The Current - Should we let humans go extinct?

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

In the face of human-made climate change, philosopher Todd May asks whether we even deserve to inhabit this planet in his book, Should We Go Extinct? In September, he told Matt Galloway that the question could force us to consider how to be better stewards of the Earth.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. We human beings have so much to offer this planet. Art, science, music. But we also cause a lot of destruction, war, climate change, animal cruelty. Does the good we create make it worth us being here? It's a big question.

Or would our world be better off without us? Those are the big questions that keep Todd May awake at night when he's not teaching philosophy at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. He's thinking deeply about our place on this planet. His most recent book is called Should We Go Extinct? A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times. Matt Galloway spoke with him in September. Here's that conversation.

This book begins with something that I think a lot of us are familiar with. You wake up in the middle of the night, usually around 3 o'clock. You say 3.12 a.m. and you're worrying about something. What are you thinking about at 3.12 a.m.? Among the things I'm thinking about is should we still be here? Should humanity continue? It was those 3 o'clock or 3.12 in the morning kinds of reflections that led me to the book itself. You've been thinking about this for a long time.

When you say, should we still be here? I mean, we should define what exactly you're actually talking about. Sure. I mean, one thing I'm not talking about, Matt, is mass suicide. I'm not offering some sort of humanitarian-wide Jonestown. What I'm thinking about is, should we continue the species itself? Should we have kids, right? Or should we let the species go extinct?

When did you start to think about this? Oh, Matt, it came on kind of like, you know, like some diseases that come on slowly, right? I was teaching courses in animal rights. I was teaching courses in the climate crisis, teaching courses in philosophy of war. And it made me think about the kinds of effects that we have on the planet. And in thinking about those, I start to wonder, look, with all of the destruction that we cause,

might it be the case that it would be better if we didn't continue? Now, it's not that we have nothing to offer. In the book, I talk about lots that we have to offer, but we also cause a lot of destruction. And because of that, I decided I wanted to begin to sort this out. So in 2018, I wrote an article for the New York Times blog, The Stone, in which I asked, would human extinction be a tragedy? It left a lot of questions unanswered, Matt. So what I did was I was thinking about this question since 2018. And when I felt like I really had something I could put together, that's where the book came from. I want to get to the arguments, but you mentioned that piece that you wrote for The New York Times. What was the response that you got when you asked whether essentially we, all of us, should go extinct? Well, you know, it must have been an awfully slow news day on the extreme right. Because about an hour after that thing was published, I got invited

onto the Laura Ingraham show. I got invited onto Infowars. Ben Shapiro wrote a piece that said, Todd Mason says we should all kill ourselves. And when you get that, Matt, you know you get the obligatory threats and insults by email. But a number of people wrote sympathetic views that they were thinking about this sort of thing. This has been in the back of their mind. And this is one of the first times this got really articulated for them in a way that gave them permission to think about it. But you must have known, I mean, to say, to pose the question, should we go extinct? I mean, provocative isn't a strong enough word to describe that kind of question. You must have

known that people would be alarmed and shocked by that kind of question. You must have known that people would be alarmed and shocked by that kind of question. Something was going to come from somewhere, sure enough. But Matt, was it going to come from the right? Was it going to come from the left? How was it going to come? That I had no idea about. I would say surprised, but not shocked. Surprised at where it came from, but not shocked that I got it at all. Let's walk through the arguments as to what we're doing on this planet that would make it worth us still being here and perhaps make it worth us not being here. What is it as humans that gives us value and meaning? What is it that we provide to the world, do you think? Good, good. And Matt, there's two questions there, right? One, what provides meaning for us in living our lives? And the second,

which is the one I talk about more, is what do we contribute, right? And what we contribute is having beings that are capable of things that other animals are not capable of, at least not capable of to the extent that we are. So, we can do things like bring large degrees of happiness into the world. We can also appreciate art. We can create art. We can appreciate science. We can create science. We can envision our lives as a trajectory, starting in one place and moving through the

years to another place. And that's something that other animals, at least to the extent that human beings do, aren't capable of. And because they aren't capable of it, for us, the world seems a better place, a richer place that has beings that can do that sort of thing. How do you quantify that? Because in the book, you talk about happiness, but you also talk about the balance between happiness and pain. Not everybody lives a happy life. There are many, many, many people around the world whose lives are really, really difficult. And they don't find the joy and the happiness that perhaps others see on a daily basis. Yeah, there's two issues here. One is the amount of happiness. And you're right,

it's hard to quantify. Not just because it's not just a matter of the more than less, it's also a matter of different types of happiness. Happiness isn't just a single thing you can put on a scale. But the other side of it is that in addition to happiness, there's what I want to call, and I've written about this elsewhere, meaningfulness. You can have a life that feels meaningful to you even if it's not necessarily a happy life. It can be a life of spirituality or spontaneity or loyalty or intensity. And those kinds of lives might be meaningful, might be worthwhile for the person who's living and contribute something to the world,

even if we wouldn't say they were necessarily happy lives. They can also be lives that are suffused with beauty. Again, you've hinted at this, that we as humans create things that are beautiful, but there's also beauty that is around us that we enjoy. How do you understand the value of that, the value of the things that we have created that we can appreciate? It's hard to convince someone who doesn't value that in the first place, but I think for most of us, the fact that there are beings here who are capable of looking at a work of art and resonating to it and being stirred by it,

listening to music and finding experiences in it that other animals can't. The fact that there are beings, that is to say us, who can do that seems to me, and I think it seems to a lot of people, to contribute something to the planet, enrich the planet in ways that if there weren't beings like that, we wouldn't be enriching the planet. That if we were gone, that would be a loss to the planet. Yes. Because those pieces of music, those paintings, the writings, the works of art would not be being created. Yeah. And people have asked me, Matt, well, look, if we were all gone, nobody would miss that. There wouldn't be anybody there to miss it. But we're not gone, and we're evaluating with the richness of the planet from the perspective that we occupy. And because of that, from where we stand, it seems to me, and I think it seems to a lot of people,

it would be a loss if we weren't there, even if there wasn't anybody there who would feel the loss. There's a part of the book called The Other Side of the Ledger, which follows that kind of enumeration of the good things that we provide to the world. And it raises those questions as to whether we need to continue our existence. And you begin with the issue of factory farming. Why did you start there? Factory farming strikes me as one of the most egregious ways, which are cruel to animals, right? In the book, I talk about the average number of animals

that an American will eat over a lifetime. I don't have the number. Remember, Matt, I'm a philosopher, so facts are a little elusive to me. But it's like hundreds and even thousands. And so, a single person contributes to egregious forms of cruelty to animals that are raised in a factory farm. And so that seemed to be a way really to hit the issue that would be visceral for folks. Tell me more about that and why that issue. There are all sorts of issues when it comes to suffering, when it comes to pain, when it comes to us using our position in the world to inflict harm on others. Why that issue in particular? Back in the 1970s, the philosopher Peter Singer wrote a book, Animal Liberation,

in which he described the conditions that factory-farmed animals live under. If you can envision an animal and envision what it's going through, envision, say, a calf that's raised for veal. It exists in these little tiny cartons. It can't move around. Or pigs that are pushed together in such a calf that's raised for veal. It exists in these little tiny cartons. It can't move around. Or pigs that are pushed together in such a way that they have no space and they're living in their own filth. If you envision that, it's easier, I think, Matt, than envisioning, let's say, deforestation.

It's probably easier than envisioning some forms of scientific experimentation. Even though scientific experimentation can focus you on specific animals, there can be at times justifications for at least some scientific experimentation. But it seems to me there isn't a justification that you could have for raising an animal under the kinds of egregious conditions that factory-form animals are raised under. Does that suffering outweigh the good that we bring to the world? That's the question I raise, right? Let me take a step back, Matt. There's two questions I want to ask.

One is, should we go extinct, which is really not the question you've just asked me, right? The other is the question, what can we do to justify our existence in such a way as to be better planetary citizens and then cut against any moral case for our going extinct. And so what I try to do in the book on the first question does not come down with a simple yes or no. It's too easy. It would be patronizing to people to say, okay, here's a simple answer to

that question. I try to put the case in front of folks and then let them think about it. But if you think about the issue, and we'll get to the larger question, but if you focus on the issue of the factory farms, I mean, does that suffering that you just articulated, does that outweigh the good that we talked about earlier, the things that humanity brings to this world? Good. Matt, at this point, you're talking about weighing,

which is interesting because what we would be weighing are two things that have no common denominator. There's the suffering of the animals, but on the other side, there's the creativity and the beauty and the meaningfulness that we spoke about. So, the question becomes, how do you compare these? And without a common measure, it's hard to say we go one way as opposed to the other, right? It's hard to say we go one way as opposed to the other. That's why I try to stay away from a simple answer, but rather just make the case on both sides. You mentioned deforestation.

Part of this is about the value of ecosystems as well and whether those ecosystems would be better off without us. Where do you land? Again, understanding that you're not making a clear judgment on whether we should or shouldn't go extinct. But where do you land on that? This is a personal thing for me. Now, I live in Asheville, North Carolina. I live in the mountains of North Carolina. And it's a beautiful ecosystem here. I've been driving through this ecosystem at times and thinking, you know, even when I'm gone, it would be great if this ecosystem could just be, all ecosystems change, right? But if this ecosystem or something like this could continue to exist. Now, Matt, I don't have an argument to say to

people, look, these ecosystems have a value that everybody must recognize. Rather, what I want to say is, look, here's my experience. And if this resonates for you, this gives us a reason to preserve the ecosystems and to cut against deforestation. Part of that is about a sense of wonder, right? That sense of wonder that inhabits you as you make your way through those mountains. What are you feeling then? Wonder is one where I feel a sense of peace that somehow, even when I'm gone, there will be this ecosystem going through its seasonal changes, that it will be something that continues on after me. And somehow the fact that I'm going to die doesn't seem quite as disturbing as it does when I'm not thinking about that. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs.

And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. You acknowledge in the book that many of the issues that you raise, whether it's environmental degradation, whether it is the impact of factory farming, that they can fall on the doorstep of a tiny part of the human population. What about people who don't, who aren't contributing in that same way to the harms that humanity is bringing to the world? Where do they fit into this equation? Yes, yes. And there's lots of folks, very possibly the majority of the planet,

right? These are folks who either, if they're contributing to the kinds of reasons that I talked about tilting toward extinction, they're contributing pretty minimally. So, in the book, I try to make a distinction between whether we deserve to go extinct on the one hand, or whether it would be better for us to go extinct on the other. And the question that I'm focused on is whether it would be better to go extinct. But what now? What about those people who aren't contributing? One of the problems that we're facing is that as countries become less impoverished, develop a middle class and there's more wealth, the factory farming and the kinds of practices that we have in the U.S. begin to appear there.

So, for instance, in China, where people are gaining a lot of wealth, there are these giant pig farms, just like pig towers, right, in which pigs are raised in egregious circumstances. So, Matt, on the one hand, I want to say it's better that people have more wealth and aren't impoverished on the one hand. But on the other hand, what comes with that are the kinds of egregious practices that characterize some of the wealthier societies, and that might form a reason that we ought to think about whether we should continue. It's also not just wealth, It's also the size of the population. I mean, this is something that people have talked about rather controversially for decades now. And you raised the issue of whether we would be better off with a smaller population. But as you note,

it is explosive for people from wealthy countries, particularly in the global north, to tell the rest of the world to have fewer children. Absolutely. And in the global north, there are a number of countries, I think the US is one of them, you probably know this better than I do, where it's not even clear we're reaching replacement population. But in the global south, there tend to be higher birth rates. So for people in the global north to say you ought to quit having kids, right? That is telling people who themselves have contributed less, if at all, to some of the problems that I'm talking about, that they're the ones who deserve to have less kids. That's why I try to move away from the issue of deservingness and ask more about what

would be better. So, among people who are not contributing to a number of the problems in any egregious way, they themselves don't fall into the category of deservingness. Maybe some people, maybe me, we might fall into that. However, as societies develop, their kids are going to have more wealth because that's the tendency, right? And as wealth accretes, right, as societies become richer, now you have all of the problems that characterize, let's say, the U.S. What do you make of the fact that, I mean, there is an ambivalence that runs through a younger generation about having kids in this world, about bringing kids into this world? Part of this is about cost. Part of it is also about, do you want to raise kids in a world where there are wildfires and sea levels that are rising? What do you make of that ambivalence? Yeah, I mean, I've talked to a lot of younger folks about this.

Well, I teach. And there is that kind of ambivalence, Matt, that you're talking about. I think a lot of it does have to do with the climate crisis. talking about. I think a lot of it does have to do with the climate crisis. Look, if we're not going to go through a radical change, if we're not going to re-envision our relationship to the environment, right, our grandkids or great-grandkids are going to grow up in a Mad Max movie. That, I think, really weighs on younger folks. I think cost is an issue, but I think that for the people I talk about, the climate crisis is front and center for them in a way that for older people, it doesn't play as urgently. So, as you've said, I mean,

it's spoiler alert, but you don't make a definitive call on whether we should go extinct or not. But where does this leave us? When you run through these arguments and you run through the scenarios that are at play, where does that leave us, do you think? Well, let me put it this way. To face the question of whether we should go extinct is like facing the possibility of, if I could use this term, Matt, facing the possibility of a moral hanging, right?

In which we deserve, as a species, not to go on. That seems, right, Samuel Johnson once said that someone who faces the prospect of a hanging in two weeks, that it focuses the mind. If the morality of the possibility of our going extinct is going to focus the mind, then what it does is it opens us up, I think, a little bit more sympathetically to some of the solutions I'm talking about at the end of the book. You say maybe instead of asking whether, you know, it'll come to justify our future existence, we should ask if we're willing to try to justify that existence.

Right. And that's the second question, right? The first question, should we go extinct? And the second question, what can we do to make our existence here more justifiable? And the kinds of things I'm talking about, right, trying to limit factory farming, limit deforestation, limit population growth, and at the end, this discussion of developing a certain sympathetic relationship to the environment where we don't see the environment as just a set of resources for us to exploit, but something that we're part of and need to respect. If we're facing the possibility that we might morally not be justified in our existence, but there are things that we can do that might tilt toward justification, that seems to me to lend a certain urgency and a certain openness to some of these other changes. How do you get to that place?

And I mean, what needs to change to get to that place? Because it feels like at the heart of it, the key thing is a change in attitude in some ways that we have to think differently about our place here. And I just wonder how you get to that place. I think part of it is just reflecting on the circumstances we find ourselves in. Younger people are doing that. They're reflecting on the climate crisis. Matt, I could put it this way. Let's suppose that I told you, look, the kid you're going to have is going to be a mass murderer. Would that give you a reason not to have the kid? It would. But let's suppose I told you, look, the kid that you're going to have is going to be a mass murderer unless you do certain things to prepare

the environment for that kid. That's surely going to motivate you to do it. The idea that I'm trying to press with the book is, look, the generations that are coming and some of the current generations are in some ways mass murderers of our fellow creatures. And we can do something about that. But to do something about it is to recognize first what the problem is. And I hope what the book is, is to open a conversation to see how it is that we're contributing and motivate us to begin to move forward on issues that we all agree are probably issues that are important to work on in any case. But do you honestly believe that people are willing to have that conversation? And maybe it's the framing of it.

I mean, the idea of a mass murderer might be something that puts people off having that conversation. But do you honestly believe that people are willing to engage? Because it requires a rethink and a change in attitude towards animals and towards the natural world and our place in the natural world so that, as you said, I mean, we don't just see it as resource or as something that we use for enjoyment. But two things, right? One, I think it is changing.

It's changing slowly, but you go to restaurants and restaurants that didn't used to have vegetarian options are now having vegetarian options. It's a bit in the air. But Matt, you're also asking me to predict something, right? And let me tell you how bad a predictor I am, right? When I was in college, there was a concert that was given, little tiny concert, little tiny hall, so little, right,

that the band had to go through the doors we were standing. I opened the door for the band. The band went through, and I looked at my friend, and I said, that's the best I'll ever do, Some small-time band from New Jersey. Now, Matt, that was Bruce Springsteen. Small-time band from New Jersey. So if you're asking me to predict, right, you're asking the wrong guy. I'll ask you this then.

How do you, I mean, based on what you've written, but also how you're thinking about this, how do you live your own life to feel more comfortable about your existence? Let me say this to preface, right? I'm not a moral model here, right? I'm not the kind of model people say, hey, look, we should all be living like Todd, then we'd all be justified in having kids, right? But what I try to do is be cognizant of my situation. And of course, to the writing the book, of course, that forces you to be more cognizant. But specifically, to have the environment, to have animals become more salient to me, to see them as the beings they are. This is not a complicated philosophical move.

It's just a move of attending to something. And attending to the world in which we live, attending to our fellow creatures, attending to those environments. The book has really forced me to do that in a more focused way than I did before. And the hope is that in a very small way, it will contribute to other people doing that. You said this was a difficult book to write. What was the most difficult part about it? Envisioning us not being here. Envisioning a world in which all of those good things that I talk about in the second chapter weren't there on the planet. It's just, it's tough to sit with.

In my philosophy, and I'm sure you know this, right? My philosophy is a matter of sitting with things, sitting with thoughts, sitting with things that might be obvious and trying to sort them out. And I had to sit with our extinction, sit with a universe without us or a planet without us. And that was difficult to sit with. We don't usually do that. We don't regularly do that, sit with those ideas. You've been very successful at getting us to think about that outside of the classes that you're teaching.

The intro to the book is written by Michael Schur, who is the creator of The Good Place, brilliant television series, Ted Danson and others in it. And you were kind of like a, I don't want to say like an advisor on that, but you were like the philosopher in residence in some ways on that program.

Yeah, there were a couple of us who were advisors. And basically what Michael Schur did was he, he wrote Man of the Blue, had read a little book I'd written on death. And we started to talk. And as we talked, we started to get along. I became a sort of current advisor for the show. And the writers and Mike were really interested in getting the philosophical questions right at the same time they wanted to create an entertaining sitcom. And that show did it on a massive scale and on a very popular scale

in terms of getting us to kind of marinate in big ideas. What happens if we do that, do you think? Well, let me say two things, Matt. First, you just asked me for another prediction. So if we were to reflect on a mass scale, I think, in fact, behaviors might change. When I teach animal rights, people tend to have different relationships to animals than they did when the course ends. And I don't proselytize.

I talk about people who think animals should have no rights. I talk about people who think animals should have the same rights as human beings. But at the end of that discussion, our fellow creatures are more salient to students than they were before. So if this were to seep more into the culture, not just my thought, but what The Good Place did, what other popular shows do that get people to reflect, I think the salience of the issues would become more present for them. And if that happens, then I think you can begin to see bits of change. Todd May, I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you. Thank you very much.

It's been my pleasure and honor, Matt. Todd May is a philosopher and the author of Should We Go Extinct? A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times. He spoke with Matt Galloway in September.