Wednesday, January 23, 2008

New Final Solution® Now With Added Inclusivity!

There is a peculiar notion emerging lately from the left-green alliance to the effect ours is a miserable and unhappy species, causing environmental havoc beyond the capacity of this fragile planet; things would be far better if humanity were to simply disappear. The New Criterion has a short piece on a book by one of the leading proponents of this cheerful ideation, Prof. David Benatar of the University of Capetown, entitled Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, from Oxford University Press (which once enjoyed distinction as a publisher of scholars). The blurb for this assemblage of dead-tree product tells you all you need to know and contains a fine tautology as well:

Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence.

Well, that's deep, ain't it? Only a college man could cook up a profundity like that. On the other hand, Prof. Benatar and his like-minded colleagues may feel they had no choice but to adopt this ludicrous stance. Most of the world, especially those from poorer countries, refuse to buy into Benatar & Company's purported unhappiness, yawn at their cries of global warming and cannot help notice those from the west who lecture on the evils of consumption, and its terrible cost to the environment, are strangely deaf to their own counsel. Even those leftie-greens who make a show of reducing their carbon footprint by flying in airplanes no more than once a year, say, and puttering around on bicycles, are still seen by those unenlightened and poor denizens of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, as living lives of unimaginable luxury. To the dismay of Benatar and his ilk, not only do they not shun luxury, they want a piece of it. What on earth can be done?

Simple: if the people of the world, especially those numerous poor, despite year after year of patient proselytizing, refuse to come around to the the views of their environmental prophets and betters, they will have to go. To save the planet, don't you know. For now, Prof. Benatar and others opt for the slow and voluntary extermination of our species via tube-tying, contraception and abortion. Much of Europe and Russia are obliging him but alas, not America and the rest of the world; the world's population is still going up, the environmental rape continues. Should these insufferable breeders refuse to acknowledge, once and for all, how unhappy they truly are as well as the damage they do to planet earth and start co-operating, a more drastic solution will surely have to be devised, probably similar to one dreamed up seventy years ago to deal with an earlier surplus population. In keeping with twenty-first century sensibilities, however, this solution will be far more inclusive, ensuring that everybody, regardless of race, color, creed, sex or sexual orientation will have the opportunity to be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice. To save the planet, don't you know.

(h/t to Justin Martyr)

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