human extinction. This should not be surprising, given the increasingly threatening predations of climate change. In reflecting on this question, I want to suggest an answer to a single question, one that hardly covers the whole philosophical territory but is an important aspect of it. Would human extinction be a tragedy?
…
So, then, how much suffering and death of nonhuman life would we be willing to countenance to save Shakespeare, our sciences and so forth? Unless we believe there is such a profound moral gap between the status of human and nonhuman animals, whatever reasonable answer we come up with will be well surpassed by the harm and suffering we inflict upon animals. There is just too much torment wreaked upon too many animals and too certain a prospect that this is going to continue and probably increase; it would overwhelm anything we might place on the other side of the ledger. Moreover, those among us who believe that there is such a gap should perhaps become more familiar with the richness of lives of many of our conscious fellow creatures. Our own science is revealing that richness to us, ironically giving us a reason to eliminate it along with our own continued existence.
One might ask here whether, given this view, it would also be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering. Although I do not have a final answer to this question, we should recognize that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans. To demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying. In contrast, preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering, since those human beings will not exist and therefore not have lives to sacrifice. The two situations, then, are not analogous.
…
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/opinion/human-extinction-climate-change.html
Send your kids to Clemson University, assuming they don’t commit suicide on the spot after being exposed to Professor Todd May’s viciously anti-humanist green philosophy, they could well be talked out of ever having their own children.
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What animal suffering is this person talking about?
Predators cause a lot of animal suffering. Should we hunt them to extinction?
Germs and viruses cause animal suffering. Should we eliminate all germs and viruses?
Let’s face it, the only way to prevent animal suffering is to sterilize the earth.
All sentient life involves some suffering. Todd May has zero moral depth and zero understanding.
This fellow qualifies as a university Professor? That says a lot about his university in particular and current day academics in general. Is there any speck of a possibility he would act himself on this recommendation? – None. Apparently posturing, lieing and hypocrisy are now venerable academic activities.
Some activists actually suffer for the cause. Simone Weil comes to mind. I can’t think of any university professor activists who particularly suffer for their various causes.
There’s always Grizzly Man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_Man
that was natural selection
“This fellow qualifies as a university Professor? ”
This fellow qualifies as a PHILOSOPHY Professor….
Agreed. He’s asking a valid philosophical question. But Philosophy professors are supposed to be smart guys who contemplate the fundamental nature of things. To me, his premise about “the increasingly threatening predations of climate change” is pretty dumb. It shows he hasn’t thought the issue of ‘climate change’ through very well.
“There are stirrings of discussion these days in philosophical circles about the prospect of human extinction. This should not be surprising, given the increasingly threatening predations of climate change. In reflecting on this question, I want to suggest an answer to a single question, one that hardly covers the whole philosophical territory but is an important aspect of it. Would human extinction be a tragedy?”
A good philosophical debate is like masturbating, but using your mind instead of your…
Professor May’s question “Would human extinction be a tragedy?” is purely rhetorical (for now).
(Above) ‘..Apparently posturing, lieing [stet} and hypocrisy are now venerable academic activities…’
There’s no risk in venturing the point across the entire academic landscape. (So-called) ‘education’ does little to alter human nature (at the top of the food chain).
Well philosophy Prof Professor Todd May surely knows all about atmospheric science, oceanography, meteorology, ecology, plant science, animal science, hydrology, geology, mathematics, etc., etc. to understand so much about climate change that he is willing to kill all future humanity.
Climate experts are such nice people, want to kill your future children, grand children,
great grand children, all the way to the end.
He should show some leadership and eliminate all his posterity. Those that are so willing to take or prevent human life are never willing to show leadership and do these things themselves before they urge it on others.
Exactly, cB!
This is some of the highest potency fertilizer I’ve ever seen. I think we’re all getting used to the idea that a significant number of our “greatest minds” have their heads so far down the rabbit hole that they look like complete asses to any sane and rational human being. It has become time for the complete overhaul of our university systems to protect our kids from the unstable denizens of tenured security.
I don’t know what these idiots will do once some common sense is returned. Picking up bottles in ditches is environmentally friendly I suppose and they can howl at the moon if do it at night. I wouldn’t count on them not wandering out into traffic though.
It’s perfectly permissible as well as feasible to howl at the moon in the daytime.
Anthropomorphism
I just asked the pet yard squirrels while I gave them all breakfast…
…they said they didn’t give a s…
Latitude: I love it!
You’d make a better Philosophy Professor than this Todd May guy.
Most human due to migraines having to read this tripe (and taxpayers and parents who have to pay for this crap in universities).
About massive animal extermination camps! We are among those animals as well. Our headless selfish greedy activities are these camps. Overfishing, deforestation, overpopulation, pollution etc. That’s nothing to do with natural hunter – prey suffering. It’s to do with the balance – natural cycle, we should give back what we take.
P.S
Narrow-minded people have nothing else to do just to post silly comments everywhere and all the time. Get something useful to do!
[????? .mod]
You need to talk to your doctor about adjusting your medication; you are rambling incoherently again.
Nothing useful to do, Anytony?
Gee, I’ve written five chapters in just one book this month. What have YOU done, besides whine?
Anthony
“Our headless selfish greedy activities are these camps. Overfishing, deforestation, overpopulation, pollution etc. That’s nothing to do with natural hunter – prey suffering.”
Errrrrr……..Actually it is. Many animals have sown the seeds of their own destruction by over predation. If humans over predate, we die out as a species. Unlikely as we have the intelligence to continue hunting many prey rather than relying on a single food source.
We are part of nature, we exist within, and part of it.
If we go too far we all die off………too bad. Plenty have gone before.
Stop your lilly livered whining.
“headless”?… Perhaps Anthony meant heedless?
Good question! I hope reincarnation is a fact and I come back as one of my wife’s dogs.
Re “the pain we inflict on animals through climate change”
The ice age caused a lot of animal suffering. It did a pretty good job of wiping out boreal forests and all other plants. Sea levels dropped which was devastating to coral reefs.
Oh! Dear……
He got out again.
“Dr. May took his Ph.D. from Penn State University in 1989, and has been at Clemson (after a brief stint at Indiana University of Pennsylvania) since 1991. He specializes in Continental philosophy, especially recent French philosophy.”
Penn State should demand it back. But then again, consider its other famous denizen.
Do they know that he took it?
It was stolen.
You can’t steal that which you don’t have!
He is a doozy, isn’t he? From his CV page
“He specializes in Continental philosophy, especially recent French philosophy. He has authored thirteen philosophical books, focusing on the philosophical work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière. His book The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism has been influential in recent progressive political thought, and his work on Rancière is among the first in English………
…His teaching interests are varied; he has found himself teaching classes as diverse as Anarchism, The Thought of Merleau-Ponty, Resistance and Alterity in Contemporary Culture, Secular Ethics in a Materialist Age, and Postmodernism and Art. ”
Post modern shamanism is what I would call it.
For reasons noted below I shall resist the ready temptation to adopt professor May’s own outlook by accordingly inviting him to self-destruct by his own sorry ‘final solution’ standard. Instead I would supplement his deficient knowledge base by noting that aside from photosynthesizing botanicals all earthly life depends upon each other for its sustenance. And by the way that applies in mighty ways to microscopic malaria parasites and their symbiotic Anopheles mosquitoes as much as to grizzly bears and average Joes. So for a start, let’s drop the self-indulgent guilt-tripping as though it were some compelling guiding premise for desperate conduct.
Professor May is simply the predictable byproduct of the philosophes he has specialized in, with the heedless nihilism of a Michel Fouchault (dead of the AIDS he was content to spread around to many others). And if he wants a historic philosophical project to tremble over, he might consider whether his has been the paradoxical, if in the end inevitable, fruition of a blind faith in the faultless promise of a headstrong ‘Age of Reason’ itself, with those countless corpses in the recurring service of some no doubt enlightened ’cause du jour’. For a few of us the received quite different standard of “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” springs to mind in this commemorative season of the speaker’s birth.
Professor May seems to me like his mobius strip like progessive illogicality is really just in a philosophical death struggle with the basic notion that excrement stinks, including his.
How could such a philosophical ‘injustice’ be visited upon someone so obviously ‘enlightened’? Is there no true justice in the world? In the universe??? Was Gaia asleep when Professor May was born or at least had his revelation? Has she not even noticed him?
These must be terrible, terrible burdens for such an intellect as Professor May’s. No wonder he has written 13 books to explore his hideous dilemma of a life.
Komrade Kuma
Philosophy: The science of futility.
Ask a question never expecting an answer.
Indeed, how can such a subject be taught, far less documented, to be taught from.
I have had innumerable philosophical conversations late into the wee small hours after some great evenings in the pub.
Yet to come away with an answer.
HOtSCot,
‘Philosophy’ actually started of as largely scientific equiry (Archimedes, the Epicureans etc) but I think the rational minds soon realised that there were a lot of nut jobs attracted to the idea of being a ‘philosopher” ( it probably got one laid regularly or at least social attention, a bit like being on Twitter say) and so the rational ones put distance and labelling between them and the ancient forebears of Professor May.
This gent doesn’t sound like he’d be much fun at a cocktail party with his depressing opinions. What a nihilistic misanthrope.
Well, you never know what he’d be like socially. He might be a lot of fun. I took the trouble to use Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature to preview a bit of his The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism. It’s quite amusing, and, in fact, it’s the finest academic work I’ve read this week.*
Here’s a brief quote from the Amazon description of the above-mentioned book: “…After positioning poststructuralist political thought against the background of Marxism and the traditional anarchism of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Proudhon, Todd May shows what a tactical political philosophy like anarchism looks like shorn of its humanist commitments—namely, a poststructuralist anarchism….” Whoa!
* For the curious, this is the short URL to the Parts 1–4 links of the other work I read this week:
http://alturl.com/udten
Someone forgot to take there meds again.
He has a bosom companion in Princeton’s Pete Singer, who thinks it’s perfectly OK to kill newborn humans: “Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person,…” He’s an ethics professor, by the way. My best friend through high school wound up in the PR department at Princeton. He said something to the effect that Singer made his two years there “The worst 5 years of my life.”
I remember fondly the days when conservatives and Christians were accused of having a “holier than thou” attitude.
Today, we see from the left what resembles a body-building pose down where everyone flexes to show how sensitive and moral they are. Whoever is offended by the littlest little thing is the most sensitive, and whoever is willing to do the most to save humanity is the most moral.
“I’m willing to buy a Prius to save the world.”
“I’m willing for other people who pay taxes to pay more taxes to save the world.”
“I’m willing to pay higher taxes to save the world.”
“I’m willing to dress like a vagina and yell at people walking by to save the world.”
“I’m willing to buy solar panels to save the world.”
“Well, I’m willing to eat locusts to save the world.”
“Well, I’m willing to wish for human extinction to save the world!”
I’m willing to tear up the whole university system in order to save humanity from the disgusting mind droppings of a significant number of professors. That’s gotta get me some points!
Lead by example. If you think this way, stop having kids, or wipe yourself off the face of the earth. This is how we evolve. Hopefully in a few generations we are better off. In one breath we have to save everyone and the next breath we are over populated.
+1000
Funny how they never “Get the ball rolling” by starting with themselves. That would set a good example for their followers…hopefully. : )
Mark and John, you have it exactly right. In the spirit of Officers Candidate School, whose motto is “follow me!”, this professor and others like him, should lead the way. I might even watch.
Always loved that motto! Especially when hearing it shouted from 50-100 meters behind me. These are the kind of people who have always advocated the removing of “human weeds” while never considering themselves to be wearing that nomenclature.
I so want to watch the lemming train of climate activists jumping off the nearest cliff!
Not that it would ever happen, sadly… the bums seem to live by the motto, “Rules for thee, not for me.”
Oh, he’ll do it! He prefers to “lead from behind” like another, recent great Leader of the Left in the US. In this case, leading from behind means “I’ll make sure everyone else does it first then I’ll follow”…
Unfortunately, it is several decades too late to convince Mr. May’s parents that they should not have children.
I notice complete lack of details describing this supposed “unimaginable animal suffering at the hands of humans.” Seems to me our planet’s 300,000 (or whatever) species are doing OK. California diverted much needed water to make sure one regional tiny little fish (which no one has ever heard of)
would not suffer population decline. What a low IQ moron. I agree that humans like him we do not need.
Other animals create a fair amount of suffering in the creatures that happen to be below them on the food chain. It doesn’t seem to bother them one bit. Why should I worry about them? If I were unfortunate enough to come face-to-face with a polar bear, would it agonize over whether or not to include me on its breakfast menu? I think not.
You think being eaten by a bear’s bad? Try having a sphex wasp lay its egg in you. It first paralyses you so you can’t get away. While you’re still alive when the egg hatches, the newborn grub digs into your flesh and proceeds to eat you from the inside out. It must be a hideously painful death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphex
So what gives this jerk the right to criticize human behaviour?
And the grub instinctively eats the nonvital parts first to keep its first meal fresh longer.
“would also be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering. ”
You first, Professor Todd May. Show us you really mean what you say.
Todd May be nuts. Or he May be worse than just nuts. What’s he talking about, sending people to extermination camps? Haven’t we been through something like this recently?
I don’t know where he gets the “suffering” thing, unless he’s been watching too much Hope for Paws, which rescues abandoned dogs and cats, and finds new homes for them.
If he is serious, he should volunteer to be the first to die in his death cult. Belgium does euthanize people at their request now. He could go there and get it over with.
How many wackos like him are there that don’t publicize their death cult attitude quite so much? Only asking, because I got the paper once morning and then on the front page was the news about the massacre at Jonestown, Guyana, with that suicidal psycho Jim Jones directing that mass murder.
You first, Todd. You set the example, and then you can see how many want to follow you.
Have read several articles putting this stupidity forward during the last few months, and yet again I make the same statement I do to these idiots each time they toddle out with this crap, you go first. Then the Human Race could move forward with our next evolutionary step, minus such sad examples human beings.
Time for a B Ark.
Hehe, long gangplank which ends at the intake of a whisper chipper. Pretty sure The Simpsons did something like that.
If you know the story of the Technocrats, how they think and what they want to achieve, sociopathic claims like this are all in the mix.
https://youtu.be/e8JRCoSgsUU
https://youtu.be/ACYRaNvTN2w
Sounds as if he’s calling for mass sterilization rather than genocide. How thoughtful of him.
Well, African TFR’s are amongst the highest, so I guess his policy would involve sending teams of American or European sterilizers to Africa.
No problem with that policy, right?
That solution sounds both inclusive and diverse!
I’m wondering if the jolly professor’s pronouncements don’t create a hostile work and study environment for some members of the university community, such as those from high fertility countries? I think administrators should be notified.
Philosophers and the Elitists like generalizations, silly talk that goes nowhere.
No discussion of real, specific problems which are messy.
The live in a bubble Elitists cannot even talk about Africa.
Our beliefs about the Africa problems are Disney like fantasy.
Based on current trends there will be 2.5 billion people in Africa by 2050, an addition of 1.3 billion people.
Aid money to Africa has been an absolute failure as Africa’s number one fundamental problem is a lack of law and order which aid money cannot solve. Chaos is evil.
How many products are made in Africa? Almost none.
https://qz.com/africa/1016790/more-than-half-of-the-worlds-population-growth-will-be-in-africa-by-2050/
‘Africa’s rapidly growing human population is predicted to more than double by 2050, a staggering increase of three and a half million people per month.
By 2050 around 2.2 billion people could be added to the global population and more than half of that growth will occur in Africa.
Africa will account for the highest population spurt with an additional 1.3 billion people on the continent, a new UN population report shows.
Hmmm, I wonder if he has ever considered the “pain and suffering” most animals go through when they are being eaten (while still alive) by other wild animals in nature ? D’OH!
Yet a bullet or arrow to the vitals is “cruel”. 😐
It’s a point of pride and/or principle for hunters to strive for the clean kill that’s over quickly for the game, and to make every effort to track it and finish it in the event of a non-lethal first shot.
We’re the only creatures on Earth who entertain the concept of the mercy kill.
I wonder if Professor May’s position will cause even one member of the CAGW alarmist camp to question the “wisdom” of intelligentsia supporting their group-think . . . and to reflect that maybe he/she has made a REALLY BIG mistake.
Most of the intelligentsia will assume that “Dr.” May is talking about the undesirables, not about people like themselves.
“Cancel Humans!”
Cancel misanthropic professors.
He is clearly in a job way above his ability to function adequately.
He suffers from delusions of adequacy.
This one does too
Who would even want an impressionable teen going to a university at this point? A guy like this one should clearly be sacked and offered a job making pottery wind chimes.
Let’s compare having to deal with a world that’s 1C warmer, vs being torn apart and eaten by a lion.
Being at the top of the food chain, and possessing several excellent hunting rifles, I don’t have to worry about lions. Temps going up, or down, is not much of a worry so I’m golden!
Bring a buddy along you know you can outrun. You know, just in case.
Ah the old it’s not the lion/tiger/bear/(insert predator here) that I have to out run, it’s you (the slower moving person I’m with). That one never gets old. Problem is, what if there are multiple lions/tigers/bears/(insert predators here)?
I think it is time to put all these nuts back in locked ,white padded rooms, for their own safety of course… ; )
A much more compelling philosophical reflection on modern man is the curious phenomenon of widespread acceptance of a theory that has no scientific laws, axioms, postulates, nor formulae that implores carbon based life forms to condemn carbon.
Are syllogisms still taught by the Philosophy Department?
Carbon Based life forms require Carbon
Carbon Dioxide is the base of the food chain
Carbon Dioxide is necessary to complete the Carbon Cycle of Life
Therefore, mankind should pursue efforts to ensure Carbon Dioxide is sufficiently accessible to all future life
Nice syllogism, Thomas Horner. One I live by. Alarmists invert it. They are trying to destroy all forms of life. That makes them monsters.
CAFOs and poison-based agriculture indeed cause immense suffering and harm. But alarmists miss all the positives. We are recovering our city rivers as bird sanctuaries. We have reversed the extinction of the quagga. We are just beginning to learn how to increase biodiversity. The finest Permaculture and Restoration Agriculture are restoring the Garden of Eden.
And best of all: fossil fuels (and only fossil fuels) are increasing the carrying capacity of the Earth for Life.
For the record, Professor May, I allow cave crickets to live in my bathroom. I make concerted efforts to rescue the errant ones that decide to inhabit my washing machine, before I do a load, and I routinely avoid squashing them accidentally by watching where I step in the zones where I allow them to live.
As for an answer to your question, “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?”
Honestly, no. It would not be a tragedy. Tragedy is a human judgment, and without humans, there would be no entity to make this judgment. The universe simply wouldn’t give a crap. But, frankly, I choose to enjoy my existence while it lasts, and hope that navel gazing on prospects of climate doom will soon be recognized as a social disorder.
It would be a “statistic,” as one great philosopher opined.
The insanity of these delusional anti-Human warmistas is beyond belief. Their rants are getting worse, assuming that is at all possible!
This Professor is a big fish in his own little raindrop of delusion. Perhaps he should more carefully consider his little raindrop as it relates to the ocean of the universe.
Words of comfort and wisdom for Professor Todd May can be found here.
http://www.songlyrics.com/national-lampoon/deteriorata-lyrics/
And, in an imperfect world, there should be other altruistic creatures who have already reached these conclusions and ended themselves…
This sociopathic psychotic individual probably believes the dinosaurs ended themselves to “alleviate animal suffering”.
This alleged teacher is rubber room material.
He should not be anyone’s burden, so send him to live deep in uninhabited wilderness; e.g. inland Antarctic, remote sub polar islands, barren wastes. Getting chased by a few less particular carnivores may awaken real humanity instead of his self proclaimed anti-humanity.
“My worst nightmare involves some fanatic somewhere who thinks that the world has too many human beings. Such a person would have no compunction about releasing some kind of pathogen. And this is the kind of thing that could be done by someone with access to a laboratory. It’s nothing very special. It’s not like making an atomic bomb, where you need large conspicuous facilities.” – Sir Martin Rees, here:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/martin-rees-on-the-future-of-science-and-humanity-20181205/
Nothing to worry about. Move along folks.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/24/zika-is-just-the-first-front-in-the-21st-century-biowar/
Odd? They never lead with themselves. I submit a better phrasing of the concerns would be: you are all inconvenient to my momentary passing concerns, please die.”