By Sean Crawley

Have you heard the litany of excuses for not doing anything about fucking, eating and shitting ourselves out of existence? I have been carefully collecting the data since I was birthed onto this planet, and the following is the picture that has emerged.

You may notice that my graph looks exactly like the human population growth over this period. That is no mistake, each one of us has at least one reason to give up on saving the planet. So my numbers above are really quite conservative.

The human population explosion above shows nicely the result of mindless fucking. PS: in case you haven’t noticed, it is not encouraged in any way to raise the issue of population in public. People love sex and kids, that’s just the way it is – bacteria in a culture medium have a similar philosophy.

Above is a graph showing the result of mindless eating/consumption. It looks a like the population graph. PS, you have no right to tell someone they can’t have more of anything. People naturally want more of the good things in life. That’s life.

Above is a graph showing the result of mindless shitting in our own nest. It looks a lot like something else, doesn’t it? Please excuse the projections beyond 2025; the Smithsonian Institute must know something, or believe something, that I am not aware of. PS, politely asking people to dispose of their rubbish responsibly is the current modus operandi. Do not mention curbing population or consumption lest you’re happy to branded a communist, or something worse. Besides, we have to shit somewhere.

Have you noticed the pattern? Exponential is what it’s called in Maths. And if you listened in class, you will know that very soon things are going to bigger than the Milky Way. And if you listened in Biology or Physics, you will know that something’s gotta give.

But to not offend the status quo: don’t think, don’t speak, don’t act, that’s just the way it is?

Ignore the data.

Pathetic isn’t it. Through ignorance and fear, we speed ever faster towards collapse, just like the mindless life forms such as bacteria we grew in those finite petri dishes, except we can’t go dormant and come back later when conditions are once again favourable. Sanity is maintained by distracting ourselves with such things as fashion and sport.

If we can’t yet bring ourselves to talk about our mindless fucking, eating and shitting, what can we talk about? (Apart from the dresses worn on the red carpet at the Grammy’s and the latest cheating in sport?) Three topics that might be a start, and that might be precursors to any sensible debate about human population, resource consumption and pollution, are moral relativism, human nature, and personal responsibility.

Moral relativism

There is merit to understanding the concept that our perceptions of reality are relative and largely formed by our own cultural experiences. But to take this idea to its extreme and believe that nobody or nothing is right or wrong, is dangerous. One obvious case that exposes the dangers of extreme moral relativism is female genital mutilation. Any brand of moral relativism that entertains for one minute any form of defence for such a practice needs to be seriously challenged.

I would propose in that in today’s climate any moral relativistic attitudes towards having as many children as one desires should be a hot topic. Relying on increased affluence to naturally reduce the birth rate is in my mind an oxymoron. Humans can and do adapt to changes in the environment, and pumping out a large number of offspring today ought to be a big no-no, regardless of your cultural leanings.

The same could be said about the largely unchallenged dogma of getting ahead. If a person’s desire to become wealthy, travel the world, own the waterfront, climb social ladders, be the best, and to pursue unrealistic dreams, is not challenged, or at least seriously analysed, then we are in for one hell of a ride to extinction. Times have changed, the finite world is full, and the only way now to attain any of the above-mentioned goals is to steal from, or step on, others.

We need to talk about how extreme applications of moral relativism paralyse us into mindless apathy.

Human nature

Science is finding out all sorts of stuff about our DNA. Unfortunately there is a great deal of energy being expended on the search for genes to prove that Homo sapiens is a flawed model. There is an old saying that if you search for long enough you will eventually find a priest that will tell you exactly what you want to hear. Today, we have to a large degree replaced the priest with the scientist. We want to find deeply embedded excuses to explain why we are greedy, slovenly, lustful, competitive, war-like, and addicted to drugs. Finding those genes, the secular replacement for original sin, gives us some solace. It also gives us an excuse for ignoring reality. The reality being that we are heading for oblivion despite the fact we have the capacity to do otherwise.

Humans evolved as social animals with intelligence. We are innately co-operative and kind, and we know innately that our survival is based on our interdependence with nature. All the other stuff – about Gods and dominion over nature; our destiny; us being a failed experiment of evolution – is bad fiction.

We need to talk about how science has been co-opted by the superstitious to simply replace the religions that kept us mindless with lies about original sin and the existence of heaven and hell.

Personal responsibility

Why should I make sacrifices and deny myself the fruits of progress when nobody else does? It’s a good question – and obviously bloody hard to answer since the rate at which we move towards collapse seems to increase with our increasing knowledge of the situation we are in.

As we get closer and closer to the precipice, we seem to have all the more reason to simply party on till the end. Why bother? It’s all going to go bust anyway!

If you sincerely believe that humans are destined for extinction, that our evolutionary branch is a dead end, then I find it very hard to argue against going hard to the end of days. But if that is so, can I ask that you give up lying about the virtues of growth and progress? Stop trying to convince yourself and others, that you care about anything. In particular, I implore you to be honest with your children and admit to them that you are leaving them a worse world than what you were handed. This ubiquitous bullshit about wanting to leave the world a better place for the next generations is just too hard to bear.

We need to start talking about personal responsibility, otherwise we will mindlessly continue to fuck, eat and shit ourselves out of existence, period.