In a recent post at the wonderful Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster talks tangentially about one sort of anti-Humanism that’s currently in vogue with a lot of people:

“The worst example of this misanthropic worldview I’ve encountered occurred at a dinner party where the subject of space exploration came up. I was defending the idea of expanding into the Solar System as a necessity in terms of acquiring the tools of asteroid deflection, at which point my host said that an incoming asteroid would do the universe a favor if it destroyed our planet, and that we shouldn’t try to stop it.”

Now this resonates with me for two reasons.  One, I’m a space nerd and an unapologetic Get-Off-The-Rock advocate.  I genuinely feel that we need to be eyeing near-space colonization in this century.  The sooner, the better.  (My personal favorite target for this is Mars.  For a sensible, well-defended explanation on how this could be done, see The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin and Richard Wagner.)

Secondly, as a Humanist, this sort of species-wide misanthropy offends my deepest held beliefs and sensibilities.  Simply put, I believe that the human race is not only worthy of preserving, but something special, beautiful, and unique enough that saving it is unreservedly a Good Thing.  Further, I think that the sorts of mental contortions necessary to believe that we should all be wiped out are unnatural enough in the first place.  That people could bold-facedly assert that mankind deserves destruction and then continue to fight to continue their own lives and further their own interests smacks of rank selfishness.  Quite frankly, to say that “humanity should be let to be destroyed” coming from someone who doesn’t follow it up by checking themselves out one way or another has always struck me a “death for thee but not for me” sort of sentiment.  They hold the whole species in lethal disdain, save for themselves, and perhaps a few close friends and relatives.

Before I go further, I can hear a few voices in the audience shouting “strawman”.  In order to dispel those accusations, let me make two arguments for this sort of species-oriented misanthropy actually being a broadly held (or at least held by some) position.  First, there was a time in my life (at least a decade or so ago) when I thought this way.  I looked at the effects that people were having on the planet, on other species, and on one another and that, combined with a healthy dose of teenage iconoclasm and misanthropy, drove me to the conclusion “fuck it, everything’s better off without us.”  (N.B. This in no way contradicts what I said earlier about the selfish hypocrisy of such statements

Secondly, I’m far from the only person who has thought that way.  A couple of google searchs (yes I am aware that proof-by-google-search is far from rigorous, but I think it’s sufficient for my purposes) turned tons of pages of people seriously suggesting that the entire human race ought to be destroyed.  And while the ones that seemed to advocate a complete destruction seemed juvenile, they were genuine.  Others held onto a more tepid, Malthusian view that, really, we only needed to destroy MOST people in order to bring the world population back inline with some perceived “reasonable number.”

So perhaps instead of a strawman, I really only had an oversimplified account.  There’s total anti-Humanism and then there’s a sort of neo-Malthusianism.  The first is largely rooted in the belief that people are inherently evil, the second in the belief that, whatever people are like, there are too many of them.

The second sort of species-oriented misanthropy is more conveniently dispatched, so I’ll look at that one first.  To the neo-Malthusians I have two things to say.  First, the progenitor of much of the modern population reduction advocacy, Thomas Malthus, was shown wrong in much the same way I think his modern counterparts will be.  Essentially, Malthus looked at the current state of agricultural and economic affairs and suggested that the population capacity of the world was limited by those and other factors.  He argued that, for this reason, certain die-offs, plagues, wars, and genocides might be viewed as advantageous because they help to keep in check an otherwise exploding populace.  Aside from the fact that such Malthusean events usually put a fairly minor dent in the global population, the limiting pressures that Malthus identified on the population of the planet have been slackened many times since his death by the force of human ingenuity and development.  New agricultural techniques, new tools, new industries, and new modes of living have repeatedly pushed by the theoretical limit of the global human population.  Practically speaking, it seems like this trend is only continuing.  With the recent development of modern fertilizers and pesticides and genetically modified food stuffs, agriculture is providing more food than ever to feed the global population.  Economically, despite recent dips, the global gross production of goods is orders of magnitude higher than when Malthus was writing.  Medicine has eradicated several killer diseases and is on the verge of eradicating or severely limiting others.  Every year the force of human advancement makes ever more room on the planet and improves the lives of those who are already here.

The second point I have to the neo-Malthusians is, regardless of WHY they believe the human population ought to be reduced, wouldn’t a more productive and humane way to deal with the situation be to spread that population out?  Why not begin to try to shift some people off this rock and on to others?  To complain that the Earth is over-populated doesn’t necessarily mean we need fewer people, only that we need fewer people on Earth.

My arguments in response to the true anti-Humanists are, of necessity, less clear and straight forward.  The mind of someone who truly believes people to be and inherent detriment to something more valuable has already made several axiomatic assumptions that differ greatly from my own.  I believe that people are something special and something inherently possessing of value, beauty, and greatness.  I believe that we are possessing, through accidents of evolution, of unique faculties and proclivities which are worth exploring, preserving, and developing.  I believe that these faculties along with the bonds we share with one another and the great works that we’ve already accomplished and continue to accomplish ought to compel us to preserve our achievements and strive further for others.

But now, trying hard to find a way to defend these, it’s tempting to make them simple, axiomatic assertions of faith.  This I believe: that people are beautiful.  This I believe: that people are worthy.  This I believe: that people are meaningful.  It’s likewise tempting to respond the anti-Humanist with a recording of Bach’s Mass in B Minor and a picture of the Alhambra.  Or to ask them how a creature, as Hamlet put it “How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, … in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god”, could be unworthy of its own best efforts at survival and propogation.

Of course, Hamlet’s line wasn’t even enough of an argument for himself.  He immediately follows it by bemoaning man as the quintessence of dust.  And rightfully so, since these arguments rely on nothing more than my own personal sense of wonderment and enchantment with the human.  If I suggest that reason, art, and understanding are worth saving, it begs the question “why?”  If I suggest that our charity for one another and (burgeoningly) for the planet around us merits our salvation, one might answer that the world would tick along just fine without us.

About the only answer I can give that might satisfy naysayers is that I truly believe we have something to offer the universe.  Our drive, curiosity, wonder, aesthetics, reason, and beauty can expand through the universe and make it a truly better place.  And while I’m sure that sounds like starry-eyed drivel to most, I truly believe that a universe with people in it is better than one without.  We are not without our flaws, but nor are we without our merits.  And these merits I believe are without precedent on our planet.  And some, even, I’m sure are without precedent in the universe.

And I believe that spreading out into the galaxy will not only benefit us, but our planet, the other species with which we share it, and, if I may continue to be melodramatic, the universe at large.

In between dancing our arses off there was much camping. I mean seriously, we camped the HELL out of that patch of ground that they gave us. (Photo evidence to follow.)

Anyway, back in town. Photos to hit my flickr page later tonight, most likely. For now, it’s off to work to play catchup.

Seriously, this year, they only sold Sasquatch three-day passes until March 9th. After that? You have to buy a ticket for each of the three days separately. Now, Ticketmaster sticks it to you with a “Convenience Fee” on each purchase. Three day pass? One “convenience fee”. Three one-day tickets? Three convenience fees. And they don’t scale directly with the price, either, so I just wound up giving TicketMaster a fair chunk of change (something a little over $30 in fees). $30 of my hard-earned money going to involuntary corporate charity.

But here’s the thing that really galls me. Last I checked, TicketMaster ALREADY gets a cut of the ticket cost. They’re skimming on the tickets and then charging the customer for the great good honor of doing business with the Masters of the Tickets. They then refuse to back their tickets with refunds, don’t give anything even resembling “customer service”, and run competition out of the business so effectively that I dare anyone to name a single competitor to TicketMaster and its subsidiaries. If you’re buying tickets to any kind of major gig, it’s either TM or nothing. I mean, it used to be that if you bought them at the venue itself you could actually get them for the list price, but that’s usually not the case anymore, since TicketMaster’s staffing most of the ticket booths these days.

*Sigh* At least I’ve got my tickets, I guess.

(P.S: For those of you capital-C-Capitalists in the audience: yes, I know that I’m entering into a contract and I shouldn’t complain since I agreed to it yadda yadda yadda. Fine. Yes. But I only bought from TicketMaster because there’s no other option. If your only option is a poor deal or to go with out, there’s nothing incongruous about taking the poor deal and bitching about it. But that’s another post for another time.)