An unexpected result
Not least because I essentially don’t give a shit about the environment. (The result depicted in the image below is from Scottish Vote Compass, and my non-Scotch chums might find it interesting to take the test too.)
I do believe human activities are causing global warming, and that we’re rendering the planet incapable of sustaining human life at a terrifying rate – via greenhouse gases, pollution and overpopulation – to the point where mankind could in my view have well under 100 years left of anything recognisable as our current lifestyle. It’s just that I think that’s a good thing.
Alert WoSland viewers won’t be all that surprised at this revelation, given my longstanding and wholehearted support for VHEMT. Last year I even started a blog attempting to partly explain these feelings by documenting some reasons why I thought Homo Sapiens had run its course, but gave up almost immediately because it was just too depressing.
So I was really quite startled to find out that I’m apparently closer to the Greens than the SNP, particularly as I chose “Disagree” on statements like “We should fund public-transport investment with green taxes like road tax”, and Agreed that economic growth was more important than reducing greenhouse gases. (Although to be fair, I haven’t actually looked at the Scottish Greens’ manifesto. Maybe it says that.)
My best guess is that I diverged from the SNP by hitting “Agree” to the statement that students should contribute to the cost of their higher education after graduation, although that’s an extremely qualified belief (I think the earnings threshold should be much higher than anyone is currently proposing, and that the contribution should be in the form of a very much more modest sum than the £30,000 that the typical student in England is going to owe after three years of study thanks to the tuition fees of the three Unionist parties.)
And actually, I’ve just noticed that after you complete the questionnaire you can actually compare your answers to those of the parties to find out exactly why you got the result you did. Tch, eh? So I should probably go and look at that now. Sorry, everyone. As you were.
But still – Man Who Wants Humans To Die Out Most Closely Aligned With Green Party. Who knew? I think that means the Greens must basically be evil totalitarian tyrants, but we’re going to need a little more research on that one.
Why would you want humans to die out?
For the reasons I linked to.
But the blog is just a few 'news of the weird' articles and some 'hell in a handcart' stuff. VHEMT sounds like black humour for depressed people.
Really sorry you feel like that, it can't be much fun.
I feel great, thanks. Why would I care if the planet dies 100 years from now? I won't be here. And you're clearly viewing VHEMT through a bleak prism of your own, because it’s not remotely gloomy or depressing.
If you don't care whether the planet 'dies' in 100 years, I don't understand why you'd care if there are any people around to see it happen.
My own 'bleak prism' – that's feeble, like the kid who wins playground arguments by saying 'takes one to know one'.
Your refusal to back down over anything at all is in some ways an admirable quality – quite an annoying one, too – but you're siding with the loonies here. And wishing humans would become extinct is surely a very good definition of a depressive personality, regardless of the clarity of your prism.
I got:
Scottish Greens: 72%
SNP: 48%
Lib Dems: 25%
Labour: -17%
Tory Bastards: -63%
Which is probably about right I suppose. I wish I lived in Scotland.
"If you don't care whether the planet 'dies' in 100 years, I don't understand why you'd care if there are any people around to see it happen."
I don't. I have no idea where you'd get that from.
"My own 'bleak prism' – that's feeble, like the kid who wins playground arguments by saying 'takes one to know one'."
It isn't at all. It's simply not a black or depressing website. It's written in a very sunny and cheerful tone, vastly more so than anything I've got to say on the subject.
“Why would you want humans to die out?”
It seems as if collectively, people are doing quite a lot to ensure that this is an intensely likely outcome in the future*. Therefore, either you accept this outcome – “we get what we deserve” – or you hate everybody else, and probably even yourself!, for happily over-consuming, over-shitting, and over-filling.
Cleverer people than me first noticed that the world was on a trajectory to MassDeathsville, and it’ll take cleverer people than you to convince me otherwise.
*Disagreeing with this statement would seem to me to be either unknowingly ignorant or knowingly blinkered, however I do accept that future outcomes are hard to predict and still arguable.
Can I point out that, as a Psychologist (er… Psychology A-Level teacher), I am aware of research which shows that depression might lead to being more realistic than being happy. As we all know, happiness is a form of madness and leads to Japanese people making those obnoxious hand signs like they’re in a gang that kills with bullets made of cute.
link to en.wikipedia.org
If you are receptive to the idea of Depressive Realism, I suggest reading about Terror Management Theory.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Global warming isn't going to wipe out humans. Its going to kill a whole bunch of the poor humans. Global warming isn't near enough a catastrophe to hurt the human race on an existential level
Not by itself, perhaps. But we're setting plenty of other timebombs under ourselves too. Pollution, depletion and poisoning of the food chain, destruction of biodiversity and lots more. And that’s assuming Nature doesn’t help us along with a dose of bird flu. But nobody's saying all humans will die at once – some will survive longer than others, perhaps even generations longer. But what I said in the piece was "mankind could in my view have under 100 years left of anything recognisable as our current lifestyle".
VHEMT want to hasten the extinction of the human race solely by not breeding and state explicitly that they want to avoid a massive die-off of the human race by more direct means such as global warming, which would be better served by encouraging people to breed.
Indeed they do. As I said earlier, their outlook is far cheerier than mine.
Which makes your concluding line bullshit. As VHEM themselves state, for the first couple of centuries or so their plan of action is entirely indistinguishable from that of a person who wants humans to live happily and responsibly for billions of years. You claim to want a catastrophic extinction – an opposite to their goal – and you claim to have 'wholehearted[ly] supported' them for a long time. Please choose which side of your mouth to close.
A lot of those questions are very poorly worded. Pretty much all students contribute to the cost of their education via the medium of paying taxes after graduating.
Some of these students will even earn higher than the average income, paying higher than average tax and contributing even more to their own education.
You know full well that’s not what the question means, though.
"Which makes your concluding line bullshit. As VHEM themselves state, for the first couple of centuries or so their plan of action is entirely indistinguishable from that of a person who wants humans to live happily and responsibly for billions of years. You claim to want a catastrophic extinction – an opposite to their goal – and you claim to have 'wholehearted[ly] supported' them for a long time. Please choose which side of your mouth to close."
Oh, do shush. We both want humans to die out. VHEMT want us to stop breeding immediately, which would give us about 100 years until there was nobody left. (Not “a couple of centuries”, unless you know of some medical breakthrough that’s going to keep currently-existing humans alive till we’re 200). I'm completely in favour of that, I just think letting it happen through environmental destruction (note: "letting", not "forcing") is slightly more feasible and practical, and also a handy back-up plan. There's no contradiction or conflict there whatsoever – the goal is identical and so is the likely timespan.
I do know that's not what the question means but i enjoy being awkward.
the english version might sound optimistic, the dutch translation uses really archaic and scary words.. (usually happens when volunteers do fan translation in stead of writing their own lines.. it's our Japlish)
"It's simply not a black or depressing website. It's written in a very sunny and cheerful tone"
The hell it is! Dress it up with as many cartoon dinosaurs as you like, but the message is still essentially that we hate people so much, we don't want any more of them to exist. There's nothing sunny about that. It's like the woman in the Battle Royale film, cheerfully explaining how all but one of the kids is going to die this weekend.
You yourself described VHEMT's site as "black humour". That would fairly clearly seem to imply that it was humorous. The message being conveyed by that humour is only bleak if you insist on seeing it from the viewpoint of a single species, rather than that of life as a whole.
Life is only known to exist in one place, in the entire incomprehensible vastness of the universe. Humanity could yet destroy the planet so completely as to render it uninhabitable, one way or another. I find nothing at all bleak, negative or depressing about the concept of sacrificing one destructive species to protect many thousands more, and sustain the inconceivably precious miracle of life as a whole.
If humans are indeed a catastrophic plague, they're just the latest in a long line of events that lead to mass extinctions. There are more extinct species than there are living ones.
Life persists in the harshest of environments, in places humans can't survive. Nothing humans can do will render the the planet lifeless.
And who's to say which species are worth saving? Pandas and polar bears are evolutionary dead ends, and they haven't even been around for that long anyway. Surely the only significant species, the only one that comprehends anything beyond its biological imperative, is the human.
If this is really the only place in the universe that supports life, then to want to extinguish its consciousness is insanity. And if you're wrong, and there are a great many primordial soups out there, waiting to evolve into slime moulds or lichen or any of the many other forms of life that you'd value over your fellow humans, then does it really matter what happens to this planet?
"Life persists in the harshest of environments, in places humans can't survive. Nothing humans can do will render the the planet lifeless."
Nonsense. Greenhouse gases could turn it into another Venus.
Wow. It really was a pleasure talking to you.
Don't blame me for the fact that you made a weak and unconvincing case. You insist on mankind's perspective, fair enough. I don't.
It's not a fact – every argument is weak and unconvincing with you because you refuse to listen. You pick out the odd sentence, ridicule it and ignore everything else. You win, you move on.
Anyway, by way of a final effort you do remind me a little of the alien guy in The Day The Earth Stood Still.
"Yes, we humans are a violent species but we're capable of great compassion"
(cue montage of happy families, couples in love)
"We can be ugly and brutal, yet we create beauty for beauty's sake"
(Van Gogh lops his ear off and chucks it at the camera)
Alien Overlord Campbell taps his wristwatch:
"For fuck's sake, will you all just hurry up and die!"
Whatever, man.
@Jon “And who’s to say which species are worth saving?”
Well done for then saying that the human species is worth saving, making this a redundant rhetorical question. I think you should get a prize.
Is the human race worth saving? Have we really transcended biology into a state of collective culture that goes beyond individual physical needs? I’d argue that we’re still pretty animalistic.
I recall an excellent science fiction story that shows the intricate working of a robotics factory producing automated attack drones. The description is then of the drone’s bombing run of an enemy factory. The reveal is that no humans are involved at all, as we are all dead. But our weapons are still alive, because that’s the kind of dickheads we are.
Compare with Screamers, which is a decent enough little film. And it has Robocop in!
"Greenhouse gases could turn it into another Venus."
Leaving aside the question of whether this is possible, is such an outcome more or less likely if our government pursues a policy of promoting economic growth over reducing greenhouse gases?
That's where I see a contradiction between your goals and that of VHEMT: the means to wipe out humans that you're promoting (letting it happen through environmental destruction) is an outcome they are seeking to avoid.
I'm not so sure that 'letting it happen' is quite so passive either. If you know that inaction will lead to an outcome and you don't act, you're still making a choice. Given an empty glass bottle that choice is as simple as which bin to put it in.
I disagree. I haven't altered my behaviour in any way since the recycling craze began, I don't see how that can be depicted as "actively" doing anything. I don’t have any recycling bins in my house, I don’t even know where the nearest one is. Even if I cared, which I don’t, I’d probably be simply too lazy to recycle.
I'd also dispute "you know that inaction will lead to an outcome". Recycling all the bottles and plastic carrier bags in the country won't offset a single Chinese power station. The only practical thing recycling achieves, when practiced on anything other than a global scale, is to soothe people's consciences, while the glaciers keep right on melting.
Not recycling because you don't care, are too lazy, or because you don't think it'll achieve anything isn't the same thing as not doing so because you expect (OK, not "know") that inaction will lead to environmental destruction.
There's still the issue of having environmental destruction as a back-up plan for wiping out the human species in order to avoid … environmental destruction.
The longer humanity survives the worse and more irreversible the damage will be.
I tried it, also got Greens and then looked through the answers/comparisons which revealed I only agreed with the Greens on a handful of issues. Hmmmm.
I think part of the problem (common to these "compass" websites) is a number of the statements we're asked to vote on are vague or false dichotomys. For example, one statement is "For less serious offences, shorter, community sentences should replace imprisonment." but people have different ideas about what a "less serious offence" is. Similarly "Investment in public transport should be promoted through green taxes such as road taxes." What if someone thinks investment in public transport should increase but "green taxes" isn't the best method of raising revenue?
"What if someone thinks investment in public transport should increase but "green taxes" isn't the best method of raising revenue?"
Then there probably isn't a party representing your views.
If you seriously hold the view that you "don't give a shit about the envirionment", then not only do you self-evidently, and self-centredly, condemn the future for all, but anything else you actually do give a shit about is damned to wither in that condemned environment.
Surely, the epitome of nihilism.
“Surely, the epitome of nihilism.”
Only if, again, you insist on viewing it solely from humanity’s selfish perspective.