I am furiously applying my Buddhist awareness to your latest missive.

Have you heard the Mark Twain, "He had the cool, calm confidence of a Christian with four aces."

PS: One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the movie "Providence" (dir. Alain Resnais). Towards the end, Clive Langham (played by John Geilgud) says: "I disapprove of death. You begin to sniff the temptation of believing in something."

I included a link to a famous Hubble telescope image in one of my previous replies. Here it is again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PhilcUK-1274438506.jpg

Or are you saying you're opposed to looking at such images on principle? If so, on what grounds? In case not, here's a link to the official Hubble repository, where you'll find many other famously spectacular images:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/

Perhaps the most famous of all is this one:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/pr1995044a/

Thanks for the detail and I will think about it (I'm at work), it's very interesting. It's funny but one reason I thought of Kuhn was because he discusses exactly what I think is happening in our discussion as a paradigm phenomena.  I'll try to find it.

I will have to wonder about what measures the superiority of a knowledge system, and the relationship of truth to facts.

I should mention that I've never looked in a hubble telescope thought, or knowingly seen a hubble image.

I haven't read Kuhn but I already understand his premise (as described e.g. in Wikipedia) well enough to know I'm not interested. I'm certain that science is different in nature from and superior to other knowledge systems, and Kuhn is unlikely to persuade me otherwise. As I said he's a minority position at best. It seems bizarre to me to argue that science is not gradually progressive and cumulative, when there is such an abundance of evidence for the opposite conclusion. The fact that the structure of DNA couldn't have been discovered without electron microscopy is just one of countless examples.

Suppose I built a time machine, and personally took you on a journey to the past, to the future, and to distant galaxies. Afterwards you might agree that science is superior to other knowledge systems. Many people would anyway. My point is that this machine already exists. It's called the Hubble telescope, and both of us already took the journey. The difference between us is that for me the journey was a game-changer, but you weren't impressed by it.

I think the primary source of heat in this discussion is that you're determined to prove that science is ordinary, just another knowledge system. I reject that assertion, and as far as I'm concerned you haven't even come close to proving it, any more than Kuhn did. Nor do I agree that Buddhism can be equated with science because they're both observing "nature". This is just a backhanded attempt to make science ordinary, by hiding the fact that science is a superior mode of observation, superior in the sense that it allows us to actually to learn what's true and what's rubbish. Science has revealed more factual information about the universe in the last 200 years than Buddhism revealed in thousands of years of navel-gazing.

I dislike Buddhism precisely because its adherents try to pass it off as compatible with science, when in fact it is clearly an inferior system, filled with self-justifying assumptions that are neither falsifiable nor predictive. Buddhism shares this attempted elevation to scientific status with many other cults, including Scientology, and I assume the purpose is to make occultism more palatable to an increasingly well-educated and skeptical public, particularly in developed countries where superstition is now often regarded as a sign of childishness. Throughout most of history people were so ignorant that they were trivially manipulated by unjustified religious authority, but this has changed rapidly in the modern period (e.g. in Northern Europe) as a consequence of widespread access to higher education.

I don't dispute that we use paradigms in science, and that they occasionally change. However that they don't just change willy-nilly because some guy in a yellow robe says he's become enlightened. Scientists have to prove their cases, and formulate their thoughts rigorously. A scientific paradigm changes when the overwhelming majority of people possessing demonstrated competence in a relevant field agree that the new paradigm fits the existing evidence better than the old paradigm did. Scientific understanding evolves over time, and as with most phenomena, the changes are often non-linear.

I need to consider your responses, and appreciate the detail.

But you misunderstand me if you think I want to fight the universe so that humanity will last forever. My concern is for how we live in the present, during our existence.

Another quick note is that I'm not talking about limits to sense perception.

Regarding subjectivity, it's interesting to note that you feel science saved your life, and I feel science fucked me (and many other things) up.

My (chilled down) question would be, have you read Thomas Kuhn?  I don't mean you should have, but the comment you made about Kuhn -- and I'm sure that he has his critics -- has nothing to do with what I took from Thomas Kuhn, which was that we see reality through wholistic paradigms, knowledge systems have a certain tautological quality (paradigms) and have to filter out what conflicts with their assumptions.

 

His book was seen as undermining the idea of science as gradualistically progressive and cumulative, and totally different in nature from and superior to other knowledge systems.

 

He argues that we always have to have a system of selecting what counts as real, what questions can be asked, what methods can be used.  There is no such thing as working without reducing and keeping things out of your perceptual system.  Then he talks about how paradigms are defensive, and collapse when anomalies become unavoidable.  Kuhn is writing as much about psychology as anything else.

 

I'm not critcizing your comment, just saying I have no idea what it's referring to in terms of how Kuhn provided a way of seeing things to me.

 

I unsuccessfully tried to persuade Ted to read it. I'm not trying to say you should read it, but that I think it's to me it is a breakthrough kind of book that comes to mind for me over and over since I read it.

I wanted to write you an email before reading your reactions to my emotional and impulsive emails written last night.  I really want to explore these things without being combative about it.  I apologize for being aggressive, and also I realized it wasn't appropriate for me to bring up the market thing.

I have trouble holding my own with you on these matters, so I overcompensate. 

I would like to understand the way our world views conflict or even are mutually negating.

But I don't want to be getting angry or provoking you to anger and setting off a chain reaction as keeps happening.  This is the third time we've entered into this pattern, which arises with me reading something you've written, and reacting to it, etc.  and we get more and more polarized.

So I'm going to read your emails, but just want you to know that I regret overreacting last night.

"Are you saying that your don't think that your human brain imposes a reductive structure upon your perception of reality?"

The human brain is limited, and that's why science is interesting and powerful: because it allows us to overcome those limits, expanding our reality to include phenomena that can't be perceived directly with our unaided senses, but are nonetheless real. We can't see ultraviolet radiation (though other animals can), but we can "see" it with appropriate instruments. We can't actually look at the surface of the sun, because it's too far away, and because it would blind us, but we now routinely "watch" storms on the surface of the sun. A more pertinent example: you can't see bacteria, and throughout most of human history their existence wasn't even posited. I can't speak for you but I'm glad my doctor knows about bacteria.

I understand this last example is painful for you, because you feel you were harmed by psychiatric medicine. That's why I'm using it! I'm highlighting the fact that your dislike of medicine is subjective, as is my gratitude to medicine for saving my life on Sleeping Giant mountain. However the existence of bacteria is NOT subjective. The discovery of bacteria could be good or bad, depending on your point of view: Medical outcomes have greatly improved, but the reduced mortality has contributed to overpopulation. Ethics isn't simple! Humans could turn out to be great at science but lousy at ethics.

"Are you saying that "falsifiability" isn't a filter than excludes information ?"

No. Information is an imprecise term. I'm saying falsifiability excludes everything that isn't science, and that's a good thing for science. In fact it's a description of how science works. In other words, falsifiability is an AXIOM of science. When I'm doing science, I expect assertions to be falsifiable, otherwise they're just rubbish. When I'm making art, I can assert nonsense all day long (think of Dadaism), and that's fine because art isn't falsifiable.

"Do you think that everything is theoretically knowable by humans?"

This is way outside my area of expertise! But based on my limited knowledge I'd say: probably not.

"Why are you so invested in determinism?"

I'm not. Determinism is simply a description of a common situation in science: given inputs that generate a known and repeatable outcome. What you're really asking me is, why am I so invested in the scientific method, and the answer is, because I'm inspired by the results. I like the truth, no matter how disturbing it may be. (c.f. Hubble telescope)

"Is not the shifting baseline an egocentric assumption that is delusional?"

No. It's a failure of perception. Our senses aren't adequate for perceiving very slow change, and this exactly the type of area in which science excels. The only reason we even KNOW that our baseline has shifted is because of science, specifically Jeremy Jackson's science in this case.

"I feel as though when I question your ideas you get pissed off or hurt."

I'm neither. Really! I believe my arguments seem paradoxical and conflicted to you but I assure you that vice versa is also the case. From my point of view, humans are both capable of grasping the truth and capable of willfully ignoring it. I wouldn't call that a paradox but I might call it poetic justice.

"If you send me your ideas you should also be willing to consider my ideas."

I do consider them! I just don't agree with them. I also feel that in certain cases they lack sufficient justification or assert unsound reasoning, but this could just be a problem of rhetoric. I'm used to defending my ideas tenaciously and in excruciating detail, after years of practice.

"If I can change, or you can change, anything can."

Lots of things can't change, on all scales, from your (and my) mortality to the destruction of earth by the sun in approximately one billion years from now. The average mammal exists for a million years. So far we've managed 100,000 years, a mere tenth of the average. What is it exactly that you hope for? Another 900,000 years? Do you wish for a kinder, gentler period in human history? If so, how long would you expect it to last? Is there any precedent for it in human history? In non-human history? All species survive by some combination of competition and cooperation. Some have it easier than others. Many parasites are born, live their entire lives, and die of old age entirely enclosed in food (e.g. many of the bacteria in your body). Should we be jealous of this? Or should we feel lucky? I feel lucky!

I feel as though when I question your ideas you get pissed off or hurt.

I need to respond because you are putting out very powerful arguments for ethical positions I disagree with.  

Further, I find your own arguments to be paradoxical and conflicted in a way I have yet to be able to clarify to myself or articulate.  I have been trying to do this, and I feel that we have differences that relate to buddhist principals, especially concerning individualism, determinism, dichotomizing/purifying, etc. By the way, I am not a buddhist, I am interested in the method of inquiry of buddism.

I know you mean to be provocative, and you are provocative.

If you send me your ideas you should also be willing to consider my ideas. I'm not a passive receptacle for other people's ideas.  If your ideas are worth thinking about, mine are too. There's a way that when you respond to me you don't seem to actually entertain what I'm saying.  It feels like you just block it out.  You don't even respond to the problems of human psychology or how we represent things.

I am starting to feel more affirmative about my own ideas, as though I were waking up.  I don't care whether I have a good memory or not.

I do very much appreciate your providing me with good information and sources, like jeremey and kevin anderson.  I also appreciate much of what you observe and synthesize, your rhetorical capabilities, and creative expression, writing, emotional/visionary expression, etc. .  I was thinking you could have a youtube channel called The Weather Report.

But, as you said, it comes down to ethics, i.e. spiritual values, not facts.  

It comes down to what you choose to make of the facts.

The ideas you put forth create a situation of either/or.  I don't accept that either/or.

Also, I cannot buy into hopelessness.  If I can change, or you can change, anything can.

I am planning to do interviews with people concerning collapse! Should be interesting, and I hope you will consent to an interview...  I just feel like I have to start doing some kind of inquiry type work or social engagement so it's not all bouncing around inside my skull. I'm most interested in the psychology of it.

I meant "I hope you don't experience this as hostile" because the previous two time it seemed to become hostile.  You know that I have great respect for your intellect, knowledge, creativity  and expressive, rhetorical capabilities.

Thomas Kuhn held that theory choice is irrational. This is a minority position in the philosophy of science. He by no means succeeded in refuting Karl Popper's work on falsification.

"This entry has no concept of what Buddhism is about."

You make it sound like there's one definition of Buddhism but that's demonstrably not the case. Anyway that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. I'm not threatened by Buddhism, I just find it absurd and boring, an insult to my intelligence. I'd much rather look at the images from the Hubble telescope. If those images don't inspire humility, I don't know what will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PhilcUK-1274438506.jpg

If devastation is the price we have to pay for trying to face the truth, in my view it was definitely worth it. I have no regrets. I like your new idea from last night: I should be publicly defending science since I feel so strongly about it! Like Richard Dawkins on acid.

"let's take geoengineering as an example of science in action."

You're confusing science with the ethics of its application. We've gone over this before. Quantum mechanics is sound science. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea to build a hydrogen bomb, or a nuclear reactor for that matter. On the other hand nuclear reactors could help slow climate change. Things aren't simple, no matter how much we'd like them to be.

Anyway humans have been geoengineering all along. Aboriginal societies drastically modified their environment via fire and predation. Climate change IS geoengineering, it's just UNINTENTIONAL geoengineering. The main problem (or advantage?) of geoengineering is that it's unlikely to work quickly or completely enough to avoid the collapse of civilization.

Buddhism is the opposite of narcissism.  This entry has no concept of what buddhism is about.  There is NOTHING comforting about buddhism.  Buddism is realism and humility. Buddhism is just as much about truth as science is, but unlike science, Buddhism doesn't exclude things from the field of inquiry, or pretend to be objective or value free, when there is no such thing.

Have you read Thomas Kuhn?  About paradigms? He make it very clear that there is no such thing as objectivity, and that all knowledge systems filter out what conflicts with their ideology.

Every knowledge system is ideological and reductionist, including science.  

Buddhism is the opposite of feeling that that we are the raison d'etre of the universe.  Buddhism is a stance of interconnectivity, transcience, not priveleging the human species or any individual. The idea of the separate self (such as the migrating baseline) is what Buddhism questions.  There is nothing that science has come up with that conflicts with buddhist principles, as far as I know (which is little). Indeed, it seems to me that science is discovering buddhist principals as it goes. such as complexity and systems.  

why are you so hostile towards buddhist ideas?  What is it that you think needs to be demolished?

I totally don't understand what you find so threatening about it.

what is it that most bothers you?

It's weird to me, because science so obviously has massive destructive impacts, including all the devastastation that concerns you.  what is the destructive impact of buddhism?

It's very hard for me to express to you how powerfully you impose your structure upon the conversation.

Are you saying that your don't think that your human brain imposes a reductive structure upon your perception of reality?  Are you saying that "falsifiiability" isn't a filter than excludes information? Do you think that everything is theoretically knowable by humans?  

I hope we can get to the bottom of this.  Whenever we talk about these things I feel like I'm on a playing field where my entire way of thinking is ruled out.

Why are you so invested in determinism?

I think we should try to stick with this friction and try to understand what it's about.

My experience of science is from reading innumerable abstracts from scientific research on psychiatric drugs, nutrition and health hazards, (medical science) from being an object of science, from undergoing physical harm from science, from watching others undergo physical harm, and most recently seeing geoengineers propose to fuck with the atmosphere, which will be the next horror.  I think geoengineering is the scariest thing I've encountered so far, and I think it will be promoted by people like Obama. It's the ultimate Business as Usual.

What is your response about the fermi paradox? why would other life forms be involved in our technologies and aspirations?

What is it that you object to in terms of what I'm saying about Buddhism and becoming aware of ego-centric assumptions? Is not the shifting baseline an egocentric assumption that is delusional?

There's a way that our arguments make no contact.  This means that we have entirely different paradigms, if we don't even make sense to each other.

By the way, I really like jeremy Jackson, he reminds me of Jay, and I enjoy his sarcasm, he's very sweet in a way...

"I hope that you do don't experience this as hostile,"

LOL! Which is it, do or don't? Could this be a Freudian slip??? :P

what does "falsifiable" mean?

let's take geoengineering as an example of science in action.

Isn't it delusional?

for instance, malignancy just means "bad". It's a value judgment, not a fact.

PS: I agree 100% with the enclosed.

"All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for our spiritual quests. In contrast, science tells us that we are incidental, accidental. Far from being the raison d'être of the universe, we appeared through sheer happenstance, and we could vanish in the same way. This is not a comforting viewpoint, but science, unlike religion, seeks truth regardless of how it makes us feel. Buddhism raises radical questions about our inner and outer reality, but it is finally not radical enough to accommodate science's disturbing perspective. The remaining question is whether any form of spirituality can."

Excerpted from a post titled "Buddhist Retreat: Why I gave up on finding my religion." I Googled the phrase "Buddhism is not science", and this post was the first link returned.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2003/02/buddhist_retreat.single.html

In human beings, the inputs and the outputs are unpredictable.

It's late, and I can only read this quickly now,

But I appreciate your responding.

There is an extreme mismatch in the way we think.

I will read this later and try to understand what you're saying and respond.

I hope that you do don't experience this as hostile, because I think these are important issues,

I couldn't disagree more, sorry to say. Our positions seem totally irreconcilable.

"humans have thought structures that they mistake for reality, i.e. they think their brain is a non-distorting medium that transmits full reality, and this produces delusion."

You're either misunderstanding science, or possibly confusing science with something else. This position doesn't square with the accepted definition of science, or with my personal experience of science. Science is "a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe." [Wikipedia] But I've already stated this previously, and restating it is unlikely to help matters.

"So real Buddhism is its own kind of science, and critiques scientific positivism as a thinking structure that is delusional."

I don't accept Buddhism as any kind of science, because it's not falsifiable.

"I think determinism is one of those thought structure delusions."

Again it's a dead end. I like to use the example of bacteria in bottle. Assuming an unlimited supply of nutrients, the bacteria will fill the bottle and choke on their own waste, every time. In fact we rely on this deterministic outcome to make alcohol. In science, determinism isn't a philosophy, it's simply a description of a situation in which the output for a given set of inputs is known and repeatable.

"We can't imagine how we could have failed to come into being."

Individuals may believe this but it has nothing whatever to do with science. Physics and astronomy routinely explore situations in which we couldn't and wouldn't have existed. Genetics proves conclusively that evolution doesn't converge on anything except fitness for prevailing conditions. There is no top or bottom, and malignancy is as natural as anything else. Life evolved from bacteria, and regardless of what people do or don't do, life will return to bacteria: only the timing is in doubt.

"But the problem is that determinism leaves us totally helpless,"

Not really. Unlike the bacteria in the bottle, we can choose not to choke on our own waste. The outcome is only determined on the macro timescale, i.e. hundreds of millions of years. As I tried to express in "Less," the main variable in play is the degree of suffering we're willing to inflict on future generations. My personal point of view is--and has always been--that humans are quite capable of inflicting maximal suffering on future generations. Recent events provide plenty of support for my position, but that doesn't make it deterministic.

I think that generally, a delusion is that we see content, but don't see structure (the higher level).
For instance, people see individuals (content) as producing the social structure (which again is a self-centered idea) but don't see how social structure produces individuals as content.  Similar to seeing themselves as choosing the technologies they use. Structural change would produce different human behavior. So I don't think human nature should be inferred by how people behave in the structure we're in.
(Which is all the ridiculous critiques of digital addiction that call for people to simply choose to limit use.)

Seeing technology as a neutral tool is similar to seeing our thinking structures as media that don't produce perception, but simply transmit reality. 

So I guess this all goes to the delusion produced by the hidden power of structure, and how you can't intervene at the level of content, because structure is stronger than content.

Well, this is my monologue of after thoughts to our conversation.

I was thinking about an idea about translating the stock market index number into musical tones so that you could hear the stock market.  Also about generating a video representation of the stock market, almost like a medical machine that records heart beat, having that line going across the screen.  It would sound really different at different "resolutions" like a day, versus a year, a decade, etc.  It would smooth out the longer the period covered I guess.  There are archives of all the stock market data.  If there was a database, then you could set conditions for playing the data as music and image, like range of date, frequency of sample (i.e.1x day), and range of tones from high to low that numbers would be interpellated to.  It is a historic time line, as well as a melody line. 

Thinking of it as a kind of life sign of the market. The idea was that this might be the sound and background for a "stock market rain dance".

I was wondering if you would be at all interested in exploring this idea.

I'm thinking about doing an Into Collapse event in October. 

The other thing is that after our conversation the other night I thought alot about the influence of thought structures, and the thing about Buddhism isn't spiritualism at all, it's about becoming conscious of the role of unconscious thought structures, that humans have thought structures that they mistake for reality, i.e. they think their brain is a non-distorting medium that transmits full reality, and this produces delusion.  Buddhism is becoming aware of the mind itself and the delusions it produces.  So real buddism is its own kind of science, and critiques scientific positivism as a thinking structure that is delusional.  That doesn't mean it's not useful to employ those thinking structures for particular purposes, but in the larger sense, both scientific positivism and mainstream economics are delusional.  I'm really interested in the kinds of delusions that our thinking structures produce, the migrating baseline being one example (using our own birth as the beginning of time.) ("Neurotic" delusions are from generalizing the family conditions we were born into as universal rules of existence.)

I also felt aware of very powerful structuring ideas that you use around individualism, dichotomizing and determinism.  I think determinism is one of those thought structure delusions.
I think it starts out with delusion that the present is an inevitable determined outcome.  There could have been no other present conditions that what is.  Like mind centering around the present and inferring everything else from that reference point.  The present is natural and inevitable.  Everything led up to this and could only have lead up to this.  No other outcome was possible.

From thinking of the present as an inevitable outcome, the past process is inferred as a deterministic process that had to lead to the present, and from this is projected a determined future.  Since humans participated in this process, then humans must also be determined, because if humans didn't have a determining essence, then the whole process couldn't be determined.

So the outcome of a kind of "self-centered" intuitive notion that I and the here and now are the only thing that could possibly have existed, comes a whole deterministic vision.  I think it comes of out a delusion based on the protection of the sense of self.  We can't imagine how we could have failed to come into being.

But the problem is that determinism leaves us totally helpless, trapped, complicit, even against our will.  It leads to hopelessness, guilt, and anger.  Like any trapped animal.

So I think it's really interesting and important to try to become conscious of the way we as humans structure our perception of reality, and continually transcend our brain structures, and by doing this, and only by doing this, do we actually become free.  Human freedom is only a potentiality of our intelligence.

What's called spiritualism is really just the accurate perception that everything is interconnected, and denying that is the delusion of technological progress.

So to me the Buddhist perspective is really about becoming more realistic.

Antihumanism is a relatively new philosophy, which emerged along with critique of industrialism in the modern era, particularly after WWI. Antihumanism gathered strength from the nihilism of post-1960s counterculture and is now evolving rapidly, so there's already a wide spectrum. At the moderate end are mainstream novelists such as Kurt Vonnegut ("Breakfast of Champions"), Margaret Atwood ("Oryx and Crake"), and Paul Theroux ("O-Zone"). All of these books contain antihuman concepts and observations, though their authors probably wouldn't use the word. There are also many antihuman movies, too many to list, but at a minimum "Eraserhead" by David Lynch, "THX-1138" by George Lucas, and "Soylent Green" should be mentioned. At the extreme end are actual organizations such as The Church of Euthanasia, VHEMT (Voluntary Human Extinction Movement), and GLF (Gaia Liberation Front).

In the sciences antihumanism is usually expressed by paleontologists and biologists, and increasingly by climate scientists. Some current examples are Jeremy Jackson and Kevin Anderson (see links below). Edward O. Wilson is best known for his work on biological diversity, but he was also the first biologist to seriously propose that intelligence snuffs itself out, and that this solves Fermi's paradox: we don't receive messages from the stars because by the time an alien life form has enough power to transmit that far, it's already on the threshold of annihilating itself, and the odds of its brief blaze of glory lining up with ours are infinitesimal. This is closely related to the view that life (particularly human life) creates short-term order at the cost of accelerating the entropy of its environment, in stark contrast to the idealistic Gaia theory. For example paleontologist Peter Ward's "Medea Hypothesis" demolishes the notion that life is self-regulating, and compares life to a drunk stumbling around in a darkened room.

Antihumanism can be usefully contrasted with humanism. Humanism derives from the ancient Greek notion that man is the measure of all things, and that without human existence nothing would have value. Concealed within this is the assumption that only humans experience value. This assumption has no basis in biology, but is nonetheless one of the pillars of modern civilization, because it provides justification for extermination of other species. The denial of intrinsic value to non-human life is the essence of speciesism, and is closely related to the dogma of dominion, i.e. that it's man's destiny to subjugate all other living things (a concept that Edward O. Wilson attacked in his "Consilience").

Beyond humanism is transhumanism, sometimes known as futurism or extropianism. This is the belief that not only is man the measure of all things, but the only part of him that matters is his mind, and the sooner his mind is freed from the limitations of biology the better. The moderate form is life extension and cryogenics, while the extreme form is downloading human intelligence into robots and conquering outer space, like the Daleks on Dr. Who. Famous transhumanists include Ray Kurzweil, and Stephen Hawking who recently stated that humanity's only hope is to escape to other planets before we destroy this one. Antihumanists regard transhumanists as archenemies, due to their flagrant unconcern for non-humans. From the antihuman point of view, transhumanism bears a striking resemblance to Christianity. Both are escapist, characterized by unshakable belief that humans belong somewhere else, i.e. Heaven/Outer Space. Both express contempt for biology, e.g. Catholic repression of sexuality, and transhumanist use of derogatory terms such as meatspace. Both are motivated by fear of death, and presumably of life too, since one engenders the other (literally via natural selection). Both reject the limits of existence on earth, and promulgate a fantasy that justifies exceeding those limits. The danger isn't that the fantasy will be realized, but that deluded people will make earth unsuitable for life far sooner than would have otherwise been the case.

Unlike mere misanthropy, antihumanism is distinguished by reverence for non-human life. Biological diversity is considered an axiomatic value, and contrasted with the ugliness and sterility of human monoculture. Earth is described as a "wrecked planet" (Kurt Vonnegut), and various measures are called for to prevent further damage, the most obvious being drastic reduction or elimination of the human population. The pre-human fecundity of earth is idolized, and provides a reference for demonstrating impoverishment of ecosystems. This relates to the shifting baseline syndrome posited by Jeremy Jackson and others, in which each successive generation wrongly assumes the degree of biological diversity they observe was also seen in previous generations.

The central paradox of antihumanism is that humans evolved, and are therefore no more or less natural than any other living thing. Stephen Jay Gould argued convincingly that evolution doesn't converge on anything except fitness for conditions: there are no good or bad organisms, just ones that survive, and mostly ones that don't. Richard Dawkins went even further and described organisms as mere transport for genes, in which case the DNA we share with all other eukaryotes is the winner, regardless of what humans do. One proposed resolution is that humans are malignant life, as argued by A. Kent MacDougall in "Humans As Cancer". This sidesteps the problem however, because cancer is also natural, and closely related to viruses. The higher-order question is ethical: why is malignancy bad, and from what point of view is its badness determined?

The paradox of human naturalness could possibly be resolved by arguing that sentience is not intelligence but the ability to feel pain and pleasure. What distinguishes humans from other primates is the existential suffering that results from self-knowledge, particularly fear of death. Since humans have such capacity for suffering, we should have equally developed empathy, but instead we succumb to corruption, creating hellish conditions for humans and non-humans alike. Thus despite our naturalness, humans can and should be blamed for wrecking the planet, precisely because we're capable of feeling remorse for having done so. If we're unable to reform ourselves, as seems increasingly to be the case, we should have the decency to step aside and give other organisms a chance. Apes might re-evolve back into us, but they might not, and either way it won't be our fault.

Dan Miller: "A REALLY Inconvenient Truth"
http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/A_REALLY_Inconvenient_Truth_Dan_Miller

Peter Ward (The Medea Hypothesis):
http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_ward_on_mass_extinctions.html

Professor Kevin Anderson, Tyndall Centre for Climate Research - Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous
http://www.slideshare.net/DFID/professor-kevin-anderson-climate-change-going-beyond-dangerous

Brave New Ocean - Jeremy Jackson
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7530487

Church of Euthanasia
http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
http://www.vhemt.org/

Less

Less government.
Less business.
Less wealth.
Less power.

Less roads.
Less buildings.
Less food.
Less people.

Less is coming.
Less is already here.
Less is licking our ankles.
Less is rising up to meet us.

How fast should we be going when we hit it?
Some say if we go faster, we won't hit it.
Some say there's nothing to hit.
Do you believe them?

Humans will exist for a while yet.
How much should they suffer?
Future generations.
Your children.

Should they pick through the rubble?
Should they eat slime?
Should they die like ants?
Is that what you want?

Here in the empire, it's a soft life.
It's easy to forget the Holocaust.
It could be like that again.
It could be sooner than you think.

Less can no longer be avoided.
Less could be gradual, or sudden.
Less will hurt, either way.
Sudden will break more bones.

You could admit you were wrong.
You could apologize to your children.
You could slow down.
You could fasten your seat belt.