Pursuing Human Extinction

"...Above all, society must learn to embrace once more the great gift of life, to cherish it, to protect it, and to defend it against the culture of death, itself an expression of the great fear that stalks our times. One of your most noble tasks as Bishops is to stand firmly on the side of life, encouraging those who defend it and building with them a genuine culture of life..." - Pope John Paul II, Ad limina address of the Holy Father to US Bishops of California, Nevada and Hawaii, October 2, 1998.

Before his death Pope John Paul II spoke through many sources and on many stages about a culture of death permeating the world's nations. Whether it is the conflicts in the Middle East, Africa or Indonesia, or on the topics of Abortion and Euthanasia, the Pope hoped that it would be replaced with a culture of life. He wishes a world where life is looked on as a gift; that it has an inherent right to dignity and security, and it has worth from conception to death.

I wonder what he would think of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. I am no big fan of the Roman Catholic Church. Actions in it's name has been the cause of as much misery as it has joy in world history and those that think it is an institution way past its expiration date may have a point. I only bring up the former Pope's speech because it rings true on many levels. We do live in a culture of death and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement seems to be the next incarnation.

What seems even more interesting on an intellectual level, and frightening on an emotional level is that the VHEM does not seem in any way out of the ordinary.

"Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.

VHEMT (pronounced vehement) is a movement not an organization. It's a movement advanced by people who care about life on planet Earth. We're not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters.

We don't carry on about how the human race has shown itself to be a greedy, amoral parasite on the once-healthy face of this planet. That type of negativity offers no solution to the inexorable horrors which human activity is causing.

Rather, The Movement presents an encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and wholesale destruction of the Earth's ecology..." - www.vhemt.org

What seems at first as the newest form of a death cult turns out to be a loosely organized movement of volunteers who decide not to procreate. It seems reasonable on the surface. Indeed this planet is going to hell-in-a-hand-basket if you believe the all the scientists and environmentalists including the Canadian Dr. David Suzuki. But is the movement founded by Les Knight that reasonable? Although I did not get a vasectomy at 25 years of age (as Knight did), I have made the conscience choice not to have children. But I wonder what the motivation (rather than just a keeping it a private and personal choice) was to start a movement. Was it just a love for a planet that Knight sees being destroyed by overpopulation and mass consumption? I questioned myself on why I chose to not to procreate and none of them had to do with environmental issues. In fact, when I looked deep into my psyche (if you wish to call it that), I found that it was in a large way a selfish decision. I didn't want the responsibility. I didn't want to be the cause of another damaged person living in a world that seemed in my earlier years to be cold, uncaring, and very callous. But, I would have never thought to begin a mass movement about this choice.

But in a world where death is glorified through our mass culture, it doesn't seem unreasonable that a man would publicly declare his removal from the breeding world and want everyone to hop on the bandwagon. If Knight's motivation is the survival of the planet instead of a selfish choice to shirk responsibility for child-rearing, I congratulate him on his choice. But the extinction of the human race (even though he mentions that it is probably unattainable and even humourous to think of it) seems quite misanthropic even if he doesn't mean it to be so. I will never join his movement but I can understand the sentiment.